Chapter 1

Late at night, our newly launched product crashed. We were losing millions of dollars every single second.

As the Chief Technology Officer, I just sat there, calmly sipping my coffee. I did absolutely nothing.

I watched those millions go down the drain in real-time. I watched our newly listed startup slide into bankruptcy, and my colleagues lose everything.

In my past life, the moment the glitch appeared, I immediately rallied the dev team to patch the security loophole.

Based on the source of the crash, I quickly drafted different emergency protocols.

After securing the leak and saving most of the company’s assets, I finally relaxed, slumping exhausted into my office chair.

But the next second, the police burst into the room and slammed handcuffs onto my wrists.

"You're under arrest for intentional sabotage of corporate property!"

The employees and our CEO, Donald, screamed at me with pure rage.

"We trusted you! How could you purposely code such a massive backdoor just to ruin us?!"

"Why did you lock the servers and restrict our admin access when the crash happened? You blocked us from taking the product offline!"

"Why did you ruin this company?!"

It was only then that I realized the entire crash had been a setup.

I had literally risked my life to save the company at the very first second.

The servers had been hijacked by a hacker. I wasn't the one who locked everyone out.

I wanted to show the police my computer log history, but someone had already altered it.

Even worse, my blood test came back positive for heavy hallucinogens.

My closest colleague from the product team, Chloe, stepped forward with a video.

"He's been eyeing the company's core assets for a long time. He coded this backdoor weeks ago."

My intern, Liam, cried out in faked betrayal.

"He used this backdoor to siphon millions of corporate funds into his own offshore account!"

While I was being held for investigation, several board members cornered me on the rooftop. In the chaos, they pushed me over the edge.

After my death, those same board members who pushed me got promoted to major shareholders.

Liam took over my position as CTO.

And they claimed that I committed suicide out of guilt, jumping off the locked rooftop.

A sudden shudder ran through my body. When I opened my eyes, I was back. Back to the night of the massive product crash.