Jason adjusted his chair, the motion practiced and precise. He leaned forward, staring at the rows of code on his dual monitors. His shoulders ached, but he ignored them, focused on the screen, where his faint reflection blended into the glow.
His dark, slightly unkempt hair fell over his forehead, longer than he usually kept it. No matter how often he ran his fingers through it, it always seemed to fall back into place. His brown eyes, tired but sharp, scanned the lines of code, searching for patterns even when he wasn't fully aware of it.
Across from him, Arnon lounged in his chair, tossing a stress ball lazily into the air. The faint thud it made against his palm had become part of the office's ambient noise.
Jason exhaled. "You know, if you stare at that code any harder, you might bend reality."
Arnon, without looking up, gave him a slow, exaggerated middle finger.
Jason smirked. Their usual rhythm.
Sophia wandered over, arms crossed, an eyebrow raised. She was effortlessly put together, with a sharp gaze that missed nothing. There was something about the way she carried herself—calm, confident, the kind of presence that made even the worst IT fires seem manageable.
"Still stuck?" she asked, nodding at Jason's screen.
"Still stuck," he confirmed. "Deadline was yesterday, and the system's fighting me every step of the way."
Sophia leaned against the desk, scanning the code. "Jason, repeat after me—the IT mantra: It's always DNS."
Jason chuckled. "I've got Arnon for that. If I crack, he'll finish the job."
"Not if I crack first," Arnon muttered, returning with two cups of coffee. He handed one to Jason, fingers briefly tapping the rim before letting go.
Sophia smirked. "With you two in charge, we'll either meet the deadline or burn the system to the ground."
Jason raised his mug in a mock toast. "Here's to burning it down."
---
The day dragged on. Jason knocked out high-priority tasks first—patching a security vulnerability, deploying a hotfix, clearing his inbox. Small things, necessary distractions before turning to the real problem.
The virus.
The investigation unfolded methodically:
Isolate the infected endpoints. Jason and Arnon pulled compromised machines off the network.
Collect logs. They analyzed system events, access records, and network traffic from the past 48 hours.
Sandbox testing. Running the virus in a virtual environment, watching its behavior unfold.
Most viruses followed a pattern. This one didn't.
It didn't encrypt files like ransomware. It didn't steal credentials like spyware. Instead, it changed things.
Jason frowned, scrolling through altered system logs. Some timestamps didn't make sense—files edited before they were created, logins from accounts that didn't exist.
It was as if someone had rewritten reality, but only in the digital sense.
That was when he realized Arnon had gone quiet.
"Earth to Arnon," Jason said, waving a hand.
Arnon blinked, snapping out of his thoughts. "Huh?"
"You spaced out," Jason said, studying him.
Arnon hesitated, the usual quick-witted response missing.
"You've been following data breaches, right?" Arnon asked.
"All morning," Jason said slowly.
Arnon exhaled. "Yeah. But it's more than that. The patterns are... strange. Too deliberate to be random attacks."
Jason tilted his head. "You think it's targeted? Like corporate sabotage?"
Arnon's jaw tightened. "Maybe. Or something else."
Jason frowned. Arnon was always curious, always poking at things others ignored. Usually, it was harmless—little side projects, obscure facts, shortcuts. But this felt different.
"You've been looking into this before it hit us, haven't you?"
Arnon shrugged, expression carefully neutral. "Just following breadcrumbs. You know how it is."
Jason wasn't convinced. "Arnon…"
"Relax," Arnon said, forcing a grin. "I'm not hacking into government servers or anything. Just poking around."
Jason sighed. "You poke too much, and one day you'll find something you can't handle."
Arnon chuckled, but there was an edge to it. "If that day comes, I'll let you bail me out."
Jason shook his head, smirking. They packed up for the night, shutting down their systems.
Just as Jason powered off his computer, something caught his eye—his cursor flickered backward for a fraction of a second. Like an undo command.
He stared at the screen, until it went blank reflecting the chair behind him. Then he quickly stood, stretching, and slipped out before his manager could corner him.