Chapter 3: The Trap is Sprung

The thirty-day stress test that Silas Thorne had stipulated was a farce, and both men knew it. The network hadn't just performed; it had sung. Data flowed like water, broadcasts were flawless, and the national syndication partners were ecstatic. For forty-eight hours, the station had run with a perfection that the overworked engineers had only dreamed of. It was more than stable. It was a fortress.

Lex walked back into the penthouse office on the forty-eighth floor, the sterile air no longer feeling oppressive, but charged with potential. He wore the same black hoodie and jeans, a deliberate echo of their first meeting. In his hand, he carried a single, crisp invoice, detailing every last screw, every server, every hour of his life for the past three weeks, plus his agreed-upon fee.

Thorne was behind his colossal desk, a glass of amber liquid in his hand and a look of supreme satisfaction on his face. He was a king surveying a newly conquered territory.

“Ah, Carter. Come to grovel for your scraps?” he said, not bothering to offer a seat. “I’ll admit, the system works. Better than I expected from a kid who looks like he sleeps in a server rack. But your budgeting was atrocious. Absolutely profligate.”

Lex said nothing. He simply placed the invoice on the polished mahogany, the white paper a stark island in the vast sea of wood.

Thorne glanced at it, a sneer playing on his lips. He didn’t even bother to read the line items, his eyes going straight to the total at the bottom. Then, he let out a great, booming laugh. It was a horrible, dismissive sound that bounced off the floor-to-ceiling windows. He picked up the invoice between his thumb and forefinger as if it were contaminated, held it for a moment, and then let it flutter back down to the desk.

“This is a joke,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “You really thought I was going to pay this? After all the unapproved hardware substitutions? The blatant disregard for my budgetary guidance?”

“The hardware was necessary for the network to function at the required specifications,” Lex said, his voice a low, steady monotone. “The system you wanted would have failed. The system I built will last a decade.”

“The system I own,” Thorne corrected, his voice hardening. The false bonhomie vanished, replaced by the cold, reptilian predator beneath. He leaned forward, his bulk casting a shadow over the desk. “You signed a contract, Carter. A contract which states that all work must be to my satisfaction. And while the system works, I am not satisfied. Not with your insubordination, not with your attitude, and certainly not with this laughable attempt at extortion.”

He picked up a pen, a ridiculously expensive gold fountain pen, and scribbled a note on a separate pad. “I’m authorizing a discretionary payment of twenty thousand dollars. For your trouble. A finder’s fee for the equipment you so generously donated to my company.”

“That doesn’t even cover the cost of the primary encoders,” Lex stated, his calm unnerving Thorne more than any outburst could.

“Then you should have thought of that before you decided to use your own credit cards, you stupid, arrogant child!” Thorne roared, slamming his fist on the desk. The glass of liquor jumped. “What are you going to do? Sue me? My lawyers will tie you up in court until your grandchildren have grandchildren. By the time it’s over, you’ll owe me money. Now take the twenty grand and get out of my building before I have security throw you out.”

This was it. The moment Lex had been playing in his mind for weeks. The perfect, predictable arrogance. The absolute certainty of a man who had never been truly challenged.

Lex didn’t move. He didn’t flinch. He simply glanced at the digital clock on Thorne’s wall. 10:17 PM.

“I’m not going to sue you, Mr. Thorne,” Lex said, his voice dropping to an icy whisper that cut through the mogul’s rage. “Because a lawsuit won’t be necessary.”

He took a small step forward, his eyes locking onto Thorne’s. “You’re right. The system I built is magnificent. A fortress, as you say. But every fortress has a gate, and every gate needs a key. The entire network—every server, every switch, every single line of code—is slaved to a central chronometer I designed. A little black box buried so deep in the core architecture your engineers would have to dismantle the entire system to find it.”

Thorne’s angry expression began to curdle into confusion. “What is this nonsense? What are you talking about?”

“I call it the Kronos Pulse,” Lex continued, the words coming out smooth and cold as polished steel. “It sends a digital heartbeat through the network every second. A constant, encrypted authentication signal that tells every component that it’s authorized to function. That pulse is what’s keeping your station on the air right now. And like any heart, it needs instructions to keep beating.”

The faint sheen of sweat was back on Thorne’s upper lip. “Get to the point.”

“The point,” Lex said, checking the clock again, “is that the authorization key for the Kronos Pulse has a twenty-four-hour lifespan. It requires a new key to be entered every day. A key that only I can provide. Without it, at the stroke of midnight, the pulse will stop. And when the heart stops, the body dies. Every screen in this building will go black. Your national broadcast will flatline. Your syndication deal will be in breach of contract on its second day of operation.”

The color drained from Silas Thorne’s face. The bluster, the rage, the arrogance—it all evaporated, leaving behind a raw, naked panic.

“You’re bluffing,” he hissed, but his voice lacked conviction. He fumbled for the intercom on his desk. “Get Stevens on the line! Now!”

A moment later, the panicked voice of his head of IT crackled through the speaker. “Mr. Thorne? We have a problem. We’re detecting some kind of… recursive authentication loop deep in the core OS. We can’t isolate it. It’s like it’s… everywhere. It’s not a virus, it’s… structural. Woven into the foundation of the system. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

Lex’s quiet, confident smirk finally returned. “I told you, Mr. Thorne. It’s not a backdoor. It’s the heartbeat.”

Thorne stared at Lex, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on a deck. The gold pen slipped from his trembling fingers and clattered onto the marble floor. He looked at the clock on the wall. 10:21 PM. The seconds were ticking down like a bomb.

“Your contract,” Lex said, his voice cutting through the silence, “stipulates massive, multi-million dollar penalties for any broadcast downtime. I read that part very carefully. You stand to lose more in the first ten minutes of dead air than my entire invoice costs.”

The king was dethroned. The predator was trapped. The leash Lex had been so generously offered had been methodically, brilliantly, and irrevocably locked around its owner’s throat. Thorne sank back into his ridiculously oversized leather chair, the picture of a man who had just watched his entire empire crumble before his eyes. The booming laugh was gone, replaced by the ragged sound of his own breathing in the suddenly silent room.

He looked at the calm young man in the black hoodie, a man he had dismissed as a pawn, and finally saw him for what he was: his executioner.

“What…” Thorne finally choked out, his voice barely a whisper. “What do you want?”