Chapter 2 - Tremors
It started with a glitch.
Three days after Christmas, I sat in a dimly lit diner across from the motel, nursing a black coffee and watching the stock ticker on my screen. Julian had taken Vance Global public via a SPAC merger while I was supposedly rotting in a trench. He was flying high.
Until 10:00 AM.
I initiated Protocol Alpha. Across the country, every major client utilizing Vance Global's proprietary cybersecurity software experienced a micro-outage. It lasted exactly 4.2 seconds. Not enough to cause catastrophic damage, but just enough to trigger thousands of automated breach alerts.
I hacked into Julian’s office webcam using the master backdoor I had coded into the very foundation of the building's network. The feed popped up on my screen.
Julian was pacing frantically, his phone pressed to his ear, his cashmere sweater replaced by a bespoke suit that was rapidly sweating through. Elena was sitting on the leather sofa, filing her nails, trying to feign nonchalance.
"What do you mean, a system-wide handshake failure?" Julian yelled into the receiver. "That’s impossible! The core code is flawless."
"Julian, calm down," Elena said, rolling her eyes. "It’s a glitch. Have the engineers patch it."
Julian slammed his fist on his mahogany desk. "The engineers are locked out! Someone changed the admin credentials at the root level. The servers are demanding a decryption key we don't have."
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I smiled, taking a sip of my bitter coffee. The key was a rotating cryptographic sequence currently housed on a flash drive in my pocket. Julian was about to learn that stealing a man's life is easy, but stealing his genius is impossible. I sent an anonymous, untraceable email to the Vance Global Board of Directors: Your CEO is operating unlicensed tech. Investigate the patent ownership.
The tremors had started. The earthquake was coming.
