The polar night clung to Reykjavik like a heavy velvet curtain, smothering the city in a darkness that felt oppressively alive.
It was January 2025, and outside Varn Manor, the air was like a blade carved out of hardened ice.
The temperature had dropped to -15°C and violent wind ululated across the paroxysmal volcanic cliffs.
The manor was massive. Almost fantastical.
Inside, chandeliers casted prisms across marble floors, their light catching on gold-flecked paintings and ancient vases.
And at the heart of it all was the face of the Varn Group of companies' CEO—Magnus Varn.
The VarnTech.
It was his quantum computing juggernaut, which powered half of the world's secure networks, its tendrils reaching from Reykjavik to Islamabad to New York.
He was revered as a man who had it all. Money, power, fame…everything.
Yet, despite having it all, an odd sense of paranoia always gnawed at him.
Inside the giant, warm and peaceful house, peace of mind was the sole thing that he could not achieve, and so, Magnus's heart stayed colder than the night outside.
Magnus Varn, fifty, moved through the upper hallway with the precision of a man who owned the world itself—which, was justified.
His Brioni suit hugged his broad frame.
His silky, thinning blond hair that was swept back like a crest and was silvering at the temples, bobbed up and down with his anxious stride.
His face had lost the softness of youth and was marred by deep wrinkles from stress and constant paranoia that gnawed at him like frostbite.
He paused in his son Erik's bedroom.
The door was ajar, revealing a ten-year-old boy lost in sleep.
Erik's room was a child's paradise: holo-posters of starships on the walls as their colors danced across a cashmere blanket, a console connected to the giant television in the east wing of the giant room and multiple toys ranging from stuffed animals to giant LEGO sets.
Magnus sat at the edge of his bed, brushing a lock of blond hair from Erik's forehead. His son's face was a mirror image of his own.
After a moment or two, he left Erik's room and went across the room where he crossed his eight-year-old daughter's—Astrid— room where she slept, curled like a comma in silk sheets.
Her sketches of Reykjavik's auroras littered the nightstand were smudged with crayon.
Magnus tucked the blanket around her, his touch gentle. "My little light," he whispered, "no one will dim you."
These children, born to his second wife, Sofia, were his true legacy—unblemished, unlike the son he refused to claim.
As he left Astrid's room, his eyes caught on a photograph in the hallway's gallery, a relic he'd meant to burn.
Lukas Varn, his eldest, stared out from the frame, his pale gray eyes sharp as frost, his blonde hair falling across a pale forehead.
The image, snapped at Lukas's high school graduation, carried the ghost of Elise, Lukas' mother—her cheekbones, her eyes.
Magnus's breath hitched, his hands curling into fists, nails biting into his palms.
"Her shadow," he hissed, his voice a blade slicing through the quiet. He leaned closer, as if the photo could feel his rage. "You're a thief, Lukas. Every breath you take steals from Erik and Astrid—their wealth, their future. I won't let you ruin them."
Suddenly, his vein that was prominent on his forehead grew thicker and blacker. His pale blue eyes started to turn red as Lukas stared into his eyes.
Lukas was the reason behind VarnTech's sudden boom. And now that Magnus was done taking advantage of him, the paranoia of his empire falling into ruin haunted him each day.
"This has to end…" He mumbled to himself, "...this son of a bitch has to go."
**********
In the distant, dilapidated south wing of the manor, Lukas Varn was sitting in a room that felt more like a hermit or a sage's cave than a bedroom.
At twenty years of age, he was a wraith of a man—6'3", lean as a blade's edge, his 180 pounds stretched over a tall, lanky frame.
His pale skin, kissed by Iceland's long nights, glowed under the desk lamp's halo while his gray eyes darted across a textbook on quantum cryptography.
His blonde hair fell in disarray, something he rarely bothered to groom.
The shelves inside his room sagged under hundreds of books—ancient tomes and modern research on medicine, engineering, warfare, politics, taxes, audits, forensics.
Each and every page was etched into his memory. It was a desperate offer to a father who saw only Elise's face on his own.
An incomprehensible hate towards Lukas.
The walls bore his accolades of victory, framed degrees that gleamed brightly.
There was a Ph.D. in Computational Biology from MIT; a Master's in Cybersecurity from ETH Zurich; a master's in mechanical engineering from Stanford; a master's in international relations from Oxford; and a Ph.D. in Data Science from Caltech.
These were no mere credentials; they were the scaffolding of a mind that had transcended human limits, a mind that could simulate systems, predict outcomes, and weave strategies faster than any machine.
Yet, for all his brilliance, Lukas was haunted—by the fear of being left behind, of being hurt.
Pain, physical or otherwise, was something he couldn't face.
As he was busy solving the fault in the latest gadget that the Varntech was developing, the door crashed open, and Magnus stormed in like a sudden gale.
Lukas flinched, his heart lurching, but his eyes held steady, reading the fury in his father's clenched jaw, the vein throbbing at his temple.
"You," Magnus spat, his finger a spear aimed at Lukas's chest. "Get out. I can't bear your parasitic existence anymore."
Lukas rose slowly, the loud voice from Magnus causing his entire body to tremble. His hands started shaking and his eyes blinked uncontrollably. "I-I've optimized your quantum algorithms, F-Fa-Father. Saved VarnTech b-billions. I-I-I've earned my p-pl-pl-place here."
Magnus suddenly lifted his hand, and Lukas took a step back, almost falling on the bed. He wasn't particularly scared. His eyes were razor focused, but multiple body parts of his were twitching continuously—his shoulders, middle and index finger and his eyes.
Seeing Lukas tremble like that, he laughed.
He laughed like a maniac.
Magnus's laugh was an alchemy of mockery and disgust.
"Earned? You're a walking reminder of that ugly dog munching dink. You fucking piece of shit, parasite." Magnus hurled insult after insult. "Pack your things. You're out—now."
Lukas's chest tightened, the old fear of abandonment still clawed at him.
He could see it, him, alone. Again. Stranded.
He stepped forward, his voice softer, pleading even.
"O-O-On-One night, F-Fath-Father."
"Don't you call me that!"
Lukas flinched but kept talking. "L-Le-Let me stay until d-d-d-dawn."
Magnus's eyes narrowed, his posture like a wall of iron.
Lukas' pale grey eyes analyzed him and reached at a single conclusion.
'No window for bargain.'
He tried again, his voice barely above a whisper. "Twenty minutes. Just twenty."
A flicker of disdain flashed across Magnus's face and his lips twitched, but he nodded. "Twenty. Then you're gone."
Lukas moved with an uncanny speed.
'He won't let me take anything provided by him…so…'
In an instant he made a quick list of all the objects he had bought using money earned from online gigs—a luxury he was allowed to indulge in once a month under the strict supervision and terms and conditions of Varn Group of Companies.
He grabbed a black duffel bag from under his bed. He stuffed in a single diary and a USB inside. Then he added €2,000 in cash, tucked away in a hollowed-out book on game theory, and a carbon-fiber multi-tool.
As he looked around, he opened his drawer and his eyes lingered on a photo of his mother, Elise, hidden in a drawer, smiling. He touched her face through the glass and closed his eyes.
All he had was a picture of her. He couldn't recall much of her.
Letting out a heavy sigh, he took the picture out of the frame and crumpled it before pushing it deep inside his jacket pocket.
He could still remember her warm smile.
As he felt the crumpled image inside his pocket, he pushed it close to his chest, feeling the outline of the image, making sure it was there.
Once everything was packed, Lukas looked at Magnus and flung the bag around his shoulder. "I'll t-t-take my leave n-no-ow."
Magnus' almost blurted "fuck off" but decided to not waste any more words. Three guards appeared behind him, holding black batons in their hands and pistols strapped to their hips.
'9 mm. Not fully loaded. Postures tense. Safety not present. They are wary of me. A single misstep could result in me dying.' Lukas analyzed before raising his hands.
The guards cuffed him and then took him to the manor's biometric gates before pushing him out and uncuffing him through the little space between gate bars.
******************
Magnus retreated to his study where holo-screens were glowing with VarnTech's stock—up 3.2% today—and awards from tech summits lining the walls.
A satellite phone sat on his mahogany desk, its screen casting a soft blue light.
He poured a glass of Vodka as he dialed a number.
"Viktor," he said. "It's Magnus. I have a job."
Viktor, a former Icelandic Coast Guard operative turned mercenary, listened in silence. "Lukas Varn. He's a problem. €500,000 to make him disappear. And…." He paused, and then waited for the man on the other side to finish his sentence.
"No strings attached. To you."
"Yes."
"Share any recent intel. It will be done."
"Sure."
Still on line, Magnus sent a recent photo of Lukas and his last known location.
Viktor's reply was a single word: "It will be done."
A muffled chortle left Magnus' lips.
"What?"
Magnus smacked his lips and then let out a dejected breath. "Nothing. Good luck." He ended the call and threw the phone inside a glass of water across his vodka bottle.
Viktor was baffled but he put the phone away as the dial tone rang.
Within an hour, five goons mobilized in a black van near Reykjavik's harbor.
Their tactical vests bristled with SIG Sauer P320s, their thermal drones humming like wasps, synced to the city's CCTV grid with facial recognition software.
Their comms crackled, as they plotted Lukas's interception.
"Target is on foot, likely downtown," one said, his voice clipped. "ETA: 30 minutes."
*************
Lukas moved through Reykjavik's streets, the snow crunching under his boots, his breath a fleeting cloud in the polar night.
The city was a ghost town at 1 AM, its 130,000 souls hidden from the cold.
Streetlights painted long shadows, and CCTV cameras blinked continuously like clockwork.
His destination was TechTrend Reykjavik, a small shop on Laugavegur street.
Iceland's safety meant the store's security was laughable—a magnetic lock, no alarms.
Lukas knew it so he chose one of the cheaper shops.
He knelt down with his multi-tool's screwdriver glinting as he pried open the lock's casing.
He shortened the circuit with a twist.
Inside, the air smelled of plastic and dust.
He grabbed a used Lenovo ThinkPad—8GB RAM, an i5 processor—and an android phone.
Sitting on a chair in the repair section of the electronics shop, Lukas powered up the laptop.
His fingers danced across the keys as he booted a Linux Live USB he'd crafted years ago.
He flashed a custom firmware, a lean version of Kali Linux laced with his own encryption, which was a SHA-512 variant he called VarnHash—born from sleepless nights studying VarnTech's quantum research.
It was something that could shield attacks from even theoretical quantum attacks.
The phone was next: he rewrote its IMEI with a Python script, routing calls through a VoIP server hidden in a dark pool VPS.
He wove in a piece of VarnTech's experimental tech—a micro-quantum obfuscator, a chip design that tangled signals making the phone a ghost to trackers.
Both devices were locked with AES-256 passphrase: "EliseVarn2025Legacy."
After that, he installed a kill-switch script that would erase all the data and another pleasant surprise if touched by the wrong hands.
****************
Lukas didn't stay there for long.
He found refuge in a 24-hour café, its warmth a fleeting balm against the cold knot outside and in his chest.
He paid for an hour using the cash he had saved up and got a seat in the far corner of the cafe.
The Wi-Fi was open source.
'Lucky me, I guess.'
He connected his laptop and opened a terminal.
His target was Iceland's National Registry, Þjóðskrá Íslands.
After just a few seconds, he found a crack—an SQL injection flaw in an outdated API—and slipped through.
His fingers stopped for the first time and he thought about it. The name of his new identity.
Memories from his past flooded in as he remembered making the first nanotech spy mosquito for Magnus. While he became the most powerful man on earth, all Lukas got was one thing. An insult: "A jack of all trades like you will never make it big in life."
Lukas' lips quivered into a dejected smile as he typed.
Jack.
Jack Olsen. 24. Finnish. Born in Helsinki.
That was his new identity.
He backdated records to 2023, syncing them with Finland's Population Register using a stolen OAuth token.
While it was a crime and extremely perilous, the way he did it seemed like he was just playing a children's game.
'I need some money too…' Lukas thought.
And then he remembered something.
Magnus's shell companies, something he came across when he was working on making a custom accounting software for Magnus.
There were 52 of these shell companies, scattered from Panama to Seychelles—held €40 billion in liquid assets.
This was also something Lukas knew from years of studying VarnTech's books.
He stole a total of €100,000: €2,000 per account, through micro-transactions routed via a mixnet of Tor and I2P.
Each transfer used randomized SWIFT codes, masked by a man-in-the-middle attack on the companies' APIs.
He deployed a trick from VarnTech's research—a quantum ledger scrambler, a tool he made to help Magnus launder money.
It was something that rewrote blockchain metadata, making his theft look like routine expenses.
The funds landed in ten offshore accounts under Jack Olsen, secured with RSA tokens and biometric hashes.
Magnus, who was practically drowning in billions, if not trillions, wouldn't notice the loss.
************
With funds in hand, Lukas booked a first-class Icelandair ticket to Berlin, set for 7 AM—six hours away.
A pilots' strike had grounded private jets, forcing him onto the commercial route, a small mercy for anonymity.
Dejected, and reluctantly, he reserved a suite at the Ion Hotel, a glass tower near the harbor.
He paid the entire €5,000 from his new proxy account in New Zealand.
The suite, while seemingly luxurious with highest quality marble floors, windows framing Reykjavik's lights, but Lukas saw only threats.
He had analyzed everything.
The entrance, the back doors, the surveillance cameras, and the weird way the receptionist looked at him when he checked in.
When he had entered the lobby, he spotted an IoT thermostat, its firmware a backdoor to the hotel's mainframe.
Once he was fully settled inside, he placed a glass on the handle. So if anyone tried to see if the room was open or not, or if anyone was tampering with the handle, he'd know immediately.
Then he broke a wine glass by hiding it inside his shirt and then spread it all over the entrance.
Once he was done, he exploited a buffer overflow in the Hikvision CCTV system, rerouting feeds to a proxy in Brighton, UK, with a spoofed IP, so it would look like someone from Brighton was using their internet.
As he was looking at the CCTV's of the hotel, he came across the one at the reception.
Two men in suits questioning the concierge about a "Jack Olsen."
Fear seized him, his body trembling, the specter of pain tightening his throat.
He saw his seven-year-old self, Magnus's voice sneering, "Useless, like her."
Standing up, he tried to control the spasms in his left hand. Something that would happen when he started to experience extreme stress.
He rewired smart lighting to strobe, the fire sprinklers set to flood with foam laced with a cleaning chemical, his laptop loaded with a fake Oslo itinerary.
He predicted their entry—door, balcony—and placed his traps with care.
Huddled in the closet, cedar-scented and claustrophobic, Lukas watched the CCTV feeds on his phone.
The goons were at the door, one holding a silenced pistol.
His heart pounded.
His finger hovered over his phone, ready to release hell as the handle of the door of his suite slowly turned.
It was the end to Lukas Varn's fleeting solace.