When Bryce Langford Jr. walked into Arcturus Capital on his first day as CEO, he looked around the trading floor like a golden retriever who had just done a line of coke. He didn’t know the difference between a server rack and a wine rack, but he knew his suit cost more than my car, and he wanted everyone in that building to know it too. I’d built that company’s engine.
Not the physical servers, not the office culture, but the actual money-making machine. For five years, I was the lead algorithm architect. I wrote the code that executed trades faster than anyone else on the street. It wasn’t just work to me.
It was a symphony of logic. It whispered profits while the rest of the market was still screaming. People think high-frequency trading is about shouting on phones or reading charts. It’s not.
It’s about latency. It’s about being a microsecond faster than the guy in the next tower. I optimized that execution layer to perfection. The engine outperformed the S&P for five straight years, not because of luck, but because I lived inside that code.
But here’s the thing about building something that valuable. You have to protect it. Not from hackers. I had firewalls for that.
You have to protect it from the suits. When I was hired, Arcturus was a boutique firm with more ambition than sense. It needed me more than I needed them. I sat down with their then-lawyer, Henderson, a tired old man who just wanted to get to his golf game, and I redlined my employment contract.
I added a clause. Appendix D, section 4, paragraph 2. It was buried under a mountain of standard intellectual property jargon. It stated, in very boring, very specific legal English, that while the company owned the code I wrote during the normal course of business, the core architecture and its underlying source logic would revert to my personal ownership if the firm ever altered the fundamental security protocols without my express written consent.
Henderson didn’t read it. He just saw that I wasn’t asking for more equity, stamped it, and went to the country club. That signature sat in my pocket for half a decade like a safety pin on a grenade. Then the founder retired to a private island to count his millions, and his son took over.
Bryce was a walking, talking stereotype of finance bro culture. He threw buzzwords around like confetti. AI. Blockchain.
Quantum. He had no idea what any of them meant. “We need to shake things up, Naomi,” he told me during our first one-on-one, sitting on the edge of my desk uninvited. “The engine, it’s good, but it’s a black box.
We need to open it up. Pivot to AI, blockchain, quantum, you know? ”
“The engine is performing at 18% above market benchmark, Bryce,” I said, my voice flat. “It’s a low-latency execution model.
It doesn’t need blockchain. It needs to be left alone. ”
He laughed, a hollow barking sound. “That’s the old way of thinking.
We need to streamline. I’m bringing in some new blood. Fresh eyes. We’re going to refactor the whole stack.
”
My stomach dropped. Not because I was afraid of losing my job. I could walk into any firm on the street and get hired in ten minutes. I felt sick because he was talking about taking a scalpel to a masterpiece he didn’t understand.
“Bryce,” I said very slowly, “the security protocols are tightly wound into the kernel. You can’t just refactor it without destabilizing the risk management layer. ”
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about the risk,” he said. He actually said that.
“I’ve got a guy. Trevor. He was a wizard at Crypto du Shell LLC or whatever. He’s going to lead the modernization project.
You’ll report to him. ”
He hopped off my desk and winked. “Get on board, Naomi. The train is leaving the station.
”
He was right. The train was leaving. He just didn’t realize he had severed the brake lines before he blew the whistle. I turned back to my monitor and opened a private folder encrypted with a key only I possessed.
Inside was a scanned PDF of my contract. I scrolled down to Appendix D and read the words again: “fundamental security protocols. ”
“Okay, Bryce,” I whispered to the empty air. “You want to drive?
Here are the keys. But you better hope you don’t crash, because I own the road. ”
Trevor showed up the following Monday. He looked like he had been manufactured in a lab funded by frantic frat boys.
He wore a vest over a t-shirt and used the word “synergy” three times in the first minute of his introduction. “We’re going to desilo the data,” Trevor announced, pacing the stage like he was giving a TED Talk to an audience of golden retrievers. “We’re going to migrate the entire core logic to a cloud-native, open architecture environment. We’re going to move fast and break things.
”
I sat in the back row, sipping my lukewarm coffee, thinking, “You break things in a hedge fund, Trevor, and the SEC breaks your kneecaps. ”
I stayed silent. I was officially “lead legacy consultant” now, a demotion that came with the same salary but zero authority. It was a humiliation ritual intended to make me quit so they wouldn’t have to pay severance.
Bryce wanted me gone, but he was too cowardly to fire the woman who built the machine. He wanted me to rage quit. He underestimated my capacity for spite. The first clash happened two days later.
Trevor marched into my office, which had been relocated from the corner to a windowless box near the restrooms, without knocking. “Naomi, I need the root keys to the dev environment. Me and the boys are setting up the new repository, and we keep hitting a permission wall. ”
“That’s because it’s a segmented network, Trevor.
It’s air-gapped for a reason. That’s where the live trading algorithms live. If you introduce a bug there, we lose real money. Millions in seconds.
”
“Yeah, yeah, guardrails, I get it,” he waved dismissively. “But we need full access to refactor the security modules. Bryce wants single sign-on for everyone. It’s too much friction right now.
”
I froze. “Single sign-on for the core trading engine? You want to let interns access the algo with the same password they use for their email? ”
“It’s about velocity, Naomi.
Friction kills innovation. ”
“Incompetence kills liquidity, Trevor,” I shot back. “I can’t give you root access. Compliance policy section 9.
Only the chief architect can authorize changes to the security architecture. And since you’re the director of innovation and not the architect, you don’t get the keys. ”
His face turned a blotchy shade of pink. “I don’t think you understand the hierarchy here.
Bryce put me in charge. ”
“Then have Bryce send me a signed order overriding the compliance protocol. Put it in writing. Explicitly state that you are bypassing the established security architecture against the advice of the lead developer.
”
Trevor sneered. “You’re just trying to hoard information. You’re terrified we’re going to find out your genius code is just a bunch of if-then statements. ”
“Get the signature, Trevor.
”
He stormed out. I knew what was coming. They wouldn’t sign it. Signing it created a paper trail of liability.
Instead, they would try to go around me. I opened my encrypted log file. Date, October 14th. Event, Trevor requested removal of air gap and implementation of insecure auth protocols.
Action, denied based on compliance policy 9. Note: they are actively seeking to alter the fundamental security protocols. My heart was hammering, but my hands were steady. I felt like a seismologist watching the needle start to quiver before the big one.
That afternoon, I intercepted the IT manager, a nervous kid named Kevin, by the water cooler. “What did they ask you to do? ” I asked softly. He looked around, checking for Trevor.
“They want me to reset the admin privileges on the main server. They want me to create a backdoor admin account for Trevor. ”
“Did you do it? ”
“Not yet.
I told them I need a ticket for that. ”
“Good man. Kevin, listen to me. Whatever you do, document it.
Email them confirming the request. Forward the replies to your personal email. Do not go to jail for these idiots. ”
He nodded, terrified.
“Is it bad? ”
“It’s catastrophic. But don’t worry, just delay them. I’m handling it.
”
I wasn’t handling it in the way he thought. I wasn’t saving the ship. I was checking the lifeboats. I spent the rest of the week auditing my own code, ensuring the timestamp on my original source files was indisputable.
I verified the Git history. I made sure every line of code I wrote before Bryce arrived was tagged and hashed. The engine started to stutter on a Tuesday morning. Trevor and his tiger team had managed to deploy a patch after threatening Kevin with termination.
They pushed code directly to the production environment. Rule number one of algo trading: you never deploy on a Tuesday morning when the market is opening. At 9:32 a. m.
, the execution latency line spiked. A millisecond here, two milliseconds there. To a human, a millisecond is nothing. To the market, it’s the difference between eating lunch and being lunch.
The P&L ticker, which usually ticked up in steady rhythmic increments, started to jaggedly sway. By 11:00 a. m. , the firm was down $400,000.
By 2:00 p. m. , we were down $1. 2 million.
At 3:30 p. m. , the summons came. Bryce’s assistant appeared at my door.
“They need you in the conference room. Now. ”
Bryce was sweating through his bespoke shirt. Trevor looked like he wanted to vomit.
“Naomi, fix it,” Bryce barked. “Fix what? I thought we were pivoting to the new stack. Isn’t this the disruption you wanted?
”
“Don’t get cute with me. The latency is through the roof. We’re bleeding cash. Trevor says it’s your legacy code conflicting with the new modules.
”
I looked at Trevor. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Is that right, Trevor? My code, which hasn’t been touched in six months, suddenly decided to conflict today?
The exact day you pushed your optimization patch? ”
“Your code is spaghetti,” he snapped. “It’s not compatible with modern libraries. ”
“I built it to be fast and secure.
You’re trying to bolt a spoiler onto a rocket ship with duct tape. ”
“Just turn off the old security checks,” Trevor yelled. “That’s what’s slowing it down. The system is checking credentials every microsecond because of your paranoia.
If we disable the internal handshake, we regain the speed. ”
The room went silent. Bryce looked at Trevor, then at me. “Can we do that?
”
“Can you? Technically, yes, you can strip out the internal verification protocols. It would act like a turbo boost for about ten minutes. ”
“Then do it,” Bryce ordered.
“I won’t. ”
“This is insubordination! ”
“No, it’s risk management. If you remove those protocols, you leave the engine open to injection attacks.
And more importantly, you fundamentally alter the architecture of the system. ”
“I don’t care about the architecture. I care about the P&L,” Bryce roared. “Trevor, do you know how to disable it?
”
Trevor hesitated. “I think so, but I need the master encryption key. Naomi has it. ”
Bryce turned his glare on me.
“Give him the key, Naomi. You’re fired if you don’t. ”
“If you fire me, I walk out with the knowledge of where the bodies are buried. And if you force that change, you’re on your own.
”
“Give him the key. ”
I stood up, reached into my pocket, and pulled out a small silver USB drive. Not the important one. Just a dummy drive with some config files.
“This isn’t the key, but it contains the documentation on why you shouldn’t do this. If you want to ruin this company, you’ll have to figure out how to break the lock yourself. I’m not handing you the crowbar. ”
I walked out.
They didn’t fire me. They were too scared. But desperation makes people stupid. They were going to try to crack the security shell themselves.
They were going to try to bypass the fundamental security protocols. I went back to my desk and opened my monitoring suite. I wasn’t watching the market anymore. I was watching the system logs.
I was watching for the specific signature of a forced entry. The break-in didn’t happen with a bang. There were no sirens, no shattered glass. It happened with a line of text on a terminal window at 7:42 p.
m. on a Thursday. I had a script running on my local machine, a simple listener loop that pinged the core security kernel every ten seconds. Ping.
Secure. Ping. Secure. Ping.
Secure. Then the text changed color. Red. Ping.
Alert. Kernel integrity compromised. Security protocol bypassed. Unauthorized rights detected in root directory.
They did it. They actually did it. To fix their latency issues, they had disabled the core security checks. They had altered the fundamental security protocols without the express written consent of the lead algorithm architect.
I sat back in my chair. I could hear muffled cheering from down the hall. They were celebrating. They thought they had fixed the engine.
They didn’t realize they had just cut the main line. I took a screenshot. I saved the system logs. I exported the timestamp diff files showing exactly what code was changed and who changed it.
User: Trevor, admin override. Then I opened my safe. I took out the physical copy of my contract. I placed the printed logs on top of it.
Legally, mathematically, and contractually, the intellectual property known as the Arcturus core logic no longer belonged to Arcturus Capital. It belonged to Naomi Adler. The next morning, the mood in the office was electric. Latency was down.
The P&L was green. Bryce strutted around the trading floor like he had personally invented money. “See, Naomi,” he sneered, walking past my cubicle. “Trevor got it done.
Sometimes you have to break a few rules to make an omelet. ”
“You certainly broke something, Bryce. ”
I didn’t tell him about the Vantage Partners deal. But I knew it was coming.
Bryce had been courting a massive institutional investor, Vantage Partners, for a $300 million capital injection. The entire pitch was based on the proprietary, unassailable advantage of the Arcturus technology. The engine he didn’t own anymore. He scheduled a due diligence meeting for the following Wednesday.
They would want to see the code architecture. They would want to see the IP assignment agreements. They would want to ensure Arcturus actually owned the tech they were buying. At lunch, I crossed the street and called my lawyer, a shark named Jessica.
“It happened. ”
“You have the logs? ” she asked, her voice sharp and professional. “I have the logs, the contract, and the timestamp diffs.
They bypassed the security kernel last night. ”
“And they didn’t ask for consent? ”
“They demanded I give them keys. I refused, and they hacked their own system.
”
“Beautiful. When do you want to drop the hammer? ”
“Not yet. They have a pitch meeting with Vantage Partners next Wednesday.
Let them dig the hole a little deeper. I want them to be standing at the altar before we object to the wedding. ”
“Cold. I love it.
Don’t sign anything. Don’t agree to anything. Just be the ghost in the machine. ”
I hung up and walked back into the building.
The logo on the wall looked like a tombstone. On Monday, Mark, the compliance officer, stopped by my desk. He was one of the few people at Arcturus who actually read the regulations. “Naomi, can I ask you a hypothetical?
” He held a paper cup of tea like it was a source of warmth in a blizzard. “I love hypotheticals, Mark. They’re like lies, but with plausible deniability. ”
“If, hypothetically, the system flagged a critical security exception in the audit log, but the ticket was marked as resolved by an admin override.
That would be a problem for the SOC 2 audit, right? ”
“Mark, if the security exception was a bypass of the core kernel, it’s not just a SOC 2 problem. It’s an existential problem. ”
“Trevor says it’s a feature.
He says the new architecture requires open permissions to function. But I’m looking at the IP agreements for the Vantage deal. The warranty clause says we certify that our security meets industry standards. ”
“If we bypassed our own firewalls, then we’re lying to the investors.
”
Mark rubbed his face. “I tried to tell Bryce. He told me to stop being a bureaucratic buzzkill. ”
“Mark, do you have access to the original employment contracts from five years ago?
Go read Appendix D of my original architect agreement. Just read it. Don’t tell anyone you read it. Just file it away in your brain.
”
He stared at me for a long moment, then nodded slowly and walked away. I had just handed him a life raft. Whether he used it was up to him. Wednesday morning arrived with the heavy, humid atmosphere of a thunderstorm waiting to break.
The Vantage Partners team was due at 1:00 p. m. At 9:00 a. m.
, I initiated the escrow protocol. I sat at my desk, now completely bare except for my monitor and a single heavy-duty encrypted USB drive — the IronKey kind that self-destructs if you guess the password wrong ten times. I ran the final script. It bundled the original, uncorrupted source code — the version before Trevor’s optimization — and moved it to the external drive.
Then, per the terms of Appendix D, it initiated a wipe of the local copies of the core architecture on my dev machine. I wasn’t wiping the server. That would be sabotage. I was simply removing my personal property from my workspace.
Transfer complete. I pulled the USB drive out. It felt heavy in my hand, cold metal. I put it in my blazer pocket.
At 10:30 a. m. , Jessica sent the email. It was addressed to the general counsel of Arcturus with a CC to Bryce Langford Jr.
The subject line was innocuous: “Notice of IP reversion re: Adler employment agreement. ”
The body was less innocuous. It stated that due to the material breach of the fundamental security protocols logged on October 14th, ownership of the source logic described in Appendix D had automatically reverted to Naomi Adler. It demanded that Arcturus immediately cease all commercial use of the software and requested a meeting to discuss licensing terms.
At 11:15 a. m. , the door to the executive suite slammed open. Bryce’s voice boomed across the floor.
“Where is she? ”
He stomped over to my cubicle, followed closely by the general counsel and Trevor. “What is this? Is this a joke?
You’re trying to blackmail us on the day of the deal? ”
“It’s not blackmail, Bryce. It’s contract law. ”
“You broke the seal, you bought the product.
We own everything you wrote. ”
“Not this. Appendix D. If security protocols are altered without consent.
”
Trevor looked at Bryce. “I optimized them. ”
“You bypassed them. ”
“Corrected.
”
“Unauthorized modification. The clause triggered. The code is mine. ”
“This is bullshit!
” Bryce screamed. “I’ll see you into the ground! I’ll have security drag you out of here! ”
“You can do that.
But Vantage Partners is arriving in two hours. And I bet their due diligence team is going to ask for a code audit. They’re going to ask for the chain of title for the IP. If you kick me out, who explains to them why there’s a massive legal dispute over the very asset they’re buying?
”
Bryce froze. The blood drained from his face. He couldn’t disclose the dispute without killing the deal. But he couldn’t close the deal if he didn’t own the tech.
“What do you want? ” he hissed. “Money? A raise?
”
“I want to sit in on the meeting. ”
“What? The board meeting with Vantage? ”
“I want to be there.
To ensure that my intellectual property is represented accurately. ”
“You are not coming into that room,” he spat, and stormed off. But he forgot about the third party. At 12:00 p.
m. , an email arrived from the Vantage legal team. They had done a preliminary scan of the public repo activity. Trevor had foolishly pushed some commits to a public GitHub for a library update.
They had noticed the admin override flags. Subject: Urgent due diligence query to Bryce Langford Jr. We noticed some irregularities in the security architecture logs. Before we sign, we require a full walkthrough of the current IP ownership and security stack.
We need your lead architect to verify the integrity of the code. Bryce read the email on his phone in the middle of the hallway. His shoulders slumped. He couldn’t do the meeting without me.
Trevor couldn’t explain the code because Trevor didn’t understand it. And if they lied, it was fraud. At 12:45 p. m.
, fifty minutes before the investors arrived, Bryce’s assistant appeared at my desk. She looked terrified. “Mr. Langford requests your presence in the boardroom.
”
I stood up, smoothed my blazer, tapped the USB drive in my pocket. “Lead the way. ”
The boardroom at Arcturus was designed to intimidate. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the skyline, a table made from endangered rainforest wood, chairs that cost more than a Honda Civic.
Today, however, it felt like a courtroom where everyone was guilty except me. Vantage Partners had sent three people. The lead guy, Sterling, was a silver fox with eyes like a raptor. He didn’t look like he bought vibes.
He bought math. I took a seat at the far end of the table, away from Bryce and Trevor. Bryce shot me a look that promised murder. I gave him a look that promised litigation.
“We’ve reviewed the numbers,” Sterling started. “Impressive returns over the last week. A bit volatile, but impressive. ”
“We’ve unlocked significant velocity,” Bryce said, using his smooth sales voice.
But I could see a bead of sweat tracking down his temple. “Our new optimization strategy is paying dividends. ”
“Right. We have questions about the sustainability of this optimization.
Our tech analysts noted that you’ve disabled several layers of the risk management stack. ”
Bryce laughed nervously. “Standard refactoring. We’re streamlining.
”
“Streamlining usually implies making things more efficient, not less secure,” Sterling said dryly. He turned his gaze to me. “You must be Naomi Adler. The architect.
”
“I am. ”
“We’ve heard good things. Can you walk us through the current state of the IP? Specifically, we want to know about the stability of the core logic with these new changes.
”
The room went silent. Bryce held his breath. Trevor was staring at his shoes. “The core logic is extremely stable.
It’s a robust, low-latency engine designed for long-term viability. ”
Bryce exhaled. He thought I was playing along. I continued.
“However, the current implementation running on the servers — the one with the security bypass — is a deviation from the certified architecture. ”
“Deviation? ” Sterling raised an eyebrow. “Yes.
It’s a fork. An unauthorized fork. ”
Bryce interrupted. “It’s an update.
An internal update. Naomi is just protective of her legacy code. ”
Sterling ignored him. “When you say unauthorized, Ms.
Adler, do you mean unauthorized by the frantic nature of the market, or unauthorized by protocol? ”
“I mean unauthorized by the owner of the code. ”
The air left the room. “The owner?
” Sterling asked slowly. “Arcturus Capital owns the code. ”
I didn’t say anything. I just looked at Bryce.
“Bryce? ” Sterling asked. “Of course we own it! ” Bryce shouted, standing up.
“She’s a disgruntled employee. She’s trying to sabotage the deal. ”
“I’m not disgruntled,” I said. “I’m contractual.
”
Mark, the compliance officer, stopped typing his minutes. He slowly reached into his bag and pulled out his laptop. “Mark,” Bryce snapped, “put that away. ”
“Actually,” Mark said, his voice shaking but audible, “I think you should see this.
”
Mark slid his laptop toward Sterling. On the screen was the scanned copy of Appendix D, highlighted in yellow. Sterling put on a pair of reading glasses. He read the clause.
He read it again. He looked at the date on the document, and he looked at the date on the security logs Mark had helpfully pulled up in the next tab. “October 14th,” Sterling read. “Security protocol bypassed.
User: Trevor. ”
He looked up at Bryce. The look wasn’t angry. It was disappointed, which is worse in business.
“Bryce, did you alter the fundamental security protocols without Ms. Adler’s consent? ”
“It’s just legal gobbledygook! ” Bryce yelled.
“It doesn’t mean anything. We paid her salary, we own the work. ”
“That’s not what this says. As of October 14th, the IP reverted to the author.
Which means,” he turned to me, “Ms. Adler, do you currently hold the rights to the engine we are proposing to invest in? ”
“I do. ”
“And do you have a licensing agreement with Arcturus Capital?
”
“I do not. ”
Sterling closed the leather folder. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet room. “Well, that complicates the valuation.
”
Bryce looked like he was going to stroke out. “You can’t listen to her. She’s bluffing. The code is on our servers.
”
“Is it? ” I asked. I reached into my pocket and placed the USB drive on the polished mahogany table. It made a small, distinct clack.
“The code on your servers is the corrupted version. The one Trevor broke. The one that is currently running without safety rails. It works for now, sure, but it’s leaking data and it’s legally compromised.
This drive contains the last valid, secure, and legally pristine version of the Arcturus engine. The version that generated the 18% returns you pitched to Vantage. And per my contract, this code belongs to me. ”
Sterling looked at the USB drive, then at Bryce.
“Is she telling the truth, Bryce? Does she have the source? ”
“It doesn’t matter! ” Bryce screamed.
“She stole it. That’s theft. ”
“It’s her possession. I left the corrupted version for you.
You can keep Trevor’s code. Good luck with the SEC audit when they ask why you removed the compliance filters. ”
Sterling stood up. His two associates stood up with him.
“Bryce, we can’t proceed with this. The IP ownership is in dispute. The security architecture is compromised. And frankly, your risk management appears to be nonexistent.
”
“Wait,” Bryce scrambled around the table. “We can fix it. We can sue her. We can get an injunction.
”
“I’m not investing $300 million into a lawsuit. I came to buy a Ferrari. You’re trying to sell me a stolen car with cut brakes. ”
Sterling turned to me and nodded, a small mark of respect.
“Miss Adler. If you ever decide to license your technology to a firm that reads its contracts, give me a call. ”
“I will. ”
Sterling and his team walked out.
The door clicked shut behind them. The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush a submarine. Bryce stood facing the door, his back to me, his shoulders heaving. Trevor was slumped in his chair.
Peters, the general counsel, was massaging his temples. Then Bryce turned around. His face was twisted into a mask of pure infant rage. “You,” he whispered.
“You did this. ”
“I’m a professional, Bryce. There’s a difference. ”
“I’ll destroy you.
I’ll bury you in legal fees. You’ll never work on the street again. ”
“No, you won’t,” Peters said from the side of the table. Bryce whipped his head around.
“Whose side are you on? ”
“I’m on the side of the law. She has us dead to rights. Appendix D is clear.
If we sue, we lose. And in discovery, all the logs of Trevor bypassing the security will become public record. The SEC will shut us down. The investors will flee.
It’s over. ”
Bryce looked at Peters, then at Trevor, then at me. He lunged for the USB drive on the table. I didn’t flinch.
I let him grab it. He held it up like a trophy. “I have it. I have the code.
”
“That’s encrypted. AES 256. Without the key phrase, it’s just a piece of metal. And you can’t brute force it.
I wrote the encryption. ”
He stared at the drive. He looked like he wanted to crush it. “What do you want?
” he choked out. “Just tell me what you want. ”
I picked up my purse and looked around the boardroom one last time. “I want you to admit it.
”
“Admit what? ”
“Admit that you didn’t know what you were doing. Admit that you tried to break something you didn’t understand because your ego couldn’t handle that you didn’t build it. ”
Bryce stared at me.
His face was purple. The veins in his neck were bulging. “I own you! ” he screamed.
The sound echoed off the glass walls. “I own you and your algorithms! I am Arcturus! ”
It was the scream of a king who had just realized his throne was made of cardboard.
“You don’t own me, Bryce,” I said softly. “And as of yesterday, you don’t even own the algorithms. You own a shell company with a high burn rate and a compromised server. ”
I walked over to the table and held out my hand.
“The drive, please. ”
He clutched it tight. “No? Okay.
Keep it. It’s useless. I have the backup, and I have the key, and I have the contract. ”
I turned to Peters.
“Peters, have your office contact my lawyer. We can discuss a transition plan. I’m willing to license the engine back to Arcturus. But the rates have gone up significantly, and it comes with a condition.
”
“What condition? ” Peters asked, looking like he just wanted to go home and drink scotch. “Bryce steps down as CEO, and Trevor is terminated immediately. For cause.
”
“You can’t do that! ” Bryce yelled. “I’m the IP holder. I can dictate the terms of the license.
If you want the engine that makes the money, you play by my rules. If not, well, I hear Vantage Partners is looking for a new tech partner. I have Sterling’s card. ”
I walked out of the boardroom.
I didn’t look back. I heard Bryce screaming something about loyalty and betrayal, but it sounded distant, like a dog barking three streets over. I took the elevator down to the lobby and walked out into the sunshine. It was a crisp fall day in Chicago.
The air smelled like exhaust and potential. A text from Mark: “He’s crying. Literally crying. Peters is drafting the termination letter for Trevor.
Can I use you as a reference? ”
I typed back: “Absolutely. Call me tomorrow. ”
I didn’t destroy Arcturus.
I saved the part that mattered — the code — and let the rot cut itself out. In the end, they accepted the deal. Bryce was moved to a non-executive chairman role, basically paid to stay away. Trevor was fired.
I consulted for the firm at a rate of $800 an hour to fix the mess they made. But I never gave them the source code back. We signed a licensing agreement. I own the engine.
They just rent the horsepower. I walked to the nearest bar, ordered a double bourbon, and sat by the window. I watched the people rushing by, chasing money, chasing status. I took a sip.
It burned hot and clean. They tried to rewrite the rules. They forgot that I wrote the game.
