CHAPTER 54: CHAPTER 54

The quiet in their unit, which they had once found peaceful, was now filled with a heavy sense of dread. It smothered their earlier feeling of victory. The name [User: Silica] seemed to glow on Evelyn’s laptop screen like a toxic stain that would not fade. The fifteen thousand dollars they had just made felt meaningless. Even their new tools and organized shelves now looked like childish toys compared to an enemy they could not see or touch.

Silva finally broke the silence with a shaky whisper as he hugged himself and looked around the fortified room. He was afraid the very walls might be listening. "She was in here?" he asked. "Inside our computers? What did she see? Did she find our bank records, or our names? Does she know where we live?" The fear in his eyes was a raw and physical thing.

"I do not know what she took or what she saw," Evelyn replied. Her voice was strained but controlled while her fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up complex logs and streams of data. The information meant nothing to Silva and very little to Ace. "She was not here to smash and grab. Her approach was much quieter than that. It was like a spy walking through our house, opening our drawers to see what we own, and then slipping out without a sound. She was mapping us and learning about us."

Ace felt a cold knot of fear tighten in his stomach as his mind raced. This was a fight he did not know how to wage. His unique ability, which allowed him to fix physical things with a touch, was useless here. That power was a tool for the real world, for broken circuits and shattered screens. It was silent now, offering him no guidance and no digital shield. Faced with a ghost in the wires, he felt utterly ordinary and completely vulnerable.

"Can we block her? Lock her out?" Ace asked, fighting to keep his voice steady. He looked at their new steel door. It could stop a battering ram, but it was worthless against a digital attack.

"I can try to build a better firewall," Evelyn said, not taking her eyes off the screen. "That means stronger encryption and more complex passwords. But Ace, if the stories about her are even half true, doing that is like putting a better lock on your door when the thief can walk through walls. She is a professional, and we are not." The truth clearly pained her.

A feeling of complete helplessness fell over them, as heavy and suffocating as a thick fog. They had fought so hard to find a small amount of stability, and now an invisible enemy was threatening to destroy it all.

"So what do we do?" Silva asked, his voice sounding more like a desperate plea. "Do we just sit here and wait for her to come back? Are we supposed to wait for her to shut down our power or freeze our bank accounts?"

"No," Evelyn said. Her voice was different now. The fear was still there, but it was being forged into a blade of pure determination. A fierce, calculating look ignited in her eyes as the researcher and problem-solver inside her took command. "We will not just hide, and we will not wait for her to make the next move. Instead, we will force her to make a move. We are going to set a trap."

Ace and Silva could only stare at her, completely stunned.

"A trap?" Silva asked, his face a mask of confusion. "For a digital ghost?"

"She is arrogant," Evelyn explained, the plan coming together in her mind as she spoke. "She left her signature and sent us a message because she thinks we are insignificant. She believes we are too scared and stupid to fight back." A hard smile touched her lips. "So we will use that against her. She will be back, and when she returns, she will be looking for our secrets. Our money, our clients, and our plans."

She turned her laptop around to show them a simple diagram of their small network, which was just a few lines connecting their computers and the connection between them. "So we will give her exactly what she wants. We will build a beautiful and tempting fake treasure chest. We can create a separate, hidden part of our network and call it something obvious like ’Aegis_Core_Finances’ or ’The Vault.’ Then we will fill it with fake financial spreadsheets, fake client lists made up of fictional names, and fake emails. We will make it look like it holds all of our most valuable information."

Ace started to understand. "And you will booby trap the vault."

"We’ll add a digital tracking device to those files," Evelyn said, her excitement growing. "The moment she opens those files, it will activate. It won’t harm her computer, but if it works, we’ll get a signal from it, maybe an IP address or even just her neighborhood. It is a long shot, but it is the only shot we have."

It was a desperate plan and a gamble against an enemy they did not fully understand, but at least it was a choice. And it allowed them to act.

"Do it," Ace said without hesitation. His earlier fear was gone, replaced by a fierce need to fight back. "Anything you need, you have it. How can Silva and I help?" He gestured to himself and Silva.

"You can turn this place into a real fortress," Evelyn said, her gaze sweeping around the room. "We need to think bigger than just protection from a single intruder. Vincenzo’s men could come, or someone else entirely. We need an escape route, a way out that they will never expect."

Ace looked at Silva. The bartender’s face was pale, but he set his jaw and puffed out his chest slightly. He was clearly terrified, but he also wanted to help.

"The old motel office," Silva said, his voice gaining strength. "The one that’s boarded up right next to us. There is a passage between the buildings. It is not a real tunnel, but it is where they used to run all the pipes for the pool’s filter system through the wall. It is full of dirt, dead leaves, and probably rats, but I bet I could clear it out. I could make a hole big enough to crawl through that comes out in a storage closet in the old office."

It was not a secret underground passage. It was a desperate, crumbling hole, but it was a chance. It was an option other than being trapped like rats.

"Do it," Ace said. "But be quiet about it, and please be careful."

For the next two days, the workshop transformed into a command center for two very different kinds of battles.

Evelyn became a digital soldier, living in the glow of her laptop screen amidst a mess of empty coffee cups and energy bar wrappers. Ace would often watch her, her face bathed in blue light and her brow furrowed in deep concentration. She muttered to herself, chewing on her lip, and her fingers only stopped flying across the keyboard to research a new piece of code or a security protocol. She was using her brilliant, analytical mind—the same one that should have been studying to be a doctor—to build an intricate digital trap.

Meanwhile, Ace and Silva worked together to turn the workshop into a safe place. They quietly moved shelves and piles of equipment to create barriers and hiding spots. Silva, armed with a crowbar, a shovel, and a bright flashlight, spent hours in the cramped, dark crawl space.

Ace could hear him grunting and scraping as he slowly cleared away years of dust and debris to carve out an emergency escape route.

Ace focused on repairing broken devices, treating each one as a small victory. He worked with intense concentration, comforted by the familiar tingling in his hands. Although he could revive a dead motherboard, he struggled with coding a simple tracking program. This limitation was frustrating, but it made him appreciate Evelyn’s unique skills even more. Together, they formed a strong team, each contributing their own strengths to the mission.

A constant, humming tension filled the air. Every unexpected noise made them freeze—a delivery truck outside, a distant siren, or the creak of the old building settling. Each sound felt like a potential threat, and they found themselves jumping at shadows while living on a knife’s edge.

On the evening of the second day, Evelyn finally pushed back from her desk with a long, exhausted sigh. She rubbed her eyes, which were red from lack of sleep, and announced in a hoarse voice, "It’s done. The vault is built, and it’s armed."

Ace and Silva gathered around her screen, which showed a simple map of the city. A single, soft red dot pulsed over their location. "That’s us," she said. She then opened a window filled with complex code. "This is the beacon. It’s asleep right now, but the second anyone who isn’t me or Ace tries to access the fake server, it will activate." She pointed at the city map. "It will then try to send a location ping right here. It won’t be exact and might just show a general section of the city, but it’s a start. It’s a clue."

Her work was a masterpiece of cunning and desperation.

"Now," Evelyn said, finally closing her laptop lid and plunging the room into a deeper darkness, "we wait."

The waiting was the hardest part. The heavy silence now felt expectant, and every tick of the clock and gust of wind outside felt like a countdown. They listened intently for the sound of a car door, the screech of tires, or the soft chime from Evelyn’s laptop that would signal their digital ghost had taken the bait.

Ace sat on the edge of his cot, a perfectly refurbished tablet in his hands. He felt the familiar, restless energy humming within him, a power that was both a gift and a curse. It had saved him countless times, but it had also led him here, to this moment of terrifying helplessness. He was learning that survival required more than one kind of strength. It required trust. It required a team.

He looked at Evelyn, who had finally succumbed to sleep right there at her desk, and at Silva, who was meticulously checking the locks on the door yet again.

Their shield had been tested and a crack had been found, but they weren’t just going to stand behind it and hope it held. They had built a trap and carved an escape route. The ghost was in their machine, and they were no longer just potential victims. They were ready.