Story code: ST-000152
Part 4: The Master Drive
The heavy silence in the ballroom stretched out, suffocating and absolute. The flashing 502 Bad Gateway error reflected in the horrified, widened eyes of the four venture capitalists at the VIP table. Manny stood completely still, his hands resting at his sides, watching the pristine, polished mask of Brooks Vance completely disintegrate.
“Fix it,” the silver-haired investor demanded, his voice dropping an octave, devoid of any prior warmth. He slapped his useless tablet flat against the linen tablecloth. “If you built this, Brooks, boot the server back up.”
Brooks’s mouth opened and closed. A bead of sweat dripped from his temple, catching the harsh glare of the giant LED screen. He looked at the investor, then at the dead presentation clicker in his hand, and finally, his eyes locked onto Manny. The sheer, naked panic in Brooks’s expression twisted into something ugly and feral.
“You ruined everything!” Brooks shrieked, his voice cracking violently over the unmuted microphone.
He hurled the heavy, metal-cased microphone straight at Manny’s head. Manny ducked, feeling the rush of air as the device sailed past him and shattered against a crystal water pitcher on the busing station behind him. Before Manny could regain his balance, Brooks launched himself off the raised platform.
The impact drove the breath from Manny’s lungs. Brooks tackled him squarely in the chest, sending them both crashing into the edge of the VIP table. Champagne flutes exploded into shards. The heavy silver ice bucket tipped over, sending freezing water and cubed ice cascading over Manny’s face and shoulders. He hit the carpeted floor hard, his skull bouncing against the thinly padded concrete.
“I’ll kill you!” Brooks screamed, his hands clawing wildly at Manny’s collar. A wild, uncoordinated fist slammed into Manny’s cheekbone. A sharp spark of white-hot pain flashed behind Manny’s eyes. He tasted copper.
Manny threw his arms up, blocking a second erratic swing, and kicked his knee upward into Brooks’s stomach. Brooks gasped but didn’t stop, his fingers desperately digging into Manny’s throat. The pristine velvet dinner jacket was now soaked in ice water and champagne, and Brooks’s perfectly styled hair fell in ragged clumps over his manic, bloodshot eyes.
“Get off him!” a deep voice bellowed.
Two pairs of heavy hands clamped onto Brooks’s shoulders. The private security guards ripped the flailing CEO off Manny, hoisting Brooks backward into the air. Brooks kicked and thrashed like a cornered animal, screaming incoherent curses as he was dragged away.
Manny rolled onto his side, coughing violently as air rushed back into his bruised windpipe. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. The VIP table above him was a disaster of broken glass, spilled drinks, and ruined electronics. Beneath the draped linen, hidden from the panicked crowd, lay Brooks’s overturned leather messenger bag.
It had spilled its contents onto the carpet during the scuffle. Among the scattered business cards and expensive pens lay a heavy, familiar rectangular object. The silver solid-state drive. The encrypted master offline git repository. Brooks had kept it on him, likely terrified of leaving the only functional master copy of the codebase out of his sight.
Manny didn’t think. He reached out with a trembling, bleeding hand, grabbed the freezing cold metal drive, and shoved it deep into the front pocket of his black slacks.
The ballroom was in absolute chaos. The investors were already marching toward the exit, shouting furiously into their cell phones. In the center of the room, campus police officers were sprinting through the double doors, their radios crackling. They took immediate custody of Brooks, who had completely stopped fighting and was now sobbing openly, his velvet jacket torn, blubbering about his stolen company as the officers forced his wrists into heavy steel handcuffs.
An hour later, the adrenaline had completely burned out of Manny’s system. He sat on the bumper of a parked ambulance outside the alumni club, an EMT gently pressing a cold pack against his rapidly swelling cheek. He had given his statement to a bored-looking patrol officer. Because Brooks had attacked him in front of three hundred witnesses, the aggravated assault charge was straightforward. Brooks was currently sitting in the back of a squad car, headed to the downtown precinct. Nobody had mentioned the cyberattack; to the police, it was just a technical glitch that sparked a physical corporate dispute.
“You’re free to go, kid,” the officer grunted, flipping his notepad shut. “We’ll call you if the DA needs a follow-up.”
Manny nodded slowly. He stood up, wincing as a sharp pain flared in his ribs. He pulled his thin jacket tighter around his shoulders to block out the freezing night wind. He reached into his chest pocket, his fingers brushing against the tight, folded square of yellow carbon paper. The felony summons for the library vandalism was still there. He was still broke, his name was still attached to a pending criminal charge, and his professional reputation in the tight-knit tech community was stained with the messy public fallout.
But as he began the long walk toward the subway station, his right hand slipped into his pants pocket. His knuckles wrapped around the cold, heavy edges of the silver solid-state drive.
The viral marketing hype was dead, and DropSync’s cloud servers were permanently offline, but the core algorithm-the absolute truth of his labor-was resting safely in his palm. Manny let out a slow, painful breath that crystallized in the frigid air. He had a mountain of legal trouble waiting for him on Monday morning, but for the first time since the campus alarm had tripped, he possessed the exact tools he needed to rebuild on his own.