Chapter 3
Richard stood by the bed, watching Emma for a moment.
He wanted to reach out and give her a comforting pat on the shoulder.
But he stopped halfway and withdrew his hand.
He turned and walked into the bathroom.
Then, he took a shower, brushed his teeth, and changed into his pajamas.
By the time he lay down, he was already exhausted.
But Richard didn't fall asleep right away.
He turned his head to take a look at Emma's back.
Her breathing was steady.
Her shoulders moved up and down gently.
Richard had a strange feeling.
It felt like she was sleeping soundly.
She seemed more at ease than she ever felt when he was at home.
Richard rolled over.
He thought to himself, 'Forget it.
'I'll deal with it tomorrow.'
It was 2 AM.
In the IT operations room at Lane Group, the atmosphere was tense.
Samuel Ford, the intern, stared at the server monitoring screen, his eyes brimming with tears.
The previous year, Lane Group had launched a new ERP system and project management platform.
It was built on a custom architecture.
From scratch to every upgrade and tweak, the whole system was handled by one person.
That person was Emma, Richard's wife.
She was the shadow CTO of Lane Group, or rather, the entire Lane family's business empire.
On paper, Emma was invisible to the company.
She had no position in the company's roster. She didn't have an employee ID, pay stubs, or an official labor contract.
She was only known as "Mrs. Lane."
She dropped by now and then to help out with IT glitches.
And, like that, she had built the whole digital backbone for the group.
Samuel had been with the company for three months.
His official title was "IT intern."
But, whenever anything went wrong, his first move was always to call Emma for help.
Early this morning, disaster struck.
The ERP system suddenly crashed.
The database connection timed out.
Then, the whole project management platform went down.
All project documents were inaccessible.
All the approval workflows were stuck.
The financial systems for all three of the group's subsidiaries were completely offline.
Samuel tried everything he could think of.
He rebooted the servers, double-checked the network, and skimmed through the emergency manual.
On the very last page, it said: [If things go south, call Emma Clarkson.] Emma's cell phone number was provided.
Samuel punched in the number.
The phone was off, and he only reached her voicemail box.
He hit redial.
He reached her voicemail box again.
Samuel kept calling, again and again.
No matter how many times he tried, the phone stayed off.
Samuel slumped back in his chair.
The red lights on the screen kept flashing.
He picked up his phone and dialed Richard's number.
After a few beeps, Richard picked up.
"Mr. Lane, we've got an emergency," Samuel said.
A few seconds ago, Richard's phone had buzzed on the nightstand.
Half-asleep, he grabbed his phone.
"Who is that?" he asked.
"Mr. Lane, it's Samuel Ford from IT. The ERP system crashed. Nothing's working!" Samuel blurted out.
Richard's sleepiness faded away.
"What happened?" Richard asked.
Samuel reported, "I don't know. The database won't connect, and all the business systems are offline. All the materials for tomorrow's project meeting are locked in the system.
"I'm way out of my depth here."
"Get the outsourced tech team on it," Richard ordered.
"Emma always dealt with them. I don't have their number," Samuel replied.
Richard pinched the bridge of his nose.
"What about the system keys? The admin passwords?" he pressed on.
"Emma handled everything herself. She said she had a full disaster recovery plan, but I have no clue where she keeps the keys," Samuel replied.
Richard glanced over at Emma.
She was still fast asleep.
Her breathing was steady.
"She'll take care of it in the morning," Richard said.
He ended the call, rolled over, and was out like a light.
What Richard didn't realize was that in three hours, Lane Group's business systems would go from limping along to a total meltdown.
By sunrise, it would be ringing nonstop with calls from senior management.
By 5 AM, the situation had escalated completely. Things were spiraling out of control.
First, the ERP system crashed.
Then, the customer management system locked up.
And then, the company website was completely offline.
The online support channel was dead.
All the partner procurement portals were down.
J&R Holdings' suppliers bombarded them with 12 emails through the night, demanding to know when they'd be back online.
Samuel was a total wreck in the operations room.
He sat slumped in front of the server racks, three emergency manuals sprawled open before him.
On the last page of each and every one, there was only one name: Emma Clarkson.
Samuel had called her over 20 times, and he only reached Emma's voicemail box.
Samuel shot a hopeless look at the operations group chat.
The chat was blowing up.
The CFO had woken up in the middle of the night to find the expense system down and was now spamming the chat with angry voice messages.
The sales director was freaking out because all the customer follow-up records in the CRM were gone.
The project team was in a panic. They had a midterm report for the client at nine, and the PowerPoint was still stuck in the system.
Everyone was being tagged repeatedly in the chat.
But nobody had a clue what to do.
Lowering his head, Samuel stared at his phone's contacts list.
He scrolled through and spotted Emma's WhatsApp ID.
He shot her a desperate message: [Emma, the system's crashed. Help!]
But there was no response.
Samuel fired off another message: [Emma, are you there? Everything's down.]
But he still didn't receive any response.
Samuel tried again with a third message. [Emma, please! Check your phone. I'm at my limit here.]
After sending the last message, Samuel set his phone face down on the desk.
He closed his eyes.
His inner voice said, 'Emma.
'I hope nothing happened to you.
'This isn't like you at all.'