Chapter 1: The life Before

In an abandoned warehouse, there lay a man named Monowi. As he wailed in pain, he was certain that these moments he was experiencing now, were his final moments, before his life would come to an end.

Even in his completely battered state, he was still struggling to get up, but his body wasn’t allowing him to do that. It was as if each effort he made to push himself off the ground, the ground itself was becoming more real, increasing its gravity pulling Monowi towards it. In these grim moments, his whole life was flashing before his eyes like a vivid dream.

His life felt like a failure; condemning himself for not being able to make up to his ambitions. It wasn’t just an ambition, but a lifelong dream to achieve something so far off the charts that the very definition of greatness would cease to exist. But in the race to catch these dreams, this is where it had brought him.

As these final thoughts drifted through his mind, he remembered how it all started.

In his early years, whenever he saw someone living a life of luxury, while he stood there, he felt himself painfully far from that world. It made him wonder, how could he ever attain that life. But seeing up ahead that path looked so tedious to work hard and still barely getting enough. One day, at a school he attended, he heard a story about someone who had hacked into a country’s bank and emptied all of the bank’s accounts. The hacker was never caught and was rumored to be living in great luxury.

This was the turning point in his life. At first, it just started as an itch under his skin, a curiosity to learn hacking, but his inner self was morally conflicted, about robbing others. Still, the longing for a better life, paired with a seemingly swift option, was too strong. He couldn’t control his urges and gave into them.

After graduating from high school, he enrolled himself in different institutions that taught hacking to prepare for his future ventures. But the price he had to pay for it, he had to work part times at lot of places to pay his tuition fees and get by. His other expenses were cut short, after his guardian father died during his final year of high school.

Burning his blood and soul did yield results, he familiarized the concepts of hacking, the process of manipulating vulnerabilities. But still the hard written code, it was still a milestone he had yet to achieve. He would often lose the motivation to keep practicing the syntax, unaware of the fact why that was. Now, as he reflects on it, he considers his inner moral conflict as the key factor.

After years of chronic hardships, without making even an inch of progress towards his dream, despair began to set in. The hopelessness of it all made him desperate to get what he wanted, but still it seemed like fate wasn’t going to offer any blessing any time soon.

That’s when he heard about a high paying position as cyber-controller at a certain firm, from an old childhood friend. Monowi knew that it was out of his leagues. But his friend insisted that Monowi should apply for this vacancy. When Monowi’s constant refusals couldn’t change his friend’s mind, his friend made him an offer. He would lend Monowi a device that would let him cheat and he could easily get the job, and also that device would be shielded from metal detectors, so he wouldn’t have to worry about being caught.

Although Monowi was hellbent on not cheating, but such a high paying position, was too tempting to let it slip by. In the end, he accepted his friends request, and applied for the position. He appeared at the firm’s testing center for skills and knowledge assessment. As his friend said, the device Monowi borrowed from his friend was undetectable. With its help, he was easily able to pass the test. Next, he was called in for the interview. His competition was with two others whose appearance, speech and composure made them seem like the natural choice for this job. But, Monowi had the device again, with its help, he easily cleared the interview.

Few days passed by, and he received the offer letter from the firm, naming him as the first choice for this job. Monowi couldn’t get happier than this, but still the needle of resorting to cheating to get that job was prickling him. Before he could let his guilt take over, he accepted the offer and joined the firm.

After joining, Monowi’s life at the company began, but it felt more unusual than casual or professional. As he attended online conferences, regular meetups with other control and administration departments, everything went way too smooth, as if some unknown force was at work to keep his position secure.

During this period, Monowi also learned that the position he had recently filled was the company had been desperately trying to recruit for. Every time someone filled that vacancy, either they would vanish without a trace or resigned from it due to unknown reasons. The HR team was struggling to find answers, but all they had were growing piles of files on the people who had left.

He sailed smoothly through the early days, unaware of the fact that his incompetence was quietly carving a road of trouble for him. In the calm of early success, the warning signs went unnoticed, that’s when he faced his first hurdle.

On that day, he was called in the boardroom, where all chairpersons and even the chairman was present. The environment was pretty intense. As soon as he arrived, without any initial formalities, the chairman’s secretary asked bluntly, “What is your report on the recent breach?”.

Monowi, feigning ignorance but still afraid as if something serious had slipped through due to his oversight, replied: “What breach? What breach are we talking about? Can you give some more details about it?”.

This time the chairman couldn’t compose himself, and burst out in anger: “Do you have any idea what we are going through? We have incurred a loss of million-dollar contract, and you don’t know about this. We have been prepping ourselves for the past two and a half years, but… but…”. The chairman’s words stopped halfway as he clinched his fist, about to say something very harsh, and tried hard to control his anger and frustration.

Chairman’s secretary took over, “One of our rivals has won the project that we were aiming for. According to our resources and informants, they were economically scarce and had minimal planning for the project. But in the last two days before the end of bids submission, they finalized their proposal. And quite unnaturally they won. We had our doubts from the start…”

As she took a cursory glance at everyone present there and then continued:

“We had our doubts from the start, that someone was providing them information from inside our company, but we didn’t take action. Now, that it has cost us this project, we began investigating it through our quality assurance and network team.”

She took a little break and looked toward one side of the room, where the QA and network team’s leaders were standing. She then shifted her cold gaze towards Monowi as she was about to hammer him and then continued:

“There were some unusual logs, which we couldn’t identify. They could only be identified, when they were active. Most of them were when you were off shift, but to be precise three logs were identified when you were on shift. As a cyber-controller it was your job to catch them, if not at first try then second should have been the last one.”

Her cold stare turned petrifying as she said the last sentence: “But now where is the reason, for that to have happened.”

Listening her words made Monowi’s mind go blank for a few seconds. He felt like he was not supposed to catch the culprit, but he was the one in the first place. Sweat drops began forming on his temple. He opened his mouth to say something but no words came out, as if all reason had receded in the face of evidence before him.

Murmurs stirred in the background about his shortcomings, but he was too absorbed in his own dilemma to care about those. Just as it seemed Monowi was about to say something in the haste of situation, an old man in the chairpersons stood up and straightened his clothes. This simple action of the old man was enough to make everyone silent and draw their attention.

The old man spoke: “There is no need to rush to conclusions so fast, we can take our time sorting things out, right! He may have horned the bell, but still, he is learning his way through.”

Then the old man turned his gaze toward Monowi. He felt chills down his spine. The old man continued: “I do believe you now understand what is on the line. So, you should get to work now and find the culprit, before you find yourself in another situation. That’s it for now; you can leave.”

When the old man fell silent, not a single person, not even the chairman or his secretary seconded his words. Monowi understood the signal that he should leave the boardroom now and starting working on the problem at hand.

But would Monowi really be able to do it? he knew he had cheated his way in and he was no good for this role. Would he able to catch the one who is gotten Monowi into this mess…