Ethan- The Rise Of A Villain Or A Hero?

let the hunt begin

Ethan’s P.O.V.

I stared at the building on the other side of the road with a blank gaze, hiding in the dark shadow of the building beside me.

Also, at the digital big clock at the top of the building.

00:35:08

The building in front of me was just a simple four-storey building with so many small offices, shops, dull paint, flickering signboards, dim lights in the corridors, and overfilled garbage bins here and there.

A good disguise for running a criminal den.

A gambling den…..

A doom for so many innocent families…..

My father wasn’t a gambler, but I had seen families living on that street with a gambler in their family.

Once people go in that den, they never come back the same.

00:37:13

My pulse quickened as the time continued running too fast for my comfort.

I killed once because that was necessary for our survival.

Now with this new task of destroying this den, would I have to kill more people?

But the system also warned me not to get injured or get caught.

“For Walter, and Iris.” I mumbled to myself and took a deep breath.

I got the information, and now, I am standing here, thinking about what to do next.

[Host: You have 45 minutes more to finish the task]

The screen appeared in red color, warned me in a cold and mechanical voice, and then disappeared just like that.

I groaned in frustration but decided to take action now.

Destroying a gambling den is a good deed, right?

I took a deep breath and then looked around.

Not being caught, huh?

I already had a perfect place to hide and do what I needed to do right now.

Beside that building, a half-constructed commercial block, probably abandoned midway or still going on, I don’t know, but it had no guards, no lights.

The best thing is that the building didn’t have any security camera there.

Perfect way for me to reach my target.

Taking advantage of all the blind spots and flickering of street lights, I went straight for the stairs of that abandoned building, holding the laptop tightly against my chest.

Yet my breath and heartbeat were steady.

I climbed the broken staircase to the second floor and crouched near a shattered window facing the target building.

Not too close to be caught, but close enough to get the net signals.

I opened the laptop and immediately connected it to the target building's network.

I was now sitting comfortably on the dirty floor with the laptop on my lap.

[Hosts: You have 38 minutes left]

That screen again flickered, bright red, singing a warning like a broken record.

Damn it.

The laptop started just like other normal laptops. I immediately checked for all the necessary information, and grimaced because it was not what the system promised me.

It was just an ordinary laptop.

Forget it.

I muttered to myself and was about to run a program that I wrote when the laptop rebooted, and then…..

Boom….

Codes ran on their own, windows switched at the speed of lightning, but I saw everything.

I noticed everything.

I started typing at the same time, and within a few seconds, I got access to their main server.

No OS…… No interface, just complete and raw access to their whole system.

I loved this s**t.

I switched, probed, filtered, hid my prints meticulously.

It felt as if the encrypted channels were lighting up like veins beneath my skin.

The excitement was so dense that all my nerves were on alert.

My fingers ran faster than they should.

I wrote commands layer over layer, going through bypasses, finding loops in their firewalls to get inside the system without being noticed.

I pressed the enter in the end, and the screen split into so many small windows, showing the whole building through the surveillance cameras, covering all the hallways, rooms, stairwells, and a hidden way going down the basement.

I smirked when I found another firewall there.

The present wasn’t what I wanted to see.

I paused for a second, and then started typing furiously again.

[35 minutes left]

The system screamed in warning; the red screen appeared, showed the phrase, and vanished just as it appeared, making me falter for a second, but I didn’t stop.

It took me a few more seconds to reach my target.

Through various cameras there, I saw a perfectly lit, crowded room with no windows.

So many tables around the room, and rows of betting machines…

People were shouting excitedly and angrily, some watching the game and some fighting with the servers over their win or loss….

Stacks of cash leaving the table, spread on the tables, dinging of machines…

Men and women felt possessed.

They were trapped in their addiction.

But I had no time to pity them.

I accessed their financial logs next.

All encrypted files…. The bigger the den…. Tighter the security…

No time to d******d and break them.

My fingers were still dancing on the keyboard.

And the Pandora box opened in front of my eyes.

No file was simple….

One file had another encrypted link for the next file and so on….

Damn it.

I was running out of time..

I decided to change my strategy.

Instead of digging deeper into these files, I went for the core processes – transaction handlers, illegal transactions, black money, cash flow routing with names and account details.

“If I can’t open you,” I muttered, a malicious smile crept on my lips.

“Then I will tear you apart.” The coldness in my voice dropped the temperature around me, but I felt nothing.

Not even a single flicker in my heartbeat.

I jerked my head lightly before injecting a recursive loop into their betting system.

First, corrupt the machines, and then go for the tables…

But the injection was subtle, hard to notice at first glance.

I bit my lower lip while sabotaging another betting machine.

“What the f**k? Where is my credit?” Someone yelled aloud angrily.

“What’s going on?”

“Hey, what is this? I was winning.”

More shouts, more chaos.

Perfect….

First step completed.

Now, the second step.

I injected a delay loop into their internal system by using the loopholes to hide my prints there.

It will create tiny disruptions, but they will have a big impact on.

Transactions froze for 2-3 seconds, cameras looped for 1 frame, and communication devices lagged, sending panic to internal people.

More shouts, people now running here and there, grabbing the servers, demanding their money, ready to fight at any time.

Now, the third step.

I opened a secure external channel to reach government departments.

I dumped everything that I found on their portals and erased all my traces.

Suddenly, a flicker made me pause.

{ a hand (not mine, with three big rings, running on the keyboard)}

.

.

{A screen – my screen – a tiny window opened, hiding beneath the tons of already opened windows}

{“Got you.” That very same cold and mechanical voice from that vision of past}

.

.

{That man with a big dragon tattoo on his neck is smiling maliciously. “Don’t let him go.”}

I immediately looked at the time in the right corner of the laptop.

Damn it.

I would be caught in ten seconds.

The system screen flickered in front of my eyes again….

Deep red, filled with warning…

[MISSION ABOUT TO FAIL]