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墨書 Inktalez
I stared at the cold glow of the operation log on the screen, my fingers sliding unconsciously over the touchpad. The buzzing of the central air conditioning suddenly became jarring, and cold sweat trickled down my neck, sliding into the collar of my shirt. As I checked the timestamp for the seventh time, my hand holding the coffee cup trembled violently, causing the dark liquid to sway dangerously at the rim—Wang Tao's modification of the confidential document last Wednesday matched precisely, down to the second, with the surveillance record of him working late in the office.
"This can't be happening." I grabbed a mint from the corner of my desk and popped it into my mouth, its coolness rushing straight to my head. Last Wednesday at 8:17 PM, Wang Tao had brought me oden from the convenience store downstairs; even now, I could feel an eerie chill at the thought of the condensation on the bottom of that plastic bowl. The image of him with ink stains on his cuffs suddenly twisted in my memory, like a watercolor painting soaked in water.
The printer suddenly buzzed to life, startling me so much that I nearly knocked over my mug. On the back of a discarded contract next to the shredder were densely packed attendance records for Wang Tao over the past three months. Among twenty-six instances of overtime highlighted in red marker, nineteen coincided exactly with times when system vulnerabilities had appeared—odds more bizarre than winning a lottery.
I pulled out my vibrating phone; a dinner invitation from Xiao Zhang in the client department flashed on the screen. Just as I was about to decline, inspiration struck me. My fingers paused over the keyboard as I quickly pulled up Wang Tao's reimbursement form. When I saw the entry for "Blue Shore Café," a rusty taste suddenly filled my throat—this café hidden in a corner of the tech park faced directly towards our competitor, Sheng Tian Group's R&D building.
The next evening at six o'clock, I crouched in the storage room of the fire escape, peering through a crack in the door at Wang Tao's workstation. Seeing him reach for his inner suit pocket for the third time, I quickly slipped into the elevator, pressing my head against its cold metal wall. In the mirrored reflection, my pale face looked like that of a vengeful ghost.
The frosted glass windows of Blue Shore Café were shrouded in mist as I huddled behind a decorative tree watching Wang Tao walk towards a window-side booth. When that man with gold-rimmed glasses emerged partially from the shadows, my nails dug deep into my palm—last month at an industry summit, he had worn a CTO badge from Sheng Tian Group and spoke passionately about business ethics.
"Director Wang is truly punctual," I pressed myself against the restroom wall to listen intently as Sheng Tian's CTO's voice mixed with the sound of steaming coffee machines floated out. "The database structure diagram for the new version's source code..." Suddenly, a ringtone blared from my phone, causing me to bump into the fire door. When Wang Tao’s alert gaze swept over, I hurriedly pretended to tie my shoelaces.
Three hours later, I curled up in my cubicle, blue light from my laptop screen making my eyes ache. The triple-encrypted files I discovered while hacking into Wang Tao's computer were now slowly unfolding like Pandora's box within a virtual machine. The moment I saw "Dark Stake Implantation Progress Report," pain shot through my molars—this month's frequently malfunctioning subsystem was marked as "Controllable Crash Node."
The printer hissed like a snake flicking its tongue as I stared at the ejected A4 paper and suddenly recalled Wang Tao patting me on the shoulder last week saying, "Young people shouldn't push themselves too hard." The reflection on his watch face now seemed unmistakably like that of a surveillance camera.
The office at three in the morning was as cold as a morgue; when I inserted a USB drive into the main unit, its "ding" startled me so much that I jumped. As the progress bar crawled to 87%, footsteps echoed down the corridor—the sound of security guards' rubber-soled shoes grinding against tile made me curl under my desk counting heartbeats until their sounds faded completely into the elevator lobby.
When a backup completion prompt popped up, sticky sweat had already left a blurry handprint on my keyboard. Cloud storage, encrypted emails, even external hard drives rented from safety deposit boxes—all seven layers of backup felt like seven chains binding that man who always brought me breakfast firmly within this chain of evidence.
As the last printed document was ejected from the shredder, thunder suddenly crashed outside. The sound of rain pounding against glass walls resembled how Wang Tao would slam documents onto my desk each time he delivered them. Those files marked "Key Clients" now bared their fangs within an encrypted folder—core data from thirty-seven companies glaringly listed on Sheng Tian's acquisition list.
I grabbed the cold espresso from the edge of the table and downed it in one gulp. As the sour and bitter liquid slid down my throat, I suddenly recalled what Wang Tao had said on my first day: "The workplace is like a battlefield." Now, the USB drive tucked away in his suit pocket lay quietly at the bottom of my drawer, its indicator light blinking every three seconds, resembling a countdown detonator.
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