Chapter 1: The Unwanted Witness

Chapter 1: The Unwanted Witness

The fluorescent lights of Innovatech Solutions hummed a lonely, oppressive tune in the dead of night. Outside, the city glittered, a world of life and movement Kiera Vance felt utterly disconnected from. Inside, she was a prisoner in a glass-and-steel cage, the sole occupant of the seventeenth floor. Everyone else had fled to their homes, their families, their lives, hours ago.

Everyone but her.

Her eyes, sharp and analytical behind stylish but functional glasses, burned from staring at the monitor for fourteen straight hours. Lines of corrupted code swam before her, a tangled mess that was not her creation, but had become her responsibility.

“Just wrap the null check in a try-catch block, Marcus,” she muttered to the empty air, her voice a dry rasp. “It’s Programming 101.”

But Marcus Thorne, her manager, didn’t understand code. He understood schmoozing, delegating blame, and wearing suits that cost more than her monthly rent. This afternoon, when the entire client-side server crashed, he hadn’t hesitated. In a department-wide email, he’d smoothly pointed the finger at a “recent, flawed update” from Kiera’s terminal. It was a lie, a bald-faced redirection of his own catastrophic incompetence, but in the cutthroat environment of Innovatech, the first accusation was the one that stuck.

So here she was, fixing his mess. Her reward? The privilege of not being on the shortlist for the next round of layoffs. The whispers about downsizing were a constant, chilling undercurrent in the office, making everyone paranoid, making a tyrant like Marcus Thorne all-powerful. He knew she couldn’t afford to lose this job. The invoices for her mother’s medical care were a mountain on her kitchen table, a constant, crushing weight on her shoulders.

With a final, satisfying series of clicks, the program compiled. Green text scrolled across her screen. Success. A wave of weary relief washed over her. The bug was squashed. She stretched, her spine cracking in protest, and glanced at the clock in the corner of her screen. 11:47 PM.

Protocol dictated she had to run the final diagnostic from the manager’s terminal to push the patch live. A stupid, inefficient rule Marcus had implemented to ensure all major fixes went through him, allowing him to take the credit. Grabbing her company keycard, Kiera pushed herself up from her chair, her legs stiff. The office was eerily silent, the only sound the soft whir of servers and the distant moan of the wind against the building’s windows.

As she approached the glass-walled corner office that served as Marcus’s domain, she noticed the light was still on, a thin blade of yellow cutting through the gloom. Strange. He usually left at five on the dot.

She raised her hand to knock, but a sound from within stopped her. It wasn’t the sound of typing, or a phone call. It was a soft, feminine giggle, quickly shushed. Kiera’s brow furrowed. She froze, her hand hovering in the air. Curiosity warred with her deep-seated instinct to not get involved, to just keep her head down.

Then came a low murmur, Marcus’s voice, smooth and predatory. “...don’t worry about her. Vance is a workhorse. She’ll fix it. And when she does, I’ll make sure your ‘performance bonus’ reflects your… exceptional contributions to office morale.”

Another giggle, this one higher, more familiar. Kiera’s blood ran cold. She knew that laugh. It belonged to Jenna Swanson, the new secretary, barely three months out of college, all wide eyes, trendy outfits, and cloying perfume.

Kiera took an involuntary step closer, peering through the vertical blinds that were, uncharacteristically, not fully closed. Her heart began to hammer against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the oppressive silence.

What she saw made the air leave her lungs in a sharp, silent gasp.

Jenna was perched on the edge of Marcus’s massive mahogany desk, her skirt hiked high on her thighs. Marcus stood between her legs, his expensive tie loosened, his hands roaming possessively over her. His back was to the door, but Kiera could see the smug, triumphant look on Jenna’s face in the reflection of the darkened monitor behind the desk. It was not the face of a naive young woman being taken advantage of; it was the look of a predator who had just secured her prize.

Bile rose in Kiera’s throat. This was the “performance bonus” that was supposed to go to her team for landing the Axiom account last month. This was where their overtime and hard work went.

She stumbled back, a wave of nausea and fury making her dizzy. Her heel caught on the carpet, and her shoulder bumped into a large potted plant by the door. The fronds rustled, a sound as loud as a gunshot in the silent hallway.

Inside the office, the movement stopped.

“What was that?” Jenna’s voice, suddenly sharp with panic.

Kiera’s mind screamed run. But her feet were rooted to the spot, paralyzed by a deer-in-the-headlights terror. The office door swung open with a violent shove.

Marcus Thorne stood there, his face a mask of incandescent fury. His hair was disheveled, his shirt rumpled. His eyes, usually filled with smug arrogance, now burned with a cold, reptilian hate. He saw her, and his expression twisted into a snarl.

“Vance.” He spat her name like it was poison.

Behind him, Jenna frantically pulled her skirt down, her face pale with shock.

“I… I finished the patch,” Kiera stammered, her voice barely a whisper. “The server is stable. I just needed to run the diagnostic from your terminal.”

Marcus stepped into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him. He stalked towards her, backing her up against the wall. He was taller than her, broader, and he used his physical presence to intimidate, crowding her space until all she could smell was his expensive, cloying cologne and the faint, sour scent of sweat.

“You saw nothing,” he said, his voice a low, menacing growl.

Kiera couldn’t speak. She just stared at him, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs.

“Are you listening to me?” He leaned in closer, his face inches from hers. “You are a programmer. You came here, you fixed the code, and you went home. You didn’t see a goddamn thing. If I hear one whisper, one rumor… if I even think you’ve told someone, I will ruin you.”

He paused, letting the threat hang in the air.

“You think this job is secure? In this economy?” he sneered. “I can have you replaced in an hour. I will personally write a recommendation that will ensure you never code for anyone in this city again. I’ll say you’re incompetent. That you steal company property. Who are they going to believe? Me, the manager, or some quiet little mouse who can’t even look me in the eye?”

Every word was a perfectly aimed blow, striking right at her deepest fears. Her mother. The bills. The shame of failure. He knew exactly where she was weakest.

“I won’t say anything,” she finally managed to choke out, the words tasting like ash in her mouth. The defiance she sometimes felt, that flicker of a forgotten self who went by ‘Nyx’ and broke into systems for sport, was buried deep under a mountain of primal fear. Survival came first. It always had.

“Good girl.” He smirked, his confidence returning. He straightened his tie, smoothing down his suit jacket as if brushing away the filth of their conversation. He looked her up and down one last time, his gaze filled with contempt. “Now get the hell out of my office. The patch can wait until morning.”

He turned and walked back into his office, closing the door with a soft, final click.

Kiera stood there for a long moment, trembling, her back pressed against the cold wall. The silence of the seventeenth floor descended once more, but it was different now. It was heavier, charged with humiliation and a cold, simmering rage.

She was trapped. A witness to something ugly and corrupt, with a threat hanging over her head that could destroy the fragile life she had built for herself and her mother. As she walked back to her desk on shaking legs, gathered her things, and rode the empty elevator down to the deserted lobby, one thought echoed in her mind.

He thought she was a quiet little mouse. He thought he had won. He had no idea what kind of ghost he had just awakened in the machine.