Chapter 4: The First Silent Payday

Chapter 4: The First Silent Payday

Richard Sterling savored the rich, nutty aroma of his nine-o’clock-and-already-the-second cup of Panamanian Geisha coffee. Friday mornings were his favorite. The week was done, the weekend of golf and schmoozing lay ahead, and the office ran on the pleasant, low-grade hum of people counting down the hours. He’d already forgotten about the little HR girl’s dramatic exit last week. Good riddance. He’d hired Mark, a proper manager, a man’s man. The company was better for it.

His intercom buzzed, a jarring intrusion. It was his secretary, Patricia.

“Mr. Sterling,” she said, her voice unusually tight, “I have the head of nursing from the Bridgeport facility on line two, and the regional director for the eastern division on line three. They’re both saying their staff haven’t received their direct deposits.”

Sterling sighed, annoyed at the interruption. “It’s barely nine-thirty, Patricia. Tell them to be patient. IT probably has a server lag or something.” He waved a dismissive hand at the empty air. “These things happen.”

He took another sip of coffee. But five minutes later, the intercom buzzed again. “Sir, it’s not just them. I’m getting calls from everyone. Accounting, maintenance, corporate… no one’s been paid.”

The annoyance began to curdle into a more potent irritation. He stabbed the button for Mark’s extension.

“Mark, Sterling here,” he barked when the younger man picked up. “There’s some kind of hiccup with the payroll. Handle it. Let me know when it’s fixed.” He hung up before Mark could reply. That’s what he paid managers for—to handle things so he didn’t have to.

An hour crawled by. Sterling tried to focus on a Wall Street Journal article about yacht maintenance, but the incessant buzzing of the intercom was making it impossible. Patricia sounded near tears.

“They’re starting to get angry, Mr. Sterling. The kitchen staff at the Elmwood home are threatening to walk out before the lunch service.”

“Where the hell is Mark?” Sterling roared, slamming his paper down on the desk.

As if summoned, Mark appeared in his doorway. The cocksure swagger he’d worn all week was gone, replaced by a sheen of cold sweat. His tie was slightly askew.

“There’s a… there’s a problem, Richard,” he stammered.

“I am acutely aware there is a problem,” Sterling said, his voice dangerously low. “I told you to fix it. Why is it not fixed?”

“I can’t get into the system,” Mark said, wringing his hands. “I mean, I can log in. It all looks normal. But when I go to the payroll processing module… it’s… weird.”

“Weird?” Sterling scoffed. “I’m not paying you for ‘weird,’ I’m paying you for results.”

“I click on ‘Run Payroll,’” Mark explained, his voice rising in panic, “and it just opens a help document about setting up a dot matrix printer from 1998. I tried to manually access employee pay stubs, but the search fields keep disappearing. It’s like the whole system is possessed!”

Sterling felt a prickle of genuine alarm. He remembered Elara, the quiet girl with the glasses, and the placid, unreadable expression on her face as she’d told him she was sure he and Mark could handle it. He stood up, knocking his chair back. “Move.”

He stormed out of his office and down the hall to the HR department, Mark trailing behind him like a chastened puppy. He shoved Mark aside from Elara’s old desk and sat down, grabbing the mouse with a proprietary fury. He was Richard Sterling. He would tame this machine.

He logged in with the admin credentials Mark provided. Just as Mark had said, the desktop looked perfectly normal. He navigated to the payroll program, the same one he’d seen Elara use a hundred times. It looked simple enough. A few icons, a few menus. He clicked ‘Process Bi-Weekly Payroll.’

A window popped up. It was an ASCII art drawing of a smiling computer. Below it, text read: HELLO, USER! NEED HELP?

His blood pressure spiked. He clicked it away and tried a different menu: ‘Manual Payment Authorization.’ A series of data fields appeared. He began to type in an employee’s name. Halfway through, the fields flickered and vanished, replaced by a single, unblinking cursor on a blank screen.

He slammed his fist on the desk. “What is this nonsense?”

The CFO, a perpetually anxious man named Gerald, hurried over. “What’s the status, Richard? The bank just called. Our automated transfer request never came through. The entire company payroll—three hundred and forty-two employees—is sitting in our account.”

“I’m working on it!” Sterling snarled, clicking frantically. Every path was a dead end. Every button led to a nonsensical pop-up or a blank screen. The system wasn’t broken—a broken system would give an error message. This was worse. It was actively, malevolently unusable. It was a digital labyrinth, designed to lead you in circles until you went mad.

“Get IT down here!” Gerald squeaked.

“They’re already on it,” Mark said weakly. “They’ve been trying to access the back end for an hour. They said the security architecture is… different. Customized. They can’t get past the firewalls without tripping alarms that lock the whole system down.”

A cold dread began to seep into the room. This wasn’t a glitch. This wasn’t a server lag. This was a cage.

“What about the other admin? Dave?” Sterling demanded, grasping at straws.

“It’s Friday,” Mark whispered. “He landed in Hawaii three hours ago. His wife said he turned his phone off.”

Of course. The long weekend. Dave’s vacation. The timing was… perfect. Too perfect.

It was Mark who found it. While Sterling and the IT technicians continued their futile assault on the locked system, he had begun to nervously clear off Elara’s desk, needing something to do with his trembling hands. Underneath a stapler, he found a single sheet of paper, placed with deliberate care. He picked it up, his face draining of all color.

Without a word, he walked over and handed it to Sterling.

Sterling snatched the paper. On it, in a stark, 72-point font that felt like a scream in the quiet, panicked office, were two words.

Good luck.

The paper trembled in Sterling’s hand. He saw her face again, that calm, polite smile. I’m sure you and Mark will have it well in hand. It wasn’t a statement of confidence. It was a curse.

The ghost in the machine had a name. Elara Vance.

The phone on the desk rang, and Mark numbly answered it. He listened for a moment, his eyes wide with horror. “Richard,” he said, his voice barely a croak. “That was security from the main facility. The entire nursing staff for the afternoon shift just walked out. They said they’re not coming back until they’re paid.”

Panic, raw and absolute, finally erupted. The humming office noise was gone, replaced by the frantic shouting of executives. No nurses. No cooks. Hundreds of furious employees. Millions of dollars locked away behind a digital wall built by a woman they had deemed utterly unimportant.

Richard Sterling stared at the mocking black letters on the page. They weren’t trapped in a glitch. They were trapped in their own arrogance. And they were completely, utterly alone.