Chapter 2

Rex and I burst out of the office building and ran straight for workshop three.

The metal door of the breaker box hung open, and Theodore and Ruby stood a few yards off with their crew, taking in the show.

Theodore had an insulated wooden rod in his hand, and he whistled at me, cocky as anything.

"Oh, Boss Sterling, sorry about that. Guess I bumped the breaker by accident just now."

"Since you don't treat us like people, we figured we didn't need to babysit your machines anymore."

Rex didn't waste a breath on them. He tore into the pitch-black workshop.

Less than a minute later, his voice came back out, desperate.

"It's over! It's all over!"

I ran in with my phone flashlight on.

Every indicator light on the high-temperature reactor was dead. Rex was hunched in front of the reactor door, shaking all over.

"Ms. Sterling, the special resin inside this reactor has to cure at a constant temperature."

"It can't lose power for even a second! Now that it's stopped, the whole batch has set into clumps. It's scrap!"

"That's over sixty thousand dollars of imported raw material!"

"And we still have to dig the hardened waste out. No telling if it scored the inside wall of the machine!"

Tens of thousands in material, plus the time it would take to clean and repair the machine.

Enough to bury a delivery schedule that was already tight.

I stood in the dark and kept my eyes on that pack of summer interns laughing and joking outside.

Ruby made a point of shouting at the top of her lungs.

"Serves her right! Wouldn't cough up a few hundred bucks, and now she's out tens of thousands. Bet it's killing her!"

Theodore pulled out his phone, snapped a photo of the black workshop, and posted it to his feed.

The caption was pure swagger: "Capitalist who's too full of herself to have any shame. She won't pay the heat bonus,"

"so we'll cool her down for her. Let's see how long she can hold out,"

"guys. She'll be on her knees tomorrow begging us to come back to work!"

The students in the group chat lit up instantly, lining up to like it and comment.

"Theo, you're a legend! Bloodsuckers like her only learn the hard way!"

"Everybody lock your dorm doors. Cards and games tonight!"

"Base pay goes up five hundred tomorrow or nobody shows their face!"

Rex was frantic, his eyes red, and he grabbed my arm.

"Ms. Sterling, just back down! They're young, they don't know what they're doing."

"Send each of them five hundred right now and coax them back to work!"

"Drag this out any longer and we'll be wiped out!"

I shook his hand off, hard, my voice flat.

"Young? Eighteen, nineteen, they're adults."

"If they don't know what they're doing, the police can teach them."

I called the technical supervisor over at once and gave the orders.

"Photograph every shutdown parameter. Film the whole cleanup of the hardened waste for evidence."

"Get in touch with the equipment manufacturer and have them issue a written damage assessment."

"Security, go to the monitoring room and copy every bit of footage of them pulling that breaker just now."

Rex was completely stunned, stammering as he pointed at me.

"Ms. Sterling... you're pushing this to the point of no return!"

"They're students. Corner them and they'll post all kinds of things online, and this factory's name will be mud!"

Watching those swaggering backs head off toward the dorms, I curled my lip.

"Making a scene is exactly what I want."

"If they don't blow this up big, how am I supposed to put them away?"

That night, the sixty skilled workers I'd brought in arrived at the plant under cover of darkness.

I had them quietly settled in a separate plant.

Theodore and his crew were still in the dorm eating takeout and playing cards,

happily waiting for me to come crawling first thing in the morning to beg for mercy.