You Fired a Tech Genius novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Stage
Braxton Hallett unveils Ledgerline 5 as his own; Axel calls out the minute it will lock grocers' payroll and is fired on stage; in the garage the rival CEO offers him a seat, and Gilbert's text warns him off her.
Braxton Hallett put my name on the screen behind him, and then he said it was his idea.
Six hundred people stood in the glass atrium of Hallett Systems, holding paper cups of coffee and clapping on cue.
I stood in the third row in my hoodie and the blazer I hate, with my badge on a lanyard around my neck.
The slide behind him said Ledgerline 5, Built by Braxton Hallett's Vision.
Under it, small, in grey, it said Engineering Support: A. Torvik.
I had written the engine under that slide.
It took me three years, and I wrote most of it at night in an office his father gave me when I was twenty-two.
"People ask how I did it," Braxton said into his headset.
He had slicked sandy hair, a platinum watch and a quarter-zip so clean it looked ironed on him.
He had never written a line of code in his life.
"I just asked one question," he said. "Why does money have to wait?"
The crowd laughed.
Beside me, Bridger leaned in and whispered, "He's doing the voice again."
Bridger was twenty-six, six feet four, and the only engineer I trusted to check my work.
"Let him finish," I whispered back.
"Ledgerline 5 ships October thirty-first," Braxton said. "It drops the nightly reconciliation. It makes every grocer in the Midwest faster."
My stomach went cold.
That nightly reconciliation was the only thing standing between nine thousand small stores and a locked account.
I had told him that twice, in writing.
"Questions?" Braxton said, smiling with all his new teeth. "Don't be shy."
He scanned the room and his eyes found me.
He knew exactly who I was.
I raised my hand.
"Axel," he said brightly, as if he'd been hoping. "Our founding architect, everybody."
A few people clapped.
"Without the nightly check, Ledgerline 5 locks every merchant account on the first of the month," I said.
It was quiet enough to hear the coffee machine in the corner.
"Payroll runs at six a.m. all at once," I said.
"At six-oh-five on November first, the whole network freezes."
"Nine thousand stores can't pay their people."
I kept my voice flat, because shouting never made anything more true.
"Pull the release," I said. "Or put the check back."
Braxton's smile stayed exactly where it was.
"That's an interesting theory," he said.
"It isn't a theory."
"Axel is one of our most passionate engineers," Braxton told the room, and a few people laughed again. "Sometimes passion needs a little management."
He turned to the side of the stage and nodded.
Two men in black polos were already walking toward me through the crowd.
I hadn't noticed them standing by the elevators until that moment.
He had planned this.
"You're done here," Braxton said, still into the headset, so everyone could hear.
"Your access ended as of that sentence. You're fired, Axel."
Somebody gasped.
Bridger said, very quietly, "Oh, he did not."
I pulled the lanyard over my head myself.
The badge was warm from my skin.
I walked down the aisle past a wall of faces I had trained and covered for.
At the foot of the stage I put the badge in Braxton's open hand.
"November first, six-oh-five," I said. "Remember who told you."
"Get him out," Braxton said, laughing.
The security men took my elbows and I let them.
At the elevator I looked back once.
Under the screen, on the founders' wall, my name was carved in brass between his father's and the first investor's.
Founding Architect.
Braxton was already pointing at it and saying something to a man with a camera.
They took me down to the parking garage and left me beside a concrete pillar with a cardboard box.
It held a mug, a hoodie and a dead plant.
I stood there with my own hands empty.
Heels clicked on the concrete behind me.
"I've been trying to hire you for four years," a woman said.
I turned around.
She was tall, in a camel coat, with close-cropped dark hair bleached honey gold on top and gold hoops in her ears.
I knew her from the trade magazines.
Zoe Kostas ran the only company in Chicago that had ever taken a customer from Hallett Systems.
"Every time my recruiters called, you said no," she said. "Politely. Once with a muffin basket."
"I was loyal," I said.
"I know," Zoe said. "It's the nicest thing anyone's ever been fired for."
She took a card from her pocket and held it out, and I didn't take it.
"Six-oh-five on the first," she said. "Is that real?"
"It's real."
"Then I'm not offering you a job," Zoe said. "I'm offering you the one place in this city that can stop it."
I looked at the elevator, where my whole life was still going up and down.
I took the card.
"The grocers don't get hurt," I said. "Whatever we do. That's the only condition."
Zoe almost smiled.
"Start now," she said.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was a text from Gilbert Hallett, the man who had hired me.
He was supposed to be asleep in a recovery bed with a fresh scar down his chest.
I read it twice.
Sign nothing with Kostas. She wants more than your code.
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