Chapter 2My Ten Minute Handover Ended Their Entire Company

I didn’t go home. Instead, I crossed the street to an artisanal coffee shop. I snagged a window seat, letting the warm, gentle sunlight chase away the building’s stale chill.

“What can I get for you?”

“A pour-over Geisha, please. Black.”

I ordered the most expensive coffee on the menu. A proper toast to my imminent, absolute freedom.

The barista worked methodically. The water hit the grounds, blooming them, and an intoxicating, complex aroma filled the air. It was pure. Unlike the complicated cocktail of cigar smoke, cologne, and political ambition that perpetually clung to Garrett’s office.

My phone vibrated softly. It was an incoming message from an unfamiliar cartoon avatar: “It’s me, Liv. Your apprentice.”

I accepted the request.

Immediately, her messages poured in, shaking with barely contained fury. “They are absolutely vile, Sloan! You barely walked out the door before Garrett sent a message to the group!”

A screenshot followed. It was the "Project Warriors" group I’d just left. Garrett’s profile picture hovered above a self-congratulatory block of text: “The recent issue has been addressed, and the core vulnerability has been completely neutralized. Thank you to Sloan for her cooperation, which proves our error correction mechanism is effective. Chin up, everyone. The afternoon demo must be a success!”

Below that, Cassie had added a pumping fist emoji and a line: “Brilliant, Garrett! So glad we caught that in time!”

Followed by a few lukewarm "Roger that" and "Way to go, boss" replies from the rest of the team.

I could practically see Garrett’s smug, self-satisfied face. Neutralized the vulnerability?

I almost laughed out loud. They'd just kicked the fire marshal out of the burning building and were now congratulating themselves on putting out the flames. The sheer audacity was staggering.

The phone vibrated again. Liv’s text: “They’re saying the handover document you left was incredibly clear. Garrett even ‘praised’ you publicly for your ‘professionalism and attitude.’ I’m going to throw up.”

I picked up the Geisha, blew on the surface, and took a careful sip. The coffee’s citrus and floral notes exploded in my mouth—sharp, acidic, with a slow, rich finish.

Clear? Of course it was clear. I had made the irrelevant parts—the stuff they could eventually figure out—painfully transparent. It was like handing them an instruction manual for a complex machine, where I meticulously detailed how to turn it on, but omitted the critical chapter on how to prevent it from self-destructing.

My mind drifted back a week. Late Friday night. I was alone, running a final code review ahead of the system stress test. That’s when I found it: the logical flaw, buried deep in the foundational database architecture.

It was insidious. It wouldn’t trigger under normal load. But at a specific time—between 1:50 PM and 2:00 PM—if the system hit high-intensity stress from over ten thousand concurrent requests, it would trigger a catastrophic, irreversible, chain-reaction data deletion. All linked tables, wiped clean instantly, beyond conventional recovery.

A cold sweat broke out on my neck. That project was the company’s lifeblood. The major investor was arriving the following Friday at 2 PM for the final demonstration. And the full-link stress test was scheduled to begin at 1:40 PM.

It was a ticking time bomb, set with chilling precision.

I immediately wrote an emergency fix proposal and a detailed bug analysis.

Monday morning, I was about to send the report to Garrett when Cassie rushed up, looking frantic, holding her coffee.

“Sloan, fire in the hole! The user profile module I’m running is totally borked. The data is all over the place. Could you please take a look?”

Cassie had been at the company longer than me. Her technical skills were mediocre, but she was a master of corporate politics and was tight with Garrett. Seeing her genuinely panicked, I agreed without thinking.

The issue was simple—she'd confused a parameter in an API call. I spent less than thirty minutes fixing it and handed her the solution. She practically groveled in thanks and rushed off.

I didn’t realize I’d just handed her the very knife she would plunge into my back.

That afternoon, Garrett called me into his office. He slammed a printed report on the desk: “Report on Major Data Vulnerability in Project User Module.”

In the report, Cassie had leveraged her minor screw-up, exaggerated it, and dressed it up as a "catastrophic vulnerability" that could have derailed the entire project. Then, using cleverly falsified communication logs and code submission timestamps, she had strongly implied the "vulnerability" was a mistake I made during the final code integration.

I was stunned. I tried to explain, but Garrett cut me off, emphasizing that the project was too close to launch to risk any instability. Someone had to be accountable for this "major risk." He looked at me like I was a piece of trash he was finally authorized to throw out.

Now I understand. Garrett had always resented my technical ability, even as he depended on me for the core work. He wanted me gone so he could claim all the credit for himself. Cassie's lie was the perfect excuse he’d been dreaming of.

They thought by eliminating the one person who knew too much and firing their way to an "unblemished" project, they had secured their perfect trophy.

They had, in fact, just stripped the entire project of its only fuse. My actual, critical fix for the real ticking time bomb was still sitting in the draft folder on my personal laptop.

“Sloan? Are you there?” Liv’s message snapped me back.

I tapped a quick reply. “Don’t worry. Just watch the show.”

I set my phone face down. My wrist watch read 1:40 PM.

The gentle jazz music played on in the café. Outside, the traffic flowed. The sun was bright.

The countdown had begun. Ten minutes left.

I picked up the coffee, felt the warm liquid slide down my throat. Deep inside, a cold, clinical, and fiercely satisfying anticipation was growing.