RAY MARTIN CODE

The mop water was cold, the kind that numbs your fingers even through the gloves. Ray Martin’s reflection wavered in the grey puddle on the marble floor, a face he barely recognized anymore.

Once, that face had been on magazine covers, featured in glowing articles about “the boy genius of the tech future.”

He could have finished early, but habits die hard. Ray still thought like a perfectionist, making every corner of the lobby gleam as if someone’s life depended on it. In his case, it kind of did.

This job was the last thing standing between him and sleeping in the backseat of his rusted sedan again, The security cameras above hummed quietly, swiveling now and then,

their red eyes tracking movement. Ray knew where their blind spots were he had mapped them on his first week, partly out of boredom, partly out of instinct. It’s what you do when you’ve been burned before: you study the walls of your cage.

At 2:17 a.m., he wheeled his cart toward the executive wing, a place most janitors avoided because it meant extra scrutiny from night security.

But Ray had learned that the guards were lazier than they looked,

He swiped his access card and stepped into the corridor where the air always smelled faintly of sandalwood and expensive secrets.

One in particular, Harold Vance, Founder & Chairman made his chest tighten in a way he hated. Harold had been the only man to give him a job after the scandal, but he was also the man who never looked him in the eye.

Ray was halfway past when he noticed something strange: the door to the old server archive, a narrow, rarely-used room tucked between Harold’s office and the conference suite, was slightly ajar.

That door was always locked, He hesitated. His shift was already running late, and curiosity had been the first nail in his professional coffin years ago. But the sliver of darkness between the door and frame felt like it was looking at him, daring him to step inside.

He pushed. The hinges let out a whisper of protest. Inside, the archive smelled of dust and cold metal.

In the far corner, a single tower was still humming, its green status light blinking slow and steady like a heartbeat. Ray frowned. Vance Dynamics had moved all its infrastructure to the cloud years ago.

He stepped closer, wiping a film of dust from the monitor. The screen came alive with a terminal window, lines of code cascading too fast to follow. Not random junk, This was intentional, Structured, Encrypted.

The header read: Project Seraph – Restricted Access

Something twisted in his gut, He didn’t know why, but the name felt… wrong, Like a word you’ve never heard before but somehow recognize.

He told himself to walk away. Turn, mop, leave. But his fingers were already on the keyboard. Old instincts, The kind that had once made him the youngest systems architect in the country.

He tapped a single command: > access /root/seraph.key

The terminal froze for a heartbeat, then spilled out a stream of alphanumeric chaos, Ray’s pulse kicked. This wasn’t just an encryption key, it was an entire algorithm, An architecture designed to infiltrate, control, and manipulate multiple systems at once. Banking networks, Air traffic control, Private communications, The damn thing was wired into everything.

A whisper of movement made him freeze, Footsteps, Close, Too close. Ray killed the screen and ducked behind the racks, heart hammering. Through the narrow aisle, he saw a shadow cross the doorway. It lingered. Then a man stepped in.

Not a guard, This one wore a tailored suit, the kind that didn’t belong in the building at 2:30 a.m, His face was expressionless, his eyes scanning the room like a scanner beam.

Ray stayed still, breath locked in his throat, The man walked to the humming server, ran a hand along its side,

When he was done, the man reached into his jacket and pulled out something metallic. Ray’s stomach turned cold. It was a suppressed pistol, The man checked the shadows, then stepped out into the hall, leaving the server silent behind him.

Ray waited a full minute before moving, His hands were trembling, but not from fear alone. He had copied part of the algorithm to his own encrypted flash drive without even thinking about it.

The smartest thing he could do now was throw it away, forget it existed. Instead, he slid it into his pocket. Somewhere in the building, a phone rang. Once, Twice, Stopped, Then Ray’s earpiece, his cheap Bluetooth headset he used for music, crackled to life.

A voice he didn’t recognize said softly, “We saw you. Keep the key. We’ll be in touch.”

Ray ripped the Bluetooth from his ear and stared at it as if it might bite him, The voice was gone, No static, no repeat, just the empty hum of the building at night.