Chapter 15 - The Basement BreachWhen my sedan screeched to a halt in the underground loading dock of Silver Pine Tower, I didn't wait for a parking spot. I killed the engine, grabbed my toolkit, and bolted straight through the service freight elevator doors.
The underground server room was a cavernous, chilled chamber lit by flashing rows of blue and green server racks. When I swiped my old badge, the heavy security door hissed open.
Arthur was standing in front of the central diagnostic console, his fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard while sweat beaded heavily on his forehead. On the main monitor, a red progress bar was ticking steadily upward: SYSTEM FORMAT: 84% COMPLETE.
"Owen! You're here!" Arthur gasped, pointing at the screen. "They're routing through an open port on the third-floor executive router! Whoever is doing this has physical access to an active network jack inside the building!"
"An insider," I said, my eyes narrowing as I scanned the server racks. "Someone still on the payroll who has a physical keycard."
I walked over to the secondary diagnostic terminal, plugged my physical maintenance cable directly into the main bus line, and bypassed the software firewall entirely.
"What are you doing?" Arthur asked.
"Cutting the digital umbilical cord," I replied grimly.
I didn't try to stop the format script through software commands. I reached behind the primary server rack and threw the manual circuit breaker for the third-floor executive sector, instantly severing its connection to the main data grid.
The red progress bar on the monitor froze dead at 92%.
A loud, frustrated groan echoed from the ceiling speakers as the remote connection was forcefully terminated.
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"You did it," Arthur whispered, collapsing back into his chair with a massive sigh of relief. "The core financial logs are locked in cold storage. They can't touch them."
"Good," I panted, wiping sweat from my neck. "Now let's find out who was plugged into that third-floor jack."
