THE ALOGORITHM OF POWER, MOP AND DAGGER

The floor waxer hummed like an old beast dying of exhaustion. Bradley pushed it forward with both hands, shoulders aching, his reflection sliding back at him from the shining tiles of the Montrose Tower lobby.

Forty-two stories above him, executives in charcoal suits debated acquisitions worth billions; down here, the only thing worth noticing was a smear of mud someone had tracked in.

The air smelled faintly of bleach and the bitter tang of burnt coffee drifting from an after-hours meeting. Bradley leaned into the machine, his mop bucket standing like a lonely sentinel by the glass revolving doors.

He wasn’t supposed to think while he worked, but thoughts bled through anyway. You were supposed to be different.

That old voice again. The professor’s voice. His mother’s. His own. Once upon a time, he had been brilliant, the kid professors praised, the one with algorithms published before graduation.

He had been on stages, handshakes, awards. He was supposed to build, to lead, to conquer the tech world. Now he cleaned its floors.

The waxer groaned, jerking to the right. Bradley steadied it, jaw tight. Every muscle in his back burned from ten-hour shifts. The janitor’s uniform clung to him with sweat, name tag reading Frank, not Bradley.

The supervisor thought “Frank” sounded friendlier, less threatening than Bradley Harrington, failed prodigy.

“Yo, Frank.”

Bradley looked up. Marcus, night security, leaned on his desk with a doughnut in hand, crumbs dotting his shirt. “When you finish in here, elevator lobby’s a mess. Some VP puked after his celebration dinner. Champagne and oysters don’t mix.”

Bradley gave a tight nod. “Got it.”

Marcus smirked. “Man, you should’ve stayed in school. All that computer stuff. My cousin’s making bank in coding. You?” He waved the doughnut. “Just sayin’.”

Bradley didn’t answer. He’d learned silence was safer. Every word out of his mouth reminded people he didn’t belong here.

When Marcus wandered off, Bradley let the silence sink back in. The lobby lights glared off chrome and glass, sterile and expensive. He could see his own reflection in the revolving doors: lank hair, hollow eyes, uniform two sizes too big. He hated that reflection.

But beneath the uniform, the mind was still there. Sharp, restless, caged. He still saw patterns others missed. Every time he pushed the waxer, every time he lined the mop strokes just right, his brain fell into rhythm, algorithms of motion, symmetry in repetition.

The same brain that once cracked encryption for fun. The elevator dinged. Bradley straightened, expecting late-night suits. Instead, Ella Montrose stepped out. His breath caught.

She wore a tailored blazer, hair swept back in a careless bun, phone in one hand. Even exhausted, she radiated the kind of presence that silenced a room. The founder’s daughter. The future of the empire.

She barely glanced at him as she passed, heels clicking sharp across his freshly polished floor. But her eyes, blue, unreadable, lingered a half-second longer than they needed to. Bradley lowered his gaze, pretending to fuss with the waxer.

When the doors shut behind her, the emptiness of the lobby returned with crushing weight. “Supposed to conquer the world,” he muttered to himself, hands tightening on the machine. “Now you’re invisible.”

The waxer shuddered again, coughing like it might die for good this time. Bradley killed the motor and crouched down, prying at the access panel.

The building’s equipment was decades old, patched with duct tape and prayer. He traced wires automatically, fingers moving with the familiarity of someone who understood circuits better than people. And then he saw it.

A black cable snaking where it didn’t belong. Running not to the waxer’s motor but spliced into the floor panel itself.

Bradley frowned. He tugged at the wire, following it to a loose metal grate near the wall. A janitor wasn’t supposed to look behind grates. But his curiosity had always been stronger than his sense of self-preservation. He unscrewed the panel.

Inside, tucked into the wall cavity, was a small black device no bigger than a paperback novel. No company label. No barcode. Just a blinking green light.

Bradley froze. His instincts screamed illegal. He’d studied enough cybersecurity years ago to recognize a black-box server tap. Someone had piggybacked into Montrose Tower’s internal network, hidden in plain sight, where no suit would ever stoop to look.

He pulled back, heart hammering. The smart move was to close the panel, forget he saw anything. Keep mopping. Collect his paycheck. Stay invisible.

But brilliance didn’t die. It only slept. And Bradley’s mind had just woken up. He reached in, brushed the dust off the device. A simple switch. His thumb hovered. Don’t. He flicked it.

The lobby lights dimmed for a split second. The server box whirred alive, fans humming low. Bradley’s phone buzzed in his pocket, though he hadn’t touched it. He pulled it out. A new message blinked across the screen, no sender ID: ACCESS GRANTED

Bradley’s pulse spiked. His phone screen bled into cascading numbers, symbols racing faster than he could blink. Code. Layered, encrypted, shifting like living machinery.

His chest tightened. This wasn’t malware. This wasn’t random. This was designed. Designed by someone brilliant. And now, somehow, tied to him.

The lobby was silent again, the waxer dead, the world unchanged. But Bradley Harrington knew, everything had just shifted.