I woke with a start, the room dark and unfamiliar. A warm presence to my right mumbled and hugged me in closer, and I slowly relaxed back into his soft embrace. The clock in Gregory King’s ornate bedroom read a little after 3am. I still had at least two more hours left to sleep before my day would begin. I knew I was going to want to stay in bed, the idea of playing hooky with Mr. King made me smile, but I knew he would never go for it.
Running his business was practically an obsession with him. I was very much his employee, not his lover, at work, so these quiet moments were precious and few. I snuggled back into Mr. King’s warm arms, letting his gentle breathing lull me back to sleep. My wrists ached from the cuffs he had me in earlier that evening, but the bruises were worth it. Every night spent with him was worth it. I let my thoughts wander as I closed my eyes to shut out the numbers on the clock.
My brain immediately tried to tick off the various meetings on the schedule that day; three development meetings, a payroll issue, lunch, a board meeting in which I was presenting the financial stability projections for the quarter, and the myriads of small issues I knew were going to pop up throughout the day. I let them all wash over me, letting each one have a second of my time before going on to the next. It was strangely relaxing to plan out my day in the safety of the dark morning. I loved my job.
I had been working directly with Mr. King for almost three months now, and I had found my rhythm. It had taken a few weeks to acclimate, but I was excelling and finding solutions to problems before they even registered as problems. It was also wonderful to be with Gregory King again. I felt him twitch in a dream, holding me tighter as he mumbled into my hair.
He was two separate people, and I found myself wanting to please both of them. The sweet and thoughtful man from college only came out when we were alone and filled my nights. The powerful businessman version, demanding and controlling, filled my days. He made sure to keep the two identities separate, and I had learned quickly that despite our evening rendezvous, I could expect no quarter from him if I failed any of his business demands.
I could feel sleep slowly creeping up on me. My brain slowly let the sweet darkness envelope me and I drifted off, safe and warm in Mr. King’s arms.
***
Something felt off. The office had its normal hum, the secretaries busily clicking at computers, the phones ringing, and sporadic chatter filling the morning air, but I felt a tension in the air. It felt like a thunderstorm was coming, the office mood heavy and jumpy. The interns seemed to be hiding more than usual, and the secretary’s voices seemed to squeak too brightly. Just as forest animals know when a storm is coming, the office knew something big was going to happen. I gathered my usual morning information, and went to find Edward Thayer, head of the antiviral department, to get the production updates I needed to brief Mr. King with that morning. Thayer was in panic mode when I found him.
“Oh God, Claire! I don't know how something like this could have happened! What the hell are we going to do? What am I going to do? I can't face him alone with this...”
Claire could almost see the life draining from him as he spoke. His skin was pale, except for flushed cheeks, and his hair looked like he had run his hands through it all morning. He was fluttering about his office like a frightened butterfly, never landing anywhere, but almost touching everything. He tried to pick up a folder, but it slid through his hands and fell to the floor. He stood for a moment and stared at the papers, his face crumpled like he might cry. I quickly bent and picked up the scattered papers and put them back in his shaking hands.
“Ed, you know I have your back in any meeting you might have with Mr. King. Now, what on earth is the matter?” I asked gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. His whole body seemed to be trembling.
“You haven’t seen it yet then? Oh Claire- it is bad. So bad... Mr. King isn’t going to just fire all of us- he is going to personally kill all of us. At least twice.” his voice drifted into a mumble as fear shook through him.
I knew that, since Thayer had gotten this job he sometimes had a crisis of confidence. I understood, since he had overnight jumped three pay grades and been put in charge of over a hundred people. Usually when he got like this, I could defuse him with humor. “Let me see. It can’t be that bad- at worst he will just kill you and make you zombie slaves. Saves on payroll,” I tried gently, but my humor went right past him. His hands shook as he opened his laptop and handed it to me. Up on the screen was a email file addressed to the head of the antiviral company.
Dear Mr. King,
I have hacked your system. You destroyed me and now I am going to destroy you. Attached you will find a portion of the antiviral source code to prove that I have it. I have the entirety of it and will be selling it to anyone interested in purchasing the information. I also have used to it to develop a virus that is implanted in every computer in the King Corp. building.
If you wish to stop the virus, I want 5 million US dollars wired to an account in the Grand Caymans. If this is done by Wednesday at 5pm EST, I will disable the virus. For an additional 5 million I will not alert the media to the breach in your antiviral system. The last bit, the source code, will cost you 10 million for me to destroy all copies of.
You should never have fired me.
If you involve the authorities in any way, I will activate the virus and I will release this information to the public.
Sincerely,
Cirrus
I had to read it twice.
“I don’t understand. I know that the virus would be bad because our anti-virus software would have no way of finding or stopping it, and I know that the public finding out about this would be bad, but why would releasing the source code destroy the company?” I asked confused. In my mind the worst would be that people would use the information to get free anti-virus, and while bad, not the end of the world.
“If he releases the source code, we have no way to stop other people from building mal-ware that can hide from our system. Every one of our customers would be vulnerable to attacks. If it got out that this had happened, no one would buy our software. Lawsuits would occur. Did you know we supply the government with this? National security would be compromised. If the source code is released, the company would never recover. We would all lose everything,” Mr. Thayer explained.
I tried to wrap my brain around the concept and instead my thoughts flipped to when Mr. Cirrus had quit.
Mr. King snickered. “Your one sentence blurbs are no longer going to cut it around here.” He paused. “Mr. Cirrus, Mr. Thayer, you’re both aware of how important it is we meet this deadline, correct?” Both men answered with an affirmative. “Then you’ll understand that I can’t afford a shakeup in your department right now. Mr. Cirrus, at the conclusion of this project, your role will turn into more of an advisory one. You will be teaching Mr. Thayer the ins and outs of your current job, and once he’s ready, I’ll be transferring you to a position in R&D.”