Chapter 4: The Digital Execution

Chapter 4: The Digital Execution

Lily made it back to her desk on legs that felt like hollow reeds. Her hands were shaking so violently she had to clench them into fists in her lap to still them. She didn't dare look up, but she could feel the eyes of the entire department on her, a mixture of pity, horror, and a terrifying, nascent admiration. The office was dead silent, the only sound the faint, tinny echo of Marcus still ranting behind his closed glass door.

She stared at her monitor, the offending report still displayed, the fabricated 8.2% conversion rate seeming to glow with a radioactive malice. She had done it. She had walked into the lion’s den, offered her throat, and he had savaged her exactly as planned. The lamb had been mauled, but the trap had been sprung.

An alert chimed softly from the encrypted chat on her screen. A single word from Elara: ‘Egress.’

The protocol was clear. One by one, they slipped out for a late lunch, their movements staggered and casual. They didn’t go to the bustling corporate cafeteria. Instead, they convened back in their dusty sanctuary, Conference Room 7B, the door clicking shut on the rest of the world.

Leo was already there, his laptop open. He’d retrieved the three phones, and as the others filed in, he was already downloading the files, his fingers flying across the keyboard with a grim efficiency.

“Alright,” he said, not looking up from his screen. “Let’s see the masterpiece.”

He clicked ‘play.’

The first video was from Lily’s phone. The angle was low, looking up. It captured Marcus in all his grotesque glory, leaning over her desk, his face a mottled crimson mask of fury. His voice, tinny through the phone’s speaker, was a torrent of abuse.

“—are you a complete and utter moron?” the recorded voice boomed. “8.2 percent? Do you think the board are idiots? Do you want me to look like a fool? This isn't some art school project where you get a gold star for trying, Chen! This is my career! My reputation!”

The team watched in stunned silence. They had all been on the receiving end of his temper, but seeing it laid bare, captured on video, was a different experience. It was stripped of context, a pure, ugly distillation of his tyranny.

Leo switched to the second file, the audio from Sarah’s hidden phone. The quality was crystal clear. Every word was a dagger.

“I should fire you right now. I should walk you out myself. You’re not paid to think, you’re not paid to make mistakes. You’re paid to make me look good. Is that concept too ‘feminine’ and weak for your tiny brain to comprehend?”

Lily flinched, the words striking her a second time. Elara placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. The reference to his insult from the day before was a gift, a perfect, damning bookend to his abuse.

Finally, Leo played the third file, from Mark’s breast pocket camera. It was a shaky, roving shot, but it captured the entire scene through the glass wall of Marcus’s office. It showed Lily standing there, small and still, absorbing the verbal onslaught. It showed other employees in the background, heads down, pretending not to notice. It showed the public nature of the humiliation.

When the video ended, the only sound in the room was the hum of the ancient air conditioner.

“My God,” Sarah whispered, her face ashen. “It’s… it’s even worse than I imagined.”

“It’s perfect,” Elara said, her voice a blade. The video was their smoking gun, still hot to the touch.

“So we send it to HR,” Mark said, though his tone lacked conviction. “And to his boss, Victoria. They can’t ignore this.”

Leo let out a harsh, cynical laugh. “Can’t they? They’ll call it a ‘heated performance review.’ They’ll send Marcus to a one-day anger management course and tell Lily she needs to be more resilient. They’ll open an investigation, and in the process, they’ll find a reason to fire every single one of us for creating a ‘hostile work environment.’ This video, sent through official channels, is a suicide note.”

The brief flicker of triumph died, replaced by the cold, familiar dread. He was right. Playing by the rules had never worked.

“So what do we do?” Lily asked, her voice quiet but firm. “We can’t let him get away with it. Not after this.”

Leo finally looked up from his laptop. A strange, dangerous glint was in his eye, the look of a man who had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

“We don’t go through official channels,” he said, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his face. “We go around them. We go over them. We go through everyone.”

He turned his laptop around. On the screen was a simple, outdated-looking email interface.

“This,” he announced, “is my secret weapon. When Sterling-Corp merged with OmniSolutions a decade ago, they had to integrate two completely different email systems. For about six months, they used a legacy server with a master distribution list to make sure no communications were lost. The list was called ‘ALL-CORP_INTEGRATION_PROTO.’ It includes every single employee, from the CEO in the penthouse to the interns in the mailroom. When they decommissioned the server, they forgot to disable the list or the back-end access portal. For ten years, it’s been sitting here. A ghost in the machine.”

He leaned back in his chair, the full weight of his revelation settling on them. “It’s a weapon of mass destruction. A nuke. Once we hit send on this, there’s no coming back. No quiet HR meetings. No corporate cover-ups. We deliver judgment to the entire company, all at once.”

The scale of it was terrifying. It was corporate treason.

But as they looked at each other, seeing the shared scars of Marcus’s reign, the fear was burned away by a cold, righteous fury.

“Do it,” Lily said, her voice clear and strong.

The rest of the team nodded in grim agreement. The Alliance of the Damned was ready to go to war.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur of adrenaline and cheap, bitter coffee from the breakroom. Under the guise of working late on the “corrected” Q4 projections, they turned Conference Room 7B into a digital war room.

Elara directed the operation with the precision of a field marshal. “The email can’t be emotional,” she instructed, pacing the room. “It has to be cold, professional, and irrefutable. We’re not disgruntled employees. We are presenting a factual report on managerial misconduct.”

Mark, the copywriter, took the lead on the text, his fingers flying across the keys. Elara stood over his shoulder, refining every word. They stripped out every adjective, every ounce of personal grievance, until all that remained was a stark, factual account.

Sarah, the social media expert, chimed in. “The subject line is crucial. It can’t be dramatic. It needs to look like official business.” They settled on: ‘URGENT: Formal Report on Departmental Conduct – Marketing Division.’ It was just corporate enough to guarantee it would be opened.

Lily insisted they attach more than just the video. “They need to see the pattern,” she argued. “They need the whole story.”

Elara nodded, retrieving the black USB drive from her pocket. She plugged it in, and the dossier—eighteen months of meticulously documented abuse—was added as an attachment. ‘Appendix A: Log of Incidents.’

Leo worked on the technical side, embedding the video directly into the email so it would play without needing a click-through. He created a temporary, anonymous sender alias: ‘Sterling-Corp Oversight.’ Finally, he brought up a scheduling tool.

“When do we launch?” he asked.

“Tomorrow morning,” Elara said without hesitation. “10:00 AM, sharp. After everyone’s had their coffee and settled in at their desks. Maximum impact.”

By the time they were finished, it was nearly midnight. The city was a glittering tapestry of lights outside the grimy conference room window. On Leo’s screen was the finished product: a perfectly crafted corporate email, a digital guillotine armed with a damning video and an explosive dossier. The recipient list glowed with the name of their forgotten god: ‘ALL-CORP_INTEGRATION_PROTO.’

Leo’s finger hovered over the final confirmation button. He looked around the room at the exhausted, determined faces of his co-conspirators. They had passed the point of no return.

He clicked. ‘Message Scheduled for: Thursday, 10:00 AM.’

The deed was done. The bomb was armed, the timer counting down. All they had to do now was walk into the office in the morning, sit at their desks, and wait for the world to explode.