CHAPTER 2 — The Thirty Minutes That Changed Everything
At exactly 1:17 a.m...
Emma entered the company headquarters.
The security guards looked confused.
Several executives rolled their eyes.
Victoria whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear.
"Let's enjoy the show."
The crisis room looked like a disaster zone.
Coffee cups.
Sleeping engineers.
Massive screens flashing red warnings.
Billions of dollars disappearing by the minute.
Emma said only one sentence.
"I need everyone to stop touching the servers."
Silence.
The chief technology officer frowned.
"Young lady..."
"We've been fighting this attack for sixteen hours."
Emma calmly replied...
"And every command you've entered has helped the hackers."
The room froze.
She walked directly toward the central workstation.
No hesitation.
No fear.
Her fingers danced across the keyboard with astonishing speed.
Command after command.
Code after code.
Windows opened faster than anyone could read.
Engineers slowly stopped laughing.
One whispered...
"How does she know our internal architecture?"
Another stared at her monitor.
"Impossible..."
"She's mapping the hidden access tunnels."
Five minutes.
Emma discovered the first breach.
Twelve minutes.
She isolated the malicious servers.
Nineteen minutes.
The hackers suddenly lost control.
Twenty-six minutes.
Encrypted files began restoring themselves.
Twenty-nine minutes.
Every alarm inside the building...
Stopped.
Complete silence.
Then...
Green lights.
Across every monitor.
Someone gasped.
"We're back online."
Another engineer checked the financial systems.
"No data loss."
The chief cybersecurity consultant looked completely pale.
"This..."
"This shouldn't be possible."
Richard slowly turned toward Emma.
"How?"
Emma removed the flash drive.
"I built this defensive AI almost three years ago."
"I've been testing it every night."
No one spoke.
Victoria's face turned white.
Jason blinked repeatedly.
Sophia couldn't breathe.
Richard whispered...
"You built this..."
"Alone?"
Emma nodded.
"I just needed old computers."
"The ones everyone threw away."
The board chairman suddenly stood.
"Young lady..."
"Would you consider working for this company?"
Emma smiled politely.
"I already do."
Confused faces filled the room.
She reached into her backpack...
And placed a thick envelope onto the conference table.
Richard opened it.
Inside...
Were hundreds of reports.
Every cyber vulnerability.
Every security recommendation.
Every solution.
All anonymously submitted over the past three years.
The sender's name on every report...
E.C.
Richard looked up slowly.
"That was you?"
Emma nodded.
"I knew no one would read them if they came from the stepdaughter."
Several executives suddenly remembered.
The mysterious reports had saved the company millions.
Everyone had praised the unknown genius called E.C.
The entire room turned toward Emma.
Victoria couldn't even lift her head.
But Emma wasn't finished.
She quietly opened one final file.
"I also discovered something else."
"The hackers..."
"Didn't enter from outside."
"They were invited."
The room instantly became ice cold.
Every eye turned toward the board members.
Because someone inside the Carter empire...
May you like
Had betrayed them.
And Emma already knew exactly who.
