Jake and Mike were deep into Project Nemo—no longer just coding, but living it. Their daily lives had shifted entirely. Sleep came in patches, meals were skipped or replaced with caffeine, and time blurred into a looping rhythm of debug, test, deploy, repeat. Their minds had become engines, constantly optimizing Nemo's systems, updating algorithms, fine-tuning its machine learning models to adapt to the rapidly evolving threat landscape.
But then, something unusual surfaced.
It was a cold, grey evening. Rain tapped against the window of Jake's room as glowing lines of code ran across their screens. The air was tense, filled with the low hum of hardware and the quiet intensity of two minds locked into the pulse of the digital world.
Mike suddenly froze. His eyes widened, staring at the screen like it had just spoken to him in a voice only he could hear.
Jake glanced over. "What's the matter, Mike?"
Mike didn't respond right away. He leaned closer to the screen, his fingers tapping rapidly, toggling between data logs and timeline graphs.
Then, in a breath barely above a whisper, he said, "Do you see this? The pattern? Look at the timestamps of these cyberattacks."
Jake wheeled his chair over and peered at the screen. Mike highlighted a cluster of data entries.
Jake squinted. "Wait... fifteen days apart?"
Mike nodded, his voice low and urgent. "The last five major cyber incidents we tracked—all spaced exactly fifteen days apart. Different cities. Different systems. But the same method. Same signature. Same time gap."
Jake sat back, a chill crawling down his spine. "I hadn't noticed it until you said it… but now it's too clear."
Mike's voice tightened. "This isn't coincidence. This is a schedule. Someone's orchestrating these hits like clockwork."
Jake frowned, tension tightening his jaw. "You think all these disasters—blackouts, server breaches, emergency system collapses—they're connected?"
"I don't just think it," Mike replied, dragging a predictive graph onto the screen, "I know it. It's a chain reaction. Precise. Intentional. And if this timeline holds…" He tapped the screen. "The next attack is due in three days."
Jake stood, adrenaline sharpening his thoughts. "So we're not just tracking random chaos anymore. We're watching a campaign. An unfolding operation."
Mike looked over, his face pale but focused. "It's not natural. It's designed. Someone is pulling strings behind the curtain—and Nemo just found the thread."
They stared at the screen in silence as another forecast generated on the display—a red dot blinking softly over a city they knew too well.
Jake whispered, "They're getting closer."
And in that moment, both of them realized: Project Nemo wasn't just a prototype anymore.
It had become a weapon.
And so had they.
The blinking red dot pulsed steadily on the screen, centered over Wellington, a quiet town just two hours from where Jake and Mike lived. Known for its medical research facility and regional server farms, Wellington wasn't exactly a prime target—unless, of course, someone wanted to knock out the backup data of multiple hospitals and utility providers all at once.
Mike zoomed in on the map while Jake ran Nemo's predictive simulation.
Jake muttered, "This isn't a coincidence. That facility holds mirrored records for over half the state's health systems."
Mike's fingers danced across the keyboard. "If they corrupt those records—diagnoses, prescriptions, surgical histories—tens of thousands of people could be affected. We're not talking inconvenience. We're talking lives."
Jake stared at the screen, the weight of it all pressing in. "This is war. Just a quiet one."
Mike leaned back, rubbing his temples. "We have three days. Maybe less. And we still don't know who's behind this."
Jake paced the room, mind racing. "Null Void?" he asked. "Could this be them again?"
Mike shook his head. "The signature's different. It's more refined. Cleaner. Almost… elegant."
He pulled up the breach code, letting Nemo analyze the payload and encryption methods. Lines of shimmering, compressed code scrolled past.
Then Nemo beeped.
PATTERN RECOGNIZED AND DECODED: CODE SEQUENCE TAGGED "NILGIRIS."
Jake frowned. "Nilgiris? What is that?"
Mike looked puzzled. "Not a hacker handle. Not in any of the darknet logs. Let me check the root."
He typed in a series of admin commands and unlocked deeper access. There, buried inside the attacker's code, was a strange comment left behind, almost like an easter egg.
"Nilgiris does not destroy. Nilgiris resets. Humanity must reboot."
Jake read it aloud, the words chilling and cryptic.
Mike sat upright, alert. "This isn't just a cyber criminal. This is ideology. Philosophy. Whoever Nilgiris is, they think they're saving the world."
Jake's expression hardened. "We've got a cyber-terrorist with a god complex."
The room filled with a tense silence. The rain had stopped outside, but the pressure was only building. Mike spoke first.
"We need to get to Wellington. We need to stop this ourselves."
Jake hesitated. "You mean physically go there? Break into a secure data center?"
Mike looked him dead in the eye. "We've come this far. We know the patterns. We have Nemo. And right now, no one else even knows this is coming."
Jake took a deep breath. "Then we do it. We go in. We stop Nilgiris. But we do it smart. We prep. We track their code. And if we're lucky…"
He trailed off, his eyes narrowing.
Mike finished the thought: "We find Nilgiris."
What if we fail?
What if Nilgiris is ten steps ahead of us?
What if we're not enough?
He kept replaying the possibilities in his mind like a broken record. The image of Wellington's hospital systems crashing, patients left in chaos, lives hanging in the balance—it haunted him. Every decision he made now carried weight. And for the first time, Jake wasn't sure he was ready to carry it.
Across from him, Mike stared blankly at the screen, but his mind was elsewhere. He was usually the composed one, always thinking, always five moves ahead. But tonight, his hands were clammy. His heart beat just a little too fast. Doubt crept in like a slow leak.
He glanced at Jake, then down at the drive containing Lockjaw, their secret weapon.
What if it doesn't work?
What if we just made everything worse?
Mike knew technology. He trusted Nemo. But he didn't trust the world. He'd seen too many times how something pure could be twisted. Nilgiris wasn't just a hacker—he was the kind of person Mike had always feared: someone who believed they were saving the world by tearing it apart.
Mike clenched his fists. "We shouldn't be the ones doing this," he muttered under his breath.
Jake looked up. "But no one else is."
That was the truth. Raw. Undeniable.
And it was that truth—more than courage, more than anger—that drove them forward.
Beneath all their fears, one thought united them: If we don't act now, who will?
They weren't heroes. They didn't feel brave.
They were anxious.
Terrified.
And absolutely certain of one thing—
They had no choice but to fight.