Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the System
The drive back to the main office was a blur of gray asphalt and rising panic. I didn’t go to my desk in the basement storage room. Instead, I walked straight past the administrative bullpen on the second floor, ignoring Madison as she called out something about a catering budget, and headed directly for the IT server room.
Our lead IT technician, Leo, was halfway through a paper cup of stale coffee when I swiped my keycard and locked the door behind me.
“Claire? You can’t be in here without management sign-off,” Leo stammered, scrambling to close a web browser on his monitor.
“Shut up, Leo, and pull the terminal logs for last Tuesday night between midnight and 4:00 AM,” I said, my voice ice-cold. I pulled up a chair next to his desk and slammed my palm down on the edge. “Right now.”
“I can’t just—management protocol says—”
“Management protocol doesn’t cover federal smuggling charges, Leo. Someone used my supervisor login credentials to override customs manifests on the South Dock terminal network last Tuesday. If those logs show my workstation IP address, we are both looking at a federal penitentiary. Now open the damn logs.”
Leo’s face drained of color. His fingers flew across the keyboard, clacking frantically as he bypassed two layers of internal security and pulled up the raw server connection history.
Lines of code and IP addresses scrolled down the screen. I leaned in close, tracking the timestamps.
Tuesday, 2:14 AM.
Terminal ID: SD-North-04.
IP Address: 192.168.4.112.
My stomach plummeted. That wasn’t my basement computer’s IP address. It belonged to the executive suite upstairs—specifically, the router installed in my father’s private office.
“It wasn't a remote hack,” I whispered, staring at the screen. “Someone physically used the terminal console in my father’s office while logged into my master account credentials.”
“Wait,” Leo muttered, leaning closer to the monitor and typing a quick command to trace user session tokens. “Look at the active session cookie right before the override. It wasn't just a password login. It used a physical hardware security key.”
“A hard token,” I said, my mind racing. “Only two people in the company have hard tokens assigned to my master administrative clearance level. Me... and my father.”
Before Leo could respond, the heavy glass door of the server room buzzed and clicked open.
Standing in the doorway, holding a leather portfolio under one arm, was Rebecca. Her sharp, perfectly manicured face wore a look of mild irritation as she looked from Leo to me.
“Claire,” Rebecca said, her tone dripping with passive-aggressive sweetness. “Charles has been looking for you everywhere. There’s an emergency board meeting in twenty minutes, and he wants you downstairs to take the minutes. And honestly, must you skulk around the server room like you own the place? It’s unbecoming.”
I stood up slowly from the chair, looking past her into the hallway. Then my eyes dropped to her right hand, resting casually against her portfolio.
May you like
On her index finger was a heavy silver ring with a built-in USB-C hardware authentication drive—the exact physical key used to bypass my master security clearance.
---
