Chapter 6 - The Digital Counter-Strike
Maya’s eyes darted down to her phone screen. A small, grim smile touched her lips—a look of pure, unadulterated genius that she must have inherited straight from Gloria.
"You talk about empires, Arthur," Maya said softly, standing up to face the billionaire eye-to-eye. "You forgot one crucial thing about the systems you built."
Arthur frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"You spent forty years paying off witnesses, silencing scientists, and burying medical trials," Maya said, her voice steady and echoing in the silent boardroom. "You thought you controlled every byte of data in this building. But you forgot that fifty years ago, my mother designed the core architecture of Vance Industries' internal network. She left a backdoor in the system—a fail-safe designed to trigger if her encrypted profile was ever accessed or terminated without her biometric clearance."
Arthur’s face drained of color. For the first time, absolute terror flickered in his eyes. "What did you do?"
"While you were busy having us dragged up here," Maya said calmly, holding up her phone, "my automated script uploaded the entire contents of Gloria’s flash drive—every trial result, every victim's name, every wire transfer, and the proof of my abduction—to every major news outlet, federal regulatory agency, and international medical journal in the world. It went live three seconds ago."
"NO!" Arthur roared, lunging forward to grab the phone.
Before he could reach her, the massive wall-mounted smart television at the end of the boardroom flickered on by itself.
The screen broke through the corporate screensaver and displayed a live broadcast from a major national news network. The news anchor’s face was grave, reading an urgent breaking news bulletin:
“We interrupt this broadcast with breaking developments regarding Vance Industries. Federal authorities have just raided corporate headquarters following the release of classified documents exposing decades of suppressed clinical trial fatalities and corporate corruption led by CEO Arthur Vance...”
Heavy footsteps echoed outside the heavy oak doors of the boardroom. Shouts, heavy boots, and the unmistakable metallic clatter of police gear rang down the hallway.
May you like
Arthur stopped dead in his tracks. He turned slowly around, staring at the television screen as his multi-billion-dollar empire unraveled in real-time before his eyes. His knees buckled slightly, and the crystal glass slipped from his hand, shattering into a thousand sparkling pieces against the hardwood floor.
The guards at the door lowered their hands, looking at each other in panic before dropping their batons and stepping aside as federal agents in tactical gear breached the room.
