Maya was already in her pajamas, a cup of chamomile tea growing cold beside her. She sighed, not at the CEO, but at the absurdity of the situation. The sticky note was gone. Probably recycled.

She watched as the recovery screen on his laptop dissolved, and the familiar Windows login appeared. The crisis was over in less than two minutes.

She opened PowerShell. Not the blue-and-white console that amateurs fear, but the dark, powerful command line that felt like a wizard’s staff. She knew that BitLocker recovery keys, if managed properly, were not lost—they were simply hidden in the beating heart of the company’s Active Directory.