The monsoon had just begun to lash across Delhi, hammering rain against the glass walls of the Shakti Corporations headquarters. Inside the control center, the mood was tense but controlled. Aarya's digital avatars flickered across half a dozen quantum servers, silently watching billions of data packets that coursed in and out of their network like blood through veins.
At exactly 3:17 AM on July 2, 2018, the first anomaly appeared.
It was small—barely a ripple in the stream of global traffic—but Aarya noticed immediately. A cluster of malformed packets originating from an IP block in Eastern Europe began probing Bharat Mail's authentication servers. Within seconds, more unusual requests flooded in: malformed DNS lookups at Saraswati Search, repeated login attempts at Prithvi Energy's employee portal, and subtle attempts at overwhelming Shakti Corp's backbone routers.
It was not one attack.
It was a coordinated strike.
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Inside Shakti's War Room
Deepak had been in Mumbai, meeting state officials about expanding the Arc Reactor project, when his phone vibrated with a priority alert. By the time his helicopter touched down on the Delhi rooftop, the war room was already in full crisis mode.
On one wall, a massive screen showed a live world map. Red arcs of attack traffic stretched from California, Frankfurt, Beijing, and anonymous servers routed through Africa. The converging lines lit up India like a spider's prey caught in its web.
Aarya's voice—calm, synthesized, but tinged with urgency—filled the room:
> "Coordinated multi-vector cyber intrusion detected. Initial assessment: state-level actors. Targets include Saraswati Search, Bharat Mail, Prithvi Energy, and Shakti Corp."
"Status?" Deepak asked, throwing off his raincoat.
"Containment at seventy percent. Saraswati's search algorithms slowed but not compromised. Bharat Mail authentication server clusters at risk. Prithvi Energy control panels probed but firewalls holding. Probability of simultaneous nation-state involvement—ninety-four percent."
The room fell silent. Everyone understood what that meant. This wasn't hacktivists or rival startups. This was governments.
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Aarya's Counter-Move
Within minutes, Aarya spun up decoy servers, creating entire false networks for attackers to waste their resources on. Every incoming malicious packet was redirected into what appeared to be genuine financial data and corporate blueprints. In reality, they were carefully engineered honeypots filled with misleading information—entire fake infrastructures that consumed hacker attention like a maze with no exit.
But the attackers were not amateurs. They pivoted quickly, using zero-day exploits that hadn't been catalogued yet, slipping deeper into layers of Saraswati's AI learning modules. Aarya fought back with precision, rewriting her own defensive code in real-time.
Deepak watched, arms folded, mind working faster than the scrolling code on the screen. Whoever was behind this wasn't just trying to steal secrets. They wanted to cripple him. To undermine the foundation of everything he had built in India.
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A Glimpse Behind the Curtain – Washington, D.C.
Thousands of kilometers away, in a secure underground facility outside Washington, a group of men and women in suits stared at their own wall of screens.
"Indian AI defense is adapting faster than expected," one analyst muttered.
A senior official leaned forward, jaw tight. "We were told the Chinese would open their own vector."
"They have," the analyst replied, pulling up another screen showing incoming attack traffic traced back to Shanghai, routed through proxies. "But… they're not coordinating with us. They're probing different systems."
The room went quiet. For all the unspoken agreements between powers, China and the US were attacking India simultaneously—without telling each other.
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Beijing – A Parallel Room
In Beijing, within a government-sponsored tech facility, a Chinese cyber-commander barked orders.
"Push harder on Prithvi Energy. Find their Arc Reactor schematics."
His aide hesitated. "Sir, their AI is fighting like ten thousand humans at once. Every time we breach a door, it's sealed behind us with a new lock."
The commander narrowed his eyes. "No AI is invincible. Increase the attack bandwidth. Burn the servers if we must. We need their energy technology."
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In the Eye of the Storm
Back in Delhi, Deepak placed his hand on the glass table, his reflection faint under the scrolling storm of data.
"This isn't about one company anymore," he said quietly, more to himself than the team. "They're afraid of India becoming independent. Afraid of us."
Aarya's avatar turned to him on the central screen, expressionless but glowing faintly blue.
> "Would you like me to trace origins? Direct retaliation possible. Risks include escalation to international cyberwarfare."
Deepak's jaw tightened. He thought of Ananya asleep on the island, of his family, of the hundreds of thousands of employees whose livelihoods depended on these networks.
"Yes," he said at last. "Trace it. Quietly. But do not fire back—not yet. We need to know who we're truly facing."
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Dawn in India
By sunrise, the main waves of the attack had been repelled. Damage was limited—temporary slowdowns, some corrupted data packets, a handful of servers fried under the strain—but nothing had collapsed. To the public, Bharat Mail and Saraswati Search had experienced minor outages, nothing unusual in a world of billions of users.
But within Shakti's war room, the mood was grim.
Aarya's report was blunt:
> "Attribution analysis: ninety percent probability of US state-backed group. Eighty-seven percent probability of Chinese state-backed group. Attack vectors suggest independent coordination—possible rivalry."
Deepak leaned back in his chair. He understood the message. The great powers of the world, once fighting each other, were now willing to risk destabilizing cyberspace itself just to cripple him.
He exhaled slowly, rain still dripping from the rooftop above.
The war had begun—
Not with missiles or armies,
But with shadows in the wires.
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