"I see you, ghost," the terminal text displayed line by line. "Where do you think you're hiding?"
Arsenio sat in the dim light of Booth 09 inside The Glass Byte cyber cafe, his eyes reflecting the sharp neon red of the terminal screen. He did not freeze, nor did his pulse spike into panic. The counter-trace was closing in on his hardware signature, but he had built his system specifically for high-risk data intercepts.
"You see a phantom," Arsenio murmured, his voice low and devoid of fear. "Nothing more."
His fingers blurred across the mechanical keyboard, entering a complex command sequence that triggered a localized data detonation within his local memory buffer. Instead of attempting a simple disconnection, which would leave a clean trace packet behind, Arsenio unleashed a tidal
