The Lisbon Portela Airport was a hive of European efficiency and chaotic tourism, the perfect visual noise for a man trying to disappear. Karvin stood in the immigration queue, the "Elias Vance" passport burning a hole in his pocket. He gripped the handle of his cheap luggage, the one containing the solar-powered Wi-Fi repeater disguised as an air quality monitor.
He stepped up to the booth. The officer, a tired man with heavy eyelids, slid the passport into the scanner. Karvin forced his heart rate to slow, using a meditative breathing technique he'd learned to counter adrenaline shakes during high-stakes hacks. The scanner beeped. A green light. The officer stamped it without looking up.
"Welcome to Portugal, Mr. Vance."
Karvin took the book, his fingers trembling slightly only after he turned away. The "Elias Vance" persona had held, but the digital tripwires were undoubtedly triggering somewhere deep in the global cloud. He had hours, maybe less, before the Billionaire's algorithm flagged the entry.
He took a taxi not to his target, but to the chaotic district of Alfama, a maze of steep, cobblestone streets and narrow alleys. It was the oldest part of the city, a place where GPS signals bounced erratically off thick, ancient walls—a natural Faraday cage against precision tracking.
He found a small, crowded café with outdoor seating and ordered a galão. While sipping the coffee, he activated the "air quality monitor." To any observer, he was an environmentally conscious tourist checking pollution levels. In reality, he was calibrating the directional antenna.
The target was three miles west: The Euro-Grid Legacy Billing Center. It wasn't a skyscraper; it was a nondescript, brutalist concrete bunker from the 1980s, disguised as a municipal records office. It housed the physical servers that tallied the euros for every kilowatt of power sold across the continent.
Karvin checked his watch. 14:00. The market reversal Dara had warned him about via the encrypted emoji message was scheduled for the market close at 17:30.
The trap is timing, Karvin realized, the caffeine sharpening his thoughts. The Billionaire knows I'm coming for the billing network. He isn't trying to stop the crash; he's positioning his other assets to short-sell the energy market exactly when I pull the plug. He wants me to destroy the billing system so he can profit from the panic and blame 'cyber-terrorists' for the price hike.
If Karvin triggered the zero-day exploit now, he would simply be the Billionaire's executioner, handing him billions in profit. He had to plant the anchor, but he couldn't detonate it until he changed the variables.
He finished his coffee and moved out. He didn't go to the front door of the Billing Center; he went to the construction site adjacent to it. A luxury hotel was being renovated, its skeleton wrapped in scaffolding and mesh.
Karvin slipped into the site, blending in with a group of day laborers by donning a stolen high-visibility vest he'd grabbed from a distracted surveyor's truck. He climbed the scaffolding, the wind whipping off the Tagus River. The view was breathtaking, but Karvin only had eyes for the concrete roof of the building next door.
He reached the fourth level, directly overlooking the Billing Center's HVAC units. This was the spot. The legacy servers generated massive heat; they needed constant venting. The vents were the only unshielded opening in the building's electromagnetic armor.
He pulled the "air quality monitor" from his bag. He didn't just set it down; he wedged it tight between two steel girders of the scaffolding, pointing the internal directional antenna specifically at the HVAC intake.
He flipped the switch. The device hummed—a sound inaudible to the human ear but screaming in the 2.4GHz spectrum. It began its "Silent Anchor" protocol: pinging the billing server with a low-level, friendly maintenance signal, waiting for the command to inject the zero-day payload.
Anchor planted, Karvin thought. Now, the trigger.
He pulled out his phone to confirm the signal lock. The screen flashed green. The server had accepted the handshake. He had the gun to the head of the European economy.
But before he could climb down, a movement in the alley below caught his eye.
A black van with tinted windows idled near the rear exit of the Billing Center. It wasn't a maintenance vehicle. The tires were heavy-duty run-flats, the suspension reinforced—the signature of armored transport.
Karvin froze, pressing himself against the cold steel of the scaffolding.
The rear doors of the van opened. Two men stepped out—bulky, efficient, wearing tactical gear stripped of insignia. The Iron Hand's cleanup crew.
They weren't there to guard the building. They were dragging someone out of the back of the van. A figure with a hood over their head, stumbling, hands zip-tied. As the figure was shoved toward the service entrance, the hood snagged on the doorframe and slipped partially off.
Karvin felt the breath leave his lungs. Even from four stories up, he recognized the profile. The sharp chin, the terrified set of the shoulders.
Dara.
They hadn't just compromised her; they had brought her here. To the target.
The Billionaire's cruelty was absolute. He knew Karvin wouldn't attack blindly. He had brought Karvin's only ally—the only person who knew the HFT algorithms—to ground zero. If Karvin triggered the exploit and crashed the cooling systems or surged the power to fry the servers, Dara would be inside the blast radius of the resulting electrical fire.
He's using her as a human shield for the money.
Karvin's thumb hovered over the "Execute" button on his phone. He could destroy the Billionaire's legitimacy right now. He could fulfill his mission. All he had to do was sacrifice Dara.
The door slammed shut below. Dara was gone, swallowed by the concrete bunker.
Karvin lowered the phone. He couldn't do it. Not yet.
He looked at the "Silent Anchor" wedged in the scaffolding. It was active, waiting. The plan had changed. He wasn't just here to destroy a server anymore. He had to break into a fortress, extract a prisoner, and then burn the kingdom down.
He stripped off the high-vis vest and began the rapid descent down the scaffolding. The digital war was over. The physical war had just begun, and Karvin was armed with nothing but a stolen guidebook and a Wi-Fi signal.
He reached the street, his mind racing through the building schematics he'd memorized. There was no digital back door for a rescue. He needed a distraction. A big one.
He looked at the time. 16:15. One hour and fifteen minutes until the market close. One hour and fifteen minutes until the Billionaire executed his trade.
Karvin dialed a number on his burner phone—a number he had sworn never to use, belonging to a volatile, anarchic "hacktivist" collective in Berlin he had alienated years ago.
"This is Ghost," Karvin said when the line clicked open. "I'm not calling to apologize. I'm calling to give you the root access codes to the Lisbon traffic grid. I need you to turn every stoplight in the financial district green. Right now."