For the first time since I’ve met her, something like hope flickers across Mina’s face. It’s gone almost instantly, but it was there—genuine enough that I find myself wanting to believe her story despite every instinct warning me against it.
“Come with me,” I say, gesturing toward the door with my free hand. “And don’t try anything stupid.”
She rises slowly, unfolding from her seated position with the careful movements of someone whose muscles havestiffened from immobility. When she’s upright, I notice again how petite she is, the top of her head barely reaching my shoulder. It’s easy to forget the physical reality of her when faced with the sharp intelligence in those green eyes.
I press the gun against her back as she walks ahead of me, close enough that she can feel the pressure but not so hard that it would bruise.
“Try anything,” I warn, “and I won’t hesitate.”
We move through the clubhouse yard, the air hot against my skin. Mina takes slow, deep breaths as we walk, savoring her first taste of freedom after confinement. I guide her through the back entrance of the main building, keeping her away from common areas where other club members might see her.
The hallway leading to my office is deserted. When we reach the door, I pause, suddenly aware of how vulnerable I’m making myself by bringing her into my technological sanctuary. If this is a trap, I’m walking right into it. But the alternative is watching our entire digital infrastructure crumble, and that’s not an option I can accept.
I push the door open, revealing my office transformed by the emergency shutdown. The usual blue glow of monitors has been replaced by the blood-red pulse of backup systems, casting everything in a crimson light that makes the familiar space feel alien and threatening. The servers stand like silent sentinels along the walls. Their status lights are dark for the first time since I built them.
Mina steps inside, her silhouette sharp against the red glow, and for a moment, she looks less like a prisoner and more like what she truly is—a digital weapon about to be unleashed.
Whether that weapon is pointed at our enemies or at our heart remains to be seen.
Chapter 6: Mina
The office swims into focus around me. Emergency lights paint everything the color of fresh blood. Six monitors line the desk before me, each black and lifeless. My vision blurs at the edges, my body a hollowed-out shell after hours, or maybe days, without proper food or water. I still don’t know how long I was unconscious, but my mind remains razor-sharp, cataloging every detail of Fang’s technological sanctuary as I step inside.
The room smells of electronics—that distinct scent of warm plastic and solder that always feels like home to people like me. Cables snake across the floor in organized chaos, connecting towers of custom-built hardware that would make most tech companies drool with envy. This is a hacker’s paradise, built by someone who understands both power and paranoia.
I stride toward the workstation with purpose despite the weakness in my knees. Each step requires concentration, my body fighting the effects of dehydration and hunger that gnaw at my insides like feral animals. The concrete floor seems to tilt beneath my feet, but I refuse to stumble. I won’t give Fang the satisfaction of seeing me falter.
“Wait.” Fang pulls open a mini fridge tucked next to the desk. He pulls out an electrolyte drink and thrusts it at me.“Here.”
Grateful for the drink, I grab it. I suck it down, nearly choking on it in the process. I reach for a chair and grip its leather back, steadying myself.
“Everything’s shut down,” he says behind me, his voice tight with controlled anger. “Emergency protocols. I had to kill the power to stop the data exfiltration.”
“Smart move,” I admit, “but we need to turn the computers back on to assess the damage.” Without waiting for permission, I drop into the seat, my fingers already reaching for the keyboard. “Boot sequence?”
A pause, heavy with suspicion, then: “Alt-F7, then the master password.”
I glance over my shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “Which you’re not going to give me.”
His face remains impassive behind those thick-rimmed glasses, but I catch the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Move.”
I slide over as he reaches around me, his body uncomfortably close as he types a complex string of characters, shielding the keyboard with his massive forearm. The scent of him—clean sweat, coffee, and something faintly metallic—envelops me for a moment before he straightens and steps back, the Glock still visible in his cut.
The monitors flicker to life one by one, status reports flooding the screens in cascading windows of text. I scan them quickly, my fingers already moving across the keyboard in a familiar dance. The cartel’s digital fingerprints are all over these systems—I’d recognize their work anywhere, considering I designed half their attack protocols.
“They’ve breached your primary firewall and established multiple backdoors,” I mutter, opening terminal windows and launching diagnostic programs. “Classic distributed attackpattern—hit from multiple vectors simultaneously, overwhelm the defenses, then slip in through the chaos.”
Fang moves to stand beside me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body but far enough that he can monitor everything I type. “How bad?”
My fingers never pause as I answer, “Bad. They’ve got hooks in your database servers, your authentication systems, your communications protocols.” I isolate a particularly nasty piece of code and display it on the center monitor. “See this? It’s a dormant wiper. Once activated, it would have deleted everything—backups included.”
I feel rather than see his posture stiffen. “Can you remove it?”
“I’m already on it.” My hands fly across the keyboard, lines of code scrolling past faster than most people could read. My body may be failing me, but my mind is in its element, processing information and executing commands with machine-like efficiency. This is where I live—in the space between intention and execution, where thought becomes electric impulse becomes action.
Sweat beads on my forehead despite the cool air. My fingers tremble slightly, not from fear, but from the physical toll of sustained concentration. I blink away the blurriness that threatens my vision, forcing myself to focus.
“They’re using a modified Trojan I helped design,” I say tersely, a bitter smile twisting my lips. “Ironic that I’m now fighting my own code.” The admission costs me nothing—it’s obvious enough from how quickly I’m navigating through the attack infrastructure.
