Part 4 — They Fired Me from the Company, but Ten Minutes Later Every Screen Turned Red and the Director’s Smile Froze on His Face

At that very moment Mauricio’s phone rang.

He looked at the screen and answered the call.

“Mauricio Salgado?” a man’s stern voice asked. “Please remain at the site. Investigators will be with you in a few minutes.”

“This is a misunderstanding,” Mauricio said.

“The orders issued from your account have already been forwarded to the prosecutor’s office.”

“I am the head of the company.”

“Not from this moment on.”

The call ended.

Mauricio put the phone on the table, but his hand was shaking so much that the device slid twice across the wooden surface.

Sebastián stood by the wall and said nothing. Verónica went to the window. Outside, the flashing lights of ambulances were reflected on the building’s glass.

And I was looking at the diagram of Station Seventeen.

“Laura,” Alejandro told me, “if you do not get to the station now, the pressure will rise further.”

“I know.”

“Mauricio said he would block your way.”

“Mauricio can no longer control his own words.”

Just then the hidden speaker in the operations center switched on. The technician who was standing there accidentally turned on the recording discovered by the police.

Mauricio’s voice sounded in the room.

“Fire Laura by Friday. If she gets to the audit, everyone will have to see that the system is not ready yet. I do not care what she says about safety. Remove the manual-control panel and delete her access too. If anything happens, we will assign responsibility to her.”

Sebastián’s voice could be heard in the recording.

“What if the system collapses?”

Mauricio answered him:

“Then we will say that Laura damaged everything before leaving.”

Silence fell over the room.

Mauricio heard his own voice and for the first time said nothing. His face went pale. His fingers still lay on the table, as if he wanted to take those words back, but everyone had already heard the recording.

“It was a private conversation,” he barely said.

Alejandro shook his head.

“It was a conversation about the deliberate violation of the company’s safety.”

“You are my father’s lawyer.”

“I am the executor of his will. And today I will have to act against you for the first time.”

Mauricio looked toward me.

“Laura, do not do this. You know I did not want anyone to be hurt.”

“I know that too.”

“Then help me.”

“I will help save the system. But I can no longer hide the consequences from you.”

I said these words to him for the first time without feeling fear.

I went to the station in an emergency vehicle. The sky was already growing dark, and the wind was swirling dust over the pipelines. The iron doors of Station Seventeen were half open when I arrived.

Inside, a young operator named Daniel was standing at the panel.

“I blocked all the automatic commands, but we could not find the manual control.”

I took the copper key out of my pocket.

I saw an old red mark on the wall. Under it was a narrow lock covered with paint.

I inserted the key.

The mechanism woke with a heavy sound.

Part of the wall moved aside and an old control console appeared. Don Ernesto’s initials could be seen beneath the dust.

“It was here?” Daniel asked.

“It was waiting for me for eighteen years.”

I entered the sequence of the valves manually. The system thought for a long time after every command. Once the green light went out and I thought everything was over.

“Laura, the pressure is rising again,” Daniel said.

“Close the release valve on the third line.”

“If you are wrong, the entire station will stop.”

“If we do not close it, it may explode.”

He carried out the command.

First one pipe dropped. Then another. Finally, the main reading slowly came down into the green zone.

The alarm stopped.

Daniel closed his eyes.

“We survived.”

I leaned against the console with both hands. My knees were shaking, but this time not from fear. Eighteen years of tension suddenly left me.

In Monterrey, the police led Mauricio and Sebastián out of the building separately. Verónica handed all the files to the investigators. Then the board of directors entrusted temporary management of the company to Alejandro and the technical team.

Mauricio called his lawyer.

“Pay from my father’s estate,” he ordered him.

The lawyer answered:

“I can no longer represent you. My client is now the company, while you are accused of actions against it.”

“Have you all abandoned me?”

“No. You dismissed all of you.”

That night I returned home late. I took the old photograph out of my bag. In the photograph, Don Ernesto and I stood in front of the first control center. My hair was tousled by the wind, while he held exactly that small copper key in his hand.

I put the key on the table.

The next morning I entered my office. The door was open. Everything had been taken: the monitors, the files, even the coffee cup. Only four small photograph fasteners remained on the empty wall.

Mauricio’s place was empty.

But for the first time I did not feel that emptiness as a loss.

Three weeks later, the company completed an independent audit. It turned out that Sebastián’s program bypassed the necessary safety checks, while Mauricio knew this. He was charged with deliberately concealing responsibility and violating safety rules.

I did not attend every hearing in court.

It was not necessary to watch every consequence.

It was enough to know that the truth was already speaking without me.

Two months later I started a new job in a small engineering company in the northern part of the city. There, the walls were still plain, the employees addressed one another by name, and the chief engineer personally checked the valve reports every morning.

A small pot of rosemary stood on my desk. At noon I opened the window, and the smell of warm bread from the neighboring bakery came in.

My son Niko often waited for me after work. One evening he drew a car, a tall pipe, and a little woman holding a key in her hand on a sheet of paper.

“Is this you?” I asked.

“Yes. You help everyone, but now you come home on time.”

I laughed.

“That is the most difficult assignment.”

“And do you complete it?”

“I am trying.”

In November the first snow came. It appeared rarely in Monterrey, so Niko stood by the window and counted every snowflake. I made tea in the kitchen and at the same time received a message from an unknown number.

It was Mauricio.

“Father did not leave this company to you. If you change your statement, I will give you everything back. Money, position, your own office. Just say that the recording was misunderstood.”

A second message came a few minutes later.

“Laura, we built all of this together.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I sent only one reply:

“No, Mauricio. You only stood in the place where your father built a house.”

No third message came.

I turned off the phone.

Niko came to me and handed me a sheet of paper. In the new drawing there was a house, and in front of it a small red door.

“This is our new house,” he told me.

“Why a red door?”

“So that everyone outside knows that it is possible to enter here.”

That night I put the copper key on the windowsill. The red enamel glittered in the white light of the snow. For eighteen years it had been only the key to an old lock for me.

Now I knew that sometimes a door opens when all your life they have been proving to you that you no longer have the right to reach it.

Niko clasped my hand.

“Mom, will you go to work again tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“And if someone tells you that they do not need you anymore?”

Snow was falling silently against the window.

I took the key in my hand.

“Then I will come home.”

This time I locked the door myself.