The lair dimmed as the massive holo-screens flickered to life, their pale light painting shadows across rows of masked faces. Fingers froze mid-typing. Cigarette smoke curled lazily in the air. Conversations halted. All eyes turned toward the figure seated at the high, secluded table—the man with streaks of electric-blue hair that glowed under the lights. He leaned back, arms folded, a smirk playing at his lips as though he held the whole world on a string.ZeroDay.For five months, his name had been law down here. Five months without defeat, five months where every newcomer tried and failed to climb above him. In the world of hackers, where skills were swords and code was blood, he was king. And he knew it. They knew it.He stood, stretching lazily, and the screen behind him flared to life with brutal, block letters: THE PHANTOM HUNT.A ripple ran through the lair. Fingers paused mid-stroke. Cigarette smoke hung frozen in the air. Even before he spoke, the masks turned toward him in

Chen did something the lair did not expect. He didn’t wheel out a specialized setup rig as others would have done. Instead, he reached for a nondescript laptop sitting randomly on a table, the kind that could belong to any junior operator. He booted it in under ten seconds, the machine breathing like a patient animal. Chen’s fingers were a quiet storm.The screens across the room began to mirror his terminal. Code scrolled in a clean, surgical font, and the big screen began to take Chen’s work in a way that no one could accuse of trickery. This was not boasting; this was pedagogy. He would let the whole den see, or fail to see.ZeroDay’s voice, usually smooth as oil, faced an edge of something like irritation. “I’d like to see a single trick. Show us how ‘Ashen’ handles data that the Feds couldn’t touch.”Chen typed without haste. The first moves were unremarkable—an OSINT scrape, a reverse-DNS lookup, the delicate art of pulling EXIF metadata from a blurred photo. But where lesser ha

She chuckled and sighed. “I um.. grew up in a middle class family. My parents always worked their asses off to provide and remain in that spot –the middle class, or at least reach for the top. My dad was an Architect –still is. But besides being an architect, he was an epicurean.”“What’s that?” Miles asked softly.“A greedy pig. Basically, someone who is characterized solely by the love and lust of luxury and wealth, and it becomes the most important thing in their lives. Now, you would think that being a working man who wants the best for his family, it could be justified, but… my dad was never about family. He didn’t care about us, about me. He only cared about his name and his so called legacy.”Nina sighed deeply, as if wanting to cry, “When I turned 17, my father called a family meeting one evening and um… he told me that I have been given sold as bride to the Carte… I mean, a certain family. Shit, I’m not supposed to mention names.” she quickly cut herself.Miles gently touched

“Done.”The word cracked through the lair like a gunshot.For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then the ripple began—chairs screeching, necks snapping toward the sound, keyboards falling silent. Every masked face swung to the lone figure at the far desk. They closed in on the podium to watch the final part of the show.Chen leaned back in his chair, closing the laptop with one hand, as calm as a man who’d merely typed an email. On the big screen above, the glowing timer froze.23 minutes, 12 seconds.The underground roared.“No way.”“Bullshit!”“That’s not possible!”ZeroDay’s throat tightened. The self-proclaimed king sat stiff on his throne-chair, but his knuckles whitened against the armrest. He had given the crowd a month’s worth of boasting about his triumph. Now, in less than half an hour, someone had claimed to do the impossible.Chen rose slowly. He didn’t swagger, didn’t gloat. He just walked toward the podium like gravity bent around him. His mask caught the glow of the neon ligh

Fsociety was smoking hot!It wasn’t the kind of cheering you heard at a football game or a street protest. This was different—raw, unfiltered, from the gut. People who had spent years in basements hunched over keyboards, who normally only expressed emotion through lines of code and snide text on forums, were pounding the tables, stamping their boots, roaring like they’d just witnessed the impossible.And maybe they had.For ten years, governments had failed. FBI, Interpol, Europol—all their resources, satellites, and agents hadn’t dragged the Phantom out of hiding. But tonight, in less than half an hour, a masked stranger sitting at a beat-up table in an underground den had stripped him bare and broadcast him live on a hotel camera.History. That was what this moment was.“Ashen! Ashen! Ashen!” the chant started somewhere in the back, spreading like wildfire. Masks nodded, fists pounded, and soon the whole chamber thundered his name.Chen remained seated for a moment, letting the wave