Maya Chen's fingers danced across the mechanical keyboard in the oppressive silence of her Oakland studio.
2:47 a.m.
On the main screen, lines of code streamed like green waterfalls, casting an eerie glow across her sharp features. Her black hair, streaked with violet strands, fell in a curtain over her tired eyes.
Around her, three more monitors flickered, displaying streams of data and encryption algorithms that she was methodically dismantling.
"Come on," she murmured, biting her pierced lip. "Show me your secrets, CrossVault."
The company logo—a stylized vault surrounded by circuitry—taunted Maya from the top right corner of the screen.
CrossVault Technologies. Damien Cross's tech empire. Four billion dollars in annual revenue. The cybersecurity giant that claimed to protect the digital world… but might have blood on its hands.
Maya closed her eyes for a moment, pushing back the wave of pain threatening to overtake her.
"For you, bro," she whispered, reopening them.
Her gaze landed on a photo taped to the side of her main screen: her and her brother, three years ago, at his MIT graduation. He was smiling, so proud of her—unaware he only had a few months left to live.
Officially, Thomas Chen died in a car accident. But Maya knew the truth. The sabotaged brakes. The encrypted message he'd sent her just hours before his death:
["Phoenix, they're watching me. If anything happens, look into Cross."]
Phoenix. Her hacker handle since her teenage years. The one she used in underground forums, cyber challenges, infiltration missions for San Francisco's Anonymous circles. Tommy was the only one who knew her dual identity. The only one who understood why a model Stanford student would become a digital vigilante by night.
A soft beep snapped her back to the present. Her intrusion program had just broken through CrossVault's first security layer. Maya smirked.
"Too easy," she muttered, cracking her knuckles.
But she knew it was bait. CrossVault wasn't just any company. Damien Cross had built his fortune on the post-cyberterrorism era's paranoia. His systems were legendary. Unbreakable. The few hackers who had tried had ended up in prison… or worse.
Maya launched another attack sequence, her fingers flying across the keys with supernatural agility. Line by line, she tore through the digital defenses.
Her stomach growled loudly. She hadn't eaten since her afternoon shift at the café where she served overpriced lattes to hipsters to cover rent.
The irony: by day, she served coffee to CrossVault employees. By night, she tried to bring down their boss.
A new window opened on the screen. A complex, organized file system.
Maya's pulse quickened. She was in. Really in.
"What are you hiding, Mr. Billionaire?" she murmured as she navigated the directory.
Financial records, government contracts, patents… Nothing unusual for a company of that size. But Maya was after something specific. A project, a transaction, a name that would lead her to her brother's killers.
She opened a folder labeled [Special Projects – Alpha Classification]. At the top of the list, one codename hit her like a punch to the gut: [Project Phoenix]
"No way."
How could CrossVault have a project named after her hacker alias? Coincidence? Or did someone know who she really was?
Maya clicked on the file, hands trembling.
Access denied.
She launched her best decryption tools, but the algorithms fought back. Whoever had designed that security was a genius. A genius who outmatched her.
That's when she noticed it. A nearly invisible subfolder, hidden in the metadata: [T.Chen_Memorial]
Maya's heart stopped.
Tommy. They had a file on Tommy.
Her hands now shaking over the keyboard, she forced her way in, using every backdoor, every advanced technique she had. But the moment she thought she'd cracked it, the screen went black.
"Shit!"
Then, slowly, blood-red letters appeared against the black screen:
[HELLO, PHOENIX. I'VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU.]
Maya instinctively recoiled from the screen. Her heart was pounding.
The message continued:
[TOMMY TOLD ME ABOUT YOU.
MEET ME TOMORROW, 2PM, RITUAL COFFEE ON VALENCIA STREET.
COME ALONE. – D.C.]
D.C.
Damien Cross.
The name came instantly.
Maya stared at the screen, her breath short and shallow.
With a sharp motion, she shut everything down, plunging the studio into darkness. Outside, San Francisco glittered under a thousand lights.
Maya collapsed into her worn gaming chair, face in her hands.
"Tommy, what kind of mess did you leave your sister in?"