Monday, 11:00 AM. The Vanguard IT Department.
The IT department on the 40th floor was usually a quiet, heavily air-conditioned sanctuary of humming servers and introverted engineers. Today, it felt like a bunker bracing for an artillery strike.
I stood behind the Chief Technology Officer, a nervous man named Greg who was sweating profusely through his dress shirt. He was typing furiously at his terminal, setting up the guest credentials for Evelyn Cross and her team of federal agents.
"I'm giving them read-only access to the primary trading logs and the executive email archives for the last fiscal quarter, just like the preservation order demanded," Greg said, his voice shaking slightly. He looked up at me, clearly terrified of the new, twenty-something Managing Partner who had seemingly appeared out of thin air. "Mr. Hart, if they run a deep forensic sweep, they're going to see the encrypted traffic spikes from the sub-basement."
