Chapter 3

Alisa POV:

After finishing my herbal soup and sleeping through the rest of the night, I walked out to the estate's back garden the next morning holding a mug of black coffee.

The morning air outside was clean, free from Jayde's heavy perfume and the suffocating dominance pheromones that high-ranking wolves constantly released indoors. I looked down at the gravel path, calculating how much more money my friend Sophie needed at the research institute to fund the gene therapy for my narcolepsy.

I noticed Tessa and a few other maids whispering by the hedges, clutching trash bags and casting sharp, judgmental glares my way. They were clearly waiting for an opportunity to stir up fresh trouble, their petty malice radiating in the morning sun. I didn't give them the satisfaction of a reaction. To them, this estate was the entire world; to me, it was a temporary cage I was already planning to pick the lock of.

I finished my coffee and walked calmly back toward the house, ignoring the muffled snickers behind me.

Climbing the stairs back to my cramped guest room, I checked that the hallway was empty before locking my door. I pulled the custom red terminal from under my pillow, typed in my passkey, and logged back into the Apex Network.

On the public forum channels, thousands of users were frantically refreshing the page, trying to track down the legendary hacker Cipher V for high-level jobs. My fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard as I accessed the supreme administrator's encrypted bulletin board.

I typed a single line of text: Dealing with personal matters. Cipher V is suspending all commissions indefinitely.

The second I hit send, the entire dark web forum went dead silent for three seconds before exploding with tens of thousands of shocked replies. Ignoring the chaos on the public board, I switched to my private message tab.

Nightshade's message from last night was still waiting. I thought for a second and typed a reply.

"I arrived at a place full of stupidity and prejudice."

Almost the exact second my message went through, a reply popped up on the black screen.

"Need me to flatten the place for you?" Nightshade's words carried his usual arrogance.

The corner of my mouth curled up slightly.

"Not necessary. I can handle them myself."

The other end went quiet for a moment, then sent over a string of disguised code. I recognized it instantly as a stealth IP tracking probe. Narrowing my eyes, I tapped three keys, built a reverse firewall, and bounced the probe straight back down his data tunnel.

"Testing me?" I sent back coldly.

"Just making sure you're safe," Nightshade replied without a hint of guilt.

I ran a reverse analysis on the residual data Packets from our brief clash. A blurred geographic coordinate popped up on my map interface, showing that Nightshade's signal source was located right here in the central metropolitan territory, just a few miles from the Gordon estate.

I squinted at the blinking red dot on the screen, realizing the top hacker on the leaderboard was much closer to me than I had thought.