Aura-Link, The Office Boy’s Rise to Global Supremacy

Chapter 5

The scent of the spilled coffee mingled with the smell of Julian’s cold sweat, creating a suffocating atmosphere in Sterling Tech’s main lobby. The resulting silence was no longer just a lack of sound; it was a heavy stillness, as if the air in the room had suddenly frozen.

Every eye was fixed on Rian, a young man who for the past two years had been regarded as little more than a piece of office furniture, invisible, ignored, and easily trampled. Now, however, he stood tall with a gaze that seemed capable of stripping away anyone’s darkest secrets.

Julian remained kneeling on the marble floor, his trembling fingers clutching a silk handkerchief now stained with the brown liquid. He looked up, staring at Lady Victoria Sterling with a pale, ashen face, then turned to look at Rian with a mixture of hatred and horror. He wanted to scream, to hurl insults, but his tongue felt like lead. Victoria’s question hung in the air, demanding an answer that could change Rian’s entire life in an instant.

"Who told me isn’t important right now, Julian," Rian said, his voice sounding incredibly calm, almost mechanical. He shifted his gaze from Victoria back to the kneeling manager. "What matters is how fast you can clean these shoes before I send this data to the board of directors!"

Rian felt a surge of adrenaline so intense that his fingertips began to tingle. In the corner of his right eye, the Aura-Link system continued to process information at a painful speed. Rows of green and gold code flashed by, calculating the heart rates of everyone in the room, mapping every wrinkle on their foreheads as emotional data.

"You... you’re threatening me in front of Lady Victoria?" Julian’s voice squeaked as he tried to seek protection from the ruler of Sterling Tech. "My Lady, look at him! He’s insane! He stole company data! He must be a spy!"

Victoria Sterling did not respond to Julian’s whimpering. She remained standing like a statue, her slender frame draped in a dark blue dress that radiated undeniable authority. Her grey eyes narrowed, focusing entirely on Rian. In Rian’s vision, the Aura-Link system suddenly chimed loudly, delivering a warning that made his head throb.

[Warning: S-Class Target Detected in Person!]

[Name: Victoria Sterling]

[Loneliness Level: 90% - Condition: Acute]

[Status Mental: Skeptical, Intimidated yet Curious]

[Aura-Link Glitch: High-level Quantum Encryption detected around target...]

Rian gave a small jolt as his vision momentarily flickered. Victoria’s image in his eyes shattered into pixels before pulling itself back together. He could see the heartbreaking statistics behind her beautiful, expressionless face. This woman had everything, wealth, power, beauty... but the system showed a massive, extraordinary void inside her. A ninety percent loneliness level? That was almost impossible for someone who was always surrounded by bodyguards and admirers.

The small commotion came to a complete halt as Victoria raised her hand slightly, a small gesture that immediately silenced Julian.

"Enough, Julian," Victoria said coldly. Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried a weight that could crush anyone’s resolve. "Get out of here. Clean yourself up and have a full accounting report for those reserve funds on my desk within the hour. If even a single cent is missing... you know the consequences."

Julian’s jaw dropped, his face turning from pale to a sickly grey. Without daring to argue further, he scrambled to his feet, nearly slipping on his own spilled coffee, and bolted toward the elevator as fast as his legs could carry him. The other employees who had been watching immediately pretended to be busy, though their ears remained wide open toward the lobby.

Now, there was only Rian, Victoria, and four burly bodyguards keeping their distance a few meters behind them.

"You either have immense courage, or you are incredibly stupid," Victoria said, taking a step forward. Her high heels clicked sharply against the marble. "A janitor who knows the details of the X-104 reserve funds? That isn’t the kind of data you find in a trash can, Rian."

Rian swallowed hard. He could feel the gaze of Victoria’s bodyguards as they began to reach for the weapons concealed beneath their suits. The Aura-Link system provided a quick instruction:

[Suggestion: Divert the topic to the current technical issue. The target is facing a larger crisis.]

Rian glanced toward the giant holographic screen in the center of the lobby displaying the company’s performance graphs. The screen suddenly flashed red, displaying an error message:

CRITICAL ERROR - ENCRYPTION FAILURE. The technicians at the front desk looked panicked, their fingers dancing fruitlessly over their keyboards.

"Perhaps My Lady would be more interested in why this building’s quantum encryption system was just breached by a brute-force attack from an external server," Rian said suddenly, gesturing toward the screen with his chin.

Victoria started. She immediately turned toward the hologram screen. "What are you talking about? That’s just a routine transmission glitch."

"No," Rian countered, his eyes glowing a deep black as Aura-Link performed an instant hack into the local system through his gaze. "Node number seven on sub-level four just suffered an overflow. If you don’t shut down the secondary firewall and reroute data traffic to the analog lines within thirty seconds, all research data in the underground labs will be automatically erased. It’s a self-purging protocol triggered by a virus sent by 'The Watchers'."

Victoria’s eyes widened. Her cold face suddenly shifted into a state of controlled panic. She didn’t know how this young man knew about 'The Watchers' or the self-purging protocol, but she could see that the data Rian mentioned was dead accurate.

"Do exactly what he says! Now!" Victoria shouted at her technical team at the reception desk.

"But My Lady, the analog lines are highly unstable, we could lose—"

"DO IT!"

The room suddenly became a digital battlefield. Rian remained standing calmly, while his eyes continued to give silent instructions. He could see the flow of data sliding through the air like threads of light. With a single focus of his mind, he "pulled" one of those threads, helping the company’s system close the leaking security gap.

Ten seconds later, the holographic screen stabilized. The red hue vanished, replaced by the Sterling Tech logo glowing in a calm blue. The entire staff in the lobby exhaled in relief, some of them wiping sweat from their brows.

Victoria Sterling turned slowly, looking at Rian with a gaze far sharper than before. This time, the look wasn’t one of contempt, but a very dangerous curiosity. She stepped closer, so close that Rian could smell the scent of jasmine and the chill in the air that seemed to follow her.

"A janitor who understands quantum encryption and can detect a military-grade attack in seconds?" Victoria whispered, her voice low and laced with threat. "Who are you really, Rian? Were you sent by them to watch me?"

Rian felt his Aura-Link system begin to surge. The glitch reappeared, worse this time. He saw Victoria’s face flicker between human and a mass of digital data. A sharp pain stabbed at his eyes, forcing him to squeeze them shut for a moment.

"I... I’m just a guy who wants to work in peace, My Lady," Rian answered reflexively, before quickly correcting himself with a trembling voice. "I just see what others don’t."

Victoria reached out, her slender fingers nearly touching Rian’s face before she pulled back, as if afraid of something. She noticed something was wrong with the young man’s right eye. That pupil...

They did not constrict when exposed to light. They remained wide, black, and seemed to possess an infinite depth.

"Follow me to my office right now," Victoria commanded, her voice turning back into freezing ice. "And don't even think about running, because my guards have orders to shoot anyone acting suspiciously in this building."

"My lady, I still have plenty of hallways left to mop," Rian said, trying to joke, though he knew it was a terrible one.

Victoria didn't laugh. She turned and walked toward the private elevator, her blue cloak fluttering majestically. The guards immediately surrounded Rian, signaling with the muzzles of the pistols hidden beneath their suits for Rian to follow the CEO's lead.

Rian took a deep breath, staring at his mop bucket left behind in the middle of the lobby. He knew that from this second on, he would never hold that mop again. His life as a loser in London was dead. All that remained was the journey into the lion's den, where the secrets of his eyes and Victoria Sterling's true identity would collide.

"Congratulations, User," the Aura-Link system's voice echoed coldly in his head. "You have just entered the orbit of an S-Class Target. Survival probability: forty percent. Good luck."

"Forty percent?" Rian thought bitterly. "You should have given me a better number, damn it."

The elevator opened with a soft chime. Victoria glanced back, giving Rian that look showing a ninety percent level of loneliness once more, before she spoke in a tone that made his hair stand on end.

"Come to my office now, or I'll call the police and make sure you rot in a dungeon for industrial espionage. The choice is yours, Rian."

Rian stepped into the gold-plated elevator, letting the doors close and sealing his fate in a conspiracy far larger than mere office matters. Inside that cramped space, he could feel Victoria's heart beating rapidly, a truth that her expressionless face could not hide. And Rian knew this adventure had only just begun.