Follow The Rules Strictly As You Said

I was the only one on the wall for seventy-two hours against a siege of hackers. I held the line until the last second, then collapsed on the server room floor.

I woke up in the ICU. The first message I saw was a company-wide memo: Three days of unexcused absence. A fifty-thousand-dollar fine.

My director stood at my bedside and laid it out plainly. "Rules are rules. No exceptions."

I pulled the IV from my hand and said one word.

"Fine."

From that day on, no one understood the rules better than me.

The fluorescent lights of the ICU were a stinging white.

I had to blink three times just to pry my eyes open. The air was thick with the scent of antiseptic, and an IV needle was taped to the back of my left hand. A deep blue bruise was blooming on my wrist.

On the bedside table, my phone screen was lit up.

I turned my head, my gaze falling on the notification bar.

127 unread messages.

The one at the very top was a company-wide email.

Sender: Human Resources.

With my free hand, I reached for the phone, my thumb swiping the screen open.

"Subject: Official Notice Regarding Unexcused Absence of Alex Chen, Technology Department. This memo is to inform all personnel that, following a review, it has been confirmed that Alex Chen, Network Security Engineer, was absent from March 12th to March 14th without submitting a formal leave request as stipulated in Article 17 of the Employee Attendance Management Policy. In accordance with company regulations, the following actions will be taken: 1. A formal reprimand will be issued company-wide. 2. Mr. Chens quarterly performance bonus of $50,000 will be forfeited. 3. This incident will be recorded in Mr. Chens permanent employee file."

I scrolled to the bottom of the email.

CC: All Employees.

A flick of my thumb down, and the department group chat was already exploding.

Someone tagged me: "Alex, you okay, man?"

Someone else asked, "This has to be a mistake, right?"

But most of them were silent. A heavy, telling silence I knew all too well.

I stared at the ceiling, a dull ringing in my ears.

March 12th, 9:47 PM. The companys internal network monitoring system lit up like a Christmas tree from hell.

I was just about to leave.

My backpack was slung over one shoulder, one arm already in my jacket sleeve.

The single alert on my screen multiplied, from one to ten, then ten to a hundred.

Someone was hitting our core database with a distributed attack. This wasn't a standard DDoS flood; it was a surgical strike. They knew our internal topology, slipping through a port that should have never been open. It was like they had a key to the front door.

I dropped my bag on the floor, threw my jacket over the back of my chair, and sat down to fight back.

I called Marcus Reed, my director. It rang six times, no answer.

I called Frank, one of the lead ops guys. He said he was on the freeway, at least two hours out.

It was just me, alone, staring at six monitors, plugging the holes.

Id block one vector, and theyd pivot, coming at me from another angle.

Block that one, and theyd find another.

The attack traffic surged from 800 megabits per second to 40 gigabits per second.

I downed twelve cans of Red Bull. Then came the coffee, black, no sugar, chugged cold right from the pot.

The first day passed.

The second day passed.

On the third day, the afternoon of March 14th, as I tried to stand up from the server room floor, my vision went black. My knees buckled first, then my forehead slammed into the sharp metal corner of a server rack.

Frank told me later that when he finally pushed open the server room door, I was face down on the ground, blood matting my hair, my hand still resting on the keyboard.

The attack was over.

I had held the line.

The data, client information, and core code for over three hundred employeesnot a single byte was lost.

And then I ended up in the ICU.

And then I received the notice of unexcused absence.

The door to my room swung open just as I was reading that email for the third time, word by agonizing word.

Marcus Reed walked in.

Suit, tie, hair perfectly coiffed. He carried a small bag of fruit, which he placed on the bedside table, patting an orange as if to check its firmness.

"You're awake," he said, pulling a chair over and crossing his legs. "How are you feeling?"

I didn't answer.

He waited a few seconds, sensing the tension, and cleared his throat. "You saw the memo, I take it."

I nodded.

"Alex, you've been with us a while. You know the policies." His tone was a well-rehearsed "my-hands-are-tied," but the slight curve of his lips betrayed him. "Leave requests have to go through the official channels, approved by your direct supervisor. You were gone for three days with nothing in the system. When HR asked me about it, I couldn't exactly lie, could I?"

"I was in the server room," I said, my voice hoarse.

He held up a hand, a gesture to stop me. "I know you worked hard. I appreciate the effort. But effort is one thing, and policy is another. They're two separate issues. If you had just called me, sent a text, anything to get a paper trail started, I could have approved it after the fact. But you did nothing."

He paused, leaning forward and lowering his voice. "Corporate is auditing attendance records right now. At a time like this, nobody gets a pass."

I just looked at him.

His gaze was steady, his lines delivered flawlessly, as if he'd practiced in a mirror.

"Rules are rules," he said, standing and smoothing a non-existent wrinkle from his trousers. "No exceptions."

The room fell silent for a few seconds, punctuated by the steady beep beep beep of the heart monitor.

I clenched the bedsheets, my nails digging into my palms.

The last seventy-two hours flashed through my mind in a chaotic montage: the frantic cascade of data across six screens, the stomach-cramping coffee I kept pouring down my throat, the low hum of the fluorescent lights in the server room at 4 AM, the cold, sharp shock of metal against my forehead as I collapsed.

I swallowed hard.

And then I said one word.

"Fine."

Marcus froze for a second.

He had probably come prepared with a full script. If I got angry, he'd play the sympathetic but helpless manager. If I broke down, he'd offer a tissue and feigned compassion.

But all I said was, "Fine."

The word was too small, too quiet. It gave him nothing to work with.

He nodded, patting my shoulder. "Good. Get some rest. We need you back at the office."

The door clicked shut.

His footsteps faded down the hall.

I stared at the IV in the back of my hand for a long, long time.

Then I picked up my phone, closed the email, and opened a new note.

I typed a line: Employee Attendance Management Policy, Article 17.

Then another: Find the full text.

The day I was discharged, the sky was a bruised gray, hanging so low it felt like it could collapse at any moment.

I stood outside the office building for three seconds, took a breath, and pushed through the glass doors.

The receptionist looked up, met my eyes, and then her gaze darted away as she pretended to sort a stack of packages.

Walking past the marketing department, I could feel their eyes on me from the corners of their vision. The rhythmic clatter of keyboards suddenly intensified, the keys struck with a little too much force, a performance of "I'm very busy and definitely not looking at you."

I ran into Susan from accounting at the elevators.

She held the door for me. After a moment of hesitation, she spoke in a low voice. "Alex, about that memo nobody thinks it was right."

I just nodded at her. "Thanks, Susan."

I didn't say anything else.

The tech department was on the twelfth floor.

The moment I walked in, a hush fell over the entire area.

I understood that silence. It wasn't concern. It was the quiet of a crowd watching a spectacle.

Everyone has their own scale. They knew what I did, and they knew how I was being treated. But on the other side of that scale sat their mortgages, their car payments, and their kids' tuition. So the scales didn't move an inch.

I got it.

I sat down at my desk, booted up my computer, and said nothing.

A fresh stack of work orders sat on my desk. The one on top was signed by Marcus, marked "URGENT."

I pushed the stack aside, opened the company's internal portal, and typed into the search bar:

"Company Policies."

Employee Attendance Management Policy, 94 pages.

Overtime Management Regulations, 47 pages.

Travel and Expense Reimbursement Policy, 62 pages.

Project Management Workflow Standards, 118 pages.

Information Security Management Ordinance, 83 pages.

In total, thirty-seven policy documents, over two thousand pages of text.

I started with the first one, reading every single word.

At 3 PM, Frank came over with two cups of coffee. He set one on my desk and held the other.

"Alex," he said, pulling up an empty chair and leaning in close. "Don't do this to yourself, man. That fifty grand I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't listen. I'm sorry."

"Frank," I said without looking up from my screen. "When you found me in the server room, what did it look like?"

He was quiet for a moment. "You were face down. Your forehead was split open on the corner of a server rack. There was blood everywhere. When I rolled you over, your hands were ice-cold."

"And who did you tell about this?"

"I told Marcus," Frank said, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the paper cup. "He said he knew, but told me to keep it quiet. Said corporate was breathing down our necks and we couldn't afford any drama."

I nodded slowly, my eyes still fixed on the screen.

Frank didn't leave. He seemed to want to say something more but couldn't find the words.

Finally, after a few minutes, he broke. "What the hell are you reading, anyway?"

"Company policy."

"Why would you read that crap?"

I turned to look at him then.

"I'm learning."

Frank's mouth opened, then snapped shut.

He'd known me for five years. He knew that when I said "I'm learning," I wasn't kidding.

He walked away, taking his coffee with him.

By the end of the day, I had finished the Attendance Management Policy and the Overtime Management Regulations.

I had jotted down seven specific article numbers in my notes.

One of them, Article 23, Section 4, was crystal clear: "In the event of a sudden emergency preventing the timely submission of a leave request, the employee's direct supervisor may submit a retroactive request on their behalf within three working days."

In other words, during those seventy-two hours, all Marcus had to do was click a "Submit Retroactive" button for me in the system, and my absence wouldn't have been unexcused.

He didn't click it.

He chose not to.

I highlighted that article in red and saved the note in a new folder.

I named the folder "Study Notes."

Before shutting down my computer, I looked up one more thing.

That anomaly I first noticed at 9:47 PM on March 12th, right before the whole system went into meltdown.

The point of entry for the attacka port that should never have been open.

The permissions required to open that port could only be granted by an admin account at the director level or higher.

I had been too busy fighting the fire to dig deeper then.

Now, I had time.

I copied the port number into my notes.

Then I shut down my machine.

On the dot.

6:00 PM. Not a second later.

The next morning, I clocked in at 9:00 AM sharp.

Not 8:55, not 8:58. Exactly 9:00.

Because the company policy stated, black on white: "Working hours are from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM."

Marcus called on me during the morning stand-up. "Alex, did you see that urgent ticket I sent you yesterday? The client is breathing down our necks."

"I saw it," I said.

"And when can we expect delivery?"

"As soon as the process is complete."

He frowned. "What process?"

I opened the notes app on my phone and read aloud. "According to the Project Management Workflow Standards, Article 8, Section 2: 'Tasks requiring inter-departmental collaboration must be initiated via a formal Collaboration Request Form, signed and approved by the heads of both departments before work can commence.' This ticket requires server permissions from the Operations team, which qualifies as inter-departmental collaboration. We need their signature."

The conference room fell silent.

My colleagues stared down at their notebooks, avoiding my eyes, avoiding Marcuss.

A muscle in Marcus's jaw twitched. "We've never bothered with formal processes for small things like this."

I looked up, meeting his gaze directly.

"Director, you were the one who taught me. Rules are rules."

His expression hardened into a mask.

That ticket didn't get done that day.

It wasn't that I wouldn't do it. The process wasn't complete.

The head of Ops, Dave, was out of town on business. He wouldn't be back to sign it for three days.

I documented the delay with meticulous clarity in an email, CC'ing Marcus and the entire project team, and attached a screenshot of the relevant company policy.

At 5:58 PM, I started clearing my desk.

At 6:00 PM, I stood up.

Marcus poked his head out of his office. "Alex, that data migration isn't"

"Director," I cut him off.

He stopped, stunned.

I pulled a printed sheet of paper from my desk drawer and handed it to him.

Overtime Management Regulations, Article 5: "Employee overtime must be requested by the department head via an Overtime Request Form at least twenty-four hours in advance and approved by Human Resources. Any work performed outside of standard hours without prior approval will not be recognized by the company or compensated as overtime."

"If you need me to work late, please submit the request twenty-four hours in advance," I said, placing the paper on his desk. "See you tomorrow."

Marcus stood in his office doorway, the muscles in his face pulled taut.

He wanted to explode.

But he couldn't. He had no grounds.

Because these were the very rules he had used as a weapon against me.

I turned and walked out of the office.

Behind me, I heard the sound of his door slamming shut.

I ran into Frank in the elevator on my way out.

He looked me up and down, a complicated expression on his face.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing. It's just you've changed."

"How so?"

He thought for a long moment before finding the word. "Terrifying."

The third day, the client called to check on the project's progress and was informed the paperwork was still being processed.

They filed a formal complaint directly with Marcus.

From my desk, I heard the sound of a mug shattering against a wall in his office. I didn't look up.

My fingers typed out a new line in my notes.

Information Security Management Ordinance, Article 31. Server operation logs must be retained for a period of one year.

It had been eleven days since March 12th.

Three hundred and fifty-four days left.

Plenty of time.

Marcus was spearheading a major project.

The Apex Solutions data platforma 0-0.5 million contract, the biggest deal of the year for our company.

From its inception, I had been the one to design every core technical solution for that project.

Marcus didn't understand the tech; he understood signing documents and leading meetings. At every technical review with the client, hed sit at the head of the table in his tailored suit, give a three-minute opening speech, and then say, "And now, I'll turn it over to our lead technical expert to walk you through the details." That was my cue to take the microphone for the next two hours.

The client thought Marcus was the technical mastermind.

In reality, he couldn't even name the tech stack I was using in my own proposal.

Now, the project was at a critical acceptance phase.

The client demanded that phase three be delivered by Friday, or they would invoke the penalty clause in the contract.

Marcus sent me an email. The subject line had three exclamation points. "URGENT!!! Apex Project Phase Three DeliveryMust Be Completed This Week."

I replied with an email of my own.

The body was just three lines long, with two attachments.

"Director Reed, Regarding the Apex project phase three delivery, the following process steps have not yet been completed: 1. The 'Database Permission Change Request' requires your signature before it can be submitted to the Information Security department for approval. Current Status: Awaiting Signature (This has been in your approval queue for 6 working days). 2. The 'Test Environment Deployment Plan' requires cooperation from the Operations team. An 'Inter-Departmental Collaboration Request' must be submitted by you. Current Status: Not Initiated. Once these processes are complete, I will begin the technical delivery immediately."

I CC'd the entire project team and HR.

Twenty minutes later, the door to Marcus's office was yanked open.

"Alex. My office. Now."

His voice was controlled, but barely. The edges were frayed.

I stood up, taking my phone with me.

I walked in.

He shut the door behind me, turned around, and his face was flushed a deep, angry red.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Awaiting your approval."

"That request has been sitting in my queue for six days! Why didn't you just remind me?"

I stood my ground. He hadn't invited me to sit.

"According to the Internal Systems Usage Policy, Article 12: 'Approvers at all levels are expected to process requests within three working days of receipt. The system will issue an automatic reminder for any overdue items.' The system has already reminded you twice, Director."

His Adam's apple bobbed.

"Alex, is this about the memo? Are you holding a grudge?"

"No."

"Then what is this?"

I looked him straight in the eye.

"You taught me, sir. Rules are rules. I'm just following them."

His right hand gripped the edge of his desk, his knuckles turning white.

The phone on his desk rang, its shrill tone cutting through the tension.

He hesitated for a second, then snatched it up.

It was the client.

I stood two meters away, but I could clearly hear the impatient male voice on the other end.

"Marcus, what's the status on phase three? My director has asked me about it three times already."

Marcuss face contorted, a strained smile plastered on his lips. "Mr. Davis, rest assured, we'll have it for you in the next couple of days"

"A couple of days? That's what you said last week."

He turned his back to me, lowering his voice, but I heard every word.

When he hung up, he spun back around.

"I want you to go right now and get that"

"The process isn't complete," I said.

He stared at me, his eyes burning.

I stared back.

After a tense ten seconds, he violently ripped a folder from his desk, flipped to the pending approval form, scribbled his signature, and slammed it down in front of me.

"Take it."

"The inter-departmental collaboration request needs your signature as well."

He squeezed his eyes shut, exhaling sharply through his nose.

He signed it.

I picked up both sheets of paper.

"I will submit these to Information Security for approval today. The standard processing time is two to three business days. I will begin execution as soon as approval is granted."

"Two to three business days?!" his voice shot up. "The client's deadline is this Friday!"

I paused at the door without turning back.

"Director, I don't set the approval timelines. Company policy does. If you have a problem with the process, I suggest you take it up with corporate."

I walked out of his office, pulling the door gently shut behind me.

Back at my desk, a new message from Frank was on my screen.

"Are you insane???"

I didn't reply.

I opened my notes app and created a new file inside the "Study Notes" folder.

The title was: "Plan for Retrieving Server Logs for Anomalous Port Opening on March 12th."

On Friday, the Apex project failed to meet its deadline.

The client sent a formal notice, invoking the penalty clause for a total of twenty thousand dollars.

Marcus posted a message in the department group chat: "I will be reporting the cause of this project delay truthfully and accurately to upper management."

Everyone knew he was talking to me.

But he didn't tag me.

Because he couldn't.

Every step I took was by the book.