The room was silent, so everyone heard her.
Dahlia, who was still recovering from beng so startled, glanced behind her in surprise.
"Me?"
Wynona walked forward.
"You're a data analyst, aren't you?"
Dahlia nodded honestly but raised a finger to point at Maya.
"Well… so is she."
Wynona shrugged, the corners of her lips twitching, "True. But she's not the one who works for Archer Group as a data analyst and was even sent here as a representative."
Confirming he really hadn't heard wrong, Malachi furrowed his brows.
She was Dahlia Warren?
The information he had on her had an old grainy attached to it.
Furthermore, she had a bowl cut in it that covered most of her face. Her posture was poor, so he hadn't expected her to look any better now.
Still staring at Maya, Dahlia parted her lips, but Maya immediately assumed she was about to ask her to act and scoffed, turning her head to the side proudly.
"Dahlia, don't insist that I do this. I may have studied abroad and come out best in my class, but it's highly inappropriate that I do it."
Dahlia chuckled. "I wasn't going to."
Maya's face twisted, but she quickly salvaged the situation, saying, "Of course. We'd all expect nothing less from a data analyst who works for Archer Group."
Malachi leaned back.
Indeed. The board had made such a fuss over him firing her, so he really wanted to know what the big deal about her was.
"I'm losing millions as you speak! If you know how, hurry and salvage this situation!" Brianna's panicked voice suddenly came through.
Immediately, someone from the back brought a computer and placed it in front of the screen.
He connected it to one of the jumbotrons so everyone could see the code.
Dahlia stared at the screen for a moment before reaching out to scroll through it.
Behind her, Maya couldn't resist smiling when she saw the issue.
It was a small code malfunction, lodged inconspicuously. Whoever wrote the code had taken care not to mess it up, so this was clearly an issue from the people handling the computer backstage.
She glanced at Dahlia, smiled smugly, and crossed her legs.
"I can't fix this."
Brianna's hopeful eyes fell.
"Y-you can't fix it?"
Dahlia turned to her with a nod.
"I can't."
"If you can't fix it, then who can?"
"Wait, it's not that I can't fix it. It's that the code…" Dahlia tried to explain when a disdainful voice interrupted.
"Of course she can't fix the code, Miss Hemsworth." Maya, who had been sitting just a moment ago, came up from behind and shoved Dahlia.
Dahlia stumbled forward, gripping a nearby pillar to regain her balance.
Malachi frowned but said nothing.
Maya sat at the computer dramatically, massaging her knuckles before placing her fingers on the keyboard.
Brianna hovered over her worriedly. "Do you know what you're doing?"
"Miss Hemsworth, it's best not to break her concentration," Wynona clicked her tongue wistfully, stepping forward as well.
"My daughter may not look like much, but she graduated with flying colors from a nationally renowned computer university abroad."
"Oh? Then why didn't you say so?" Brianna hiccuped in surprise.
Immediately, the other guests began to hiss.
"Yes, you didn't have to let this person Archer Group sent try first."
"Because of her, Miss Hemsworth should have lost tens of millions by now."
"Not that I blame them. They must have realized there's a glitch somewhere and are trying to exploit the pricing."
"If this isn't rectified in the next five minutes, every bottle will be sold out, and this will be the biggest loss in the company's history."
Brianna swallowed, holding her breath.
This was really worse than she had imagined and to think it was mostly because she went with someone she assumed was the obvious choice.
Placing a hand on Maya's shoulder, she squeezed it gently and promised, "Please do your best. I'll reward you handsomely if you can salvage this situation."
Maya's lips curled into a smirk.
Of course.
She spent about two minutes writing nonsense code.
As she scrolled up, she copied the code she had just added and deleted it. It was so fast no one noticed.
Then she went to the error she had identified and removed it.
"There. This should do it," she exhaled and got out of the chair.
Brianna hesitated, "Are you sure?"
Wynona smiled proudly, beating Maya to it as she answered in her stead, "If my daughter says it will work, you genuinely have nothing to worry about."
Brianna was slightly skeptical, but seeing the confidence they both had that it'd work, coupled with the fact that she had no other choice, she gave the go-ahead to her staff.
One, two, three…
Nothing happened.
Everyone looked toward the jumbotron to see if the price had returned to normal.
A moment later, Brianna frowned, and the smug smile on Wynona's face fell.
Maya naturally grew apprehensive as Brianna began shouting, repeatedly running the code herself.
"It's not working! Why isn't it working? You said it would work!"
Maya blinked, hurriedly taking her seat in front of the computer again.
"I-I don't know. It's supposed to work."
The code wasn't wrong. So what was…
They were interrupted when a figure unhurriedly strode to the front and calmly pointed at a spot in the code.
"Here. The code went wrong from here. That's why I said I can't fix it."