Chapter 230: The One Who Planted It
[Lisa Clone v2: Foreign malware detected.]
Rohit’s jaw tightened.
What had looked like an accident no longer felt like one.
The Japanese delegation was already on his way to the building. A private staging server. A critical demonstration only minutes away. And now this.
He pulled up the virus file’s metadata.
Created today. Only five hours ago.
His eyes narrowed.
"Lisa. Extract the last six hours of server logs. Quarantine the malware."
The process took five seconds.
The malicious file was silently moved. The moment it left the system, a notification flashed across the top of the screen:
[Game version rollback in progress...]
Rohit immediately stopped the rollback and ordered a full diagnostic scan.
Thirty seconds later, the final report appeared.
[No bugs found.]
The build was clean.
He leaned back slightly, a cold flicker of amusement crossing his face.
The malware had not been a random glitch. It had been deliberately uploaded as a small patch just before the client was set to run. In simple terms, the game itself was fine — the road underneath it had been poisoned. No matter how many times they tried to fix the vehicle, the path would keep sabotaging it.
Even more interesting: the patch had been triggered the moment the game was first pre-installed on the server. Like filling a machine with contaminated fuel and then blaming the engine when it failed.
Clever.
Very clever.
In two and a half minutes, Rohit had the new clean build extracted and running smoothly inside a sandbox environment. No crashes. No conflicts. Perfect.
Then the door handle turned.
Rohit moved instantly. Every related window closed. The screen switched back to ordinary server log files. By the time the door fully opened, he looked exactly like a man still deep in frustrating work.
Sheetal entered carrying a tray — patties, pastries, and coffee. She set it down beside him.
"Got anything useful?" she asked.
Rohit kept his expression serious and shook his head.
"Nope. Still working on it."
The lie came easily.
He could have told her the truth. He could have ended the crisis right there. But the implications stopped him. Solving in minutes what an entire team had failed to fix would look suspicious — almost as if he had known exactly where to look. Impulse and caution overlapped. He chose silence.
He picked up the coffee first, using the moment to think.
The sabotage. The timing of the delegation. Sheetal returning far quicker than expected.
Unless she had already arranged everything behind the scenes and only needed to appear personally involved. A gap in trust had opened.
’Could she be behind this?’
The thought flashed through his mind. She did not seem the type to betray Arya... but there was always a chance.
He glanced at her over the rim of the cup.
"When was this build deployed to the server?" he asked casually. "And which team handled it?"
Sheetal frowned, clearly not pleased with the question, but answered anyway.
"Vani’s team. Shristi was the one assigned to handle the deployment."
Rohit gave a small nod. While speaking, his hands continued moving smoothly across the keyboard — quietly clearing every trace of his AI activity, relocating the original log files, and sealing the evidence into a different destination folder.
"Call them back," he said.
Sheetal hesitated only a second before summoning them again.
When Vani and Shristi stepped back into the room, the change in their faces was immediate. The color had drained from both of them; their earlier composure had thinned into something brittle and watchful.
Rohit didn’t acknowledge it. Instead he leaned back slightly and began asking casual, almost idle questions about the latest patch notes—small balance tweaks, a new particle effect, an obscure UI flag that had nothing to do with the crash.
He let the conversation drift, then gently steered it toward a handful of unrelated systems.
All the while his fingers moved across the keyboard with quiet precision, rewriting sections of code so that they looked structurally different while remaining entirely identical in function — in short, no real change at all
The performance lasted nearly twenty minutes.
Both women listened hard, brows furrowed, trying to map his explanations onto the actual problem.
Neither challenged him. Arya’s name hung unspoken between them like a shield; he was her brother, and that single fact kept their doubts locked behind polite silence.
At last he compiled a fresh build in raw form and turned to them.
"I’ll need your work emails. I’ll push the package straight to your stations."
Sheetal’s eyes lit with cautious amusement. "It’s fixed already?"
"It should be," Rohit answered evenly. "Once you redeploy from your end and run a clean cycle."
Vani gave her address and insisted on handling the deployment herself.
Rohit sent the files, then added a clear instruction: do not launch the build. Deploy only, then message him the moment it finished. She nodded and left.
The moment the door closed, Rohit glanced at the two women still standing near his desk.
Sheetal and Shristi both looked tightly wound, the anxiety they had been suppressing now plain on their faces.
He had embedded the payload deliberately.
The build he had given Vani would remain inert until someone extracted and executed it.
Everything he had just done—the technical theater, the calm explanations—was simply a curtain drawn over the real issue long enough to control the narrative.
A message arrived a few minutes later. Vani confirmed the new build was generated and ready.
Rohit opened his admin panel, removed her package without hesitation, and restored his own earlier, clean build. He launched it.
The game loaded smoothly.
"Oh, thank god," Sheetal breathed.
"Finally," Shristi added, relief loosening her shoulders. Her smile was brighter than the others’.
Vani returned just then. The moment she stepped inside, the color that had begun to return to her face vanished again.
Shristi quickly told her the problem was resolved.
Shock flickered across Vani’s features before she forced it into a smile of celebration. The brief flash of disbelief did not escape Rohit, but he gave no sign of noticing.
He opened the sandbox environment and began a routine inspection of the build Vani had just generated—right in front of them.
The dormant Trojan files sat there quietly, waiting. He scrolled past them without comment.
When he looked up, Vani was smiling too tightly, a thin sheen of sweat visible at her temples despite the cold air conditioning. The moment he moved on, her shoulders eased; she seemed to decide he had simply stumbled near the real issue without ever seeing it. May be she can re-insert again if given the chance.
"Is everything resolved, then?" she asked, voice carefully measured.
Rohit raised an eyebrow. "Test it on your own mobile. Run a full trial."
She nodded and began downloading the clean build in her phone.
Sheetal stepped closer and rested a hand on his shoulder, the gesture warm and almost sisterly.
"Good work, Rohit. You have no idea how large a problem you just removed. I’m starting to envy Arya for having a brother like you."
He smiled modestly. "Why envy her, sis? Aren’t I already your brother too? You’re allowed to hug me if you want."
Sheetal’s expression melted into pure delight. "Aww... you’re too cute." She brushed her fingers lightly across his cheek, then pulled him into a polite, warm embrace, guiding him against her and letting him feel the soft press of her body. "Once this is finished, I’m taking you to dinner myself."
Rohit didn’t pull away. He simply accepted the contact, quiet and unresisting.
When she stepped back, her tone shifted back to business. "I’m going to tell Arya the good news. You two relax." She glanced at him again. "Will you stay for the meeting afterward? It would be useful experience."
"Only if you keep me beside you so I can actually follow what’s going on."
Sheetal laughed softly and ruffled his hair. "That’s exactly what I planned." Then she left.
Rohit turned to Shristi.
"Miss Shristi, could you give us a moment? I need to discuss something important with your team leader."
Shristi’s eyes widened. Color rushed into her cheeks as she clearly misread the request. She nodded too quickly, a knowing, embarrassed smile already forming.
"Of course—take your time. No worries at all." She practically fled the room.
The door clicked shut.
Vani remained standing, unable to comprehend how a mere kid like him had traced the virus back to its source.
Had this been a trap from the beginning?
Calling her back. Questioning her. Making her redeploy the build. Even that strange twenty-minute discussion suddenly felt deliberate. He had been steering her exactly where he wanted her to go.
The last traces of color drained from her face. She regretted reinserting the virus at the last moment.
For the first time, Vani wondered whether Rohit had known the truth from the very beginning—or had simply given her enough rope to reveal it herself.
"Young master... I—"
Rohit raised one hand, cutting her off. His voice was calm, almost conversational.
"Do you have a boyfriend?"