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墨書 Inktalez
In the surveillance footage, Zhang Zhiqiang was puncturing a report with a cigar cutter, the sound of the blade opening and closing reminiscent of a snake flicking its tongue. I pressed the Enter key, and the twenty-seven cameras in the finance department's corridor flickered with static as Li Ming's implanted worm program voraciously devoured encrypted files.
A coffee cup trembled at the edge of the table, and Wang Mingyuan's number lit up in seventh place on my call log. "Manager Wang, last month's subsidiary cash expenditures exceeded the budget by four million." I folded the financial statement into a paper airplane, the creases perfectly covering three suspicious overseas remittance numbers.
Suddenly, the printer spat out an A4 sheet with an inky smell, revealing Lin Xueyao's hotel invoice from last week's reimbursement in the footer watermark. I chuckled into the receiver, "Sister Wang from finance said the system has been glitching lately. Can you guess how many deleted permission logs are in her recycle bin?"
"Your desk plant needs watering," Wang Mingyuan's breath grew heavier before he hung up, matching the sighing frequency he had when he discovered that a financing contract had been swapped. I took off my glasses to clean them, and in their reflection, I saw the access records for the emergency exit on the thirty-seventh floor—Zhang Zhiqiang had lingered for forty-seven minutes longer than usual last night.
During the morning meeting, I slid a USB drive across to Wang Mingyuan. The five-carat diamond ring refracted rainbows under the projector's beam; it was evidence found in the vacuum cleaner filter of a cleaning lady. His fingers paused as he flipped through the report; on page twelve, ink stains formed shapes that clearly resembled a partial map of the chairman's private jet routes.
"Interns are learning to audit now?" Wang Mingyuan tapped his pen rhythmically on the desk, echoing last quarter's leaked bid price figures. I deliberately knocked over a water bottle, and as water pooled on the table, it outlined the coastline of Singapore, perfectly encircling three offshore company registration addresses.
On my way back to my workstation, I bumped into Zhang Zhiqiang tearing apart a stack of receipts. The shredding machine's noise mixed with his cold laughter seeping through his teeth. "Shen seems quite concerned about company operations lately?" His thick palm slapped my shoulder; the light glinting off his cufflink danced like Morse code—the same as last night's destroyed surveillance footage segment number.
Suddenly, a mug exploded in the tea room, brown stains crawling across the tiles like claw marks. I raised my voice to a newcomer, "I heard the Audit Team is investigating cash flow?" The glass door reflected the finance supervisor rushing toward the archive room; her high heels were stained with red dirt that matched exactly with the humus in the flowerpot on the windowsill of the Board of Directors' meeting room.
When Zhang Zhiqiang kicked over my trash can at my workstation, shredded delivery slips fluttered in the air conditioning draft. I adjusted my glasses and stared at his bloodshot eyes. "Supervisor Zhang, do you know anyone who deals with foreign exchange? I've heard regulations have tightened recently." The number of calendar pages he knocked down corresponded precisely with the approval date for that problematic payment.
As I dragged the eighth encrypted email into the recycle bin, an alarm blared unexpectedly in the corridor. The glass of the fire hydrant reflected Lin Xueyao deleting chat records; her chipped nail polish formed patterns that coincidentally matched the verification code on last week's fuel invoice for the chairman's driver.
Wang Mingyuan's internal phone rang at midnight; keyboard clacking synced with USB decryption progress came through the receiver. "A typhoon is approaching," he coughed amidst printer hums, "Get all departments' budget sheets collected by tomorrow morning." The blue light from my monitor made me squint; watermarks floated between lines of reports that unmistakably depicted a three-dimensional layout of the finance department's safe.
At that moment when Zhang Zhiqiang kicked open the emergency exit door, I pressed my phone’s quick alarm button. The ashtray he swung smashed against the wall, creating spiderweb cracks; flying ceramic shards traced parabolic arcs, landing precisely at the formatted hard drive number in the surveillance room.
"Do you really think you've found a strong backing?" He loosened his tie, which flopped like a dying snake. I took a step back to avoid the spittle flying from his mouth, while the numbers on the elevator display reflected in the fire door's shiny surface, wildly jumping toward the forbidden underground parking level three.
When Security arrived, the miniature camera hidden in the second button of my shirt was still recording. In the lens, a half-exposed gold-embossed business card peeked out from Zhang Zhiqiang's pocket, its edge marks perfectly matching the official seal that had been stolen six months ago.
The pungent smell of disinfectant wafted in from the restroom as I crumpled up a note and flushed it down the drain. The blockchain hash value printed on the paper was being synced to the cloud, and three characters combined formed the safe code that Lin Xueyao had secretly engraved on the bottom of her lipstick.
Suddenly, a wardrobe in the changing room collapsed, and on the fallen laundry receipt, the shape of the missing corner of the dry cleaner's stamp matched exactly with Wang Mingyuan's shattered teacup. I rubbed my fingers over my torn cufflink; the metal scratches revealed a string of latitude and longitude coordinates in the moonlight—pointing to the mysterious vacation island of the Chief Financial Officer.
The touchscreen suddenly displayed a data reset countdown. In those seven seconds of respite, I inserted a specially made USB drive. As the decryption progress bar climbed to 98%, a sharp sound of nails scraping against metal pipes echoed from above, matching exactly with the dialing tone of an intercepted overseas call from last week.
As the first light of dawn pierced through the haze, the encrypted folder finally unlocked. I stared at the screen and burst into laughter—within Zhang Zhiqiang's mistress's credit card transaction records was a payment receipt for funeral services amounting to a million, with the client's name being the third person on the absentee list for the Board of Directors meeting.
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