The Last Winner

Chapter 2: The Thirteenth

It was late. The Stellar Tech office was mostly dark, save for a few glowing rows of monitors that hummed like an automated machine.

Zara sat at her desk, staring at the unfinished code. The cursor blinked, but she did not type a single character.

She was waiting.

Her eyes drifted toward a colleague nearby. For two days, Kevin had been among the last to leave. He had the right clearance, a predictable routine, and, most importantly, he lacked vigilance.

23:17.

Kevin stood up, stretched, grabbed his mug, and headed toward the pantry.

His footsteps faded around the corner.

Zara stood up, moving with practiced naturalness, as if she were merely fetching a printout. Within seconds, she was at Kevin’s desk.

She sat down and swiftly planted a micro-program. It did not steal data; it only tracked one thing: Kevin’s behavioral patterns in the system.

She was not looking for a password; she was looking for a behavioral template.

27 seconds later. Just as she prepared to withdraw, the screen flickered without warning.

There were no pop-ups, no alarms, only a brief, high-frequency distortion that rippled across the display.

Zara’s breath hitched. She stared at the screen, sweat breaking out across her back.

Was it a system refresh? Or… was someone watching her?

Footsteps echoed in the hallway. She quickly returned to her seat, her heart pounding.

*****

Midnight. Zara’s apartment.

Three monitors provided the only light in the room. She was performing a "digital transformation."

In a sandboxed environment, she attempted to log in using Kevin’s behavioral template.

[Verifying...]

[Identity Confirmed: Kevin Hayes]

[Alignment: 99%]

Access was granted. But the next second, an icy white box flashed on the screen:

[ Session Terminated. ]

There was no error code, no explanation. It was as if the system had sniffed out a subtle, non-human "body temperature" in those final seconds.

Zara glared at the screen, her palms slick with sweat. The system was far sharper than she had anticipated. It did not just verify who you were—it "felt" you.

2:59.

Her phone vibrated. An encrypted message with no source popped up: "Not now."

Zara’s pupils contracted. She did not reply, her eyes fixed on the live traffic monitor.

3:00:00.

She struck again. This time, she did not simulate Kevin. Instead, she became a piece of parasitic code, latching onto the edge of a permission-scheduling thread during the system’s routine maintenance window.

The channel opened. It was razor-thin, stable, and careful not to touch any core nodes, yet it offered a vantage point over the entire data stream.

At the moment of success, a tiny line of light-gray text appeared at the bottom of the system: [ Log Archived. ]

It was not deleted; it was archived. This meant the action had been recorded, but it had not triggered an alarm yet.

Zara did not hesitate. She severed the connection instantly, cutting all physical links.

The room returned to dead silence. Her phone vibrated again.

[Was that you?]

Zara paused for a long moment, then typed back: [Wasn't it you?]

Two seconds later, the reply came: [I didn't do anything.]

Zara locked her phone, sinking into the darkness. Deep within this supposedly impenetrable system, besides her, there was another ghost.

*****

The next morning.

Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the office.

Gavin stood by the window, a half-finished cup of coffee in his hand.

His screen was on. A security report was frozen on last night’s activity.

3:00 AM.

Level 1 Alert.

System status: Resolved. No threat detected.

He did not close it immediately. Instead, he opened the detailed log.

Kevin’s account. Login time: 03:00.

He did not scroll further. He simply stared at the timestamp.

After a beat, he spoke to the empty office: "Mark this time interval."

The system recorded the command, and the screen returned to normal.

He took a sip of coffee, as if nothing had happened.

*****

A few days later, Zara began to use the channel.

She lurked within the backbone of Stellar Tech’s permission network. She did not steal files; she just observed—watching the hidden "architecture" behind the business operations.

She soon discovered a pattern.

Every month on the 13th. Lasting for three hours.

19:00 — 22:00.

Label: Internal Sync.

No meeting ID, no participants, no call logs. It looked like a layer deliberately isolated by the system.

Zara did not click it yet. She stared at the date and the time, and a strange, long-buried sense of familiarity slowly rose.

It did not come from the system. It came from her memory.

Every month on the 13th, regardless of the day of the week, Lucas would disappear in the evening.

He always said the same thing: "I have something to take care of tonight."

11:47.

The door opened, very softly.

His footsteps were slow. She heard him stand in the doorway for a while. He did not change his shoes, did not turn on the lights, as if checking to see if she was awake.

"What are you actually doing?" Zara asked coldly from the dark.

Lucas said nothing.

"Why do you disappear on this day every month? Your phone was off, I couldn't find you. Were you seeing someone else?"

"It wasn't what you thought," he said softly.

"Then what was it?" Zara pressed.

Lucas remained silent. After a long while, he said in a voice that was almost a rasp, "Some things are not for me to decide, Zara."

She did not ask again. She turned over, lying with her back to him.

But she did not sleep. She heard him sit in the dark, motionless for a long time.

Zara pulled her focus back to the present. She stared at the line: Internal Sync.

This was not an ordinary meeting. If it were, they would not have gone to such lengths to hide the participants and sever the system paths.

Her finger tapped the desk, a slow, steady rhythm.

Could Lucas’s monthly disappearances have been linked to this secret meeting?

Who were the participants? Gavin must have been one of them.

Zara closed the window.

The screen went dark for a second, then lit back up.

She typed Gavin’s name into the search bar. She did not hit enter; she just stared at those five letters.

The cursor blinked after the final letter.

She did not move, but her mind was already made up.