The utility junction box was small enough to induce claustrophobia and cold enough to steal warmth, but to Karvin, it was pure sanctuary. He huddled over his micro-encryptor, watching the digital pulse of the connection with Scylla. The pulsed transmission, timed to skip the city's radar arrays, was agonizingly slow, but its obscurity was its defense.
"The power grid, Karvin. That's a target the size of a continent," Scylla's voice crackled across the low-frequency channel. "The Billionaire's holdings in the European energy sector are immense, shielded by layers of shell companies. I'd have to hack half of Brussels just to find the primary server farm."
"Don't look at the generators, Scylla. Look at the vulnerabilities," Karvin instructed, shivering slightly. He remembered the original intelligence: the European asset was critical for revenue but plagued by systemic digital corruption. "He built his wealth on leveraging digital weaknesses. His control isn't in the steel turbines; it's in the data flow. He needs to control billing, allocation, and pricing to prove his legitimacy as a 'custodian.' Find the place where the money touches the wires."
Scylla went silent, the only sound on the line being the rhythmic, hollow thump of her own keyboard thousands of miles away. Karvin used the pause to execute the most painful task of his exile: establishing his new digital persona. He wiped the memory of his micro-encryptor clean, adopting a synthetic fingerprint and a completely randomized ID. The old Karvin was a ghost, a known face; the new one had to be a silent, unprovable force.
Outside the junction box, the city hummed with oblivious life. Above ground, the political firestorm Karvin ignited was reaching a boiling point. His sanctions against the Mineral Mining Group were driving commodity prices sky-high, forcing desperate global leaders to debate the Billionaire's "custodian" claims. The Billionaire was winning the PR war, but Karvin had created a real-world, financial strain that couldn't be ignored forever.
"The Iron Hand is hunting your digital shadow, Karvin," Scylla's voice cut back in, laced with fresh tension. "I see probes—advanced, proprietary code—sweeping every dark net forum and dead drop you ever used. They are prioritizing low-latency connections, assuming you'd try to communicate with your old team in New York. They won't be far behind your current location."
"The Iron Hand will find this box eventually. I only need a few more hours."
"You don't have hours. You have minutes," Scylla retorted. "The Iron Hand just dispatched a perimeter drone. It's flying a non-standard route, sweeping the park above you with high-sensitivity thermal imaging. It's looking for heat spikes consistent with a prolonged, stationary human presence."
Karvin looked down at his cramped space. His body heat was minimal, but the running micro-encryptor and the low-frequency radio waves were emitting just enough energy to be visible to a dedicated thermal sensor. He had to shut down, right now, or be found.
"I'm going offline. Do you have a target in Europe?"
"Wait," Scylla said, her voice dropping to a whisper of pure discovery. "I found it. Not the central grid—it's too hardened. But their smart meter and billing network. They run a legacy system for residential and small commercial energy management, but it's leveraged into their central pricing algorithm for wholesale control."
She quickly transmitted a sparse string of code—a specific IP address, an outdated security protocol, and a single, unpatched zero-day exploit written in a language Karvin hadn't touched since university. It was a digital relic, perfectly ignored by modern security systems.
"The Billionaire uses this network to artificially stabilize his perceived value in the European market by rigging the public energy forecasts," Scylla explained. "If you can disrupt the billing network, you don't shut off the power; you erase the monetary value of the entire European energy supply chain. You crash his legitimacy."
"It's beautiful," Karvin whispered, feeling a surge of adrenaline that fought back the cold. Crashing the billing network wouldn't cause blackouts; it would cause economic oblivion for his enemy's largest European asset, rendering the 'custodian' role useless.
"The location of the primary server for that network is Lisbon. You need physical proximity for this exploit—it requires a specific localized ping to initiate the zero-day," Scylla said. "I can't do it from here. You have to go to Lisbon, Karvin."
Before Karvin could reply, Scylla delivered the final blow. "The Iron Hand's drone is locking onto your thermal trace. You have thirty seconds. I'm sending you one last file: the address of a highly secured, non-extradition safe house in the Mediterranean. Get there. Now."
Karvin grabbed the small USB stick containing Scylla's coordinates and the zero-day exploit. He smashed the micro-encryptor and the second burner phone against the steel wall, silencing his final link to the digital world.
Twenty seconds.
He scrambled to cover the junction box hatch, stuffing the debris beneath him to hide his entry point. The silence was instantly replaced by the high-pitched whine of the incoming thermal drone hovering directly overhead in the park.
Karvin had no passport, no money, and no digital identity. He was a ghost with a single USB drive and a single destination—Lisbon, via a Mediterranean safe house—to take down the Billionaire's European power empire. He dropped into the sewage culvert below the junction box, the cold, dirty water his only path forward. He knew one thing: if he survived the next 48 hours, the Billionaire would learn that you can destroy a hacker's office, but you cannot destroy his code.