Resistance

Couple of days later.

They arrived in Wellington just after nightfall, dressed like typical teens, backpacks slung over their shoulders. But inside those bags were portable hard drives, encrypted comms, emergency VPN routers, and their custom-built micro firewall modules—Nemo's eyes and ears.

The town was quiet. Too quiet.

The medical data center, nestled behind a chain-linked fence, looked innocuous enough. But Mike could feel it—something about the silence felt wrong.

They hacked into the outer perimeter surveillance through a side utility box. Jake slipped through the gap in the fence while Mike guided him via comms, tapping into the building's internal systems.

Then, suddenly—darkness.

The power across two blocks flickered and died. The center's backup generator groaned to life.

Jake's voice crackled over comms. "Mike… I didn't trigger that."

Mike's screen lit up with alerts. Nemo flared red.

ATTACK INITIATED. CODE MATCH: Nilgiris.

Mike's voice sharpened. "Jake, it's already begun. They're inside the system."

Jake ducked behind a server stack, heart pounding. "Then so are we."

Jake crouched behind the rows of humming servers, the red emergency lights casting eerie shadows across the cold metal floor. The air was heavy with tension, and every second ticked louder in his head. On his earpiece, Mike's voice came through like a lifeline.

"They've deployed a payload, Jake. It's targeting the real-time backup clusters. If it hits those, the hospital records will be permanently corrupted."

Jake's breath hitched. "How much time do I have?"

"Ten minutes, maybe less. But there's something else…" Mike's voice paused, a flicker of unease in it. "There's movement. Not in the system. In the building. You're not alone."

Jake froze.

Then he heard it too—footsteps. Soft. Deliberate. Closing in.

He pressed himself closer to the servers and whispered, "Mike. Can you see them on the cams?"

"One figure. No security badge. Hooded. Moving toward the east server room. Jake... that's your room."

Jake's mind raced. He reached into his backpack, pulling out a flash-drive preloaded with a Nemo subroutine—a digital countermeasure they called Lockjaw, capable of freezing active attacks by isolating and mirroring the infected nodes.

He slid toward the server's main terminal, plugged in the drive, and began uploading.

But then… the footsteps stopped.

And a voice sliced through the quiet.

"You're not bad for an amateur," the figure said, stepping out of the shadows.

Jake spun around, heart hammering. The figure wore a sleek, matte black hoodie. No mask. Just calm eyes that gleamed with confidence—and something deeper. Obsession.

"You're Nilgiris," Jake said.

The figure smiled faintly. "That's what they've labeled me, yes. It's easier for the world to name the storm than to understand the weather."

Jake glanced at the loading bar behind him. 67%. He just needed a few more seconds.

Nilgiris took a step closer. "You and your little AI—Nemo, is it?—you've been interfering. You weren't supposed to notice. Not yet."

"Why are you doing this?" Jake demanded, stalling for time.

Nilgiris looked around the server room like he was walking through a museum of fossils. "Because this system—your system—needs to crash before it can evolve. You think you're protecting the world? You're just reinforcing the rot. I'm resetting it."

Jake stood his ground. "You're playing God with people's lives."

Nilgiris raised an eyebrow. "No. I'm just removing the illusion of safety. Evolution needs chaos. You'll understand one day."

"Upload complete," Mike's voice whispered in his ear.

Jake's eyes flicked toward the screen. Lockjaw Deployed. Engaging Containment.

Suddenly, the server lights flickered—and then surged brightly. The payload's progress stopped. Frozen. Quarantined.

Nilgiris turned to look at the terminal, and for the first time, his mask of composure cracked.

Jake didn't waste a second. He pulled a compact taser from his jacket and fired. The electrodes struck Nilgiris's shoulder—he jolted, crumpling to the floor, stunned but alive.

Jake exhaled hard, adrenaline shaking through him.

"You did it," Mike said through the earpiece. "Lockjaw isolated the threat. Hospital data is safe. Authorities are on their way. You okay?"

Jake stared down at Nilgiris, unconscious but breathing.

"No," Jake replied. "But I will be."

A week later.

In the glow of their monitor-lit room, Jake and Mike reviewed Nemo's logs, analyzing every byte of data from the attack. Nilgiris had been handed over to cybercrime authorities under an anonymous tip, and Project Nemo had passed its trial by fire.

But the war was far from over.

Because as they scrolled through the logs, Nemo displayed one final alert:

Unrecognized Node Detected. Shadow Ping Origin: Unknown.

Mike leaned in. "Nilgiris wasn't alone."

Jake nodded slowly. "This was just the beginning."