Page 146 of The Kiss Of Death
I promised myself if everyone else has to die to keep her alive, so be it.
I had one idea, one way for us to win, but I didn’t know if it was possible.What if I fucking fail?What if my skills were useless when I needed them.I can’t fail. I can’t lose her. I can’t. I can’t.
“I can’t find the answer to the puzzle. I give up; this is too hard,”I remembered the kid in me whining to my mother, when she created those impossible-to-decipher puzzles.
“It’s because you got lost, you followed the wrong paths. A puzzle is like a maze, a wrong path, deviating from the trajectory. Start from scratch,” she had said.
A maze.
“The only way to find them is to wait for them to make a mistake,” I muttered, my mind already envisioning the linesof code. “And everyone makes a mistake eventually. Especially when you think you’re untouchable.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re the mistake.” I pointed at Mercier. He was the bug in the system. “And the drone is our Trojan horse.”
Mercier was the key to end their reign, and the drone was the only solution to find them. Our only chance. Dalia wouldn’t have to hide anymore. Those monsters wouldn’t haunt her nightmares.
“What?” that clueless piece of shit asked.
“I’m going to create a virtual maze within the drone’s program,” I said. “If anyone tries to tamper with the code, the maze activates, delaying their progress. I would be able to monitor their attempts, and trace their location while they struggle to navigate the maze. But the code has to be invisible. Undetected. It’ll have to mimic the software components and evade signature-based detection methods.”
“Can you do this?” Mercier frowned.
It was a calculated risk, even if I had omitted one crucial detail. The maze would only activate if they attempted to change the code; otherwise, I was screwed. However, a group of their caliber would never blindly trust someone like Mercier, in case he had planted a tracking device, and that would be their downfall. No fallback strategy existed. It was all about executing a singular Plan A. The only route to secure Dalia’s freedom definitively and obliterate the notion of powerlessness from my wretched existence.
“Only I can do this,” I said. I didn’t trust any engineers from the government to domything.
It was my cyber warfare.
I had never crafted softwares that powerful. No one ever had.
“I’ll craft the most complicated maze ever done. They’ll never be able to escape. I’ll corrupt each of their systems one by oneto dissect their data. I’ll find those fucking bastards, but you—” I jabbed a finger at Mercier. “You’ll have a special task. You’ll reach out to your dear minister of the French army friend, and have him stand by for my signal to apprehend them. You’ll meet him face-to-face in person and tell him the truth. Somewhere private, with no phone or hackable Wi-Fi. And if you fail…” I towered close to him, my lips etching into a scowl. “I’ll have no qualms about making you suffer.”
He nodded.
I snapped my fingers and gestured toward the door. “Now, let’s move.”
“Where?”
“To your premises.” I gritted my teeth, keeping my patience in check. He was so slow to follow. “And remember, after that all you have to do is show up at the meeting spot. And if you could manage to look as pitifully weak and guilty as you do right now, it might just coax them into taking the bait.”
One way or another, this had to end.
In a week.
And I’d have to lie to her one last time.
Everything around me felt so alive, while I felt like a lifeless zombie.
The hallways of Pantheon were crowded with students returning from winter break, their laughter and chatter contrasting sharply with the heaviness in my chest. I clutched onto my backpack, avoiding each of them as I weaved toward the Unifiers’ territory.
“Take care of your heart,my flower. A bruised heart is the worst sickness,”Grandma had said to me while driving me to the airport.
Little did she know that my heart wasn’t just bruised—it was shattered in thousands of pieces, held together by fragile bonds that threatened to break at any moment.
I glanced up from the floor, and my heart lurched painfully in my chest, those fragile bonds snapping. There he stood, descending the stairs, cloaked in a black hoodie, strands of his disheveled hair falling on his forehead, framing his tortured aura.
I was climbing the stairs, and every step closer to him filled me with impending doom. The stone railing felt icy against my trembling fingers, the cold seeping into my bones. A sharp intake of breath caught in my throat. Out of all people, why did it have to be him? He was my shadow, my tormentor, my heartbreak personified.
