Rhea was many things. A code enthusiast, a skilled manipulator, a strawberry bubble tea connoisseur.
But now, she had become something else too: an underwhelmed spy in a room that smelled faintly of burnt circuits and unwashed socks.
The Null Frank lab was supposed to be this tech-savvy rebel headquarters—Jake and Mike's great underground resistance against the manipulative puppeteers of memory and mind.
Instead, it looked like a garage band practice zone got into a fight with a RadioShack clearance sale and lost.
There were wires dangling from the ceiling like overcooked spaghetti. An ancient, wheezing fridge sat in the corner—unplugged, suspiciously buzzing.
And a whiteboard in the back had a doodle of a stick-figure cat labeled "Firewall 2.0."
Rhea surveyed the scene like an interior decorator forced to work on a post-apocalyptic sitcom set.
"Charming," she muttered.
Jake beamed like a proud father showing off his kid's macaroni painting.
"Cool, right? We made all of this from scratch!"
Mike snorted from under a mountain of circuit boards.
"She's being polite. Even the pizza boxes are part of our infrastructure. That monitor? Balanced on two of them."
"Still warm," Rhea observed with a twitch of a smile.
Jake was on cloud nine. "She's not just into coding, Mike. She feels the code. She gets us."
Mike didn't even look up. "She asked if Python was a snake or a brand of cereal."
Jake brushed it off like dandruff. "You were worse when we started. Remember the time you tried to connect our server to a toaster?
You said, and I quote, 'It has slots. Must be USB-compatible.'"
"That was a test," Mike grumbled. "A tragic, bread-scented test."
Still, Rhea played her part to perfection. She laughed at Jake's jokes—even the one about naming his laptop "Optimus Code."
She asked "confused but cute" questions like whether Java was related to the Starbucks drink and if HTML stood for "Hot Tech Mystery League."
Mike sighed constantly. Jake practically built her a digital throne.
But behind the bubble tea giggles and naïve nods, Rhea's eyes scanned everything.
Every terminal.
Every passcode.
She watched Jake type his password three times and memorized it. (It was "JakeRox123"—she wept for humanity.)
The Lighthouse Project folder was well hidden—tucked behind decoy files like "Grandma's Cookie Recipes," "Homework_Final," and one labeled "Definitely Not Important." The latter had 11 layers of encryption.
Classic Mike.
One evening, Jake left to pick up bubble tea. (He was trying to impress her with "strawberry hibiscus fusion with extra jelly," which apparently meant true love.)
Mike was busy trying to resuscitate a fan that spun slower than the plot of a slow-burn romance.
That's when Rhea made her move.
She leaned in, all casual. "So, this 'Lighthouse' thing. Sounds fancy. What's it do? Guide lost ships through the storm?"
Mike froze. "It's just a name."
She raised an eyebrow. "A name. Like metaphorical?"
He blinked rapidly. "N-no. Just... branding. Sounds cool. Totally meaningless. Absolutely not a mind-awakening tool that could unravel years of neural reprogramming."
She sipped her tea. "Totally."
Rhea didn't push.
No need.
She had confirmation now.
It existed.
And it was alive.
Later that night, she slipped a tiny drive into one of the systems—not in the mainframe, just close enough to run an invisible script. It didn't touch Lighthouse, but it mapped everything around it. Like a wolf circling a bonfire, waiting for the right moment to pounce.
Then came the message:
To: Nilgiris (encrypted channel)
Subject: Infiltration Update
Infiltration deeper.
Jake emotionally compromised.
Mike suspicious but manageable.
Lighthouse found. Awaiting extraction protocol or sabotage instruction.
Far away, in the icy stone guts of the Himalayas, the Architects were dancing.
Or, more accurately, twitching like people who had just been told they could finally leave a long, boring meeting.
Asher spun around twice and threw up a "finger gun" to no one. "That's my girl! Code whisperer of doom!"
Nilgiris didn't dance. He barely blinked.
"Told you. Timing is everything."
He was pleased—but not at peace.
His gaze drifted once again to the blacked-out uplink terminal. It had been days since Elixr responded. Not even a status emoji. And Magira usually lived to throw shade.
"What if they're plotting without us?" he murmured.
"What if we're the side quest now?"
Asher, helpfully dumb as ever, shrugged. "Or they ran out of space credits. You know—like, planetary data roaming."
Nilgiris closed his eyes. "Silence yourself."
Back at Null Frank HQ, Rhea was officially part of the team. They gave her a chair.
Granted, it squeaked like a haunted mouse and had only three legs—but in rebel tech terms, that was practically a throne.
She brought thermal mugs with cute code puns—Jake's read "#BestCoderEver" and Mike's just said "404: Mug Not Found." It earned her credibility. Even Mike started sharing his soldering iron.
Jake, meanwhile, was glowing like a laptop stuck on max brightness. He taught her basic loops, logic gates, and the art of not electrocuting yourself near a circuit. They even had synchronized typing sessions. It was adorable.
But beneath the bonding and flirtation, Rhea was laying digital breadcrumbs. Her "practice scripts" were more than just training exercises—they planted passive backdoors. Gentle probes. A trap waiting for a trigger.
Yet something began gnawing at her.
Jake was… sweet. Too sweet. Like over-sweetened code—easy to digest but hard to forget.
And Mike—grumpy as he was—had a kind of honor to him. Rhea had caught him one night muttering into his keyboard about the "moral implications of neural rewrites" and the "ethics of memory."
This wasn't a rebel duo trying to win internet points.
They were trying to protect something sacred.
And the Lighthouse?
It wasn't a weapon.
It was a cure.
A flicker of truth in a world rewritten too many times.
She frowned.
Was she the villain?
Her fingers hovered over her next report. The encryption routine waited like a loyal dog.
But Rhea… paused.
She shut the window.
"Tomorrow," she whispered.
Jake entered moments later with the tea, grinning wide.
"Got you the hibiscus one! Extra jelly."
"Perfect," Rhea said, forcing a smile.
"Just what I needed."