A Screenshot Changed My Life—And Ruined His

I post a WhatsApp Status with the caption, "Vacation's coming soon. Countdown starts now." I make sure to hide it from everyone at work. But the very next second, my boss, Thomas Burton, shoves a screenshot of my Status in my face. "So you've got plenty of free time, huh?" he bellows. "Go scrub the toilets! And you're getting a 30% pay cut!" I freeze, a chill running down my spine. I had blocked everyone at work from seeing my Status. So how the hell did Mr. Burton get a screenshot of it? When I return to my desk, my colleague, Caleb Knowles, comes over with a cup of coffee. "Don't worry about it, man," he says, comforting me. "I'll put in a good word for you." I thank him, but my eyes remain fixed on his phone. He's looking at the exact Status I posted earlier. Chapter 1 Caleb Knowles sauntered back to his desk. As he passed our team lead's station, he leaned in and muttered something under his breath. The two of them immediately glanced at me and exchanged a knowing smile. I opened WhatsApp and checked my privacy settings again. I'd blocked every single coworker from seeing my posts, and Caleb—saved in my contacts as "Operations - Caleb"—was clearly on the list too. So where the hell had that screenshot come from? I scrolled through my contacts again and again until I spotted a gray profile picture with the name "Southvale Industrial Park - Mr. Levine." He'd added me last month while we were working on the industrial park project, asking me to send over the first draft. I was so busy that I accepted his request without thinking. But after I sent him the file, he disappeared. Now, when I opened his WhatsApp profile, his Status was completely blank. There was literally nothing on his profile, which struck me as odd. I sent him a message. "Hi, I wanted to check if there were any issues with the proposal I sent you before." The next second, I caught Caleb's phone lighting up out of the corner of my eye. He picked it up and glanced at the screen. Then he looked at me in a panic before quickly looking away. My blood ran cold. Was this his secret account? Had he been using it to keep tabs on my Status and steal my work? I suddenly remembered what had happened last month. I'd spent three straight nights working on the industrial park proposal. I'd saved it on my computer but hadn't sent it to our team lead, Marcus Duthey, yet. The next morning, Caleb submitted an almost identical version, claiming that he'd stayed up for several nights working on it himself. Marcus praised him for being hardworking, and Caleb even dared to put on a selfless act. "Jethro's been swamped," he said matter-of-factly. "So I figured I'd take some of the workload off his hands." I'd been furious and confronted him, but he'd turned it right back on me. "We're coworkers, and it's normal for people to come up with similar ideas. Why are you being so petty?" In the end, he received the performance bonus, while I was left with nothing but resentment. I'd thought Caleb was simply shameless, but now I realized that he'd been setting me up all along. A notification from HR suddenly appeared on my phone, the company seal standing out in bold red. "Jethro Lane is being transferred to the Facilities Department due to a lack of commitment to his work. His salary will be reduced by 30%, effective immediately." Around me, my coworkers either pretended to be busy or whispered among themselves, their eyes constantly drifting toward me. One of Caleb's sidekicks, Paul Ziegler, deliberately bumped into my desk with his mug. Water spilled all over my keyboard. "Oops. Sorry. Didn't see you there," he said airily. "If I were you, I'd take a look in the mirror before posting stuff like that. Save yourself the embarrassment." I glared at him but said nothing. After all, I had no proof. If I made a scene now, I'd only give them an excuse to label me as someone who couldn't follow orders—exactly what Caleb wanted. I turned back to my computer and started organizing my files. My desktop was packed with two years' worth of projects I'd worked on. Some were million-dollar projects, while others were nothing more than everyday promotional graphics that I'd created from scratch. As I copied my personal files onto an external hard drive, I noticed an unfamiliar process running in Task Manager. Its name was just a string of random characters, and it was using a significant amount of memory. I clicked "End Process". Less than two seconds later, it popped right back up. I frowned, assuming it was some kind of monitoring software the company had installed. Still, I didn't think much of it and continued copying my files. Chapter 2 It wasn't until I was copying over last year's project archives that I noticed something strange. The e-commerce project that had won the company's Best Proposal of the Year award had a timestamp showing that the original draft showed its last modification time as 2:00 a.m. on a weekend. But that day, I clearly remembered having a fever and spending two days lying in bed at home. I hadn't even touched my computer. … The facilities supervisor shoved a broom into my hands, his face twisted into a scowl. "Clean all the restrooms on this floor today, and wipe down all the hallway windows. If the work isn't up to standard, it'll come out of your performance review." A few of the longtime facilities employees stood nearby with their arms crossed, leaning against the wall and watching me like I was some kind of joke. Then Caleb appeared out of nowhere. He walked straight across the floor I'd just finished cleaning, leaving two footprints behind. "Well, well, well, Jethro," he drawled. "So you're really doing this now?" He looked at me, his eyes glinting with amusement. "Honestly, I didn't expect things to turn out like this. Mr. Burton asked me how you'd been doing lately, so I just mentioned that you seemed to have a lot of free time…" He held out his coffee cup. "Do me a favor and toss this when you're done, yeah? I've got a meeting to get to." I met his gaze, and the smug look on his face said everything. He was enjoying every second of this. "Take care, Caleb," I said, smiling at him as I took the cup. He turned and walked away, his dress shoes clicking against the freshly cleaned floor. I crushed the coffee cup in my hand and tossed it into the trash. … By the time I clocked out, I carried the company-issued laptop home. During the handover, I told HR that I still had some personal files on the computer that I hadn't finished copying over. I asked if I could take it home, sort everything out, and return it the following week. They didn't think much of it. It was just an old work laptop, after all. The second I got home, I didn't even bother eating. I immediately video-called my childhood friend, Isaac Jadwin, who worked in IT. "Help me check this laptop," I said. "I think someone installed some kind of monitoring software on it. Isaac answered while chewing on a sandwich. He remotely accessed my computer and spent nearly 40 minutes digging through it before suddenly swearing. "Holy crap!" he exclaimed. "Some asshole installed a stealth remote-access program on your computer. "This thing can watch your screen in real time, copy your files without you knowing, and even turn on your webcam without triggering the indicator light. It's buried so deep that most antivirus software wouldn't even detect it." The color drained from my face. I remembered all those nights I'd stayed up at home working on proposals, when I'd suddenly get the uneasy feeling that someone was watching me. It hadn't been my imagination after all. "Can you find out who did it?" I asked, my throat feeling tight. "Yeah. I can pull the access logs." Isaac hammered away at his keyboard for a while before sending me the log file. "Look. Starting three months ago, someone accessed your computer almost every night between 1:00 am and 3:00 am. "I traced the IP, and it's coming from Parkview Residences, an apartment complex near your office. The account name is 'cknowles'." It immediately clicked. The account "Cknowles" belonged to Caleb Knowles. I stared at those letters, a chill creeping down my spine. "Do you want me to remove the software for you?" Isaac asked. "Should we call the cops?" I shook my head, forcing down the anger boiling inside me. My eyes fell on the unfinished industrial park marketing proposal still open on my screen, and I suddenly smiled. Caleb had gone to all this trouble to get rid of me because he wanted my projects, didn't he? If he loved stealing my work so much, I had just the thing for him. I deleted the unconfirmed key figures from the proposal and left them marked as "Pending Confirmation". … The next day, I brought the laptop back to the office and returned it to the operations department's administrator, telling her that I'd finished copying all my personal files. Chapter 3 As I passed Caleb's desk, I deliberately slowed down and glanced at his screen. As expected, he was searching for design specifications, with several related pages open. I smiled to myself but said nothing as I headed back to the facilities department. Now and then, I'd deliberately complain to my coworkers in Facilities. "I was almost finished with that industrial park proposal, but then they transferred me." I kept my voice just loud enough for Caleb, who sat by the hallway, to hear. I knew exactly what he was thinking. He wasn't capable of doing the work himself, and every proposal he'd taken credit for before had been stolen from me. Now he'd personally assured Mr. Burton that he could handle this million-dollar project. If he screwed it up, all the credit he'd taken before would come crashing down. There was no way he'd resist accessing my computer again to steal whatever was left. Just as I expected, a little after three that morning, Caleb posted a WhatsApp Status with a screenshot of the proposal open on his computer. "Three straight nights with barely any sleep, but I finally got it done. I hope everything goes smoothly." Paul was already sucking up to him in the comments. "You're seriously putting in the work, man. If this project goes through, you're definitely getting another bonus!" I smirked at the screen and turned off my phone. Caleb could take all the time he wanted. He wasn't getting that bonus either way. He might want to start getting used to prison food instead. … The next morning, I had barely walked through the office doors when I saw Caleb standing with a printed copy of the proposal, looking like he owned the place. "I'm presenting it to the client tomorrow," he said to Mr. Burton. "I'll make sure we land the deal." Mr. Burton patted him on the shoulder and praised him for doing such a great job. As Caleb walked past me, he deliberately bumped into my shoulder, looking unbearably smug. I didn't even flinch. I just looked at the proposal in his hands, my smile growing wider. … The next day, around eleven in the morning, I was in the facilities department's storage room counting cleaning supplies when my phone suddenly started vibrating nonstop. I pulled it out and saw that the company group chat had spiraled into a frenzy. Someone from the administration team had taken screenshots from the client group chat and forwarded them to everyone. The red exclamation marks on the messages practically screamed off the screen. The client's boss was seething with rage. "What the hell is wrong with your company? What kind of shitty proposal did you send us? "The core specifications are completely wrong! Do you have any idea what this is going to cost us? We're going to have to delay the project by two weeks. Who's going to pay the penalties we'll owe our downstream clients? "And who came up with the pricing? It's 40% higher than the normal market rate. Did you seriously think you could rip us off? "Let me make this clear to your boss. Your company will be responsible for every cent of the losses caused by these errors. Otherwise, I'll see you in court!" The group chat went completely silent for three seconds. Then Mr. Burton's messages came flying in, all in bold capital letters. "@Caleb What the hell happened?! Weren't you the one who swore this proposal was 100% solid?" "I used Jethro's previous version as a reference," Caleb immediately replied, panicking to the point that he was making typos. "I only made some improvements based on his work. I didn't change any of the core specifications!" Then he dropped a screenshot into the group chat. It showed the file information for the industrial park proposal that had been on my computer. The file name, creation date, and last modified date were all clearly visible. "Mr. Burton, look," he said. "Jethro created the original version of this proposal last month. I only used his framework. If there was a problem with the specifications, then he must have made the mistake in the original file!"