"Come on, come on," he muttered, wiping sweat from his brow. The server held the Q3 financials. If it didn't come back online before the London markets opened, the company would hemorrhage millions.

He typed the key into the locked server's prompt. A tense silence, then a cheerful chime. The drive spun up. Files appeared. Prometheus was alive.

They didn't have a choice. They broke protocol. Using a jump box, Marcus opened and enabled the "Advanced Features" view. He navigated to the Prometheus object, right-clicked, and selected Properties .