The sub-basement of VanceTech was usually a place of grinding machinery and stagnant air. But at 10:14 AM on a Tuesday, the air turned electric.
I was at my station, pretending to organize a manifest of industrial-grade lubricants, when the internal comms system of the building gave a short, sharp chirp. Every terminal, every holographic display, and every tablet in the facility instantly flickered.
It wasn't a glitch. It was an intrusion.
The primary security monitor on the wall of the loading dock—usually reserved for showing loading schedules—flashed bright, pulsating violet. A sequence of garbled, high-density encryption strings began to scroll down the screen at speeds that would melt a standard processor.
ALERT: MULTI-VECTOR PENETRATION DETECTED. ORIGIN: GLOBAL BOTNET. CLASSIFICA
