THE LAST FILE · EPISODE 06

The Question Nobody Asked

No incident this time. Just a whiteboard, a fifteen-minute timer, and a new designer asking which files matter most.

9:30 AM. Monday.

Alex had spent the weekend thinking about Ethan's passwords.

Not because he thought Ethan would misuse them. Ethan had been one of the most careful people Alex had ever hired. That was exactly what bothered him. If even a careful, friendly exit left things behind, what else had Northstar left behind without noticing?

In the thirteen days since the wrong attachment, Priya had found client folders open to everyone, payroll on an unlocked screen, client files on a personal USB drive, and one login shared by the whole company. Each time, they'd fixed the thing in front of them. Each time, the next thing had been waiting.

So at the Monday meeting, instead of the usual project round-up, Alex wrote one question on the whiteboard and turned around.

If our most important files disappeared tomorrow, or reached the wrong person, what would we do?

Fourteen people looked at it. Nobody spoke.

Then Maya half raised her hand. "Sorry," she said. "Which files are the most important ones?"