BY FRIDAY evening, Sophie's laptop had become her entire world.
Lines of code stretched across three monitors while encrypted transaction logs scrolled endlessly down another screen.
The mysterious administrator account continued leaving behind fragments of activity across servers in Italy, Singapore, and the Philippines, yet every trail dissolved before she could identify the person behind it.
She rubbed at her tired eyes and reached for her coffee. The mug was empty.
Again.
She glanced at the clock in the corner of her monitor.
7:18 p.m.
She blinked. She had intended to leave the office before sunset. Instead, she had forgotten lunch, ignored three reminders from her calendar, and spent nearly eleven consecutive hours chasing a ghost through cyberspace.
A knock interrupted her c
