FULL SYSTEM COMPROMISE IMMINENT - 30 SECONDS TO COMPLETE DATA EXFILTRATION
There’s only one option left, and it’s the digital equivalent of a scorched earth policy. I reach beneath my desk for a red button protected by a clear plastic cover—my emergency kill switch, designed for exactly this kind of worst-case scenario.
I flip the cover open and slam my palm down on the button without hesitation.
The effect is immediate and dramatic. One by one, the servers along the walls power down, their status lights blinking from green to amber to nothing at all. The cooling fans that have been whirring at different pitches slow and stop, like mechanical hearts giving up the ghost. The monitors flicker and go dark, taking the warning messages with them.
The room falls into an eerie silence broken only by my ragged breathing and the soft ping of cooling metal as the servers contract in the suddenly still air.
In that ensuing silence, one thought pulses through my mind with absolute clarity: Mina knows more than she’s telling me, and I’m going to find out what it is, one way or another.
I storm back to the Quiet Room with my Glock drawn and fury burning through my veins like liquid code—hot, precise, and dangerous. The attack on our systems wasn’t random. It was too coordinated, too perfectly timed. The coincidence stretches beyond statistical probability, and there’s only one variable in this equation that makes sense. The hacker sitting in our concrete box who claimed to have the keys to the cartel’s digital kingdom.
The locks yield to my fingers with mechanical obedience, each click echoing my mounting anger. I throw the door open, letting light blaze into the darkness. The sudden brightness illuminates her stunned expression, but I don’t so much as blink. I don’t want to miss a microsecond of her reaction.
Mina sits exactly where I left her, back against the far wall, knees drawn up to her chest. The harsh light catches the hollows beneath her cheekbones, the cracked surface of her lips. The glass of water I left is empty, but it wasn’t enough. Twenty-four hours without water has left visible marks, yet her eyes remain as sharp as shattered glass, reflecting a defiance that even dehydration can’t dull.
“Our network just got hit,” I say, the words clipped and cold as I level the gun at her chest. “Sophisticated attack. Bypassed security protocols that were specifically designed to be impenetrable.”
I watch her face for the telltale signs of guilt or satisfaction—a twitch at the corner of the mouth, a flicker of the eyelids, any of the hundred microexpressions that humans can’t control. Most people don’t realize how much their faces reveal in the milliseconds before conscious control kicks in.
Mina isn’t most people.
Her expression shifts in a way I can’t quite catalog—not guilt, not exactly satisfaction, but something more complex. Recognition, perhaps. Or the confirmation of a theory. It’s gone before I can properly analyze it, replaced by the same cool assessment she’s worn since I pulled her from the burning warehouse.
“Convenient timing,” I continue, taking a step closer, the Glock steady in my hand. “Almost like someone knew exactly when to strike. Almost like someone had inside information.”
She tilts her head slightly, a single strand of jet-black hair falling across her face. “If I had that kind of control over the cartel’s operations from in here,” she says, her voice raspy from thirst but steady, “do you really think I’d still be sitting in your concrete box?”
The logic isn’t flawless, but it’s solid enough to make me hesitate. She’s right—if she could communicate with the outsideworld, she’d have called for extraction, not a cyber-attack that would only increase my suspicion. Besides, there’s nothing in here but her and the clothes on her back, which I thoroughly searched before I left her in here.
“I can help you,” Mina says, breaking the silence. “I know their systems. I designed half of them. I can stop the attack, close the backdoors they’ve opened, make sure they never get in again.”
I narrow my eyes, suspicion a bitter taste at the back of my throat. “And why would you do that?”
“Because I want something in return.” Her eyes meet mine without flinching, intense enough that I can almost feel the heat of them across the small room. “My brother. I need your help to get him away from them.”
The word “brother” hits me like a sucker punch, unexpected and devastating. My grip on the Glock falters for just a moment, memories flooding in that I’ve spent years keeping compartmentalized—a basketball bouncing on asphalt, Tommy’s voice calling that he was going home, the empty years that followed filled with search parties and false leads and eventually nothing but silence.
“Your brother?” I repeat, hating how the question comes out softer than I intended.
Something in my tone must betray me because Mina’s eyes narrow slightly, reassessing me like I’m code with an unexpected function. “Yes. My brother. He’s why I work for them. He’s sick—has been since he was a kid. Needs constant medical care. As long as I do what they want, they pay for his treatments. They own me.”
The words are simple, matter-of-fact, stripped of emotional manipulation. That makes them more believable than any tearful plea could ever be. Still, I’ve been in this game long enough to know that the most effective lies are the ones thattarget your specific vulnerabilities. What if she knows about Tommy?
“And I’m supposed to just believe that?” I keep my voice flat, professional, even as something in my chest twists uncomfortably.
Mina shrugs, a small movement that seems to cost her more effort than it should. “Believe what you want. But your network is currently being stripped bare.”
“I pulled the plug.”
“But you can’t turn it back on until you fix this. You’re defenseless. Every second we waste in here is another second you don’t have eyes around the perimeter of this compound. They can strike and you’ll never see them coming. You need me. I need you. Seems like a simple equation to me.”
My mind races through possibilities like a processor evaluating conditional branches. She could be lying. This could be an elaborate scheme to gain access to our remaining secure systems. But if she’s telling the truth, she represents our best chance at securing our systems.
And if her brother really is being held as leverage…
I make my decision, lowering the gun slightly but keeping it visible. “If—and that’s a big if—you can stop their attack when I turn shit back on, I’ll consider helping you. But if you’re playing me, if this is some kind of trap, you won’t live long enough to regret it.”
