Athanasia: My Hacker System-Chapter 17: The First Hack
"I’ll take a left turn here, and the office should be at the very end of this corridor," John whispered, his voice barely a breath in the oppressive silence of the administrative wing.
He slowed his pace as he approached the designated door. The hallway was a long, narrow stretch of shadows and polished tile that seemed to amplify his nervousness.
In this part of the building, the air felt heavier, stagnant with the scent of old paper and floor wax. This wasn’t a main thoroughfare; it was a dead-end corridor, with Tara’s office lying at the end of it!
’I can’t afford to be sloppy now,’ he thought. ’Frame Recognition.’
He hadn’t bothered using the ability earlier while he was out in the main halls. He was officially on duty, after all, and his presence was "covered" by his status as a night guard. But here, at the threshold of his target, the stakes had changed.
If there was a hidden camera or a localised sensor, his "official" excuse would crumble under the weight of suspicion. But he didn’t care at this moment.
The world shifted. The world around dissolved into a matrix of cascading green data and wireframe structures. John didn’t waste a second. He hurried his steps, his feet barely touching the floor as if he was flying.
He knew his Mental Points were a finite resource, and time was his greatest enemy. Even if he detected a monitor device now, he lacked the tools to disable it without raising an alarm. He was committed. There was no turning back now.
To his immense relief, the [Frame Recognition] scan revealed nothing out of the ordinary. No dense clusters of security code, no hidden digital eyes tracking his movements through the corridor. The area was "clean."
As he reached the office door, he paused to inspect it. It wasn’t particularly large, perhaps five to seven meters in depth. Through his ability, he could see the silhouette of a central desk, a few tall lockers for filing, and a couple of guest chairs arranged neatly in front of the workspace.
John didn’t care about the furniture. He didn’t care about the decor. He used the Shell ability, the command line hovering in his field of vision. He started to write the code using his thoughts, and the white cursor typed out the complex strings of code for the most advanced version of the search engine he had developed.
Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, sharp knife.
Let’s do it.
With a quick, sharp motion, he pricked the tip of his index finger. He didn’t flinch as a single, crimson drop of blood welled up, before he touched the wall with it
The effect was instantaneous. In his vision, the sea of green code surrounding the part of the wall he touched flickered and surged, turning a brilliant, stark white. The white-out effect covered a localised area of roughly two feet.
[Ding! System Handshake Established!]
[Ding! You have successfully synchronised with Office 512!]
[Ding! As your system synchronisation level is low, you will be required to pay Mental Points to maintain a stable connection!]
[Ding! Security Assessment for Office 512: Level Above Low. Consumption rate has been adjusted accordingly.]
[Ding! You will consume 5 Mental Points per 10 minutes of synchronisation!]
’Five points?’ John’s heart sank. He felt a sharp pang of irritation. He had anticipated a higher cost than his own room—perhaps double or even triple. ’At least I came prepared. I knew this wouldn’t be a walk in the park.’
He turned his full attention back to the Shell Interface, the lines of code reflecting in his pupils.
’Run it!’
He gave the command with a mental snap. Now, the clock was truly ticking. He had exactly eight minutes left for the search engine to scour the office’s data, find the relevant file, and extract the information he desperately needed. He waited to see the fee for running the search engine in this office.
[Ding! Running the search program will cost: 5 Mental Points per 10 minutes.]
’So it’s the same as the handshake cost,’ John noted, his mind racing to do the math. ’Ten points every ten minutes just to hack and search for one time. I have only enough for one more attempt if this one failed to bring me the results I need.’
Piles of raw code began to cascade down the interface. The latest version of his search engine was performing beautifully; it was already filtering out the white noise of coding junk, narrowing down hundreds of lines of useless data into a manageable stream of less than a hundred. To John, this was a massive leap.
The engine was relentless, adding new lines every second. John knew he couldn’t afford to wait for the program to finish. He began reading the code in real-time, his eyes darting across the flickering strings, searching for anything of value about Ricky.
Just as he was starting to gain momentum, a red warning box flashed across his vision, accompanied by a chime.
[Ding! Warning! Certain segments of the file you are attempting to view are protected by a sophisticated, high-level security measures!]
[Ding! It is highly advisable to cease all attempts to view these protected codes. Do you wish to proceed at significant risk, or abort searching these encrypted parts?]
John froze. This was new. ’This is the first time you’ve actually asked for my opinion about security risk,’ he muttered.
The system’s shift in tone was palpable. Usually, it gave directives or warnings; now, it was offering a choice, which meant the risk wasn’t just high, the reward was as well. But John didn’t have the luxury of making a bet.
’Just stop showing the protected codes,’ he commanded. ’I’m not strong enough to crack a high-level encryption yet. I’ll come back later when I’ve levelled the system up and dig out every single secret hiding in this file.’
Strangely, he wasn’t surprised that there were advanced security measures protecting Ricky’s file. If anything, the presence of such a sophisticated firewall only confirmed his darkest suspicions. Ricky was a secret that might even overshadow Cissel’s mysteries.
Cissel was an anomaly, yes—a girl with two distinct abilities—but she still operated within the recognisable bounds of her character type. Ricky, however, was acting out of his character.
[Ding! The system will cease the hack on encrypted segments and limit the program’s function to the codes already public.]
The waterfall of data slowed to a trickle. John scanned the Shell window. There were roughly sixty to seventy lines of code left. It wasn’t as much as he had hoped for, but it was far more than he had expected after the security warning.
He continued to read from where he stopped, his brow furrowing. He spent five minutes dissecting the lines, but the more he read, the more frustrated he became.
’Ricky Cartel. Eighteen years old. Origin: A small town called Torterina. Family: None. Siblings: None. Relatives: None... Dammit!’
He slammed a hand against the wall, though he caught himself before making too much noise. ’The guy is a ghost, and this entire profile is a total fabrication.’
The hack was complete, but the victory felt hollow. He had spent his precious Mental Points to uncover a lie. The information was detailed and useless. It felt like a professional cover story.
’If he has no family, no connections, and isn’t even wealthy, then how the hell is he rubbing shoulders with guys like Alfred and Bernard?’ John thought back to his conversation with Luke Lockheart. Even Luke, who knew everyone in the upper echelons of the class social hierarchy, had found Ricky’s presence unsettling.
’The only thing in here that isn’t fluff is this...’ John narrowed his eyes at the final line of code. ’He is a member of PAREI. What the hell is PAREI?’
A wave of bitter disappointment washed over him. He had burned through a dozen Mental Points for an acronym he didn’t recognise, and a cover-up story that was fake. He felt he was robbed!
He felt a sudden, violent urge to kick the office door down and tear through the physical files with his bare hands, just to see if the paper held what the digital world was hiding.
But before his anger could boil over, a frantic series of notifications began to explode across his vision, brighter and more insistent than any he had seen before.
[Ding! Congratulations! You have successfully completed the Serialised Mission – Part 1!]
