Chapter 19: The Shadow Coder

**Chapter Nineteen: The Shadow Coder**

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The message from Zuri Imara replayed in Jayden's mind like a war drum:

> *"You wear the crown like it's armor. But armor cracks."*

He stood in the estate's underground server vault, surrounded by blinking screens and whirring machines that powered Lexington Global's digital heart.

Faith's fingers flew across the keys, eyes locked to five monitors.

"She's a phantom," she whispered. "No IP history. No metadata. No fingerprints on the code."

Jayden folded his arms, eyes on the single blinking cursor in the center of screen six.

"But she left a message. She wanted us to find her."

Leo paced nearby. "So it's bait."

"Or a challenge," Faith added.

Jayden leaned in. "Either way, I accept."

---

Zuri Imara had once been Nairobi's most brilliant coder. She had hacked banks at seventeen, exposed corrupt ministers by eighteen, then vanished after a scandal no one could fully trace.

Until now.

Jayden turned to Faith.

"Can you build me a sandbox server? I want to go hunting."

Faith raised an eyebrow. "You're going in personally?"

Jayden nodded.

"I need to understand how she thinks. And to do that, I need to follow her code."

---

Six hours later, Jayden sat alone in the Lexington cybercell, hooked into a private node—a ghost server that mirrored Zuri's coding patterns from the intercepted message.

He typed in silence, tracing her breadcrumbs.

Backdoors. Trap loops. Phantom code.

Then something strange happened.

A popup.

Old-school.

Gray text on a black background.

> "WELCOME TO THE GAME, LION CUB."

> "LEVEL ONE: TRUST FALL."

Suddenly, the lights dimmed.

The screen flickered.

Then static.

Then…

A video file began to play.

---

Jayden's eyes widened.

The footage was from **inside** his own estate.

A hallway.

Three days ago.

Zuri had tapped into the estate's private feeds.

The footage zoomed in on **Sasha**, walking late at night, entering a restricted archive room.

Jayden clenched his jaw.

"Sasha?" he muttered.

Was she spying?

Was she leaking information?

He couldn't believe it.

Didn't want to.

But Zuri had planted this clip on purpose.

A message inside a message.

A virus of trust.

---

He stormed out of the cybercell and found Sasha on the upper balcony, sipping tea and reading reports.

"Sasha," he said, voice low but sharp.

She turned quickly. "Jayden?"

"Why were you in the Archive Room three nights ago?"

Her expression shifted. Carefully.

"I was looking through your father's legacy tapes. I thought I could find more on the Serpent funding trails."

"You didn't report it."

"I didn't think I needed permission to dig up what was already ours."

Jayden stepped closer.

"Someone used your movement to send me a message. Either you're a pawn… or something worse."

Sasha's eyes flared.

"You think I'd betray you again?"

"I think Zuri wants me to doubt you. And it's working."

---

Later that night, Jayden met privately with Leo.

"I don't want to accuse Sasha. But we have to watch her."

Leo nodded. "I'll have Lorna tail her discreetly."

Jayden exhaled.

Then paused.

"What if Zuri is doing to us what I did to the Serpents? Breaking us from the inside—without touching a single brick?"

Leo's eyes darkened.

"Then you need to stop playing chess."

Jayden looked at him.

"You need to start playing war."

---

The next day, Faith decrypted a partial trail from Zuri's code. One line repeated in several command blocks:

> **"GRACELAND 7:17"**

Jayden thought for a long moment.

"Graceland… That's a church. My mother used to take me there when I was younger."

Leo pulled up the building records.

"It was shut down after the fire. Condemned."

Jayden's voice was firm.

"Then we go there."

---

They entered the burned church just after midnight.

Ash still clung to the pews. Charred crosses hung loosely from the walls.

Jayden walked toward the pulpit, flashlight beam sweeping the shadows.

Behind the altar, etched into the stone, was a carving:

**7:17 — THE FIRE REDEEMS THE SILVER**

Leo stepped forward. "Another riddle?"

Jayden smiled grimly.

"No. A location."

He crouched and pushed at the altar stone.

It shifted.

Beneath it—**a steel laptop. Still warm.**

Faith plugged it into a portable decoder.

Inside: a partial blueprint of Lexington's old cybersecurity system.

Modified.

Corrupted.

Weaponized.

Leo stared at the code.

"She's not just hacking us."

Jayden whispered:

> "She's turning our legacy into her battlefield."

---

They returned to the estate with the laptop.

Jayden stood before his team.

"I don't care how long it takes. I want Zuri found. I want her online, offline, and out of the shadows."

Brian asked quietly, "What if she's not working alone?"

Jayden looked at him.

"She's not."

He turned toward the screen.

And said one word:

**"Shadowfall."**

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**End of Chapter Nineteen**