The city lights flickered in the rain outside.

He led me to the kitchen and made me sit on a leather barstool.

He grabbed a first aid kit from a cabinet under the sink.

He knelt in front of me, gently wiping the soot from my face with a damp cloth.

“You’re safe now,” he whispered, his eyes locked onto mine.

I held the hard drive out to him.

“We need to connect this to your terminal,” I said.

He took the drive and walked over to his mahogany desk in the corner.

He plugged the drive into his secure laptop and typed in his administrator password.

The screen illuminated his face in a blue glow.

“The files are encrypted,” he said, frowning at the screen.

“The decryption key is the formula code for the original product,” I said, walking over.

I leaned over his shoulder and typed the sequence into the keyboard.

The progress bar loaded quickly, and a list of internal server logs appeared.

We both leaned closer to the screen.

The logs showed the exact date and time the chemical binders were altered.