Data Purgatory

For the thousandth time, Lukas Graham regretted replacing his traditional password with iris recognition.

At the moment he was locked in the 63rd floor president's office, where a blood-colored evening sun floated beyond the bulletproof glass façade. The air-conditioning vents smell like the rotting scent of iris, and his smart desk automatically plays Chopin's Funeral March, the BGM he used to bankrupt his competitors last week.

"Sir, there's an unusual fluctuation in the core data chain." The AI secretary in the holographic projection suddenly distorted into a mosaic. Lucas grabbed a glass of whiskey and smashed it against the screen, the amber-colored liquor splashed on the merger and acquisition contracts, and the ink floated in fluorescent patterns when it met the alcohol.

Financial reports that should have been shredded were being reborn. He frantically wiped them with his cuffs, but the numbers became clearer and clearer -- the twelve biotech companies that Graham Group had acquired all had the same string of code in their lab records: V-ERONICA-α.

"Activate emergency protocols!" Lucas ripped off his Armani shirt and lunged for the safe. The retinal scanner, however, burst into electrical sparks as he got close, and amidst the smell of charring, the iris recognition system suddenly reported an error, "Permission has been transferred to Ms. Stone."

Monet's Water Lilies on the wall flipped over on itself, revealing a hidden electronic screen. Scarlet irises bloomed hideously on the blue screen, and the petal veins were actually a breakdown of the amount of their tax evasion. Lucas finally catches on when the mechanical female voice reads "Dear Mr. Fiancé" -- it's Emma mimicking Leah's intonation with a vocal synthesizer.

"You think you can win by fudging a few numbers?" He grinned and ripped off his smartwatch, but the dial pieces suddenly levitated to form a QR code. After the phone automatically scanned the code, a hologram of the Graham family cemetery surfaced in a glass of whiskey, and the latest headstone was inscribed, "Lukas Graham, Died on the Night of the Playing with Fire."

The air conditioner temperature plummets to zero. The white mist Lucas exhaled condensed into ice flowers on the glass walls, miniature cameras embedded in each petal. He suddenly realized that this smart office, built at a cost of ten million dollars, had long since turned into Emma's revenge theme park.

"Retrieve the last thirty days of surveillance records!" He hissed at the voice control system. Instead, all the screens synchronized to show restricted images: the iris tattoo on the back of Leah's neck was transmitting bio-data to the cloud as she tangled with him in the hatch of a private jet.

Cold sweat ran down his spine and into the waist of his suit pants. Lucas finally remembered that Leah had suddenly become obsessed with ultraviolet tanning last month -- it turned out to activate the fluorescent tracker under her skin. He rushed to the safe to retrieve the encrypted flash drive, only to find the titanium door laser-etched with a pattern of a bridal veil and the combination lock displaying a countdown: 23:59:59.

Lucas laughed through the smoke and burst into tears as the first flames burst from the bottom of the leather sofa. What a familiar recipe; Emma even had a symmetrical aesthetic when it came to arson. He took off his high-fashion suit to fight the flames, but his cufflinks suddenly burst into lasers and burned a perfectly round hole in the ceiling.

"SURPRISE." The sound of an object sliding down the ventilation ducts. Lucas looked up to see twenty clones smiling up at him -- clones that had been bred from hair that had fallen out of his gym and were now wearing the same Armani suits and holding data-perfect merger and acquisition proposals.

The fire alarm bell suddenly went silent. The clones spoke in unison, their voices like AI-tuned choirs: "Thank you for your contribution to human genetic diversity." The employee tags on their chests floated with fluorescent codes, the very same bitcoin keys that had been stolen from the Swiss bank.

Lucas touched the secret door switch in the throbbing fire shadow. It was the passageway to the secret lab, which at the moment was oozing an eerie blue light. As he kicked open the metal door, the sight inside the cryo-pod sent an eight-magnitude earthquake through his pupils -- three hundred clones of Emma were thawing out, the iris tattoos on their left arms linking into glowing data streams that went straight to the core systems of the New York Stock Exchange.

"Like my new staff?" Emma's voice suddenly sounded over the lab radio. All the clones opened their eyes in sync, their irises flashing with the Graham Group's deadly vulnerability. Lucas frantically clicked on the self-destruct program on his phone, only to find that control had long since been transferred to the "Veronica Gallery" official website.

A helicopter roars from outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. As Lucas smashes through the glass wall to call for help, he realizes that the incoming helicopter is spray-painted with blood-colored irises. Leah's double was peeking out of the hatch, holding not a lifeline but an enlarged version of the engagement ring he'd given Emma -- a miniature nuclear reactor embedded in an eight-carat blue diamond.

"You always said love was a merger." The stand-in Leah's voice mingled with electromagnetic clutter, "Now please sign for this parlay." She pressed the cutter on the ring, and the blue diamonds fell in a trajectory that burned sulfurous tail smoke in the twilight.

Lucas sees the truth in the last 0.03 seconds before the explosion: the entire financial building's intelligence systems were implanted with Emma's synaptic algorithms five years earlier. Those AI secretaries, iris recognition, and holographic projection that he was so proud of were just the most basic NPCs in the revenge game.

When the 63rd floor turned into a sky of blue fire, all the screens of the New York Stock Exchange jumped at the same time. The Veronica Gallery is live-streaming an auction with a grand finale titled Data Purgatory - Lucas's neurography of the brain in dynamic relief, with the amount of money stolen from a Swiss bank flashing at every synapse.

Emma's clones salute the camera with champagne. Behind them, three hundred Lucas clones are signing confessions that a handwriting expert will confirm in three hours: the signatures are an exact match to the financial forgery documents from twenty years ago.

As the fire trucks roared in, ash began to fall from the sky. Some recognized the ashes as carrying the scent of iris, like samples left over from the fire five years ago. The real Emma, on the other hand, was currently sitting on Leah's wedding bed, injecting her unconscious double with a final memory chip.

"Time to exchange brides." She applied lipstick to the security camera. The entire burning financial city was reflected in the mirror, and the souls screaming in data purgatory were providing the perfect nourishment for the Scarlet Iris.