“You? Please. We’re trying to save the company.”
Sofia didn’t look at him. She looked only at Ethan.
“The new security protocol you installed last night is conflicting with the legacy system. The firewall thinks internal transactions are an external attack. It’s created a self-triggering loop.”
The CTO stopped smiling.
“How do you know that?” Ethan asked, stepping closer.
“I’m studying computer engineering at Northwestern,” she replied evenly. “And when people think you’re invisible, you hear everything. I wrote a patch last night because I suspected this would happen.”
She held up the USB drive.
Security objected immediately. “She doesn’t have clearance!”
“We need the executive access key,” the CTO added. “The core server is manually locked.”
A calm voice came from the doorway.
“I have it.”
All eyes turned to Daniel. He pulled out a red emergency access card.
“Maintenance was given this after last year’s electrical fire,” he explained quietly.
Sofia’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Dad… if I mess this up, we’re both fired.”
Daniel placed a steady hand on her shoulder. “You’ve been fixing broken things since you were a kid. If you say you can do it, you can.”
He swiped the card. The lock released.