The Strong-Willed Sean O'Connor

CHAPTER 8

Abrill stared at Sean, her eyes wide with shock. She had been trying for days to locate the hacker, and despite all her efforts, she had failed. Yet Sean had managed to do it in less than five minutes.

It felt too good to be true—like he was bluffing just to look impressive.

"How can we be sure you actually found the hacker's location?!" Abrill demanded. "You might be able to fool others, but not me! Show us the location on the laptop and let us see it ourselves."

Sean didn’t even glance up. “They’re bouncing their signal through multiple proxies, but the core route has a flaw. They left a trace in the data packet—very subtle.”

He typed a few more commands, then turned the laptop toward Greg and Abrill. A world map lit up, red lines tracing digital routes across continents until one point blinked steadily.

“There,” Sean said simply. “Warsaw, Poland. The hacker’s origin point.”

Gasps filled the room.

Greg leaned in, adjusting his glasses. “That… that’s not just a general location. That’s a specific IP address.”

Sean nodded. “It’s a residential subnet, but the traffic isn’t encrypted as tightly as it should be. Amateurs cover their tracks better. Whoever this is—they're bold. Fast, but messy. They wanted to be noticed.”

Abrill stepped closer, stunned. “That’s impossible. I went over every route. There wasn’t a single signature I could find. And you—you did that in under five minutes?”

Sean finally looked at her. His tone was calm, but there was weight behind his words. “You looked too hard. Sometimes the trick isn’t to chase the noise—it’s to listen for what’s too quiet.”

Greg stared at the screen, speechless. The experts exchanged glances, their earlier smugness giving way to something else—respect, or maybe fear.

Victor gave a small, satisfied nod. “Is that proof enough?”

Abrill clenched her jaw. “I... I still think anyone could’ve just guessed—”

“Just ignore her, Mr. O’Connor,” Victor said, cutting her off. “She acts like that all the time. Let’s just get started, please.”

Sean nodded, dropping the laptop on the desk. “Understood. Let’s get this done.”

Abrill scoffed in response.

Victor led Sean to the large monitor in the office—the same one Abrill had been using earlier. Sean immediately sat down and glanced at the screen. Every computer had been hacked so thoroughly that nothing but lines of code filled the displays.

It didn’t take long for him to realize this hacker was one of the best. But one thing puzzled him—why had they targeted this company?

“Mr. Stroud, who’s the best at their job here right now?” Sean asked.

Victor turned to his team. “I’d say Greg is better than the others, since Abrill isn’t an employee—she’s just a student.”

Hearing that, Abrill opened her mouth to protest, but Sean’s voice cut her off.

“Alright. Greg alone will do.”

Without sparing her a glance, Sean gestured for Greg to come over.

Greg hesitated for a second, clearly surprised to be chosen, then stepped forward. Sean slid the keyboard toward him.

“I need you to monitor the outbound traffic while I work on isolating the breach point. Don’t touch anything else unless I say so.”

Greg nodded quickly. “Got it.”

As Sean began typing, his focus razor-sharp, Abrill crossed her arms and stepped back, biting her tongue. She hated being sidelined, especially when she knew she was just as capable—if not more.

Victor watched the screen intently while the others hovered in silence, the room filled only with the rhythmic tapping of keys.

Although Victor had inherited a tech company, he had never been particularly interested in its security side. Watching Sean, he couldn’t fully grasp what was happening—but one thing was clear: Sean knew what he was doing, and Victor had never seen Greg so focused before.

Within moments, Sean pulled up a secondary console, his eyes scanning lines of data at lightning speed. “There’s more than one connection here,” he muttered. “This isn’t just a solo act. Someone’s piggybacking.”

Greg looked up, alarmed. “A team?”

“Possibly. Or someone trying to cover their tracks by pretending it’s a team.”

Abrill’s irritation faded as curiosity crept in. Despite herself, she was impressed—and more than a little intrigued. He had uncovered another lead in such a short time, which was undeniably impressive, but she refused to acknowledge it. Instead, she turned her head away and scoffed.

Sean’s fingers paused for a split second on the keyboard, his expression tightening. He leaned back, eyes locked on a set of blinking lines at the corner of the screen.

“This… this isn’t just a trace. They planted something.”

Greg blinked, taken aback. “Planted what?”

“A worm. Slow-moving, but it’s replicating through the system. It’s hiding in the background processes and masking the original breach,” Sean explained, raising his head from the screen to look at Abrill. “That’s why you couldn’t detect it, Abrill.”

Hearing her name, Abrill’s head snapped toward Sean. She had no idea he would involve her again.

She stepped forward instinctively. “A worm? You mean they’ve been inside longer than we thought?”

Sean nodded grimly. “And if we don’t isolate it fast, it’ll trigger a fail-safe. Everything will lock down, or worse—crash entirely.”

Victor paled. “Can you stop it?”

“I can,” Sean replied, standing up, “but not with what I have here. I need my drive—something I’ve customized to deal with this kind of infection. It’s back at my place.”

He moved quickly, grabbing his jacket off the back of a chair.

“Keep the system running. Don’t disconnect anything or restart any machines. Greg, keep monitoring traffic and watch for shifts in the data flow. Abrill, keep an eye on the worm’s replication rate. I’ll be back in thirty minutes—forty, max.”

“Wait, you’re just going to leave?” Abrill asked, her brows knitting together. “What if something changes while you're gone?”

Sean’s eyes flicked to her. “Then adapt. You’re smart. Use it.”

With that, he strode out of the room, his pace brisk and sure.

As the door closed behind him, the silence in the room deepened. Abrill stared at the screen, heart pounding, torn between frustration and fascination.

Greg let out a slow breath. “He’s... something else.”

Abrill didn’t reply. She was already typing, eyes narrowed, chasing the worm through the sea of code Sean had just exposed.

It wasn’t even two minutes since Sean left when three men walked into the control room, one of them with glossy hair that caught the light.

They didn’t say a word at first.

Abrill’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. Greg tensed.

These weren’t just any men.

They were the team that had been contacted before Sean arrived.

And now—they were here to take over.