Chapter 2 - The Theatre of the Accused
The secure vault of Apex Global Logistics was a windowless, reinforced concrete bunker nestled in the dead center of the warehouse floor. It required dual-authentication—a biometric scan plus an encrypted keycard—to unlock the heavy steel door.
As Toby swiped his card and pressed his thumb against the glass scanner, the heavy lock groaned and clicked open, swinging inward to reveal rows of empty metal shelving where fifty crates of enterprise server hardware should have been stacked like bricks.
"Look at that!" Toby gasped, stepping inside and throwing his hands up in theatrical despair. "Fifty units of the new RTX-Enterprise servers! Gone! Cleaned out! That's over two hundred thousand dollars in missing stock! Management is going to tear us apart!"
I stepped into the vault behind him, my hands resting casually in the pockets of my jacket. I didn't rush. I walked slowly down the empty aisle, running my fingers along the dust-free edge of the bottom shelf where the missing inventory had supposedly rested.
"Fifty units, huh?" I mused, my voice echoing off the concrete walls. "That's a lot of bulk to move out of here without a forklift. Security cameras must have captured the loading bay activity all night."
Toby swallowed hard, a sudden, nervous bead of sweat appearing at his temple. He quickly recovered, flashing a strained, sympathetic smile. "Well, you know how the overnight shift is, Julian. The exterior loading dock cameras have been glitchy all week. But... um... here's the really bad part."
He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket and handed it to me.
"I checked the system override logs this morning to see who had access after hours," Toby said, his voice dropping into a somber, sorrowful register. "Julian... your master badge ID was used to deactivate the vault alarms at 11:42 PM last night."
There it was. The exact script from my nightmare.
In my first life, reading that paper had felt like staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. I had stammered, turned pale, and tried to explain that I had been home in bed asleep, playing right into Toby's hands.
Today, I took the paper, glanced at it for half a second, and folded it neatly in half.
"My master badge ID?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, man," Toby said, shaking his head with manufactured grief. "I don't want to believe it, Julian. I look up to you. But the digital log doesn't lie. Your ID, your timestamp, your vault clearance. We have to report this to Director Vance immediately before someone else finds out."
"You're right, Toby," I said, a cold, brilliant smile breaking across my face. "We definitely need to report this to management right now. But before we do that... let me show you something in my office."
May you like
Toby blinked, momentarily thrown off by my utter lack of panic. "Your office? Julian, the audit team is going to be here in ten minutes. We need to—"
"Trust me, Toby," I interrupted, placing a heavy, commanding hand on his shoulder that made him flinch. "You're going to want to see this first."
