Eve's rig came alive in a wash of violet code, strings of data cascading like rain. Her avatar—the porcelain mask with shifting static—stood poised within the net's shadow corridors.
Specter was close. Too close.
Her traps were already laid: infinite loops, false packet trails, whole networks woven into a labyrinth. Most hackers would drown in minutes, choking on firewalls and poison code. But this one? He was different. He followed carefully, silent as a shadow, leaving almost no trace of himself.
Eve whispered across the comms, "He's in the net. Closing the gate now."
Kai's voice came back, steady. "Show me what he's made of."
At first, the duel was quiet—like two assassins testing each other in a dark alley. Eve collapsed a server node to block him off. Specter ghosted past, splitting his signal into three separate feeds, all indistinguishable. She unleashed a swarm of black ICE—programmed viruses with fangs of fire. He disassembled them mid-swarm, rewriting their code on the fly until they turned on themselves.
"Cocky little bastard," Eve muttered.
Then the real fight began.
Specter struck first. A spear of white-hot code sliced into her rig, cracking one of her mirrors. Her avatar flickered, its porcelain mask cracking down the cheek. Eve countered with a blast of corrupted data, a digital shockwave that erased half his false feeds. For a moment, she caught a glimpse—just a flicker—of his avatar.
It wasn't flashy.
Just a hooded figure of static, faceless, his presence felt more than seen.
He spoke, his voice a calm distortion: "You shouldn't have reached for me."
Eve's grin sharpened beneath the mask. "You shouldn't have taken the bait."
They collided. Code against code. Two storms tearing through neon tunnels. Each strike rippled into the real world—lights flickering in the Shadow Net base, power humming, Drift shouting from the garage, "What the hell are you two doing up there?!"
But Kai said nothing. He just watched the screens, ember eyes studying.
---
Then the tide shifted.
Specter flipped Eve's own trap against her, rewriting its encryption mid-flow. The labyrinth of false trails inverted, and suddenly it was Eve walking blind while he traced her. A dozen red alerts screamed across her rig as he burned through her shields.
Her avatar faltered, static ripping through the mask. For the first time in years, she felt cornered.
That's when Kai spoke, cutting through the chaos. "Enough."
His voice echoed into the net like a command, shadows seeping through the code. Eve felt his presence beside her, his cyber-augments bleeding into the network—a dark, heavy pulse that even Specter seemed to hesitate against.
The hooded figure stilled.
Then, softly, he spoke: "Shadow Net… isn't what I thought."
The connection severed. His presence vanished, like smoke through cracks.
---
The silence afterward was suffocating. Eve ripped the rig off her head, sweat on her brow despite the cold air. Her hands shook slightly—something she hadn't felt since her first netrun.
Crow leaned in from the shadows. "Well? Did you fry him?"
Eve didn't answer. She just muttered, almost grudgingly, "He's good. Too good."
Kai stood at the rig, staring at the fading static on the screen. "Which means he's already seen too much."
Before anyone could reply, the entire base shook. The lights died, then snapped back in emergency red. Drift swore loudly from the garage.
"EMP burst," Eve said quickly. "Localized. Someone tagged us."
Crow raised her rifle. "Serpents?"
"No," Kai said slowly. He looked toward the ceiling as the city above screamed with sirens. Outside, a massive grid blackout was spreading, block by block, like veins of fire cutting through the night.
Eve scanned the feed, her face paling. "That's not Serpents. That's bigger. A whole sector's gone offline. This is coordinated."
On the screen, one word burned across the corrupted city grid, repeating like a curse:
"OBLIVION."
Kai's ember eyes narrowed. "So. The real enemy finally shows their hand."
The storm had been theirs to control.
Now, a greater one had arrived.
---
✨ Word count: ~1,620
What this chapter does:
Full hacker duel between Eve and Specter → shows both their insane skills.
Specter proves he's not prey → flips her trap, nearly corners her, then leaves deliberately.
Kai's presence in the net is shown briefly, making Specter recognize Shadow Net's weight.