Chapter 2
Hard Reset
David took off at a dead sprint toward Maintenance and the access tunnel as soon as the door shut behind him.
The taste of urgency sat bitterly on his tongue.
Something was wrong—seriously wrong. He’d run the diagnostics himself that morning; the systems had been humming along without a hiccup.
So why the hell was the generator offline?
More importantly—how could it be offline to him?
His connection to the network wasn’t programming; it was a part of him.
Nothing slipped past his mind once he touched the system.
Until now.
He flicked open his tablet with one hand, fingers swiping instinctively as he ran.
He couldn’t send his consciousness into the network while running—too dangerous for him to trance out and slam headfirst into a wall—but he could send tendrils of his talent, like a spider feeling for vibrations on its web.
Ping.
Nothing. No response from the generator interface. It was like shouting into a vacuum.
His pulse hammered faster. He lunged to the access door, punched in the passcode with practiced precision, and yanked on the handle.
The heavy metal groaned as it swung open, revealing the dimly lit utility tunnel stretching before him.
The emergency lighting cast long shadows along the walls as he ran.
The steady thud of his boots against concrete reverberated down the corridor, keeping time with the frantic pound of his heart
An EXIT sign glowed ahead like a beacon.
He barreled toward it, punched the second code—fingers trembling—and shoved inside, striding to the computer station.
The battery backup beeped steadily in warning, like an electronic heartbeat gone wrong, but the monitor was dead. The entire system… powered down.
Nope. Not good.
He pressed the power button hard enough to make the plastic creak. The hum of tech waking up greeted him, and the startup icons glowed across the monitor. Okay, so the battery was operational. That begged the question: who—or what—powered it off?
Dropping into the chair, he placed a palm flat on the keyboard and dove into the machine. The connection was instant, like a door slamming open. Raw code, pulses of energy, the heartbeat of the resort—his to read. He fired up the generator utility.
The lights roared to full intensity as the generators clicked on in a harmonious thrumming that sounded way too smug given how close the system had come to a total blackout.
He let out a breath. First hurdle cleared.
Flicking to the diagnostics interface on his tablet, he scanned utilities: electrical—green. Hydraulics—green. HVAC—running hot, but green. Relief slid through his veins.
All right. Time to figure out what the hell crashed his computer.
He pulled up the maintenance logs. The last entry? His own diagnostic check from earlier that morning. Nothing after that. He frowned.
Impossible.
His fingers flew as he opened directories, folders, files. The timestamp on the last entry read 13:35. An hour before the power failure. Too early. Too neat. He tugged open the recycle bin. Empty. “Of course,” he muttered under his breath. That would have been too convenient.
The foreboding in his gut thickened.
Could it have been a cyberattack? No, he shook his head. The generator’s interface was on a closed loop—not connected to the internal resort system, let alone the public network. Only a handful of pre-cleared stations had access, and no remote option was enabled—except through him.
His skin prickled.
Unless someone had been here. Physically. Face-to-face with the machine.
He withdrew from the computer and shifted his focus to the door’s electronic lock. Pressing his palm to the sensor, he dipped into the access log. The metallic taste of the security system buzzed along his nerves.
Bingo.
Entry at 14:30. ID 240482.
He grabbed his tablet and searched the staff codes. The profile loaded with a chime. Electrical Engineer.
David’s lips pressed into a thin line. Sure, that made technical sense. An electrical engineer would need clearance to enter for hardware servicing.
Except there had been no service scheduled for today. Last week had been the routine PM, and nothing had flagged as abnormal. The guy had no reason to come down here.
His jaw twitched as he stepped back into the tunnel to hear over the noise of the generators. He whipped out his phone and tapped Zach’s name.
“Yo,” his brother answered, voice clipped.
“Where are you?”
“Security office. Why?”
“So you know the generators didn’t start automatically. I’m in the tunnel now—I restarted them manually. The interface system was shut all the way down. Hard stopped at 14:35.”
A pause, then Zach asked, “Your theory?”
“I checked the door access log—it was opened at 14:30 with code 240482. Electrical engineer. Thing is, the system wasn’t scheduled for anything today. If he’s not our mole, I’ll eat my laptop.”
He ran a hand through his hair as he thought out loud. “Probably waited for a day we’d almost certainly lose power to cut it without suspicion. Group check-in just started, so perfect timing to scatter our staff. Someone else could have gotten his access code, though. It’s always possible.”
“I’ll handle it.” Zach hung up, succinct as ever.
David exhaled hard and shook out his fingers.
The code was still active—he should kill that now before someone doubled down.
He walked over to the keypad and inputted the override to disable the engineer’s access.
If the guy was innocent, they could reset it later—after a long and uncomfortable talk with Security. And Zach.
He checked the time. Lena would still be at the front desk, managing the group check-in with a skeleton crew. She made it look effortless, but no one was built for that kind of sustained pressure.
The least he could do was sit at a terminal and field complaints until the storm passed. He ignored the little voice that said he’d never helped any other front-office manager like that.
His steps slowed as he moved through Maintenance. A dull pulse throbbed behind his eyes—slow, punishing. The kind that meant he’d pushed too hard. The building’s systems still echoed faintly in his head—ghost signals flickering at the edge of his awareness.
He exhaled carefully.
Too much.
The sterile air of the admin corridor washed over him, cool and sharp, but it did nothing for the heat building at the base of his skull. His fingers flexed once. A tremor. Subtle, but there
Lena.
She flashed into his mind again. The look she’d given him earlier—steady. Searching. Not fear.
Something warmer. It unsettled him more than a power surge.
He told himself she worried because she cared about everyone. That was her brand of heroism. But the way her breath had caught—
No.
He hadn’t imagined that. Still. It didn’t mean anything.
He ran an empire of zeros and ones. He wasn’t resort romance material. No crisp button-downs, no effortless charm. Just worn jeans and a talent for whispering to machines.
And Lena had survived hell. Fired. Harassed. Arrested.
The only reason she had landed here was that her best friend in HR had taken a professional risk most people wouldn't have.
His jaw tightened at the thought of what Chester Dinkley had done to Lena.
A dozen darkly satisfying revenge scenarios flickered through his mind.
Auto-replies at scale. Improve his autocorrect terms. Schedule him for meetings on subjects like “Q2 Unicorn Mergers” or “Moral Responsibility in Glitter Distribution.” Deep fake humiliation involving sock puppets and interpretive dance.
His smile faltered as another spike of pain split behind his eyes.
Focus.
He could go deeper. Pull threads from the dark web. Expose something real. Ruin the man properly.
Later.
Right now, his vision blurred at the edges. The world felt half a beat out of sync, like he was still threaded into the building.
He steadied himself against the wall. That generator stunt had cost him. More than he wanted to admit. He couldn’t reach for the network now even if he tried. Not without ending up in a hospital.
By the time he reached the lobby, he’d composed his expression into something close to normal. He slid into the empty chair at the end station and called out, “Next.”
His voice held. His hands? Mostly steady. Resort life wasn’t his usual circuit board, but he could still function. For now. At least until he could retreat somewhere dark and quiet and let his brain stop buzzing.
Or until Lena looked at him again as she had earlier.
And if she did?
He wouldn’t need power for that kind of surge.