Rewriting My Billions: Boss of the Hidden realm

Chapter 7: Panic Attacks

The invisible clock in my head was ticking so loud I could practically hear it echoing off the dusty walls. 

*Eleven hours and fifty-four minutes.* 

If I didn't generate a million dollars in clean, legal revenue by midnight, my System was going to turn my brain into a frozen vegetable. 

I paced back and forth across the mustard-yellow carpet, running my hands through my hair. I looked at my team. The fate of my cognitive function rested in the hands of two mythical creatures who had absolutely zero understanding of the modern economy. 

Damian was slurping neon-green soda out of a two-liter bottle, maintaining unbroken eye contact with his monitor. 

Gideon was standing by a broken fax machine, poking buttons with a cautious, gloved finger like he expected it to explode. 

"Okay, listen to me," I barked, clapping my hands to snap them to attention. "Damian, open a new compiler. We are building the 'Thorne Logistics Routing Protocol.' And we are doing it right now."

Damian wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and cracked his knuckles. "Give me the parameters, human. What are we hoarding?"

"Time," I said, leaning over his desk. "Sterling Logistics runs a fleet of five hundred semi-trucks. They lose millions every year because their current software treats trucks like cars. It doesn't account for reality. I need you to code an algorithm that cross-references live weather patterns, municipal construction schedules, and bridge weight limits."

Damian didn't even look at the keyboard. His fingers slammed into the cheap plastic keys. The sound was deafening. It sounded like a hailstorm hitting a tin roof. 

"Weather and bridges," Damian rasped, a tiny wisp of smoke curling out of his left nostril. "Simple. Boring. Next."

"Fuel efficiency," I continued, the billionaire logic flowing out of me effortlessly. "The code needs to calculate the idle time of a diesel engine at red lights versus taking a slightly longer route on a highway. I want it to predict traffic jams before they happen by scraping data from local cell phone GPS towers."

Damian's fingers moved so fast they were literally a blur. I looked closer. The 'Enter' and 'Shift' keys were actually starting to warp and melt from the friction. 

"Cell phone scraping," Damian grunted. "Done. But human rules are stupid. Why don't the trucks just fly over the bridges?"

"Because trucks don't have wings, Smaug," I snapped, checking my watch. *Eleven hours and forty-one minutes.* "Now factor in federal union laws! Drivers are required to take a thirty-minute break every eight hours. I want the algorithm to automatically route them to rest stops that have the cheapest diesel prices within a ten-mile radius of their route."

"Mathematical child's play," Damian scoffed. He took another massive swig of Mountain Dew, his amber eyes completely dilated. 

Gideon abandoned the fax machine and walked over. He looked at the scrolling walls of green code on the monitors with deep suspicion. 

"Boss," Gideon said, leaning close to me. "You look stressed. You're sweating. You're ruining a perfectly good shirt."

"I am stressed, Gideon," I muttered, wiping my forehead. "If we don't sell this software tonight, we go bankrupt. And if we go bankrupt, I die. Or go into a coma. The System wasn't very clear on the medical specifics, but it's bad."

Gideon frowned. He looked at the floorboards, where the Sterling Group's servers were still completely silent thanks to Damian’s cyber-attack. 

"This is overly complicated," Gideon sighed, adjusting his cuffs. "If we need money to stop your brain from freezing, we should stick to the classics. I know a Duke in Vienna who still owes me a chest of silver from 1892. I could fly over there, rip his throat out, and bring back the cash."

"No flying to Vienna," I said without looking away from the screen. "Clean money, Gideon. Legal money."

Gideon tapped his chin. "Okay, fine. What about the debt collectors? The ones who work for the bank downtown. I can just go over there, eat the debt collectors, and clear our accounts. It's practically a public service."

I turned and gave him a deadpan stare. "No. You cannot eat the debt collectors."

"Can I just bite one of them?" Gideon negotiated. "Just a little? To assert dominance?"

"No biting anyone in the financial sector!" I groaned. "Gideon, you are the Chief of Security. Your job is to make sure nobody kills *us*. My job is to make the money. Got it?"

Gideon rolled his silver eyes, muttering something in Romanian about modern capitalism being incredibly boring. 

"Boss," Damian interrupted, his raspy voice cutting through the banter. "I'm hitting a bottleneck. The data intake is too massive for a standard architectural loop. To make it process this fast, I have to structure the core engine as a bypass."

I leaned over his shoulder, looking at the code. I knew enough about software from my past life to understand the basic skeleton of what he was building. 

The code was beautiful. It was elegant, ruthless, and terrifyingly efficient. But as I traced the logic lines of the bypass Damian had just written, my breath hitched in my throat. 

"Wait," I said, pointing at a specific block of text. "Damian... this bypass structure. Look at the variable gates."

"Yeah," Damian grunted. "What about them? They're flawless."

"They're a mirror," I realized, a slow, disbelieving smile spreading across my face. "Damian, the self-replicating loop you used to crash Sterling’s servers downstairs... this bypass structure perfectly overrides it."

Damian stopped typing. He looked at the code, then looked at me, a smug, toothy grin revealing slightly pointed canines. 

"Of course it does," Damian said arrogantly. "I don't write sloppy code. The only thing strong enough to break a lock made by a dragon... is a key made by a dragon. If you plug this software into Sterling's mainframe right now, it will instantly kill the virus I planted and reboot their entire system."

I stood up straight. My mind raced. 

We didn't just have a revolutionary logistics algorithm. 

We held the absolute, guaranteed cure to the multi-million-dollar disaster currently paralyzing Richard Sterling's company. We had the antidote. 

A progress bar popped up in the center of Damian’s screen. It rapidly filled from zero to one hundred percent, turning a bright, glowing green. 

Damian hit a key, and a cheap, plastic USB drive ejected from the side of the computer tower. He grabbed it and tossed it onto the desk. It slid across the wood and stopped right in front of me. 

"Done," Damian declared, kicking his feet up onto the desk and reaching for his Doritos. "Forty-two minutes. I'm taking a nap."

Gideon walked over and stared at the little plastic drive like it was a holy relic. 

"So," Gideon said, looking at me. "That little piece of plastic is worth a million dollars?"

"It's worth ten times that," I whispered, picking it up. It was warm from the overworked computer. 

"Excellent," Gideon nodded, cracking his knuckles. "So, we walk downstairs. We find Richard Sterling. I hold him upside down by his ankles, and you extort him? We make him buy the cure to his own broken servers?"

I looked at the USB drive in my hand. In my past life, that is exactly what I would have done. I would have squeezed Richard until he bled, taking his money and his pride behind closed doors. 

But the System wanted clean money. It wanted legal, public, undisputed victory. 

I slipped the USB drive into the inside pocket of my jacket. I looked at Gideon, a wide, predatory billionaire smirk taking over my face. 

"No, Gideon," I said smoothly. "Extorting Richard in a basement is small-time. It’s illegal. And frankly, it’s boring."

Gideon raised an eyebrow. "Then who are we selling it to?"

"Richard is pitching his garbage software to Apex Logistics tonight at the charity banquet," I said, checking my watch. *Ten hours left.* "Apex is his biggest rival. We aren’t going to extort Richard in the dark."

I walked toward the glass doors of the office, motioning for Gideon to follow. 

"We are going to walk into the brightest room in the city," I said, my voice dripping with anticipation. "And we are going to sell the antidote to Richard’s biggest rival, right in front of his face. Tonight."