The only sound in Noah's small apartment was the hum of his computer. The blinds were drawn tight, and his desk was a chaotic mess of empty coffee cups and scattered printouts. The glow from multiple screens cast shifting shades of blue across his face.
He had been at it for hours. Each layer of WrenTech's network peeled away like armor, revealing glimpses of something deeper—something he wasn't supposed to see.
Lines of code flickered across his monitors as he muttered to himself, "Come on… just one more firewall."
The cursor blinked, and then the file popped up:
VERDAN PROJECT – PHASE ONE
His heart raced. He clicked.
What he found wasn't text—it was video. Grainy footage from a decade ago, timestamped and encrypted. The title bar read: Subject: Dr. Leonard Verdan — Confidential Debrief
Brittany's father.
Noah leaned in closer as the clip began to load. The screen displayed a man sitting at a metal table, harsh white light illuminating his face, a slight tremor in his hands. His voice was low but filled with urgency.
"They don't know what they've created. If this gets out… people will die."
The feed stuttered and then cut to static.
Noah's heart raced. "What the hell…?"
He scrambled to recover the missing segment, fingers flying over the keyboard, when a new alert flashed on his secondary monitor:
UNAUTHORIZED TRACE DETECTED. COUNTER-HACK INITIATED.
Noah froze. Someone had found him.
"Damn it!" He yanked his hard drive from the port, but another message appeared just before the system crashed:
TRACE ORIGIN: WRENTECH INTERNAL SECURITY.
His blood ran cold. They were already inside his machine.
The lights flickered. His screen blinked once, twice, then went dark.
He lunged for his backpack, stuffing in the detached hard drive, his laptop, and the portable router he'd been using to mask his location.
The power cut out completely—the fan dying mid-spin. Outside, a car engine idled in the alley below his window.
He didn't stick around to find out who it was.
Noah grabbed his phone and keys, slipped down the back staircase, and vanished into the night.
By the time he got to the metro station, his hands were trembling so much that he could barely text, but he pushed himself to make his fingers move anyway.
To Brittany: "They're onto me. Don't reach out until I give the word. Get rid of my old messages."
He wiped his chat history clean, smashed his SIM card beneath his shoe, and blended into the crowd
Meanwhile, across town in his penthouse office, Damien Wren stood in front of his security console, his eyes narrowed at the flashing alerts.
"Unauthorized access attempt traced to a residential IP," his chief of cybersecurity reported through the speaker. "The intruder was clever — almost bypassed our third-layer encryption."
Damien's voice remained steady, but his jaw clenched. "Did you track them down?"
"They severed the connection. Whoever it was, they knew what they were doing."
He focused on the monitor displaying the alert history, his gaze lingering on a single word:
VERDAN.
A muscle twitched in his cheek. "Erase the digital footprint. Do it quietly."
"Yes, sir."
When the man walked away, Damien shifted his gaze toward the city skyline.
Three weeks.
Three weeks spent observing her.
Every time he pushed, she stood her ground.
Every time he challenged her, she came through — without a hitch.
But now, a hacker was snooping around in his archives.
And the timing felt way too perfect to be just a coincidence.
And there was only one person in his company who had a motive to seek it out.
At that very moment, Brittany was leaving the building, her fatigue catching up with her. Her phone buzzed in her bag — and the message popped up for just a moment before disappearing. A knot formed in her stomach.
She read the last line twice. They're onto me.
Her heart skipped a beat.
She tried again. Nothing.
Brittany stood frozen on the curb, the city lights blurring through the mist. Something was definitely wrong.
And little did she know — from the office window above, Damien Wren was already watching her walk away.
Who are you, Brittany Taylor… and what secrets are you keeping from me?