The afternoon sun beat down hard on the sidewalks, turning the asphalt into a blistering mirror. Maya walked fast, hood up, eyes scanning every corner, every reflection in the shop windows. The two men she'd left unconscious in the alley wouldn't be the last to come after her. If Damien Cross was telling the truth, Nexus Corp — and maybe Cross himself — had eyes everywhere. San Francisco, with its connected cameras and surveillance drones, was a digital spiderweb, and she refused to be the fly.
She turned down a side street where a flea market sprawled under faded awnings. Tables sagged beneath piles of worn clothes, old vinyl records, and obsolete electronics. The air smelled of fried food and patchouli.
Maya stopped at a stall run by an old man with thick glasses, selling burner phones and barely legal gadgets. She dug into her pocket, pulled out a few crumpled bills — all that remained from her last café shift — and pointed at a refurbished Nokia 3310.
"How much?" she asked in a low voice.
"Twenty-five," the man grunted, chewing on a toothpick.
"Fifteen."
He eyed her, then shrugged. "Deal."
Maya slipped the phone into her pocket and moved on, avoiding the curious looks of other shoppers.
At the street corner, a digital billboard was broadcasting local news. She froze. A reporter stood in front of a burning building, mic in hand. The camera zoomed in on the scorched façade, shattered windows. The address flashed at the bottom of the screen: [2307 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland.]
Her building.
["A fire of unknown origin ravaged a residential building early this morning,"] the reporter said. ["Two dead and dozens injured. Authorities are investigating a possible explosion on the third floor."]
Maya's stomach clenched. Damien hadn't lied. She clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms.
"They're going to pay for this."
She forced herself to keep moving, pushing through the crowd until she reached a dingy internet café wedged between a Thai restaurant and a tattoo parlor. The neon sign flickered weakly, and the inside reeked of burnt plastic and stale coffee. Maya paid five dollars for an hour on a back computer, far from prying eyes.
She sat down, plugged in a secured USB drive — one she had personally encrypted using her own custom protocol — and launched a VPN to mask her connection.
Her first move was to open an encrypted darknet email client. She logged in under her alias, Phoenix_Rising, and sent a message to a contact she hadn't reached out to in months: Cipher_X, a fixer known for supplying safehouses to hackers on the run.
[Phoenix_Rising]: Need shelter. SF. Urgent.
The reply came in under two minutes.
[Cipher_X]: $3000 for a clean address. No trackers, no cameras. Payable in Bitcoin.
Maya winced. But she had no choice.
[Phoenix_Rising]: 1500. That's all I can pull together.
[Cipher_X]: 2500. Final offer.
Maya slammed her fist on the table, drawing an annoyed look from a teenager playing a FPS at the next station. She took a deep breath.
[Phoenix_Rising]: Deal. Send the address.
[Cipher_X]: 1423 Folsom Street, apartment 4B. Entry code: 7391. Key under the mat. Payment in 24h or the deal's off.
Maya memorized the address and unplugged the USB drive. She was about to log out when a new message appeared in her inbox, marked from an anonymous sender: D.C.
Her heart skipped a beat.
How had he found her darknet alias?
She used cascading proxies, stacked VPNs, and encryption that would give the NSA a headache. And still, there he was — in her inbox.
She opened the message.
[D.C.]: Your stuff is safe. Laundromat, 1890 16th Street, locker 17. Code: 0423. My offer still stands, Phoenix.
The laundromat was two kilometers from where she was. A coincidence? Highly unlikely.
Maya closed the tab, wiped the browser history, and left the internet café. Outside, dusk streaked the sky in orange and violet. She shoved her hands into her pockets.
"For you, bro. I'm going to burn their whole world down."