Chapter 8: Upper Management Clearance

👉 Previous Action: You chose to feign absolute obedience to secure a management promotion that grants higher floor clearance.

Kien transformed. He became the ideal Aetheris Tech employee. He logged extra hours, delivered reports ahead of schedule, and offered innovative solutions that pushed Project Chiron further, faster. He played the part of the devoted, brilliant engineer, utterly absorbed in his work, untroubled by his forgotten hours.

Evelyn watched with a proprietary satisfaction. “Your focus is remarkable, Kien,” she commented one evening, her hand resting lightly on his arm. “Exactly what Aetheris needs.”

Within three weeks, his diligence caught the eye of upper management. An internal memo landed in his inbox: “Congratulations, Kien Doan, on your promotion to Senior Project Supervisor.” The promotion came with a new badge, emblazoned with a silver chip that glowed faintly, granting him access to previously restricted servers and the executive floor.

He now had access to Section Alpha, a data hub that contained not just current project files, but also archived communications and audit trails. As he sifted through the complex directories, he noticed another name appearing frequently in connection with unusual data flags: Marcus Lindqvist.

Lindqvist was an internal compliance auditor, known for his meticulousness and unyielding ethical stance. His reports often highlighted minor discrepancies, data irregularities that others dismissed. Kien observed Lindqvist from a distance, a man with a quiet intensity, always hunched over a terminal, his brow furrowed.

One afternoon, Kien intentionally left a heavily encrypted file open on a public terminal in Section Alpha, a file containing a fragmented, almost accidental log of access attempts to his specific neural network algorithms by Evelyn’s known internal alias. It was designed to look like a system glitch.

A few hours later, he saw Lindqvist, his spectacles perched on his nose, stop at that very terminal. Lindqvist’s head tilted, his fingers tapping thoughtfully on the keyboard. He looked at the screen, then glanced around the busy floor, his eyes briefly meeting Kien’s. Lindqvist gave a barely perceptible nod, then continued on his way.

Kien felt a surge of cold hope. He had caught Lindqvist’s attention. The auditor was clearly investigating something, something systemic, something rotten within Aetheris Tech. Kien now knew he wasn’t alone.

➡️ Read CHAPTER 10 to continue the story