The HR manager slid a severance agreement across the table and said coldly, "You're fired."

I froze. "Why?"

Just one week ago, my boss had praised me in the company meeting and called me one of the team's most valuable people.

The HR manager shrugged. "Ms. Lyttle, you're already 35. You don't have the energy of younger employees anymore, and you're not what you used to be. You no longer fit the company's future."

I joined this company when I was 29. Over the past six years, I wrote countless lines of code and worked through more sleepless nights than I could remember.

Every time the company faced a major system failure, I led the emergency response and saved it from catastrophic losses. And now they were telling me I was too old and too slow.

I laughed in disbelief. "So you've already copied all my experience and skills into an AI, haven't you?"

The HR manager paused for a moment before answering confidently, "AI never gets tired, never takes time off, and never asks for a raise. Once the company has an employee like that, why would we keep you?"

I looked at her. "Are you sure the AI has learned everything I know?"

She smiled. "Absolutely."

The moment I heard that, I finally relaxed.

Long ago, I had already hidden a trap inside my code to keep my skills from being copied.

The moment their AI employee went live, the company would only have three days before everything fell apart.

After I bluntly called out the company's plan to replace me with AI, Lorraine Lindsey from HR stopped pretending.

"The engineering team already finished their evaluation," she said calmly. "The AI writes code 30% faster than you, has a 50% lower error rate, and..."

She paused on purpose before smiling.

"It works 24/7. It never sleeps."

I sat there, furious.

All the experience I had built through countless sleepless nights and endless failures had been handed over to the AI like it meant nothing.

Now that I was no longer useful, they were throwing me away like garbage.

I had poured six years of my life into this company, only to end up with nothing.

Taking a deep breath, I opened the severance agreement on the desk and frowned.

"What about my severance package?"

Lorraine's expression didn't change. "The company's been struggling financially lately, so we can't offer that. We can only give you two months of your base salary as compensation."

Two months?

I had worked here for six years.

Two years ago, the system crashed on New Year's Eve. I had to leave my family dinner halfway through and rush back to the office. By the time I fixed everything, New Year's Day was already over.

Last year, one-third of the company's database was accidentally deleted. Everyone panicked. I spent 48 straight hours in the server room recovering the data by myself. When I finally finished, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on the floor.

I let out a cold laugh. "I wrote half of this company's core code. Over the past six years, I've saved this company tens of millions of dollars in losses. And now you're offering me just two months of pay?"

Lorraine smiled knowingly. "Taylor, don't say that. This industry isn't very big. If you don't cooperate, and your next employer asks why you left during a background check, we'll simply tell them you were laid off because your skills weren't a good fit for the position. That won't help your job search."

It was an obvious threat.

I laughed in disbelief and closed the agreement.

"Fine. I'll sign."

Lorraine immediately handed me a pen.

After signing, I stood up and asked, "Are you sure the AI has learned everything I know?"

She smiled confidently. "Of course. It has mastered 100% of your skills."

Hearing that, I finally felt at ease.

Long before this day came, I had already hidden a little surprise inside the code to keep anyone from copying my skills.

Once their AI employee went live, the company would run into serious trouble within three days.

As I walked out of the office, I heard Lily Sonnett calling our boss, Florin Stretton, behind me.

"She signed the papers. Everything went smoothly. She didn't make a scene."

I paused for a second before heading back to my desk to pack my belongings.

A coworker quietly asked, "Taylor, what happened? Mr. Stretton was praising you at last week's staff meeting..."

Before I could answer, Florin's voice came from behind me.

"Everyone, may I have your attention!"

Florin stood in the middle of the aisle and clapped his hands.

"I have an announcement. Ms. Taylor Lyttle has been terminated from our company, effective immediately. We thank Ms. Lyttle for her years of service, and we wish her all the best."

The office instantly fell silent. Everyone looked at me with sympathy.

I couldn't accept any of this.

I turned and stared at him. "Mr. Stretton, you know exactly why I was fired."

Florin froze for a second before smiling. "Ms. Lyttle, let's part on good terms. Your exit paperwork is already complete, so please don't disrupt everyone else's work."

I let out a mocking laugh. "Oh? When I was fixing one impossible problem after another, why didn't you say I was disrupting work then?"

Florin's face turned serious as he raised his voice. "If you want everyone to know the truth, then I won't hide it anymore. Everyone, do you know why our technology has advanced so slowly over the years? Why every major system upgrade kept getting delayed? Because someone used her seniority to force the company and her coworkers to work around her.

He pointed straight at me. "Because someone held the entire company back."

Florin waved toward the people behind him. "Mary, tell everyone what Ms. Lyttle's code is really like."

The young AI trainer, Mary Confer, stepped forward and pulled out her phone.

"I've analyzed all of Ms. Lyttle's code. Honestly, the only reason it never caused any major problems all these years was because she got lucky."

I almost laughed.

Luck?

Could luck handle the traffic spikes during massive sales events?

Could luck recover a database after one-third of it had been deleted?

Was the reason the company called me every single time something broke over the past six years just because I was lucky?

Florin continued in a solemn voice. "Ms. Lyttle, the company has to move forward. We can't let one person slow down our progress. This is the age of AI. AI can double our efficiency while cutting our costs in half. Right now, you're the biggest obstacle. You should be grateful the company gave you six years to earn a paycheck here."

I laughed from sheer anger. "I earned a paycheck here for six years? The money I made for this company over those six years is enough to support you for the next 60."

A flash of guilt crossed Florin's face, but it quickly disappeared.

His expression darkened as he shouted, "Stop trying to scare everyone. If Mary hadn't cleaned up your low-quality code line by line, fed it into the AI, and turned your experience into something useful, do you really think your stupid code would've lasted this long? Taylor, you should be thanking her for making your worthless work valuable. Otherwise, your six years here would've meant almost nothing."

The entire office fell silent.

Everyone looked at me.

After brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, Mary smiled proudly. "Ms. Lyttle, don't worry. The AI will carry on your legacy. Your code was terrible, but the AI has already rewritten all of it. You can leave with peace of mind."

My whole body shook with rage.

"So you're telling me I should thank the person who stole my code to train an AI? I should thank you for giving away the work I've poured my heart into for six years?"

Florin lowered his voice. "Don't make this harder than it has to be."

I glared at them and snapped back. "Not a chance. Just wait and see what happens over the next three days."

Florin frowned. "What do you mean?"

The moment he finished speaking, the system's alarm blared.

Someone suddenly shouted. "Mr. Stretton! The entire trading system just went into the red!"

Florin stayed calm. "Nobody panic. Bring the AI online immediately!"

He turned toward Mary. "The AI is online already, right?"

Mary began typing frantically. Her lips had turned pale. "I'm pulling up the AI's diagnostic logs. It says it has detected the problem and is already fixing it automatically."

Hearing that, Florin waved his hand. "Then let it handle everything. Everyone stop all manual operations and leave it entirely to the AI. This is the moment we've been waiting for to prove our AI transition was the right choice."

A repair progress bar appeared on the big screen.

It kept moving forward. 85 percent.

"The AI is about to fix everything!" someone shouted excitedly.

Florin let out a sigh of relief, loosened his tie, and shot me a mocking look.

Mary, who had been nervous just moments ago, now proudly said to him, "Mr. Stretton, the AI has reduced the repair time for the three failure points from 40 minutes to just three minutes. That's a 92% improvement in efficiency."

Florin grinned.

Then he turned toward me, still standing by the door, and deliberately raised his voice. "Ms. Lyttle, this is the difference between you and AI."

I said nothing. The AI had only patched the problems on the surface. It was nothing more than a temporary fix. It wouldn't hold for long.

Just then, Florin's phone rang.

It was the special ringtone he had set for their biggest client, Martin Vassell.

The moment he answered, Martin roared before Florin could even speak.

"Florin, what the hell are you doing? Why is your system sending out alerts? How can your company be this incompetent?"

Florin glanced at the repair progress and replied, "Mr. Vassell, please don't worry. It'll be fixed in just a moment."

But Martin wasn't finished. "Florin, the Fourth of July Sale is almost here. If your system goes down at a time like this, I'll make sure your company pays for every bit of the damage!"

At that moment, another message appeared on the AI control panel. "Issue located and repaired. Current system efficiency is 30% higher than the previous version."

Seeing that, Florin calmly answered, "Mr. Vassell, rest assured. We were simply performing an emergency optimization. It's already finished. I guarantee you we won't have another major issue."

Martin was silent for a few seconds before speaking again. His voice was still filled with anger. "You'd better be careful, Florin. My business cannot stop during the Fourth of July Sale. If anything like this happens again, I won't let your company off the hook."

"No problem. You have my word."

After hanging up, Florin let out another long breath.

Then he looked at me with a smug smile.

"Ms. Lyttle, see? Whenever something went wrong before, you'd spend all night fixing it. The whole department had to camp in the server room eating instant noodles. It often took an entire day. Yet you kept acting like you were the company's savior and that we'd somehow wronged you."

He shrugged.

"The AI fixed everything in three minutes. From the first alert to the repair, it took less than ten minutes."

Mary stood up and added with a sneer, "Mr. Stretton is right. Ms. Lyttle is getting older, so it's only natural that she's slower. But AI is different. It's fast and efficient."

Just then, someone shouted. "Mr. Stretton! The AI says there's an exception that requires human confirmation. It says the logic is too complex and beyond the model's ability to understand..."

Florin frowned. "What? Mary, didn't you say the AI had completely mastered Ms. Lyttle's skills?"

Sweat formed on Mary's forehead. "It did learn everything, but some of Ms. Lyttle's code is built on logic that's too complicated. The AI can imitate it, but it doesn't understand why she wrote it that way..."

Florin cut her off with a wave of his hand. "Then have the AI force the repair. We'll deal with any problems later."

Mary hesitated for a second before pressing Enter.

A new message appeared on the screen. "Forced repair executed."

The log window soon became quiet again, and everyone in the engineering department breathed a sigh of relief.

Standing at the doorway, I finally relaxed too.

The AI's forced repair had just triggered the trap I buried.

Every order the system processed from now on would be treated as a free promotional giveaway.

The company's losses would be beyond imagination.

The countdown had officially begun.