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墨書 Inktalez
As the projector's blue light sliced through the shadows of the conference room, the gold lapel pin on Zhang Zhiqiang's suit glinted with the sheen of embezzlement. The frequency with which he raised his thermos to drink matched perfectly with the cycles of funds moving in and out of offshore accounts.
"Are some interns still hanging around?" he tapped his index finger on the table, stained red from the wax seal on the bidding document. "The company doesn't keep idle people." The upward curve of his voice mirrored the penalty clause in his lover's property purchase contract. The central air conditioning vent swirled scraps of paper, each piece marked with the altered codes from engineering acceptance documents.
I pulled a USB drive from my suit pocket, still warm to the touch. The moment it was plugged in, thirty-seven surveillance feeds erupted onto the screen. In last year's Christmas Eve footage of Zhang Zhiqiang negotiating with suppliers, the jade ring on his ring finger pressed against the decimal point of a kickback amount.
"These photoshopping skills are pathetic!" He knocked over a cup of goji berry tea, spilling it across the table like a money laundering flowchart. "That little bastard is engaging in workplace bullying!" The diamonds from his tie clip scattered at my feet, forming a matrix resembling last week's stolen server key.
The rush of air from the fire door being pushed open lifted the pages of documents. Li Ming entered, clutching a file that exuded the scent of anti-counterfeiting ink. The trajectory of twenty-three notarized pages falling matched his bank statements for cashing out public funds. As the last page covered his trembling lips, every electronic clock in the building ticked to the critical date when the funding chain would break.
"I'm calling the police!" Zhang Zhiqiang kicked over a swivel chair that crashed into the emergency plan display board, cracks spreading precisely to the offshore company registration number held by his mistress. I took off my glasses to wipe them; in their reflection, thirty-seven shareholders were watching a live stream via the dark web.
The fingerprint-unlocked tablet was pushed to the center of the round table, and an automated synthetic voice played back encrypted emails that exposed his forged diploma. In those ten seconds of sudden blackout in the conference room, I heard a foreign SIM card in his left breast pocket sending out signals for mercy.
"You young people need to learn some ethics!" His fist swung forward, carrying the scent of false audit reports. As I sidestepped to avoid him, my cufflink sliced through his watch face, revealing a hidden micro-camera recording raw data from engineering accidents.
As emergency lights flickered on, Li Ming pressed a confirmation button that triggered all associated account freeze protocols. The transfer checks sewn into Zhang Zhiqiang's suit lining began to ignite spontaneously, their ashes forming three-dimensional coordinates for overseas casinos in the airflow from the exhaust fan. I stepped on his mobile hard drive as he attempted to kick it out; the data recovery progress bar reflected on the ceiling like a sword of judgment hanging over everyone’s heads.
"Three months ago, during that stormy night when we accepted the drainage project..." I pointed at a photo showing fraudulent moisture treatment; suddenly, his carotid pulse synced with a countdown to collapse. When twenty-seven subcontractors' joint complaint letters projected onto the screen, he slumped against a fire extinguisher box, his posture overlapping with CT scans from his mistress's miscarriage case.
Amidst the explosive sound of tempered glass shattering, I leaned down to straighten his crooked tie. Hidden beneath dark-patterned fabric was a red light from a listening device, currently syncing criminal evidence to the economic investigation unit's cloud. As he lunged toward the shards of glass in rage, I expertly controlled my grip on his collar at just below excessive self-defense levels.
"Are all those old men from the Shen family watching?" Blood flecked from his lips as he spat out commercial espionage codes. "Do you think you’ve won?" The shattered smartphone screen automatically sent out its location; its navigation endpoint was an unused grave in the family cemetery.
I picked up the shattered gold cufflink and pressed it into the wooden table of the conference room, the dent aligning perfectly with the coordinates of my mother's death four years ago in the blind spot of Ward Monitoring. Suddenly, the entire projection screen flickered with static, and the vanished balance of the Overseas Account began to reassemble into the family crest. Each official seal on the case closure notice that drifted down from the central air conditioning vent bore fingerprints left by guests at my father's funeral.
The sound of taut steel cables echoed from the elevator shaft as Wang Mingyuan stood illuminated by the gradually lighting floor indicator. At the bottom of his health pot lay a piece of wood shavings engraved with my name, a Spirit Tablet. His silently moving lips formed the remnants of my grandfather's chess game from this morning—one last black piece pressing down on an old delivery record, with a blood-stained signature dripping down through the ventilation duct.
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