Jason adjusted his chair, with a knowing precision. The dual monitors cast a cold glow on his face, reflecting in his brown eyes the screen with long codes humans are never meant to write. His shoulders ached, begging for a break, but the work wouldn't wait.
Lines of code scrolled past—dense, stubborn, and demanding his full attention. His faint reflection ghosted across the screen, blending with the glow. His dark hair, longer than usual, kept falling into his eyes no matter how many times he pushed it back.
Across from him, Arnon lounged in his chair, tossing a stress ball in a slow, steady rhythm. The soft thud as it hit his palm had become part of the office soundtrack—right alongside the hum of monitors, the muted clicks of mechanical keyboards, and the occasional sighs of coworkers losing arguments with uncooperative systems.
Jason exhaled. "If you stare at that code any harder, you might bend reality."
Arnon, still not looking up, extended a slow, deliberate middle finger.
Jason smirked and turned back to his screen. His eyes blurred for a second, struggling to refocus. A shadow loomed behind him.
Sophia wandered over, arms crossed, one brow raised—the universal look of someone about to fix your problem for you.
"Still stuck?" she asked, nodding at his screen.
"Still stuck," Jason admitted. "Deadline was yesterday, and this thing is fighting me every step of the way."
Sophia leaned against his desk, scanning the code. "Jason, repeat after me—the IT mantra: It's always DNS,check the basics."
Jason chuckled. "Thanks ,i reallly thought for once you are going to something useful. Soon you will see me running away holding my hair. If I crack, that fellow takes over."
"Not if I crack first," Arnon muttered, returning with two cups of coffee. He slid one toward Jason, tapping the rim before letting go.
Sophia smirked. "With you two in charge, we'll either fix the system or burn it down."
Jason raised his mug in a mock toast. "Here's to burning it down."
---
The day dissolved into a blur of debugging and caffeine.
Jason tackled the urgent tasks first—patching a security vulnerability, deploying a hotfix, clearing his inbox. Small wins kept him sane. But the real problem still waited.
The virus.
He had run hours long diogonastics to see what was happening ,It wasn't normal. No ransom demands. No stolen credentials hitting the dark web. Instead, it did something weirder.
It changed things.
To contain it, they followed protocol:
1. Cut the Connection – the team had pulled the infected machines off the network like surgeons clamping a ruptured artery. Cut it off fast, or the whole system bleeds out.
2. Follow the Tracks – Now their task was to check the logs.but the system logs showed files edited before they were created. Logins from accounts that didn't exist. It was like finding footprints leading in both directions at once.
3. Bait the Trap – on the other hand they have been building a perfect trap. They built a sandbox, a fake playground where the virus could roam freely. It thought it was loose. It wasn't. It was a fish in a tank, swimming in circles.
And just like that, it walked in.
And it was their teams job to check what all our uninvited guest had corrupted while he rests in his cage.
Most malware followed patterns. This one didn't.
Jason frowned at the altered logs. Computer wasn't supposed to work like this.
Then he noticed Arnon had gone quiet.
"Earth to Arnon," Jason said, waving a hand.
Arnon blinked, as if shaking off a thought. "Huh?"
"You spaced out."
Arnon hesitated, something unreadable in his expression. "You've been following breaches, right?"
"All morning.hmm i am even planning to understand this virus enough to try replicating it.why?"
Arnon exhaled, rubbing his jaw. " this virus... this is different. Too deliberate to be random."
Jason tilted his head. "Targeted attack? Corporate sabotage?"
Arnon's jaw tightened. "Maybe. Or something else."
Jason studied him. Arnon had a knack for spotting patterns others missed. Usually, it was harmless—tiny bugs, minor security flaws. But this felt different.
"You were following on cyberattacks for the past years were you not?"
Arnon shrugged, too casually. "Just following breadcrumbs. You know how it is."
Jason wasn't convinced. "Arnon..."
"Relax," Arnon said, forcing a grin. "I'm not hacking government servers or anything. Just poking around."
Jason sighed. "You think its a terrorist attack on the government? No wait. Don't poke too much, one day you'll find something you can't handle."
Arnon chuckled, but his eyes stayed serious. "If that day comes, you'll bail me out, right?"
Jason shook his head.
Then, when no one was looking, he powered off his computer.
As the screen dimmed, something caught his eye—his cursor flickered backward for a split second. Like an undo command.
His breath hitched.
He stared at the screen until it went dark, the faint reflection of his chair lingering on the surface.
Slowly, he stood, stretched, and slipped out before his manager could corner him.
Home sweet home here i come.