Chapter 2

Half an hour later.

I returned to my workstation from the restroom.

My genuine leather ergonomic chair was gone.

In its place sat a cheap plastic stool with half a broken leg.

The three large 4K monitors on my desk had been stripped away.

All that remained was an ancient, dust-covered second-hand laptop.

The young developers in the R&D department exchanged terrified glances.

Nobody in the entire room dared to breathe too loudly.

Toby, a chubby junior coder who was usually closest to me, crept over.

"Marcus, Kyle ordered IT to cut all your workstation access."

"He even kicked you out of the core WhatsApp dev group."

"A wise man doesn't pick a fight he can't win. Just go apologize and smooth things over."

I patted Toby's shoulder, motioning for him to head back to his desk.

Apologize?

The corporate world is a jungle where only leverage matters.

Whoever controls the core technology runs the show.

Kyle swaggered over with Chloe trailing behind him.

"Marcus, effective immediately, you are reassigned to the Legacy Data Archiving Unit."

"Ten years' worth of paper records—a hundred archive boxes—are sitting down in the basement."

"I expect you to manually type all of it into the system within three days."

Three days? A hundred massive boxes?

He was deliberately trying to work me into a heart attack.

Sweat broke out on Toby's forehead.

He couldn't stop himself from speaking up.

"Mr. Sterling, that's over a hundred thousand pages of raw data!"

"Even with OCR scanning software, it would take two weeks!"

Kyle shot Toby a venomous glare.

"Shut up! Did anyone give you permission to open your mouth?"

"This is a special assignment for senior deadweight. OCR makes mistakes; it must be keyed in manually."

"Fail to finish, and it counts as gross insubordination. You won't see a single penny of severance!"

The entire floor fell dead silent.

Everyone saw it for what it was.

Blatant, unchecked workplace retaliation.

I dragged the wobbly plastic stool over and sat down steadily.

"Kyle, are you absolutely certain you want me typing archives in the basement?"

"Who is going to handle the primary server's daily maintenance routine?"

Kyle waved a dismissive hand.

"You mean clicking a mouse a few times on routine inspections?"

"I can grab any random intern to do that."

"Stop trying to gaslight me with your fake importance."

I nodded, opening the lid of the battered laptop.

"Alright. If that's what management assigns, I will fully comply."

"Just so we're clear upfront."

"If the main server crashes, it has nothing to do with me."

Kyle let out a dry laugh.

"You really think you're God's gift to this company, don't you?"

"The world keeps spinning without you, old man. Get your ass down to the basement!"

I stood up and walked toward the elevators without looking back.