My Dad is the CEO who wants me Dead

You want my help

Maya's apartment was small.

Like, really small. One room with a kitchen counter shoved against the wall, a mattress on the floor, and clothes draped over every available surface. The only nice thing in the place was her computer setup—three monitors, a mechanical keyboard, and a chair that probably cost more than everything else combined.

Liam stood in the middle of the room, dripping blood onto her floor.

"Okay," Maya said, pacing back and forth like a caged animal. "Okay. Let me get this straight. You're the janitor. The quiet janitor who never talks to anyone. And now you're telling me that you witnessed a murder—"

"Yes."

"—and the new CEO is the one who did it—"

"Yes."

"—and you have something in your pocket that he's willing to kill for—"

"Yes."

"—and you want my help."

Liam nodded. "I know how it sounds."

Maya stopped pacing and stared at him. "Liam. I don't even know your last name. You've worked at Elysian for five years, and the only thing I know about you is that you drink your coffee black and you always take the stairs instead of the elevator. And now you show up at my door, bleeding, talking about conspiracies and murder, and you want me to just believe you?"

Liam reached into his pocket and pulled out the USB drive. He held it up, letting it catch the light from Maya's monitors.

"Mike's dead," he said quietly. "He was the only person in that building who ever treated me like I was human. And Julian Croft killed him because of what's on this drive."

Maya's face softened. She knew Mike. Everyone knew Mike. He'd been at Elysian since the beginning, always telling bad jokes and bringing in donuts on Fridays.

"Mike's dead?" she whispered.

"Yeah."

She sat down on her mattress, suddenly looking very small. "I saw him this morning. He was stressed about something, but I thought it was just work. He always got stressed before big deadlines."

"He wasn't stressed about a deadline," Liam said. "He was scared. Julian's been hunting for this code for weeks. Mike was the last person who knew where it was."

Maya looked at the USB drive in his hand. "What is it?"

Liam hesitated. He hadn't told anyone the truth in five years. He'd built walls around himself, layer after layer of lies and silence, and now Maya was asking him to tear them all down.

"Five years ago," he said slowly, "I was someone else. Someone who did things I'm not proud of. I was part of a project called Atlas—"

"Atlas?" Maya's eyes went wide. "The Atlas Project? That was a myth. Everybody in tech knows about it. It was supposed to be this revolutionary algorithm that could predict market shifts with ninety-nine percent accuracy. But it never actually existed."

"It existed," Liam said. "I built it."

Maya stared at him.

"I know what you're thinking," Liam continued. "You're thinking I'm crazy. That there's no way a janitor could have built something like that. But I did. And when I realized what it could do—how people would use it to destroy lives—I walked away. I erased everything and disappeared."

"But Mike had a backup."

Liam nodded. "He was the only other person who knew. I trusted him with it because I thought he'd keep it safe. But Julian found out. And now Mike's dead, and Julian's going to keep killing until he finds the code."

Maya was quiet for a long moment. Then she stood up and walked over to him.

"Give me the drive," she said.

Liam hesitated again. "Maya—"

"I'm a data analyst," she said. "If there's something on that drive that's worth killing for, I can find out what it is. I can help you."

"You don't understand what you're getting into," Liam said. "Julian's not just some greedy CEO. He's connected. He has people everywhere. If he finds out you're helping me—"

"Then we don't let him find out."

She held out her hand. Liam looked at her face, searching for doubt or hesitation. He didn't find any.

He handed her the USB drive.

Maya plugged it into her computer. The screens flickered, and then files started appearing. Thousands of them. Folders and subfolders and lines of code that made Liam's chest ache with memory.

"This is incredible," Maya breathed, scrolling through the data. "This code is—Liam, this is years of work. The encryption alone is insane."

"It was supposed to change the world," Liam said. "Instead it just ruined mine."

Maya looked at him, her eyes curious. "What happened? Why did you leave?"

Liam turned away. He couldn't look at her while he said it.

"I was framed for something I didn't do. Someone set me up, and I had to disappear. I couldn't prove my innocence without exposing the project, so I just... vanished."

"Someone set you up?" Maya asked. "Who?"

"I don't know." Liam's voice was bitter. "I spent years trying to figure it out. But every lead I followed went nowhere. Whoever did it covered their tracks really, really well."

Maya was quiet again. Then she said, "What if I can help you find them?"

Liam turned back to look at her. "What?"

"Your old files," she said, pointing at the screen. "There's metadata here. Timestamps, access logs, all kinds of stuff that could tell us who was poking around the project before you left. If someone framed you, they probably left digital footprints somewhere."

"I've already looked," Liam said. "There's nothing."

"Not from the inside," Maya said. "But I have access to Elysian's current security logs. If whoever framed you is still at the company, I might be able to cross-reference—"

"Maya." Liam stepped closer. "I can't ask you to do that. It's too dangerous."

"You didn't ask," she said. "I'm offering."

Liam stared at her. She was serious. This girl who barely knew him, who'd only ever said hello in the break room, was willing to risk her life to help him.

"Why?" he asked. "Why would you do this?"

Maya shrugged. "Because Mike was nice to me. And because I hate bullies. And because—" She paused, her eyes flicking to the floor. "Because I think you've been alone for way too long."

Liam felt something crack inside his chest. He didn't cry. He hadn't cried in years. But something in him broke open, just a little.

"I don't know how to thank you," he said.

"Start by getting cleaned up," Maya said, pointing toward the bathroom. "You're bleeding all over my floor. And then we're going to figure out what Julian Croft is really after."

Liam nodded and walked toward the bathroom. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror—the reflection of a tired, scared man who looked nothing like the confident programmer he used to be.

But for the first time in five years, he didn't look away.

He looked into his own eyes and whispered, "We're going to fix this."

The reflection didn't answer, liam knew what he had to do.

He had to become someone else.

Not the janitor, Just... himself again.

Whoever that was.