Ashcroft’s Mate

**Aria** There were only two kinds of hackers. The first wanted money. The second wanted recognition. The second kind was always more dangerous. I watched the lines of code cascade across my six monitors, fingers dancing over my keyboard while three members of my incident response team argued behind me. "They're inside the backup servers." "No, they're using the backups as a distraction." "They're already in the payment gateway." "They're not—" "They are." "They're—" "You’re both wrong." I murmured. The room fell silent. I didn't bother looking up. "They've never been interested in the payment gateway," I said, eyes fixed on the rapidly changing data stream. "If they wanted money, they'd have encrypted the client thirty minutes ago." A bead of sweat rolled down Ethan's temple. "Then what are they after?" I zoomed in on a packet that looked almost invisible among the millions passing through the system every second. "There." Mia leaned over my shoulder. "I don't see anything." "Exactly." The packet disappeared before she could process what she'd seen. I smiled. "There you are." My fingers flew across the keyboard. The monitors filled with windows opening faster than anyone else in the room could follow. Code blurred together, commands executed one after another, and somewhere in the maze of servers a hidden process finally revealed itself. Ethan let out a low whistle. "Holy..." "They're ghosting the network," I murmured. "Ghosting?" "They're mimicking legitimate traffic. Every move they make looks like an employee checking emails or downloading spreadsheets from the cloud.” Mia frowned. "That's... actually brilliant." "It is." I hated admitting it. Whoever sat behind the keyboard on the other side of this wasn't just talented…they were patient. Patient hackers were nightmares. I opened another terminal. "Let's see how brilliant you really are." The room held its breath. I rerouted traffic through a decoy server I'd built three years earlier, a digital maze designed specifically for intruders clever enough to evade conventional security. For two seconds... Nothing happened. Then every monitor lit up. "They took the bait!" Ethan shouted. A grin tugged at my lips. "Of course they did." I isolated the connection, traced it through four countries, six proxy servers, and an offshore satellite link before the attacker realized what I'd done. The connection vanished. Too late. "Got you." I pressed Enter. Across the room, Mia's laptop chimed. She stared at the screen. "We have an IP." "Three, actually." "They're real?" "They're careless." Ethan blinked at me. "You trapped them." "And they walked right into it." Silence settled over the operations center before it erupted into applause. I hated applause. It usually meant someone expected a speech. Instead, I stood and stretched the stiffness from my shoulders. "Notify the client the breach has been contained. Send the forensic report within the hour. I want every compromised credential reset before midnight." "What about the attacker?" I picked up my coffee. Cold. Again. "They won't use those servers anymore." "So that's it?" I shrugged. "They'll be back." "They always come back." That was the thing about cybersecurity. You never won. You simply survived until the next attack. --- By seven that evening, Hayes Cyber Defense had emptied. Most of the lights across the twenty-second floor had switched off, leaving only the glow from my office overlooking the city skyline. The silence was my favorite part of the day. No meetings, no ringing phones or investors asking impossible questions. Just me...and the comforting hum of machines. I loosened the knot in my black hair before letting it tumble over my shoulders. My heels had long since been abandoned beneath my desk, replaced by the trainers I kept hidden for late nights like this. I hopped on my treadmill and started reading the headline my tablet which made me snort. **HAYES CYBER DEFENSE STOPS MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR DATA BREACH.** Wonderful. Tomorrow my inbox would be flooded with new clients convinced I could perform miracles. I couldn't. I simply worked harder than everyone else. A knock echoed against the glass wall of my office. Without turning around, I called, "If you're here to schedule another interview, tell them I'm allergic to journalists." The door opened anyway. "I brought Thai food." I smiled despite myself. Only one person ignored my attempts to be left alone. Maya. She strolled inside carrying two takeaway bags, her caramel trench coat draped over one arm and a grin that usually meant she was about to ruin my perfectly sensible evening. "You've been here since six this morning," she said, placing the food on my coffee table. "I had a cyberattack." "You had breakfast at your desk." "I had two cyberattacks." "You also skipped lunch." "I was busy." "You've said that every Friday for the last four months." I sighed. "I know where this conversation is going." She folded her arms. "Do you?" "You want me to leave the office." "I want you to remember you're thirty, not eighty." "I feel attacked." "You should." She glanced at my monitors, then back at me. "When was the last time you went out for fun?" I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. Maya smirked. "My point exactly." I looked toward the city lights shimmering beyond the windows. The truth was... I couldn't even remember. Somewhere between building an empire and rebuilding myself, I'd forgotten how to have fun.