During a project review meeting, the new Gen Z intern, Jake Wilson, suddenly acts up by cutting to the server's backend logs on the projector.

With a sneer, he says, "Mr. Miller, there's been an ongoing traffic anomaly in the server for the past few months. After conducting a quick investigation, it appears that the operations director, Ms. Chapman, has been secretly using the server to run her website just to accept private gigs and make quick bucks on the side."

After the boss, Martin Miller, listens to Jake's report, his expression becomes stormy.

"Ms. Chapman's actions have greatly infringed on the company's interests! In fact, the risks of her leaking the company's core secrets are extremely high! I suggest that we call the police on her!" Jake continued.

As I look at how hostile Jake and Martin are acting, all I feel is bitter disappointment.

Back when the company has first started out, it doesn't have the funds to afford a high-specs server. I'm the one who has carried my million-dollar workstation to the company and constructed a server there. Heck, I'm the one who has been paying the power bills for the server the whole time.

To think that this company will backstab me in the end…

Fine. Since everyone treats me like an enemy, I might as well give them a taste of the consequences for offending me!

The intern, Jake Wilson, stood before the projector screen. The red dot from his laser pointer jittered across an enlarged screenshot of backend logs, finally settling on a string of IP addresses.

"Mr. Miller, data doesn't lie."

His face lit up with the excitement synonymous with catching a thief red-handed.

"Ms. Chapman has been hogging company server resources for months. Traffic spikes always hit in the middle of the night. I dug into it. These ports are all running private rendering jobs she took on the side.

"It's classic resource siphoning by using the company's electricity to make her own money. This kind of behaviour doesn't just drive up operational costs, but it's also slowing down our core workloads.

"If we don't shut it down now, next week's cloud launch is going to crash hard. And it could be even worse—she might be selling the company's core data! That's straight-up misappropriation of assets!"

Everyone turned to look at me. There was contempt and a trace of smug satisfaction in their eyes.

Our boss, Martin Miller, leaned back in his executive chair. "Susan, Jake's been here less than three months and already spotted this. You're the operations director and the technical fallback. Care to explain?"

Explain?

I looked at Martin's face, every line screaming calculation, and felt a wave of disgust rise in my chest.

Three years ago, Martin had dragged me into starting this company. He said we didn't have the cash to buy servers and couldn't afford cloud computing.

I didn't hesitate. I hauled the graphics workstation—dual EPYC CPUs, 512 gigs of RAM, four pro-grade GPUs—from my studio. It was barely six months old.

The hardware alone had cost me 120 thousand dollars.

I had even assured him at the time, "This thing's a beast. It'll carry us for now."

Somehow, that "for now" stretched into three years. The company's core code ran on it. Dozens of terabytes of project assets were stored on it.

To keep this power-hungry machine running smoothly, I even paid out of pocket to set up a dedicated enterprise line. The electricity bill would get mailed to my house every month.

Now, Jake foolishly called it a company server. The system maintenance scripts and automated backups I ran late at night had somehow turned into the so-called private freelance jobs.

What was even more interesting was that Martin knew exactly whose machine this was, yet the look in his eyes said otherwise.

"What am I supposed to explain?"

I flicked the pen in my hand onto the table. The plastic barrel hit the surface and bounced twice.

"The traffic spike is from a full stress test. I'm load-testing the whole system for next week's launch," I said. "As for Jake's claim about side gigs, have him show actual proof—job records, payment logs, anything with a paper trail."

Jake scoffed, arms crossed. "Ms. Chapman, we all work in tech here. No need to play dumb. That's an encrypted partition. I don't have the permissions, so I naturally can't pull any logs. In fact, why don't you hand over the root password so I can take a look?"

Jake paused, greed flashing in his eyes. "If you've got nothing to hide, transfer the machine's access rights to the company. Let everyone see what's really going on under the hood."

The cards were finally on the table. So, this was the setup all along.

The company was about to seek funding. A six-figure piece of hardware running the core stack, still registered under my name, was a glaring liability on paper.

Martin wanted to use Jake's accusation as leverage and strong-arm my private property into company assets.

"Jake has a point," Martin insisted with a nod, his tone leaving no room for debate. "Susan, if you've got nothing to hide, hand over access. Besides, servers should be under centralized company control anyway. You holding root access alone isn't exactly compliant."

Not compliant, huh?

Back when he begged me to bring the machine in to put out fires, he had called it loyalty. Now that he wanted it all for himself, it was suddenly "the company's policy".

I swept my gaze around the conference room.

Leonard Cole from Finance kept his head down, sipping his coffee. Just last month, his cooked books nearly blew up, and I'd used this very machine to recover the data he had shredded.

Wendy Moore from HR was quietly recording on her phone. Six months ago, she wiped the entire attendance database. I had pulled two all-nighters to restore it for her.

In a place driven by self-interest, favors meant nothing.

"Fine."

I stood up and pulled a black USB drive from my pocket. It was the hardware key for that workstation.

I set it down on the table and said, "The key's here. The root password is the company's founding date. If you want it, take it."

Martin clearly hadn't expected me to cave this easily. He froze for a beat, then a flicker of barely contained excitement flashed in his eyes.

After a look from Martin, Jake grabbed the USB drive and clenched it tight, as though he had just secured his fast track to a promotion and a raise.

"See, Ms. Chapman? That wasn't so hard," Jake taunted. "No need to make a scene in front of everyone."

I looked at him—young, arrogant, and definitely clueless. Little did he know, I had modded the cooling system on that machine myself. The liquid cooling loop required a very specific handling.

More importantly, the real core wasn't even the hardware.

"Mr. Miller, now that the handover's done, let me give you a heads-up," I said, looking at Martin. "The machine's got quite a temper. I've always handled the maintenance myself. If something goes wrong—"

"That's enough, Susan," Martin interrupted me, waving me off impatiently. "Jake's a top student from a prestigious computer science program. He knows his way around this kind of hardware. You don't need to worry. Just focus on reflecting on your issues."

Oh, reflecting?

I nodded, picked up my coat, and draped it over my arm. "Alright, I'll head out then."

As I walked out of the conference room, I heard Jake's elated voice behind me. "Mr. Miller, this setup is insane! With this machine, we won't need to rent cloud servers anymore! We'll save tens of thousands a year!"

A cold smile crept onto my lips.

Saving money? Oh, no, no. Sooner or later, they would learn that some costs were paid in blood.

…

At 2:00 pm, a company-wide email dropped into everyone's inbox.

"Disciplinary Notice Regarding Operations Director Susan Chapman's Unauthorized Use of Company Computing Resources."

The notice didn't bother with nuance. It went straight to a guilty verdict.

My misconduct included long-term misuse of company servers, wastage of electricity and bandwidth, serious data security risks, and more.

The penalties were just as blunt—immediate one-week suspension, revocation of my full performance bonus for the month, and a reimbursement fee of 58 thousand dollars for resource usage.

I sat at my desk, staring at the email, and couldn't help laughing. They really had the nerve, demanding 58 thousand dollars, huh?

Over the past three years, the commercial-grade internet line I paid for out of pocket had already cost more than that. Not to mention the depreciation on that workstation.

Now, they wanted me to pay them?

"Ms. Chapman, this is the breakdown Finance put together."

Jake swaggered over and slapped a printout onto my desk. The way he carried himself, one would think he was already the tech lead.

"Electricity's calculated on peak power draw, plus depreciation," he said. "Mr. Miller said he'll cut you some slack. It's your first offense, and you've been here a while. The most we can do is not press charges for corporate espionage."

I glanced at the sheet, and I had to say, they had itemized everything down to the last detail. Even GPU wear was prorated by the hour.

"I'll pay."

I pulled out my phone and transferred the money right in front of him.

Jake raised an eyebrow, a little disappointed. He had probably been hoping I would make a scene so he could flex again.

"Straightforward. I like that," he said, folding up the paper. His eyes drifted to the monitor on my desk.

"By the way, this monitor came with the setup, right? Since the workstation is under company property, you shouldn't be holding onto this either. I'll move it to the server room for debugging."

That was an EIZO pro monitor, worth over 30 thousand—also mine, by the way.

"Go ahead," I said flatly.

Jake waved his hand, and two admin staff immediately stepped in.

They were rough about it. Yanking cables straight without care, letting the monitor hit the edge of the desk.

I stayed silent. I simply watched my once-pristine workstation get stripped bare in minutes, leaving nothing but tangled cables and a layer of dust.

Three years of work were cleared in a single sweep.

"Ms. Chapman, just take the week off and rest at home," Jake said before leaving.

He even patted my shoulder like he was doing me a favor. "At next week's launch, you'll see how real professionals manage servers. That old-school, hacky way of yours should've been phased out long ago."

Real professionals. Sure.

I watched him walk off with the monitor. Then, I took out my phone and opened a gray-colored application. It was the server room environment monitoring system.

The pop-up read, "Connection lost". That meant Jake had already reset the gateway and locked me out of admin access. That was swift.

I opened my banking app again and scrolled through the recurring charges.

3,800 a month for the enterprise leased line, 6,000 every quarter for precision air-conditioning maintenance in the server room, and 20 thousand a year for UPS (uninterruptible power supply) battery leasing, the most critical one.

All of them were tied to my personal account.

Martin thought the machine just needed to be plugged in to run. He had no idea that to keep that beast stable in a standard office power grid, I had built an entire support stack behind it.

Then, I dialed my broadband account manager.

"Mr. Samson, this is Susan Chapman… Yes, I need to suspend the line… No, just cancel it outright… Early termination fee? No problem. Deduct it from the prepaid balance."

After hanging up, I texted the UPS leasing provider.

"Hello. You may pick up the equipment next Monday. I'm discontinuing the lease."

"Understood, Ms. Chapman. The backup power units will be retrieved next Monday."

Once I was done, I stood up and packed the few personal items I had left.

The coworkers around me all kept their heads down. Keyboards clacked louder than usual, like everyone was suddenly too busy to even look at me.

That feeling of being isolated was oddly nice. At least it wiped out the last bit of hesitation I had left.

As I walked out of the company building, I glanced up at the massive LED screen above the entrance. It was already running a countdown for the upcoming cloud launch event.

Only three days left. By then, this place would become the butt of the joke all across the city, while I would be sitting in the audience, watching it happen.

…

The next few days felt like an early retirement.

I stayed at home, drank coffee, watered my plants, and casually watched the show unfolding on my social feed.