Leo saved a local copy. He closed the VM. The clock returned to normal. The hum in the basement softened.

He clicked open his virtual machine—a perfect, sandboxed tomb of Windows XP with the classic Luna theme. No one else in the building knew this environment existed. It was his secret ark.

You see, in 2007, when the world moved to Vista and SQL Express, the city’s payroll system refused to budge. It was built on a chaotic but loyal Access 2003 database, powered by the Jet 4.0 engine. And not just any Jet 4.0—Service Pack 8. The final, blessed version. The one that fixed the “unrecognized database” ghost error and the “invalid page reference” crash of ’05.

It was 3:47 AM on a Tuesday when the email arrived.