Back in the quiet refuge of the dorm room, the midnight blue gown was tossed carelessly on the chair, a discarded costume. Mel, now in a simple tee, sat hunched over her desk. The dinner had given her crucial human data: names, fears, and the exact moment those fears surfaced.
She powered up the secure tablet, the device that was her only link to the outside and her one-way ticket to justice. The tablet held the existing data from the initial leak, and tonight, she was adding the human element.
Vasko's Fear: Linked to the Argos Expansion and the new tracking system. His anxiety suggested he was worried about visibility, not just cost or delay.
Chen's Tension: His repeated, furtive glances at his phone when logistics tracking was mentioned pointed to a communication loop he was trying to manage or disrupt.
Mel began to overlay the time stamps from the dinner, when Rhys mentioned the tracking system, with the technical data of the first leak. The initial breach had occurred precisely when the pilot program for the Argos supply chain tracking was internally approved.
Mel realized the leak wasn't designed to shut down the project; it was designed to discredit the tracking system itself. The exposure wasn't the goal; blindness was.
The logic clicked into place: someone was using the existing supply chain system for their corruption, and the new, improved tracking was going to expose them. They needed the project to seem unstable so the new tracking would be shelved.
Mel ran a rapid diagnostic on the Kallen Capital internal systems (via her remote connection), focusing only on the logs of the current logistics tracking software—the system that Vasko and Chen were keen to keep in place. She filtered for two things:
Unauthorized Access attempts in the 48 hours before the first leak.
Unusual Data Exports involving documents related to the Argos supply chain.
The search returned a single, shocking result: a persistent ping from a third-party server in a shell company location. It wasn't a random hacker; it was an internal actor with a clear, specific goal.
The data leak wasn't a massive corporate attack; it was a targeted effort to create an optical illusion of instability. The true source of the corruption was embedded in the logistics layer.
Mel had the proof. She had the server location, the time stamps, and the likely responsible parties (Vasko and Chen) based on the human intelligence from the dinner. She had to act now before the new tracking system was officially scrapped.
She opened the secure message channel. Her hands hesitated over the keyboard. Rhys's words echoed in her mind: "You are fighting for a moral outcome in a place where morality doesn't exist... I want to see if I can corrupt you."
This was the moment of no return. Exposing this level of corruption meant destroying careers, likely sending people to jail, and potentially damaging Kallen Capital beyond repair, the very company Rhys had sworn to protect. It also meant a clean conscience for Mel.
With a deep breath, Mel packaged the new evidence: the ping location, the connection to the existing logistics system, and a brief, coded analysis explaining the purpose of the leak: to protect a hidden corruption ring from new visibility.
She hit send.
The instant the package was transmitted, the secure tablet automatically scrubbed the file and the log. Mel felt a profound sense of relief, followed by an immediate wave of dread. She had just used Rhys Kallen's own company as the staging ground for a major corporate takedown. The fallout would be massive.
The very next morning, Mel was in the office, nursing a lukewarm coffee, when her desk phone rang, a rare occurrence. She picked it up.
"Analyst Melanie," she answered, professionally.
"I need you in my office now," Rhys's voice was a low, dangerous rumble, colder than she had ever heard it. "The Argos project has had a second, targeted data breach. Come alone."
Mel knew her heart was not hammering from fear, but from a cold, quiet certainty. He knew. Or at least, he suspected. She put down the phone, stood up, and smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt. The game had just moved from the boardroom to a direct, personal confrontation.