Chapter 2The Mind Hacker

The next morning, I showed up at the office two hours early and made a beeline for the main conference room.

I had an epiphany last night. If my memories were really bleeding into Erik's brain, he should be able to answer a question only I knew the answer to.

I needed to test this crazy theory.

I grabbed a marker and drew a complex math equation on the whiteboard. It was a personal shorthand system I invented back in college. Absolutely nobody else could decipher it.

I snapped a quick photo on my phone and erased it spotless.

At exactly nine o'clock, Erik strolled into the bullpen, looking sharp and wearing his signature fake smile.

"Morning, Rainey." He gave a polite nod, his tone dripping with a winner's superiority.

"Morning, Erik." I squeezed out a smile faker than his. "Thanks for bailing me out in the meeting yesterday."

"Anytime." He stopped by the espresso machine.

"You have been looking pretty exhausted lately, though. Memory loss is usually the first sign of severe burnout."

He heavily emphasized the words "memory loss", a sly glint flashing in his eyes.

"Maybe." I kept my voice casual. "Hey, by the way, what do you make of this formula?" I held up the photo I just took.

Erik glanced at the screen, and his face instantly tightened. "That is your custom shorthand for the core predictive logic. You have been using that exact syntax since your sophomore year of college."

My stomach dropped to the floor. There was zero chance he could know that. Unless...

"How do you know that?" My voice actually shook.

He narrowed his eyes. "You must have mentioned it to me at some point." He quickly turned on his heel and walked away, his stiff posture betraying his panic.

I immediately pulled out my pocket notebook and logged the interaction.

A horrifying reality was taking shape in my mind. My memories were genuinely being hijacked.

At noon, Maggie dragged me to a quiet coffee shop down the street.

"I dug up some dirt," she whispered, leaning over the table. "His resume is completely cooked."

"He claimed he spent five years at Google, but I reached out to a buddy in their HR. He was there for two years, tops."

"And he left his last startup incredibly abruptly. Word on the street is he caused a massive disaster on a classified project."

"What kind of project?" I asked.

"No idea. They scrubbed the data clean," Maggie frowned.

"But here is the real kicker. His graduate research at MIT wasn't in Artificial Intelligence. His thesis was on Neural Interfaces and Memory Storage."

The ceramic mug nearly slipped out of my hand.

"There is more," Maggie continued.

"I pulled the security logs for the building. For the past month, he has been staying late almost every single night. He usually doesn't badge out until three or four in the morning."

I flipped open my notebook, matching the dates of my memory glitches.

A perfect match. Every single time I woke up with a mental fog, Erik had been alone in the office until the early hours of the morning.

"Maggie, do you believe me now? About the memories?"

She hesitated. "I don't know if the sci-fi stuff is possible. But I know you wouldn't get this paranoid over nothing."

"If your gut says he is dirty, then he is dirty."

"I need hard proof. I am staying late tonight to see exactly what he is doing in the dark."