Chapter 13: Hackerman Jr. and the Secret Discord

If Chapter 11 was The Glitchening, and Chapter 12 was Survival Mode, then Chapter 13?

This was straight-up espionage.

It started during English class, like all good disasters do. Sarah leaned over my desk, eyes narrowed with that dangerous glint she usually reserves for finals week and liars.

"Manuel," she whispered, "why is Derek Torkon number one on the LearnArena leader board?"

I blinked. "Who?"

"Derek. Torkon. The guy who once asked if Shakespeare invented Bluetooth."

That Derek.

I pulled out my phone and opened the app. And there he was—sitting smugly at the very top of the leader board with 99,999 XP.

For context, the XP cap was 5,000.

"This has to be a bug," I muttered.

"Nope," Javier chimed in from the back, glancing up from his laptop like a warlock summoned from cyberspace. "Check the logs. Someone's spoofing."

By the time the bell rang, we sprinted to the garage—our HQ, start-up lair, and emergency panic room. Kwame was already pacing like someone waiting on paternity test results in a daytime soap.

"We're doomed," he muttered. "We're going to school jail. The one where they force you to sharpen pencils and laminate worksheets."

I dove into the backend code. Javier leaned in, gum snapping, channelling full movie hacker energy. Zoey typed like her keyboard owed her money.

That's when I found it.

Derek's account had been accessed 47 times in under a minute.

From different IP addresses. Different devices.

He was either teleporting—or running a script.

"Someone built an exploit," I said. "This wasn't random. He had help."

Zoey's jaw dropped. "You think… there's a hacking ring?"

"In this school?" Kwame scoffed. "Half these kids think RAM is a type of goat."

And then, as if summoned by our fear, a message hit our admin-only chat:

---

Hackerman Jr.: Next time, don't make your API keys so easy to find 😉

📎 [screenshot attached]

---

My heart sank.

The file? A plaintext dump of our backend API keys. Just sitting there. Naked. Vulnerable. Like a digital baby in the rain.

"What the actual fudge ripple," I muttered, gripping my phone like it betrayed me.

Sarah stood up, calm but lethal. "Okay. We're going undercover."

Ten minutes later, Zoey and I had burner Discord accounts—GlitchWitch22 and DataDaddy3000—and we slipped into a hidden server called BrainHackers2.0.

It was a digital speakeasy—dark mode, ASCII art, and a flood of student usernames.

PixelPizza420

PDFDestroyer

ClippyIsGod

It was run by the kids who always sat at the back, silent in class, but somehow always had full marks and suspiciously fast Wi-Fi.

We scrolled through the chaos:

> "Leader board override tool updated."

"XP generator for LearnArena now 95% stealth."

"Mr. Kovac's quiz bank leaked (again)."

"This… is organized crime," Zoey whispered.

"They even have roles," I said, pointing to a user named Token Lord. "This guy's charging $10 per exploit."

Sarah squinted. "Okay. We've seen enough."

Back at HQ, the mood turned from shocked to strategic.

"New plan," I said. "We build a fortress."

For the next two days, we grinded like game devs on a launch deadline. Javier recoded the XP logic. Sarah locked down the quiz bank. Zoey rewrote the avatar wardrobe module so no one spawned with rainbow socks unless they earned it.

And me?

I added traps.

Beautiful, humiliating traps.

Fake XP fields.

Ghost leader board entries.

Time-based validation keys.

And our crowning jewel:

> If anyone tried injecting fake XP, the app would screenshot their phone's home screen and automatically change their leader board name to:

Certified Goofball.

No warning. No second chance. Just pure public shame.

By Friday morning, Derek Torkon had vanished from the top spot.

He wasn't second. Or third.

He was dead last.

And beside his name?

🛑 Certified Goofball

When he walked into class, the room erupted in applause.

Even Mr. Kovac clapped.

Zoey crossed her arms, looking smug. "Welcome to the Hall of Shame."

Kwame whispered, "There's a special kind of justice in this. Poetic justice."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "And this is why you don't mess with teenage developers fuelled by energy drinks and trauma."

I sank into my chair, exhausted but proud.

Then, a ping from ChatGPT:

> You just survived your first cyberattack.

Me: And lived to meme about it.

Because in this school?

Grades mattered.

Status mattered.

But above all?

Hustle ruled the code.

And LearnArena?

Just survived its first war.

But something told me…

It wouldn't be the last.