Dmitry cracked his knuckles, eyes gleaming as he leaned back in his chair. The glow from multiple monitors flickered across his sharp features, painting his face in shades of blue and green. He smirked, fingers flexing over the keyboard like a pianist before a grand performance.
Theo's request had been simple—cause noise, make it messy, but not too obvious.
A lesser hacker might have gone for something crude—DDoS attacks, database leaks, or some generic ransomware scare. But Dmitry?
Dmitry was an artist.
He exhaled slowly, rolling his shoulders before dragging a fresh window to his primary screen. His mind was already assembling the puzzle pieces, his instincts refining the plan with razor-sharp precision.
Florence. Airlines. Ticket schedules.
A perfect mix of chaos and plausible deniability.
---
Before touching any external systems, Dmitry had to vanish—at least digitally. Even the best hackers made one mistake: attacking before securing their own ground.
He didn't make mistakes.
His fingers danced across the keyboard, executing a sequence that booted up a custom VPN chain, bouncing his connection through servers in Reykjavik, Buenos Aires, and Johannesburg. Not the usual Tor circuits—those were amateur hour. He used nested encrypted tunnels, blending commercial traffic with genuine user patterns to avoid anomalies.
Then came the blockchain-mesh relay, a private network of compromised IoT devices—smart fridges, printers, even baby monitors—spread across six continents.
He smirked. "Always funny how people secure their bank accounts but leave their coffee machines wide open," he muttered under his breath.
Finally, he deployed his favorite trick: synthetic identity diffusion.
Rather than simply hiding his activity, he flooded the system with decoys—spoofed logins from supposed cartel members, fake intelligence officers running "Florence operations," and even fabricated darknet chatter about a "rogue Russian hacker infiltrating European air traffic control."
By the time Interpol or any cybersecurity watchdogs caught wind of something, they'd be chasing shadows.
Now, he could play.
---
Dmitry tapped into the airline booking systems with a sleek SQL injection string, targeting exposed endpoints that lazy developers had left wide open.
A scoff left his lips. "Amateurs."
It took minutes—minutes—to escalate privileges and gain full administrator access to the PNR (Passenger Name Record) database.
Step One: Swap Ticket Assignments.
Businessmen heading to Tokyo suddenly had their seats reassigned to flights bound for Johannesburg. Families expecting to land in Paris were rerouted to São Paulo. First-class passengers found themselves downgraded to economy.
Step Two: Adjust Flight Times.
Several departures were now scheduled an hour earlier, causing unsuspecting passengers to miss their flights entirely. Others were delayed by four hours, creating bottlenecks at check-in counters.
Step Three: Generate Automated Confirmation Emails.
Passengers received official-looking notifications, confirming that their flights had been "rescheduled due to internal airline adjustments."
Confusion spread like wildfire.
Dmitry leaned back, taking a slow sip of tea, watching as airline call centers began to overload with frantic passengers.
Then, for the finishing touch—a ticket duplication script that created hundreds of extra reservations on fully booked flights.
By morning, Florence's airports would be a war zone.
As a parting gift, he buried a message deep in the airline's logs:
> "Your cyber defenses are as weak as your in-flight meals. Best regards, The Phantom Passenger."
He let out a low chuckle, spinning in his chair.
Then—
A small, sock-clad foot thudded against the side of his chair.
Dmitry stopped. His fingers hovered over the keyboard.
His eyes slid sideways.
A little boy, no older than six, stood there with his hands on his hips, scowling up at him.
"Papa, Mama says you're hiding again."
Dmitry exhaled, rubbing his forehead.
"I am working, Mikhail."
The boy narrowed his eyes, arms crossed. "Mama says you said that last time, and you were just playing chess with some man named 'Interpol.'"
A grin twitched at Dmitry's lips.
"I was winning at chess with Interpol."
"She says she's very angry."
Dmitry fished into his pocket, pulling out a folded bill. He held it out between two fingers.
"Take this. Buy yourself a chocolate." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Also, tell her you never saw me."
Mikhail took the money, his tiny face scrunched in thought.
"She'll know I'm lying."
"Then say I looked stressed. That's not a lie."
The boy's serious expression cracked into a mischievous grin. He snatched the cash and bolted out of the room.
Dmitry let out a breath and cracked his neck.
"Kids," he muttered, shaking his head before turning back to the chaos he had just unleashed.
---
By sunrise, chaos engulfed the city.
News stations flashed urgent travel advisories. Angry passengers waved printed tickets that no longer matched anything in the airline's system.
Pilots were showing up for the wrong flights. Check-in counters were gridlocked. Security lines overflowed with travelers whose names mysteriously appeared twice in the system.
Florence's mayor held an emergency press conference, speculating about a coordinated cyberattack on Italy's transportation sector.
---
In a high-rise office overlooking Milan, Vincenzo Moretti swirled a glass of whiskey, his gaze locked onto the silent news broadcast.
Florence was drowning in digital confusion.
His lips curled into a smirk.
Theo was already moving.
He had been certain before, but now? Now, he had proof.
Vincenzo's sharp mind analyzed the situation effortlessly. The scale, the precision, the style—this wasn't just some random hacker flexing their skills.
This was Theo's touch.
"Fascinating," he murmured, eyes gleaming.
Marco, seated on the couch, leaned forward, his expression shifting from surprise to sheer disbelief.
"This is insane," he muttered, his brows furrowing. "All this, just to cause some noise?"
He exhaled, running a hand through his hair.
"You know… Sometimes I forget just how crazy Theo is. Then he does something like this."
Vincenzo chuckled, setting his glass down with a quiet clink.
"He plays too much."
Marco huffed out a breath, shaking his head.
"Yeah. But at least he's got the skills to back it up."
They sat in silent contemplation, the glow of the television flickering across their faces. The chaos unfolding in Florence was beautiful in its complexity.
Then Vincenzo stood, adjusting his cuffs with quiet precision.
"All that's left now," he murmured, "is to trust Theo… and the contact he's meeting."
Marco's jaw tightened, his serious gaze fixed on his boss.
"And if that contact isn't trustworthy?"
Vincenzo's smirk didn't waver.
"Then Theo will handle it."
With that, he turned away from the screen, already preparing for the next move in their game.