His boss, a woman named Clara who wore expensive shoes and cheaper ethics, had given the order. "Scrub the activation keys on Rack 4," she had said, not looking up from her phone. "We're migrating the licenses to the new shell corp."
The hum of the fans didn't change. The green lights stayed green. To anyone else, the rack looked perfectly healthy. But Arjun knew better. He had just pulled the digital teeth from five machines. They were ticking time bombs.
He looked at his phone. No new email. No keys.