January 2024, Moscow. The chill of the Russian winter seeped through the drafty window of Mara's dimly lit apartment, where she sat wrapped in a frayed blanket—a relic from Dad's old dockworker days. The blanket, worn thin at the edges, carried the faint scent of his pipe tobacco, a scent that always made her think of Sundays spent in his workshop, oil-stained hands teaching her to read a timecard.
Rubbing her eyes, fueled by her third cup of cold, bitter coffee, she watched as a diamond buyer typed at 2:17 a.m., their keystrokes a perfect mimicry of human hesitation—except Mara saw the pattern: 0.3-second pauses between letters, exactly like DataCore's demo software. The IP traced to The Citadel Collective's Geneva server, the same city as HorlogeGenève.
She opened "Frank45293_V2," the subroutine's code now peppered with Dad's old jokes—"Always check for typos, kid—even bots make mistakes." As she stared at the screen, a memory flashed: Dad, after a long shift, fixing his old toolbox, muttering, "Even the fanciest fortresses crumble if they forget where they're standing."
She could almost hear the clink of his tools, see the way he'd squint at a stubborn nail, his brow furrowed in concentration. "Game on, Harrison," she murmured, her voice steady despite the weight of the moment. "Your fortress is built on sand. Mine? It's built on stories—stories of people who fight for what's real, not just lines of code. Stories like Dad's, who punched in at 6:03 a.m. every day, not just for a paycheck, but for the pride of a job done right. Stories that live in every line of this code, every typo, every imperfect keystroke."