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The eleventh floor of the Aurora Heights tech tower buzzed with ambition. At 10:00 a.m. sharp, Rehaan Bhagat, founder and CEO of cloud startup SypherCore, stood before the glass wall of the soundproof conference room. He adjusted his collar, took a deep breath, and prepared for the final investor demo via live call — a deal worth $22 million.
His team watched from outside the sealed glass chamber, nodding encouragingly. Rehaan smiled faintly at his laptop camera. Inside the transparent room, just one chair across from him was occupied — not by a person, but a customized AI screen representing the silent panel of overseas investors.
Ten minutes into the pitch, Rehaan stammered. His fingers trembled. He reached for his glass of water… and stilled. A second later, he collapsed face-first onto the table. Motionless.
Panic erupted outside. Srishti, the COO and his former fiancee, rushed to the door. But it didn’t open. The smart-lock, synced to the presentation software, was unresponsive.
By the time the building tech unlocked the room and the paramedics arrived, Rehaan was gone.
Initial reports cited a likely stroke or heart attack. He had been alone, live on a call. No forced entry. No weapons. No known medical conditions. A tragedy, but nothing suspicious — until Anish, the in-house IT analyst, noticed something odd on the security logs.
“There was remote file access into the presentation software UI,” he muttered, scrolling rapidly. “At 9:13 a.m. Someone injected code — from inside the office network.”
It wasn’t a heart attack. It was a silent execution.
The prime suspects sat no more than twenty feet from Rehaan:
Srishti, the COO who ran daily ops and once co-authored the company’s IP. She still wore Rehaan’s engagement ring on a chain around her neck.
Akash, the Head of Product. Visibly shaken, but rumoured to resent Rehaan’s harsh product deadlines and shaming style.
Paroma, the finance head, who had recently flagged “accounting irregularities” that mysteriously disappeared.
And Tanay, the quiet HR lead. Not on anyone’s radar. Barely raised his eyes all day.
An internal probe was discreetly launched. Aurora Heights couldn’t afford police crawling around. Investors pulled out within days. But then Shruti, a junior systems intern, found something strange while de-scrambling sync logs: Rehaan had recorded a second video feed, not visible during the live call.
They watched the deleted file.
At 9:42 a.m., as Rehaan opened his presentation, a pop-up briefly blinked on his screen. He frowned. “Authorization required for default unlock?” he mumbled. He tapped something. The pop-up vanished.
Moments later, he looked up sharply. “Who the hell…?” he whispered.
Then he reached for the glass of water. Then he died.
That pop-up had blinked for less than two seconds. No one else saw it. But it looked suspiciously like a permissions override request.
The lock had been tampered with. From within the system.
Who could do that? Only someone with backend access. Or someone who had access to Rehaan’s own devices.
Turns out, the conference room had been booked the night before by Tanay — to interview campus hires. He claimed Rehaan approved it verbally.
But Shruti found no invite. Only a single login to the room’s smart controls: Tanay’s.
Confronted, Tanay calmly admitted it.
“Yes,” he said. “I synced my panel there. But only to test light settings for the candidates. I didn’t touch any code.”
Anish frowned. “Still doesn’t explain the code injection. Or the pop-up.”
“No,” said Shruti quietly. “But it explains this.”
She turned her screen. Displayed was an archived message from a deleted Slack channel labeled “Project: GhostAuth.” It was Rehaan’s experimental code to pre-authorize UI actions via behavioral recognition — basically, opening docks and files based on predicted need.
“But it wasn’t stable. It used to glitch and trigger actions without asking,” she said. “He never rolled it out.”
“But Tanay could access it if it was still on Rehaan’s laptop,” Anish realized. “If someone ran that code, they could push any UI trigger if Rehaan moved a certain way.”
A new theory formed: Someone had programmed “GhostAuth” to execute a hidden command when Rehaan gestured — perhaps gesturing to explain a point. That command locked the smart door, activated a UI console, and triggered a command that played through his own headphones — an ultrasonic cue designed to cause disorientation, or worse.
It wasn’t the water. It wasn’t poison.
Rehaan had died of acoustic-induced neural shock. Triggered through his designer headphones — cued at just the right moment.
And Tanay was the only one who knew Rehaan never wore noise-canceling headphones during calls — except investor ones. Except today.
Why?
“Rehaan pushed GhostAuth down to avoid crediting your contributions,” Srishti told Tanay coldly. “Didn’t he?”
Tanay didn’t deny it.
“I built that protocol. He shelved it. And then filed IP under his name, with you,” he said. “He thought hiding it would bury me. It didn’t.”
“But you thought killing him would prove your authorship?”
Tanay smiled humorlessly. “It proved more than that.”
He was arrested. The code, once his silent protest, had become his weapon.
And in the end, technology didn’t just fail to protect Rehaan.
It obeyed him — one final time.
