Ethan suggested a test. They would offer Victor a “latest build” in a controlled environment and watch what his team did. Mara agreed, and she prepared a decoy package that looked real but carried harmless traps—errors that only appeared outside approved pathways.
At the next meeting, Victor’s advisor tried to run the build on his own laptop, away from their network. The software immediately failed with a clean restriction message. Victor’s smile tightened. He called it “a glitch,” but his irritation looked too sharp.