The Cipher Knight

Chapter 2: Black Hat at Midnight

Most nights, after he finished studying, Jay became someone else. His screen name was "Mindfire." In the quiet hours between midnight and dawn, he wasn’t just a broke cybersecurity student. He was a ghost in the machine, slipping through firewalls and backdoors like smoke. He hacked corrupt websites, exposed government lies, leaked court documents, and rerouted dark money into shelters, clinics, and missing-person databases.

He didn’t do it for praise or followers he stayed off every social platform. He did it because no one else would. Because the world was rigged, and he couldn’t sleep knowing he was doing nothing. And no one suspected a thing. Until 3:14 a.m. on a rainy Thursday night, a private message blinked onto his screen.

[ Unknown: We see you, Mindfire.]

[ Nice work on the Fresno case]

[ You're not alone. We're watching the same crooks.]

Jay’s heart skipped because the Fresno case had never gone public. He’d stumbled into it while scanning a charity site that funneled donations into a shell of companies. The fake charity had connections to a quiet but growing drug operation—synthetics shipped through tech firm backchannels. Jay had collected data, encrypted it, and sent it to a journalist who never replied. That data was supposed to be dead, and his fingers hovered above the keys.

Mindfire: Who are these people?

Then a message from his device pops up:

[Unknown: Meet us.]

[ Dockside Terminal 47B. Friday. Midnight.]

[ Bring your mind. Leave your fear.]

The message vanished like it was never sent. Jay stared at the screen, his breath caught between panic and curiosity. No IP with no trace and whoever they were. They were good, maybe better than him. And they knew things he’d buried. Days passed and Friday crawled by.

Jay skipped meals where he couldn’t focus in class his mind ran in circles. Was this a setup? A trap? A way to smoke him out? He scrubbed his devices for malware. He even set up a mirrored environment to test what would happen if someone tried to track him again, but nothing came up.

Until 11:45 p.m where Jay stood outside terminal 47B, hidden by fog and silence. The warehouse looked like it had been empty for years. Rusted steel doors with faded numbers that have half of the windows boarded with no cameras and no lights.

And yet a flicker of motion as he approached slowly, his black hoodie clinging to his body like armor. He gripped a modified USB in his pocket loaded with a virus that could fry most basic systems just in case. The side door creaked open and inside there were pale blue lights lining the floor like a trail. They led him into a wide open space metal scaffolding with storage crates, and old forklifts. Then the lights shut off behind him, where Jay spun around, heart pounding.

“Don’t worry,” a voice said. Calm. Confident. “We just don’t like being tracked.”

From the shadows stepped a person in a smooth, silver mask. Their voice was neither fully male nor female it was neutral and digital.

“You’re Mindfire,” they said. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“Why?” Jay asked.

“Because you’re one of us.”

Three more figures appeared from the dark. All wearing different masks: one was shaped like a fox, another glowed faint green, the last was cracked porcelain with circuitry drawn on its side.

“We are the Neural Rebellion,” said the silver mask. “We watch the cracks in the system. We slip through them. And when we find people like you—people with gifts—we bring them in.”

Jay narrowed his eyes. “Gifts?”

“You think your mind is the only one that hears more than it should?”

Suddenly, the room felt… full" not physically but mentally. A pressure of a presence like thoughts were crawling just beneath his skin.

Jay flinched. “You—”

“You’re not crazy,” the fox mask said. “You’re evolving.”

“We all are,” said the porcelain one. “This world is poisoned. Corrupted. But a few of us? We can feel the sickness. And we can fight back.”

Jay’s voice was hoarse. “This isn’t real.”

The silver mask stepped closer. “Then why can you hear my thoughts before I speak?”

Jay’s knees went weak. The whisper in his head—"Don’t run. You're meant for this."—echoed without a mouth.

He staggered back. “What do you want from me?”

They showed him on a flickering screen behind them, files loaded—raw, unfiltered data from inside Virexon Corp. Shipment manifests, hidden military contracts, logs marked "PHASE FOUR." And then a chilling document titled:

[Project Echo: Neural Compliance Trials]

Jay’s stomach dropped because the file contained drug research and not for healing but for control. Mind suppression with synthetic obedience, microchips, and electrotherapy tests. Entire trials performed on undocumented people, low-income inmates, and even teenagers from group homes.

“It’s real,” Jay whispered.

The porcelain masked one nodded. “We’ve lost people. Friends. Family. Some disappeared. Others… came back wrong.”

“You found the Fresno ring,” said Silver Mask. “That was just the surface. Virexon is the root.”

“And after college, you should apply there they will hire you,” the fox mask added. “Given your skill in coding”

Jay blinked. “How do you know that?”

A long silence.

Silver Mask spoke again. “Because one of us is already inside. Watching. Listening.”

Jay’s voice dropped. “You’ve infiltrated them?”

“We’re trying. But they’re evolving, too.”

Then the fox mask handed him something—a chipped ID badge with Virexon’s logo on it. Only this one had a hidden micro-transmitter beneath the plastic.

“You will soon be graduating at the end of this semester. You must start to apply there as soon as possible,” Silver Mask said. “They’ll welcome you. They think you’re desperate. Useful.”

Jay looked at the ID.

“Who are you?”

He didn’t answer.

Then, a sound cut through the silence.

A drone.

A red light flickered in the far window.

“They found us,” said Porcelain Mask.

"Scatter!" Silver Mask barked.

Jay turned, but Silver Mask grabbed his wrist and shoved a tiny, cold object into his hand. A black capsule—like a USB, but glowing faintly.

“Decrypt this when you’re safe. It’s everything.”

The next second, smoke exploded into the room with sirens and mechanical legs. Jay ran out through the other door, into the cold fog, heart pounding like a war drum. Behind him, someone screamed, and then a thought pierced his skull so sharp.

“We’ll find you again, Mindfire.”