The city's skyline stretched beyond the window of the executive conference room—glass walls, polished floors, and a silence that didn't belong in the middle of a business day. It was past office hours, but the meeting had only just begun.
Inside the room, four men sat at the long obsidian table. They weren't the kind of men who stayed late to finish reports or optimize quarterly forecasts. They were the kind who stayed behind when no one else was around to listen. The kind who did their real work in shadows and silences.
Gerald Locke, Senior Operations Manager, leaned back in his chair with his tie slightly loosened and a tumbler of scotch in his hand. He'd spent the past two decades building his kingdom—favour by favour, threat by threat. There wasn't a single contract signed in this company without some degree of benefit siphoned his way. Kickbacks. Ghost accounts. A hidden procurement loop only accessible to those who knew which numbers weren't numbers at all.
And for years, he'd gone unchallenged.
Until now.
"He's too close," muttered Roland Singh, the director of procurement, flicking through an encrypted email on his phone. "I heard from Annalise—Legal's asking for old server audit logs. They're combing through the vendor payment history."
Gerald's expression didn't flinch, but his grip on the glass tightened.
"That little worm's been working with legal for weeks," he said, voice low and coiled. "Ever since that report Aika Tanaka submitted to the board."
"Tanaka's relentless," the third man—Lars from Finance—added. "And she's got the board's ear. But she wouldn't have connected the dots without someone feeding her the patterns."
"And who do you think that someone is?" Gerald growled. "that cripple! Ren Hayashi…"
A long silence followed.
The fourth man, younger and quieter, spoke for the first time. "He's just a systems guy."
Gerald slammed his glass down.
"He's not just a systems guy. He's the only one in this damn building who is capable of seeing and finding everything. Vendor trails. Procurement logs. Internal system flags. And he's been quietly building tools to trace anomalies."
He stood and paced, jaw tight.
"And now he's working directly with Councillor Tanaka. I don't care how 'soft-spoken' he is. That little freak's a walking liability."
Roland raised an eyebrow. "You want him fired?"
"No. Too suspicious. Councillor Tanaka would come down like a sledgehammer if we tried that now."
Lars leaned forward. "So what then?"
Gerald stopped pacing. His smile was slow. Cold.
"We don't fire the key. We remove the key right after we retrieve the information that he found that might bring us down."
A pause.
"Make it look like he left. On his own. Make the environment unbearable. Feed the narrative. Rumours. Whisper campaigns. He's unstable. He's sick. He's too fragile for this line of work. Maybe even… nudge HR."
"Too risky," said the younger man. "That's thin ice. Especially with his disability status."
"Then we go subtler," Gerald snapped. "Block his access to certain logs. Corrupt one of his monitoring tools. Make it look like he's slipping. Like he can't keep up."
"Councillor Tanaka might still dig deeper."
"And if she does, we distract her. Assign her to new fire drills. Bury her in legal reviews. If all else fails—give her a more... permanent distraction."
Roland blinked. "Are you suggesting—?"
"I'm suggesting we isolate that freak," Gerald cut in. "We make sure that Councillor Tanaka is nowhere near that freak then we remove him, scare him so that he'll learn his lesson… and if this doesn't work then…"
He left the rest unsaid.
The plan was already in motion.
Two days later.
Ren wheeled into the server hall early, before most of the IT floor had even turned on the lights.
He liked these hours.
Silence. Stillness. The hum of machines—not people.
It was the only time he could think.
Lines of code filled his tablet as he ran another diagnostic on irregular API access logs. Something wasn't adding up. A ghost account had executed batch file transfers the night before, but the access trail had been scrubbed clean. Someone knew how to cover their tracks—but not well enough.
Ren's fingers hovered over the keys. His gut told him he was close.
It took him until late at night and managed to resolve the issue.
But then—
Click.
The server room door.
He turned. "Hello?"
Silence.
Then a thud.
The lights flickered—just slightly—but it was enough to make his stomach twist.
The door shut.
Ren rolled back and tried the panel.
It was locked.
He keyed in his override access. The red light blinked.
Access Denied.
His breath caught.
Another attempt.
Access Denied.
The panic came slow but sharp. Not like a wave—but a vice.
He backed up. Tried the emergency button.
Nothing.
His hands trembled.
He reached for his phone—no signal in the server room.
His breath grew shallow. Stay calm. Think. Breathe.
He'd been here before—not literally, but in this place. Trapped. Powerless. Forgotten.
And somewhere in the building—someone was watching. Someone had locked him in.
Elsewhere.
In the upper levels of the building, Gerald smiled at the message that flashed across his phone:
"Isolated. Phase 1 successful."
He thought he had escaped the shadows of his past, but now the walls were closing in again—and this time, someone made sure no one could hear him scream.