The white Maybach ate up the SLEX asphalt, leaving the humid haze of Laguna for the clinical, neon glow of the Skyway. Inside, the air conditioning was so efficient it felt sterile. Chano sat in the back, a faded hoodie draped over white leather that cost more than his entire shop. He looked less like a tech wizard and more like a guy who'd been kidnapped on his way to buy groceries.
Marco broke the silence from the front seat. "I'm sorry, 'tol. I know you didn't want this, but we were drowning."
Chano stared out the window at the flickering city lights. "One job, Marco. I fix the mess, you drive me back to San Pedro. I've got a backlog of phone screens waiting."
"Clear," Bella said, her voice like iron. "Just stop the intruder. They've locked us out. If we're still dark when the markets open, Aragon Global is a memory."
They pulled up to the Aragon Tower in Makati—a glass-and-steel monolith that seemed to touch the clouds. The lobby was pure chaos. Engineers were sprinting with laptops, security was barking into radios, and the air smelled like ozone and panic.
As they hit the penthouse, a guy in a slim-fit suit named Dexter intercepted them. He was mopping sweat off his forehead with a silk pocket square. "Ma'am Bella! Thank God. We're trying the backup firewalls, but the encryption is—" He stopped, staring at Chano like he was a glitch in the system. "Who is this? Ma'am, we're in the middle of a Level 5 crisis. We can't have... hikers in the server room."
Bella didn't even slow down. "He's the guy who's going to fix the disaster your team started, Dexter."
"Him?" Dexter let out a sharp, nervous laugh. "Ma'am, we're being hit by elite black-hats. What's a provincial technician going to do? Is he going to solder the internet back together?"
Chano ignored him. He walked straight to the main console, eyes scanning the wall of monitors flashing "ACCESS DENIED" in angry crimson. He turned to a trembling intern nearby. "Kid. Coffee. Black. Two sugars. Don't stir it."
The intern didn't even wait for Bella to nod; he just bolted.
"Hey! Don't touch that!" Dexter snapped as Chano sat down. "You'll trigger the wipe-protocol! You'll delete the whole database!"
Chano finally looked at him. "Stanford, right?"
Dexter straightened his tie, looking offended. "Top of my class. Why?"
"Because if you actually paid attention, you'd see this isn't a black-hat hack," Chano said, plugging in his own mechanical keyboard. The keys had a heavy, metallic thwack that silenced the room. "This is a Siren-Protocol loop. Every time you try to reset, the extraction doubles. You've been hand-feeding them your data for the last three hours. Didn't they teach you basic logic, or were you too busy networking?"
The room went cold. Dexter's face turned the color of a ripe tomato. "That's... that's a theoretical exploit. Nobody actually uses that."
"Well, somebody is," Chano muttered.
The intern returned with the coffee. Chano took a sip—unmixed sugar hitting his tongue—and his eyes went sharp. His fingers began to dance. To the room, the screens became a blur of cascading green and white. To Chano, it was a knife fight in a dark alley.
"Ma'am, look!" someone yelled.
The red warnings flickered and died. One by one, the screens turned a calm, steady blue.
"He's... he's counter-tracing?" Dexter stammered. "You can't trace a VPN-ghost that fast!"
"You talk too much," Chano said, the blue light of the monitor reflecting in his pupils. "Marco, watch the door. We've got a 'cat' coming through the fence."
Marco didn't ask questions. He drew his suppressed Glock and moved to the service entrance. "Copy."
Suddenly, a hidden terminal window popped up. A grainy video feed flickered to life. It showed a dark room, banks of monitors, and a man in a mask. When the hacker realized his own camera had been turned against him, he froze.
Chano leaned into the mic. "Tell your boss... the Scorpion Group doesn't own this network anymore. The 'X' is back. And as of right now? Your offshore accounts belong to me."
He slammed the Enter key with a finality that felt like a gunshot.
The room went silent. The leak stopped. The company was back online. Chano stood up, grabbed his battered bag, and drained the rest of his coffee.
"Done. Take me back to Laguna."
"Wait!" Bella stepped forward, her composure finally breaking. "Stay. Name your price. A million a month, your own floor, whatever you want—"
"I told you, it's a one-time thing," Chano said, already walking toward the elevator. "I like the pares in San Pedro more than the AC in Makati. And Dexter..." He glanced at the stunned consultant. "Ask for a refund on that degree."
As the elevator doors were closing, Marco showed Chano his phone. His face was grim. " 'Tol, we have a problem. That video of Lance Dizon? It's sitting at ten million views. And someone just left a comment."
He showed the screen. A black scorpion logo.
[See you soon, Big Brother. - L]
Chano's jaw tightened. The air in the elevator suddenly felt a lot like the air in that dark room in Singapore five years ago. "L... So that animal is still breathing."
"They're in Manila, Chano," Marco whispered. "And they know exactly where you are."