Chapter 4: The Poisoned Chalice

Chapter 4: The Poisoned Chalice

The "mentorship" began the next morning. Alex found Kyle slumped at the desk next to his, headphones on, watching a video game streamer on his phone. The screen flickered with frantic, colorful explosions that were a stark contrast to the quiet, methodical blinking of the server rack LEDs visible through the doorway.

"Morning, Kyle," Alex said, his voice a carefully calibrated mix of professional cheerfulness and authority. "Ready to dive in?"

Kyle pulled off one headphone. "Yeah, whatever. So, what's first? Upgrading the graphics cards on these things?" He gestured vaguely toward the server room.

Alex fought back a grim smile. This was easier than he'd imagined. "Not quite. Those are servers, not gaming rigs. They run the whole company. Logistics, payroll, email... everything. The first lesson is 'do not touch anything unless you are 100% certain of what it does.'"

For the next week, Alex put on a masterclass of malicious compliance. He buried Kyle in a mountain of mind-numbingly dull but seemingly important tasks. He had Kyle inventory every ethernet cable, a task that involved tracing hundreds of identical-looking blue wires. He had him read aloud from twenty-page technical manuals on firewall policies, watching the boy's eyes glaze over within minutes. He was a perfect teacher, providing overwhelmingly detailed, technically accurate, and utterly useless information to a student who couldn't have cared less.

To anyone watching, particularly Pamela, who often glanced over from her glass office, Alex looked like a patient mentor trying his best with a difficult student. In reality, he was carefully conditioning Kyle to associate real IT work with extreme boredom, ensuring the boy would never develop an ounce of genuine curiosity. All the while, Alex was meticulously performing his real duties, keeping the systems running flawlessly, a final act of stewardship before the planned demolition.

The inevitable confrontation happened the following Monday. Pamela's voice, sharp and laced with irritation, came over the intercom. "Alex, Kyle, my office."

They walked in to find Pamela tapping impatiently on her tablet. "Alex," she began, dispensing with any pretense of politeness, "Kyle tells me you still haven't given him full administrative access. He says he can't even install a new web browser without your permission. Is this true?"

"Yes, it is," Alex replied calmly. "Domain administrator privileges are the highest level of access possible. They grant control over every single file, user account, and system in the company. It's not something you hand out lightly."

"He needs it to do his job!" Pamela snapped.

"His job, as I understood it, was to learn the system," Alex countered, his voice rising slightly, ensuring it would carry outside the glass walls of the office. Several of Pamela's cronies glanced over from their desks. "Giving a trainee root access on his second week is not just against company policy; it's a catastrophic security risk. It violates every IT best practice in the book."

"Oh, here we go with the 'gatekeeping' again," Pamela sneered, rolling her eyes.

Kyle, sensing his aunt's support, puffed out his chest. "It's not rocket science, dude. I've been an admin on, like, a dozen Discord servers. It's the same thing."

The sheer, breathtaking stupidity of the comparison almost made Alex laugh. He turned his gaze back to Pamela, his expression now one of grave, professional concern. "Pamela, with all due respect, it is nothing like the same thing. One wrong click with that level of power could bring the entire company offline. We could lose financial data, shipping manifests, everything. He doesn't have the training."

"I am the CFO of this company," Pamela said, her voice low and dangerous. "And I am telling you to give him the access. I trust my nephew. Are you refusing a direct order?"

This was the moment. The public performance.

"I am not refusing," Alex said, his voice loud and clear, an actor playing to the entire office. "I am officially stating for the record that I am doing this under protest. This is a reckless and irresponsible decision that places the entire company's digital infrastructure at risk, and I want it noted that I advised strongly against it."

A tense silence fell over the office. Pamela's face was a mask of fury, her cheeks flushed with anger at being so publicly challenged. "Your protest is noted," she hissed. "And so is your insubordination. Now do it."

Alex gave a curt, formal nod. "As you wish."

He led Kyle into the cold sanctuary of the server room. The hum of the fans seemed to mock the tension between them. Alex logged into the primary domain controller, the digital throne of the entire network.

"Alright," Alex said, his tone shifting from one of protest to one of conspiratorial mentorship. "She's making us do this, so let's do it right."

He brought up the user management console. "This is it. The keys to the kingdom." He gestured to the screen. "Now, the most important thing you need to know about being an admin, the very first thing any real admin does, is to secure the account. You can't be using a password someone else gave you. That's a rookie move. It means they still have control."

He was stroking Kyle's ego, playing directly into his desire to be seen as the new authority, the expert.

Kyle's eyes lit up. "Yeah? So I can change it?"

"You have to change it," Alex said, his voice imbued with a sense of urgent gravity. "It shows you're in charge now. You need to make it your own."

He deliberately ignored everything else on the screen—the backup configurations, the user group policies, the system recovery options. He didn't explain what a single other button did. He focused with laser-like precision on one and only one task.

"Okay, watch carefully." Alex navigated through the menus with slow, deliberate clicks. "You go here, to the administrator account. Right-click. 'Set Password'."

A prompt appeared on the screen. New password: followed by Confirm password:.

"Go ahead," Alex said, stepping back from the keyboard, a gesture of handing over power. "Make it something strong, something only you know. This is your system now."

Kyle leaned in, a smug grin spreading across his face. He cracked his knuckles with a flourish and began to type. Click. Clack. Click. He entered the password, then confirmed it. A small dialog box popped up: The password for Administrator has been changed.

Kyle leaned back, looking at the screen with the immense satisfaction of a child who had just beaten the final boss of a video game. "Done. See? Easy."

"Good work," Alex said, his face an unreadable mask. "You're the man now."

The next morning, Alex came in at his usual time. He didn't even have a chance to sit down. Carol, the HR manager, was waiting for him, her face set in a practiced, neutral expression.

"Alex," she said, holding a plain cardboard box. "Your services are no longer required."

He didn't feign surprise. He simply nodded. From across the office, he could see Pamela standing in her doorway, watching him, a look of pure, unadulterated triumph on her face.

Alex calmly packed his few personal belongings: a coffee mug, a picture of his dog, a well-worn copy of a programming manual. As he walked toward the exit, escorted by a silent security guard, he allowed himself one last look back at the server room. The lights were still blinking their steady, rhythmic beat. The machine was still running, unaware that its new master was a fool, and its creator had just handed him a self-destruct button.

The glass doors slid shut behind him. The air outside felt fresh and clean.

The trap was set. The timer was running. All he had to do now was wait for the phone to ring.