ELEVATED BY ERROR

Frank Ashford didn’t look like a genius, He looked like a janitor, because he was one. Beige overalls, scuffed boots, and a rolling cart stacked with cleaning supplies.

His ID badge barely clung to its chipped plastic clip, and his face, once full of fire and ambition, now wore the mask of someone used to being invisible.

The world had forgotten Frank Ashford, And that was just fine for now, He mopped the marble floor of MorganTech’s Tower B, twenty-third floor, right outside the Executive Programming Division.

The silence here was different, sharp, paranoid. No interns ran through the halls. No casual chatter. Just glass, chrome, and the occasional whisper behind a closed door.

Frank dragged the mop slowly, carefully, like he was erasing himself, He glanced at the digital wall clock. 2:43 a.m. The hour of ghosts and secrets. Perfect.

He moved toward Server Room 4A-the one marked “AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY” in red letters. His access badge wasn’t supposed to work here. But that’s the thing about geniuses who clean floors, they have time. Time to observe, time to test, time to decode what lazy millionaires ignore.

Last Tuesday, during a fire drill, he’d cloned a temporary admin badge, Tonight, he was going to use it.

Click.

The door slid open with a hiss of cold air. Rows of humming servers lined the room like sleeping beasts. A faint pulse glowed from the walls, the code flowing like blood through digital veins.

Frank moved to the isolated terminal in the corner. His breath fogged the glass, He inserted a drive from his pocket, camouflaged inside a mop handle, Typed fast. Logged in, The interface blinked.

ACCESS GRANTED.

Welcome, Admin: Richard Morgan, His hands froze.

Richard Morgan—founder and former CEO of MorganTech.

So why did his admin credentials still work? Frank’s eyes narrowed. He typed a sequence he shouldn’t have known. Accessed a vault labeled Project: IRIS.

Then everything changed, The screen flickered. Rows of encrypted code scrolled too fast to follow. Frank’s pupils widened.

This wasn’t just data. It was an algorithm, alive, learning, adapting. Capable of autonomous decision-making, military-level cybersecurity, and something else...

Behavior prediction.

Every move, every stock shift, every board vote, predicted and influenced. IRIS wasn’t a program. It was a corporate god.

And it had just blinked. “Unknown access detected. Is this a breach?”

[YES] [NO]

Frank hovered. Then… He clicked YES.

Somewhere above him, in Tower A, Grant Bishop, MorganTech’s acting CEO, sat bolt upright in his penthouse office. Alarms remained silent. Lights dimmed momentarily. A single red alert blinked on his encrypted tablet.

“Unauthorized admin access, Level Zero,” the AI said in his ear.

“From where?”

“Tower B. Server Room 4A.”

Grant’s jaw tightened. “That badge was deactivated…”

Back downstairs, Frank backed away from the terminal. His fingers trembled. He’d seen enough, He knew enough, He was going to walk away. Go back to his cart. Pretend this never happened.

But when he turned, She was there. “Frank?”

He froze. Heart stalled.

Ella Morgan.

His mind raced. Cover stories. Lies. Excuses, But her next words killed them all. “You found it, didn’t you?”

He stared at her. She didn’t look surprised. Or scared. She looked… relieved, And that’s when he knew, He wasn’t the only one playing a dangerous game. Outside, across the street…

In a black van parked beneath flickering streetlights, a sniper adjusted his scope. Finger curled on the trigger, He wasn’t here for Ella, Not tonight, He was here for the janitor.