Novels2Search

Level 1: Zone_Warden

CONTENT WARNING: 

This story contains violence, explicit language, and potentially triggering content related to stalking, sexual degradation, blackmailing, mean girls, drowning, cyber-attacks, and stubborn egoists. Reader caution is advised.

Monitoring my computer’s screen alone in my home office, rhythmic clicks of my keyboard and occasional beeps from my servers fills the silence.

The orange sun sets over the lush greenery of an untamed forest in my yard. Through the wall-length windows, thick servers stack by each other cast tall shadows over my frame like guardians of my secrets.

Chimes of cicadas fill the crisp summer air outside. Into my hours in front of a computer, their chorus soothes me. A strict workout regimen staves off the pains that accompany my back while I work.

In my email, a conservation group somehow snuck into my inbox. Opening it, I find their dedication to raccoon health and other wildlife, melts my heart like a candle. Their strategically placed logo of Marvel’s Rocket Raccoon prevents me from focusing on anything else until I pull out my wallet.

I stop, drop, and roll over to their website but my head tilts at the payment not going through.

A minor inconvenience. I trust Elysium since it’s a bank secured with my personal software. Until it fixes itself overnight, the funds for the little masked devils will have to wait.

My dry eyes pin at the email from Dad I’ve been ignoring. It’s been hung over in my inbox for twenty-four hours. All that time, joined by the knots in my stomach which form whenever he emails me instead of calling like a normal fucking parent. Figures.

“Bring a friend or find a date for June 21st.” The subject of his message simply ordered.

My eyebrows hike against my forehead in a series of profound irritation. Already knowing what the body holds, a long-exasperated sigh finds its escape from me.

Doesn’t he remember I almost died because of him meddling in my life? The healing scars under my shirt throb and the only thing that can ground me is a long drag of my cigarette. My breathing settles and I can see in color again.

Why he wants to focus on our bloodline all of a sudden is beyond me. In fact, I’m unsure how to break to him that it ends with me.

But I’m a good son, so I’ll skim the stupid letter.

Dear son,

I hope this email finds you well. It’s been too long since we last caught up. I have an important matter to discuss.

A grand business celebration is approaching, where influential individuals are gathering to commemorate success and create new opportunities. I’ve been waiting for this occasion to showcase how successful you’ve become—my second greatest achievement, and it would bring me immeasurable joy to introduce you.

I understand finding a date may not be easy, but attending with someone would demonstrate your social prowess and contribute to the image of trying to be a well-rounded man. Bringing a friend who will share this experience with you would be equally delightful.

This event could bridge the gaps between us. Your presence would mean the world to me and I eagerly await your response in writing.

With love,

Lawrence Kaiser III.

My hand trembles over my keys.

I can’t fucking do this. It overwhelms my brain to the point of expanding nausea.

He only ever reaches out when he needs something—like my dignity. Boosting his image by showing me off to his flesh-eating business partners and leaving me to play the role of a dutiful son, worthy of his legacy. It wreaks of desperation.

His latest message does a great job to reiterate how little he cares about me or my well-being. I can’t bring myself to engage, especially not from this pitiful attempt to reach out to me.

But, if it’s bothering me this much, I’ll just pretend it never existed. Mid-sentence, I pause to hit delete. Then I do a double wipe of its history leaving zero trace of it ever hitting my inbox. Now it can’t come back to haunt me.

What’s he going to do about it? Call? Ha. That’ll be the day.

My gaze relaxes as I return to my satisfying distraction. With flawless expertise, I navigate through Big Oval’s website. One of my students insisted I look into this fake vitamin company founded in Eastern Europe.

My target glows on my screen while I bypass their half-assed security system and firewalls. Breaking into their folders, I channel the spirit of what Gollum must have felt like with the Ring. But instead of chanting “precious,” I hum “profitable.”

I borrow the most scandalous data from them to use as blackmail later.

Big Oval is only one of the hundreds like it I’ve left in my wake. My ego as well as my bank accounts have swelled so much that the only thing standing between me and the Pentagon is a VPN server and a fake mustache.

They deserve the backlash for the sins they commit. They love pretending they don’t know any better. It used to taint me with rage until I grew to accept that some people at that point are just plain evil.

The records I often find unveil everything from embezzlement, tax fraud, money laundering, and sexual harassment claims in their trash, to outright murder. Most of which still makes my stomach clench—not that I’m claiming to be a hero punishing the unpunishable.

There’s a sick satisfaction that comes with the practice. Watching the so-called “elite” beg and crumble like complete toddlers when threatened with the consequences of their own actions is more euphoric than any drug.

My dark gaze flashes as I come across their well-kept secret and fuck is it dark.

Lo and behold, Big Oval has numerous consumer complaints explaining in clear black and white that their “tested products” have been turning parts of their bodies fucking green. Four hours after being ingested, everyone’s reported cancer cells.

Somehow these informative reviews have mysteriously been wiped off the website and their partner’s affiliate sites.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

How bizarre. I better hurry and let them know.

Of course, Big Oval will deny the claims with whatever bullshit they have compiled to keep their investors happy and their wallets fat. But I have a hunch my favorite pupil EctoKnight won’t let them get away with this.

Copying those files, their images, and even the subpoenas from various law firms, I store the deets onto my hard drive and exit their websites with no trace of my intrusion.

Now for the fun part.

Before I cozy up down the hall to the living room, I tuck a burner laptop under my arm with a Creeper mug that was gifted to me by another of my students.

Propped in my other, is a snoozing raccoon I’ve homed. Dice struggles to remember he’s supposed to be nocturnal from time to time. His gurgling snores bring my smile out of retirement as I rest the little thief on my sofa.

He paces around in circles before his tiny stomps make the already comfy couch comfier. He then lays and hugs his tail between his Muppet hands like it’s a security blanket.

Opening my screen, a sip of steaming coffee soothes my throat as I upload the collection of files and send an email to Big Oval’s executive team.

In it are the basics: everything I discovered in the body of the email with a sprinkle of threats. I’ll leak the files to the press unless they pay me a handsome percentage.

It’s a high-risk game but outright addicting. I always hold the upper hand in these scenarios and companies like these are quick responders after their Spidey-senses go a-tingling.

Now, will they cave and pay the ransom? Or stand firm and risk total ruin? Maybe one day, I’ll slip up, but they’d have to be either on my level or above it, which I doubt possible.

While I wait, I set down my mug and log onto one of my favorite places. It’s my homemade message board of like-minded specialists I’ve taught in the past.

We gather online across the world to gloat about our feats in a ranking system. I’m at the international top of the top and have been for almost ten years. The king himself: Zone_Warden.

The username came to me in middle school and though I cringe a bit whenever I look at it, it’s a piece of my soul I’d rather not see changed.

It’s a good living. My work ensures I don’t depend on an allowance from a job for as long as I live. This is how I survive—wearing my reputation like a suit of armor that’s taken years to craft.

While skimming a heated response from Big Oval’s cronies, something else catches my eye that diverts all of my attention.

I squint at an urgent email from Elysium bank laid unread and ominous above. The roof of my eyes simmer, latching onto each letter reading Urgent.

Unbridled heat pumps into my ears causing them to cramp the moment it opens up. The string of sentences in the email has enough power to bring the toughest of men to their knees. As I scroll to expose the rest, my sweating hand can’t hold still.

My bank accounts have been frozen. Drained until further notice.

“What the hell…?” I muster as the coffee in my stomach tries resurfacing in the back of my throat. Re-reading the lines over again only constricts my airways further.

My rummaging eyes trace each word as if it’s an illusion caused by my lack of sleep. But no. This is all too real. Too sudden and way too irritating to dissect at 1 AM.

A visceral blow pulls my breath, changing its calm with white-hot mania. All coherent thought blinks out of range until all that remains is pressure in my lungs.

The very earth tilts. My vision blurs as the screen swims in front of me with every word thrown at my eyes like a fucking taunt.

I hold my head, buckling under the weight of anxiety drilling into every corner of my skin. Disbelief grips my every muscle.

Frozen. Drained.

Every penny earned over decades of work is gone in seconds, leaving me floundering and gasping for air.

I clench my fists so tight, my fingernails dig into my palms. The pain grounds me in the moment until panic sets in.

“It’ll take years to recover from this...” My heart pounds in my chest, as I try to piece in my memory what happened.

My furry friend has long woken up since then and scurried down the hall while a painful grunt wrings at my intestines. I lash out, hurling the laptop into the wall.

The crash echoes through the silence leaving only the rasps of my heaving shell.

My chest holds a rumbling that threatens to escape again with each second of its knocking until darkness consumes my spirit and all that remains of who I am.

The words reverberate and set in my head until a guttural shout shreds through my ribcage. “How could this happen?!” More importantly, how could this have happened to fucking me?!

Marching back to my office, I ignore Dice having taken refuge in the hole I created.

As the clock ticks into the wee hours of the night, my fingers fly across the keyboard scouring with tireless madness for a loophole—my ticket out. But no matter how innovative my search, my efforts, my pulls, I hit a wall at every turn.

My throat creates a fevered pinch as I struggle to breathe, then, as if fate itself intervened, a news article on my browser catches my redden eyes three days later.

“Princess_User24: The New Face of Hacking.”

My vision latches onto each line where it references my name and it becomes clear.

I’ve been targeted by another hacker. Bested.

My leg shakes pinning the lines of letters on my screen.

“Princess_User24?” What a fucking joke. Why now and how?

What’s lost to me is there wasn’t a warning. No blackmail request or negotiation. Just a blog post by Tech News about what this wannabe did to my reputation overnight.

After the past few months of deflecting that troll, she’s finally managed to grab my attention.

By scrolling through the countless blog posts on her, it’s evident to me how she’s taken the world by storm.

An editorial praises her as a “hacktivist goddess” of all things. Ugh. I could vomit. Her ‘talent’ has exposed corruption all in the name of protecting ‘innocent’ victims.

They detail how she not only stole millions from me but challenged my rank as number one in the field.

Trying to calm down before giving myself an aneurysm, I lean back in my chair and wipe the accumulating sweat on my face.

Princess has been a thorn in my side since her presence came out of nowhere last week. She managed to infiltrate my message board and we exchanged a few heated remarks.

Somehow, the miscreant stole back the data I had on a construction company in Florida. My hubris kept me believing it was dumb luck. My mistake was dismissing her as some smug trash-talking bitch.

I take my outrage to my message board and check on my students in our live chat. My frown creases tighter.

She’s already here.

Princess deflects the thieves I raised left and right in their debates and heated ramblings. They’re only embarrassing themselves as far as I see. And to that extension, embarrassing me.

From her online mannerisms, I surmise she’s not some rogue teen with unsupervised access to the internet or a secret government agent. No. By the ways she psychologically triggers the group with her snarky retorts, she something more evolved.

More heat fills my mind with thoughts that aren’t my own anymore. Instead, something demonic and unhinged, driving my next actions. As I wait and watch how she communicates, I picture her blood on my hands. I want—no. I need revenge.

With everything at my disposal, finding where she is will be a walk in the park. One way or another, I’ll douse this rampage of hatred she’s left to rot inside me.

Several hours into the night later, I dig deeper into Princess’s online presence. To my interest, I find out she’s gotten _EctoKnight and another of my students arrested for blackmail and about everything else I’ve been getting away with.

It’s like an invasion with her. That sucks. I’ll check up on them the minute I can. The fact that this is happening at such a short time causes my throat to dry.

With an impressive track record of taking down networks harder to break into than Fort Knox—systems I’ve personally helped in securing, Princess is more skilled than I ever imagined.

Before a tinge of sound thought revives in my throbbing head, I’m hunting down her cyber footprint. Her entire life can be discovered with a single press of my keys.

“Your data’s going to be sold to the highest bidder within the week,” I assure myself.

The dark web would have a holiday over getting the info of the bitch who’s been ruining them by making a show of it.

Visions of the faceless woman being locked in misery, kidnapped, or blacklisted by the shadow government, or stalked by police has me descending further into villainous madness.

My blood cools a degree and something abnormal happens. A rational idea branches in my mind.

Why not accept her challenge?

Yeah, the premise of competing in a hacker war felt all flavors of stupid, but this girl unearthed a disturbance in my core I didn’t know slept there. It’s pure competitive sin being in the aftermath of someone operating on a playing field more advanced than the others. It’s not just about the money or the power anymore; it’s about something raw and primal when it comes to her.

A chill of excitement rallies before I can better identify it.

“A true challenger,” I sigh, leaning on a mad smirk, knowing with every tickled static in my flesh that there’s no way I’m sleeping tonight after this.

I want to win.

*Technical note from Professor X. Kaiser: a VPN server is like a secret tunnel that lets me connect to the internet from a different location, hiding my true identity and location.

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