The office building's server room smelled faintly of ozone and dust, that distinct blend of electronics running too hot for too long. Marcus was on the floor, sleeves rolled up, working cross-legged in front of a dismantled security node.
Two hours into the job, he'd already mapped their internal architecture. Good design on the surface, good enough to keep out most amateurs, but the longer he looked, the more seams he found. The locks were purely digital, no secondary mechanical failsafes. The camera feeds looped through a single relay point instead of redundantly routing. And the firewall? More show than substance.
From where he sat, he had control of the main access point. What he needed now was hardware. He made a single call to a supplier he trusted, a man who never asked questions and always delivered.
"I need a care package," Marcus said into the phone. "Type Seven encryptors, line filters, and a dual-stack intrusion countermeasure set. Also," he paused, thinking, "a dedicated air-gapped terminal, stripped OS, no ports except power and input."
No negotiation. No confirmation of payment. The man just said, "One hour."
The delivery arrived in forty-five minutes. A black duffel bag, no markings, dropped off by a courier who left without speaking. Marcus went through it piece by piece, checking for tampering, then got to work.
Half an hour later, his workspace looked like a controlled explosion, with open panels, trailing cables, and portable drives spread across the table.
The spoofing came first.
He set up a parallel network overlay, a "ghost" that mirrored the real system so perfectly that anyone monitoring would see exactly what they expected to see, no matter what he did underneath. It took precision: building dummy packets, matching the data timestamps to the millisecond, feeding the ghost system with just enough random noise to mimic human error.
Once the ghost was in place, Marcus moved into infiltration.
He exploited their badge authentication system, which used a slightly outdated RFID protocol. He cloned two dummy badges into the system, one for himself, one for "maintenance", both buried deep enough in the ID database that they wouldn't be flagged unless someone knew exactly what to look for.
From there, he broke in, virtually speaking, through their own internal diagnostics portal. The system had a hidden admin menu, likely left in for convenience during installation. It was still live, still accessible, and had no multi-factor authentication.
He slipped in, disabled the logging for a three-minute window, and went hunting.
Within that gap, Marcus pulled a full copy of their internal research drives and email archives, encrypting it twice before shoving it onto his air-gapped terminal. He didn't even read it now, too risky in the field, but it was his, ready for later.
When the window closed, the system was clean again.
Then came the patchwork.
He upgraded the firewall, replacing their generic intrusion detection with something far nastier, a reactive system that wouldn't just block an attacker but would trace and inject noise back into their connection, corrupting their own tools. He tightened badge security, split the relay points for the cameras, and seeded in "honeyfiles", decoys designed to lure in any would-be intruders while alerting Marcus the moment they were opened.
By the time he was done, their network was faster, tighter, and about twenty times harder to crack.
It was almost 2 a.m. when the quiet hum of the server room broke.
Footsteps. Two sets. Confident.
Marcus looked up as the door opened and a woman stepped in. Brown hair tied neatly back, black eyes that didn't blink more than necessary. She wore a fitted pantsuit, black with just enough cut to suggest movement wouldn't be a problem. On her head, a peaked cap. And her posture, hands clasped loosely in front, shoulders relaxed but ready, screamed "bodyguard" before she even spoke.
"Mr. Kane?" she asked.
Marcus nodded. "You'd be…?"
"Mercy Graves," she said. The name meant nothing to him, for now. "I'm here to check on your progress."
He was about to launch into a rundown when she raised a hand to stop him. Smooth, almost polite, but definitive.
From her pocket, she produced a small disc-shaped device and set it on the counter. It hummed faintly before projecting a floating hologram. The figure's face was blurred beyond recognition, and its voice was artificially deepened.
"Mr. Kane," it said. "Status update."
Marcus leaned back in his chair, glancing at Mercy before turning to the projection. "Security overhaul is seventy percent complete. Network speed increased by forty-two percent. Unauthorized access points eliminated. The previous system could be breached in ninety seconds; now it's over thirty minutes without inside knowledge."
He tapped a key, and on the far wall, a display came alive, side-by-side footage of simulated intrusion attempts, one using the old system, one using his upgraded version. In the old footage, the breach hit like a hammer through glass. In the new, the intruder's connection stuttered, then died, leaving them chasing corrupted data.
The hologram's voice made a low, approving sound. "Impressive. Would you consider a permanent arrangement with us?"
Marcus raised an eyebrow. "I don't work for anyone permanently. Problems with authority… and all that."
Mercy's expression shifted, just barely. A tightening around the eyes, a small narrowing that said she was filing that answer away.
The hologram voice hummed again, this time with a note of disappointment. "Perhaps another time, then."
"Perhaps," Marcus said, taking a long pull from a can of Red Bull on the desk.
Mercy reached over, turned off the device, and slid it back into her pocket. Without another word, she turned and left, her footsteps fading into the hum of the servers.
Marcus watched the door for a few seconds after it closed. Then he shook his head, muttering, "Cadmus," under his breath, remembering the faint print he'd seen on one of the tech badges earlier.
Bookmarked for later.
For now, there was still work to do.