Immaculate Spirit 97 :

Nathaniel was walking into the IT department with a coffee in his hand. The coffee was not for him of course as he hated coffee, but for Lina. He was trying to check on her as often as he could even if it was not easy with his agenda. So far he had learned quite a few things about her, namly that she loved double latte coffee, the same drink that he was bringing her right now.

He was walking into the open office when he noticed something that he did not like from the corner of his eyes. Changing his trajectory, Nathaniel walked in the direction of the man who upon seeing Nathaniel coming his way closed the game that he was playing.

"Morgan is it?" Nathaniel said, reading the name tag of the twenty something young man in front of him.

"Yes sir." He said, preparing himself to get an earful.

"Do I need to remind you of the company policy about personal game played on work computers?" Nathaniel asked sternly.

"No sir, I know that it is forbidden. I'm sorry sir, it will not happen again."

"I know better than to try stopping geeks from playing video games but if you are going to play a game at the risk of losing your job, I urge you to play a more skill related game than a vulgar Call Of Duty. Do we understand each other?"

"Yes I understand sir. Thank you sir." He finally smiled a little.

"You are on my radar now Morgan. It depends on you if it's for the better or worse. Now, go back to work." Nathaniel smiles, tapping him on his shoulder.

Resuming his walk, he could see a couple of other IT guys and women trying to hide their smile while looking at him. Nathaniel had made a lot of friends in this department with only a couple of words and it made him smile internally. Never underestimate the power of geek people, especially when they had the technical skill to make your life a living h.e.l.l.

Entering the office of Lina after knocking, he could see her working on her computer with a headset over her ears. Putting his hand on her shoulder to notify her that he was there, Lina jumped out of her skin.

"Argghh!" She shouted in fright, putting her hand on her heart.

"Lina, It's me! Just breathe slowly and it will be okay." Nathaniel smiled.

"You scared me!"

"You know I knocked on the door but you did not even hear me. What are you listening to by the way? It sounded like hardcore rock."

"It is hardcore rock, it helps me focus when I'm in a long period of hacking." She said, more calm now.

"Here, this is for you, double latte coffee. Wait, did you work all night?" Nathaniel said, noticing her disheveled hair and her messed up attire.

"All night? Wait, what time is it?" She asked a little lost.

"It's a little after nine AM."

"I guess I did then. I just found something in the system and was going to call you." Lina said, sitting back in her chair.

Taking a second chair nearby, Nathaniel took position beside her looking at the screens, curious.

"Do you remember the leak incident that happened the 19 july in Seattle?" Lina asked.

"Yes of course, my mother was the one who handled that case to find out who the culprit was. It turned out it was one of our employes working in our Seattle branch. Why?"

Nathaniel was quite familiar with the case. The incident happen the day that he came back from NY after filming his movie and his mom was quite p.i.s.sed of about it so she had talked about it often. It had cost his family company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue and more if the loss of values in stock was taken into consideration.

"This is the thing, it wasn't our employee that was the culprit. Look at this." Lina said, showing a registry on the two screens.

Looking at this, Nathaniel did not understand what she was trying to show until something caught his eyes.

"Wait, what is this?" He said, pointing at one line of code on the screen.

"You noticed." She said smiling happily. "That is a line of intrusion into the system. It was not one of our employes but someone else who hacked into our system."

"If we have been hacked, how come it did not appear in our security log? And why did it show that it was our employes login code that had been entered into the system to download that alb.u.m?" Nathaniel asked, frowning.

"It's because our logs have been tampered with. The hacking has been hidden from the database and the logging access has been used as a scapegoat. The company that we contracted for our cybersecurity did this Nathaniel. Their security protocols are complete garbage but they hid the cover up extremely well. I almost missed it."

"Are you sure about this Lina?" Nathaniel asked gravely.

"Yes, I'm sure. I have all the evidence we need on my computer."

"Good, copy all the evidence that you have in a flash drive, we are going to my grandfather."

Picking the flash drive that she had around her neck with a string, she plugged it into her computer and started copying the files on it.

"Done." She said, putting the flash back around her neck, hiding it behind her pull.

Looking at her critically, he sighed.

"We have a problem."

"What is it?" She asked, starting to get self conscious.

"Let me put it as delicately as I can. Your clothes are a mess and you are kind of… smelly. My grandfather does not like his employes looking like that and if I take you to see him in your current state, he will not listen to you at all." He said smiling in the hope of taking the edge off of his words.

Blushing bright red, Lina looked at her clothes and took a whiff. He was right, she was smelly. Working frantically all night did have consequences.

"I can go home to take a shower and change really fast" She said in a small voice.

"I think I have a way better idea than that." Nathaniel said with a broad smile, a hint of mischief could be seen in his blue eyes.

Lina looked at him and even without knowing what he was thinking, she knew she was in trouble.