Chapter 5: The Ledger of Truth

Chapter 5: The Ledger of Truth

"You've presented your narrative," Alex said, his voice a blade of calm in the suffocating tension of the boardroom. "Now, if you'll allow me, I'd like to present the facts."

Jeff Morgan let out a short, derisive snort. "Facts? The only fact here is a fifteen-hundred-dollar hole in our inventory and a receipt for zero dollars."

Alex ignored him, his gaze fixed on the two corporate investigators, Harris and Cole. "Your accusation rests on two pillars," he began, ticking them off on his fingers. "First, that the number of positive surveys my department received is 'impossible.' Second, that I used my system access to generate fraudulent credit. Is that a fair summary?"

Harris, the lead investigator, gave a curt nod. "It is."

"Excellent," Alex said, pushing his chair back. "Then please, follow me."

He stood and walked to the door, a sudden island of purpose in a sea of suspicion. He held the door open, his expression an unreadable mask of professional courtesy. After a moment's hesitation, Harris and Cole rose, their movements stiff. A flustered Tim Donaldson scurried after them. Jeff, his face a thundercloud of confusion and rage, brought up the rear.

As they walked through the back offices and onto the main sales floor, a hush fell over the store. Employees stocking shelves froze, their hands full of merchandise. The few customers browsing the aisles could sense the shift in atmosphere. Mike Chen was waiting near the tech bench, his arms crossed, his jaw tight with worry. Alex met his friend's gaze and gave him a single, reassuring nod. I've got this.

Their destination wasn't the server room or a high-security office. It was a small, cluttered alcove behind the customer service desk, home to returned items, stray paperwork, and a row of drab, grey, metal filing cabinets. It was the most mundane, forgotten corner of the entire store.

Alex stopped in front of one of the cabinets. It was unlabeled, unremarkable. "You allege wire fraud," Alex said, turning back to the investigators. "A serious, data-driven crime. So you're probably expecting me to show you a complex firewall log or a hidden partition on a hard drive."

He reached into his pocket and produced a small, simple key.

"But the truth, gentlemen, is much more boring."

He inserted the key, and the lock turned with a well-oiled click. He pulled open the top drawer. It was packed, not with illicit software or fake documents, but with neat, tabbed file folders, each labeled with a date. Alex pulled out a thick, three-ring binder from the front of the drawer. On its spine, a simple label read: "Q3 Incentive Program - Front End."

He carried it over to the customer service counter, the rest of the group trailing him like confused disciples, and opened it.

The silence that followed was profound.

It wasn't a simple list. It was a masterclass in meticulous, obsessive documentation. The binder was filled with hundreds of pages of spreadsheets, printed in a crisp, small font. Each page was a log, divided into columns: Date, Time, Cashier Name, Transaction ID, Customer Survey ID, and, in the final column, "Tim Bucks Earned." Every single point of the 2,475 Bucks earned in the first two weeks, and the thousands that followed, was accounted for.

"As you know, every transaction generates a unique ID number, printed at the bottom of the receipt along with the survey code," Alex explained, his voice even and instructional, as if lecturing a class. "When a customer completes a survey, that code is logged in the corporate system along with their comments. It's a closed loop. It can't be faked."

He flipped a few pages into the binder and ran his finger down a line. "Here. October 12th, 2:14 PM. Cashier, Maria Rodriguez. Transaction ID 774-09B-1138. One Tim Buck earned for a positive survey." He looked up at Harris. "Mr. Harris, you have access to the master survey database, I presume?"

Harris, looking slightly stunned by the sheer volume of data in front of him, nodded slowly. "I do."

"Would you mind looking up that transaction ID?" Alex asked, a polite challenge in his tone.

Harris pulled out a company-issued PDA, a chunky silver brick of a device. The tiny clicks of his stylus on the screen were the only sounds. Jeff shifted his weight from foot to foot, a sheen of sweat breaking out on his bald head. This was not how he had envisioned this going.

After a long thirty seconds, Harris looked up from the PDA, his expression shifting from suspicion to something else. A flicker of respect. "It's here," he said, his voice flat with surprise. "Transaction 774-09B-1138. Sale of a wireless mouse. Survey submitted at 3:01 PM. Customer comment: 'Maria was very helpful.' One Buck awarded."

"Thank you," Alex said calmly. He turned to a new section of the binder. "Now for the credit card applications. Five Bucks per approval. Here's the log. Every entry corresponds to a signed credit agreement, a copy of which is sent to corporate finance for processing. I believe you'll find every single one of our 112 approvals for the quarter is fully documented."

He wasn't finished. He turned back to the filing cabinet. "But just in case the digital record isn't enough for you..."

He pulled open a second drawer. It was filled with thousands of neatly bundled receipts, each held together by a rubber band and labeled by date. "These are the original receipt copies for every single positive survey we received. I had my team save them. Every single one has the employee's name circled, as per my training instructions."

The corporate investigators were no longer looking at him like a criminal. They were looking at him with a kind of baffled awe. Cole, who had been silent until now, picked up one of the printed spreadsheets. He traced the lines with his finger, his eyebrows climbing higher and higher.

"This level of documentation..." Cole murmured, almost to himself. "It's beyond anything I've ever seen. This isn't a log; it's a full, independent audit."

Jeff finally found his voice, a desperate, reedy squeak. "He could have... he could have faked all this! Printed it out to cover his tracks!"

Alex gave Jeff a look of pity. "Faked what, Jeff? The transaction logs in the corporate mainframe that Mr. Harris just verified? The signed credit agreements in the finance department? The physical receipts right here in this drawer? I didn't create a cover story. I just did my job. My system wasn't impossible; it was just efficient. Something you seem to have a problem with."

The jab hit its mark. All the air went out of Jeff. His conspiracy, so potent and menacing in the sterile boardroom, had just crumbled into dust under the weight of a simple three-ring binder and a well-organized filing cabinet. He hadn't just been proven wrong; he had been revealed as a sloppy, vindictive fool who hadn't bothered to do the most basic research before leveling a career-ending accusation.

Harris closed the binder with a soft thud. He looked from the ledger to Alex, then to the humiliated wreck of a man that was Jeff Morgan. The power in the room had not just shifted; it had undergone a tectonic reversal.

"Mr. Rider," Harris said, his tone now one of pure professional respect. "On behalf of CyberCorp, I believe we owe you an apology."