Chapter 2 - Eight Minutes to Ruin
“Thirteen minutes,” Roman corrected.
Autumn did not look up.
The transfer bar crawled from eighteen percent to twenty-one.
Something was wrong.
She had calculated the remaining time from the malware’s original behavior, but the code had changed tactics. Instead of attacking the copied files individually, it had begun opening thousands of false processes, choking the laptop’s memory.
Autumn’s pulse accelerated.
Someone had built a second trap.
“Stop staring at me,” she said.
Roman’s expression hardened.
“Excuse me?”
“All of you. Every person standing behind me is making it harder to think.”
Nobody moved.
Autumn finally looked over her shoulder.
“Unless one of you knows how to terminate a polymorphic memory attack without killing the partition, give me ten feet.”
Dominic almost smiled.
“Back up.”
Everyone obeyed.
That frightened Autumn more than the guns.
She returned to the screen.
Twenty-four percent.
The investors were speaking quietly among themselves.
The lead investor, Victor Lau, closed his folder.
“Mr. Kaine, we have delayed our departure long enough.”
“Give her the time she asked for.”
“You gave us assurances regarding security.”
“And I’m correcting the failure.”
Lau glanced at Autumn.
“With a waitress?”
Autumn kept typing.
“She’s doing better than the man I paid to prevent it.”
The technical consultant visibly flinched.
Dominic did not care.
Thirty-one percent.
Autumn opened the process tree.
There.
A secondary executable had awakened.
She isolated it.
Her fingers stopped.
The name attached to the process was meaningless—XQ41.tmp—but its encryption architecture was not.
Autumn knew it.
Not merely recognized it.
Knew it.
Her stomach dropped.
Seven years vanished.
Suddenly she was twenty years old again, sitting inside an MIT disciplinary office while three professors stared at evidence proving she had broken into the university’s financial servers.
Evidence she had never created.
Her scholarship had disappeared within forty-eight hours.
Her future within seventy-two.
Her father had already been dead. Her mother was gone. Her seventeen-year-old brother, Noah, had needed someone to support him.
Autumn had stopped fighting.
She left Cambridge and never returned.
But before leaving, she had copied the malicious code that destroyed her life.
She had spent seven years studying it.
The secondary executable on Dominic Kaine’s computer contained the same signature.
Not similar.
Identical.
“Autumn?”
Dominic was watching her.
She realized she had stopped typing.
“I need internet access.”
Roman immediately said, “No.”
“If I reconnect normally, whoever is receiving the stolen data will know we stopped the attack.”
“Then why would we do that?”
“Because I want them to think they succeeded.”
Dominic approached.
“Explain.”
Autumn turned the screen slightly.
“The malware sends confirmation packets every ninety seconds. I’ve been blocking them. Whoever is on the other side now knows something went wrong.”
“And?”
“I can create a false packet telling them the transfer finished.”
Roman understood first.
“You want them to expose themselves.”
“I want their server to answer.”
Dominic’s eyes remained on her.
“Can you trace it?”
“Maybe.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only honest one.”
For several seconds, they stared at each other.
Dominic nodded.
“Do it.”
Autumn reconnected the network.
The laptop instantly exploded with activity.
Warning boxes appeared.
Roman stepped forward.
Autumn raised one hand.
“Don’t.”
She injected the false confirmation packet.
Three seconds.
Nothing.
Five.
Seven.
Then—
A response.
Autumn captured it.
The external server bounced through Toronto, Amsterdam, Bucharest and Singapore.
Professional.
She followed the chain backward.
The final location appeared.
Chicago.
Roman leaned closer.
“Where?”
Autumn stared at the address.
“South Wabash.”
Dominic’s face changed.
He knew it.
Roman did too.
“That building belongs to Rossi,” Roman said.
Autumn shook her head.
“No. That’s just the physical relay. Whoever designed this knew you’d trace it eventually. Rossi is supposed to be discovered.”
Dominic looked at Cross.
Cross’s confusion appeared genuine.
“Angelo paid me,” he insisted. “I swear.”
“I believe you,” Autumn said.
Every person in the room looked at her.
She pointed toward the code.
“Rossi hired Cross. But Rossi didn’t build this.”
“Then who did?” Dominic asked.
Autumn swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
She did not tell him the rest.
Whoever had built it might be the same person who had destroyed her life seven years earlier.
The transfer reached sixty percent.
Dominic walked toward the windows.
Chicago spread beneath them in glass, steel and late-afternoon sunlight.
Autumn concentrated on the machine.
Seventy-two.
Seventy-nine.
Eighty-six.
The secondary malware attacked again.
She anticipated it this time.
Three commands.
Terminate.
Redirect.
Seal.
Ninety-four percent.
The lead investor stood beside her now.
Nobody spoke.
Ninety-seven.
Ninety-nine.
The progress bar froze.
Autumn's heart slammed against her ribs.
“No.”
She opened the transfer log.
A corrupted archive blocked completion.
She had less than five minutes.
She could delete the archive and save everything else.
But its filename caught her attention.
BLACKBIRD.
Autumn went cold.
That was the name written across the evidence used to expel her from MIT.
She opened the archive.
Password protected.
“Autumn,” Roman warned.
“Four minutes.”
She ignored him.
Her fingers typed a password she had not entered in seven years.
NOAH1999.
ACCESS GRANTED.
Autumn stopped breathing.
Dominic saw her face.
“What happened?”
She closed the archive immediately.
“Nothing.”
“Don't lie to me.”
“I said nothing.”
Dominic moved beside her.
“Why did you recognize the password?”
Autumn looked at him.
For the first time since entering the room, genuine fear showed in her face.
“Because it was my password.”
Silence.
Roman looked at Cross.
Cross shook his head frantically.
“I don’t know anything about her.”
Autumn completed the transfer.
100%.
She removed the external drive.
Then she rebuilt the boot sector.
The laptop restarted.
Five seconds later, Dominic Kaine’s system returned.
The files were intact.
The investors stared.
Victor Lau slowly sat down.
“Perhaps,” he said, “we can finish our conversation.”
Dominic did not celebrate.
He was staring at Autumn.
“You just saved nine hundred million dollars.”
Autumn stood.
“Then I assume I’m allowed to leave.”
Dominic’s gaze shifted toward the USB drive.
“Not yet.”
Her heart sank.
“I succeeded.”
“You did.”
“Then we had a deal.”
“We did.”
Dominic stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“And now we have another problem.”
“What problem?”
“Seven years ago someone destroyed your life with the same malware that attacked me today.”
Autumn said nothing.
“And whoever attacked me,” Dominic continued, “knew a password connected to you.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“It means you stopped being a waitress who accidentally walked into my problem.”
His eyes hardened.
“You’re part of it.”
Before Autumn could answer, her phone vibrated.
A text message.
Unknown number.
She opened it.
A photograph appeared.
Her brother Noah was walking out of his apartment.
The photograph had been taken less than a minute earlier.
Beneath it were six words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED A WAITRESS.
Autumn's face emptied of color.
Dominic took the phone from her hand.
He read the message.
Then another arrived.
BLACKBIRD WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING.
Dominic looked at Roman.
“Lock the building down.”
Autumn grabbed his wrist.
“No.”
Dominic turned toward her.
“My brother is out there.”
“Which is exactly why you’re not going anywhere alone.”
“I don't need your permission.”
“No.”
His voice became quiet.
“But whoever sent this knows who you are, where your brother lives, and that you’re standing beside me right now.”
Autumn slowly looked toward the windows.
The realization was worse than the threat.
Someone had been watching the room.
Dominic followed her gaze.
Across the street, thirty floors above Chicago, sunlight flashed against a neighboring window.
May you like
A camera lens.
Then it disappeared.
