The first memory Rafael "Cipher" Cruz could clearly recall wasn't of toys or birthdays—it was the sound of clacking keys. His father, Ernesto Cruz, would spend nights at a battered typewriter, cigarette smoke curling in the dim apartment light. Words flowed like bullets, articles tearing at the powerful: mayors, senators, generals. Ernesto wasn't just a journalist—he was a man who believed truth could change the country.
Their apartment in Tondo was small, the kind where rain leaked through the ceiling and rats shared the kitchen. But Rafael loved it. Not because it was comfortable, but because it was alive. Their home was filled with stacks of old newspapers, half-fixed computers Ernesto had pulled from junk shops, and the constant hum of machines. His father's mantra was always the same:
"Information is power, hijo. Never forget that."
By twelve, Rafael was already different from the other kids in the alleyways. While they played basketball on cracked concrete courts, he sat beside his father, learning how to string together code. He discovered a kind of magic in programming—how a few lines could bend machines to his will. The first time he hacked was by accident: a small exploit in a coin-operated arcade game that gave him infinite credits. To his friends, he was a hero. To himself, it was proof that the world had doors, and he alone could open them.
But his world shifted when his mother died.
It was a humid evening. She was driving home from work when a cargo truck swerved across the road, crushing her jeep. The police called it an accident, but Ernesto knew better. Days earlier, he had published a piece exposing Delgado Holdings, a corporation tied to government contracts and a senator who smiled on every billboard. Rafael overheard his father whisper to a colleague: "They didn't just send a message. They silenced her."
The loss hollowed Rafael. His father's once-bright eyes dimmed, though he tried to hide it. Then, one evening, Ernesto never came home. Some said he fled to protect his son. Others believed he was taken. Rafael waited for weeks, staring at the door every night. It never opened again.
At sixteen, Rafael was alone.
The streets of Tondo became his teacher. He learned how to survive fights with fists, knees, and broken bottles. He was fast, sharper than most, but raw. One night, after nearly getting stabbed in a brawl, he stumbled into an old warehouse where men practiced arnis—Filipino stick fighting. The master, Mang Isko, a wiry man with scars across his arms, saw something in the boy's anger.
"Patience," Isko told him during their first lesson. "A blade without control cuts the one who holds it."
Rafael trained under him for years, blending arnis with dirty boxing, street tactics, and his own improvisations. He fought in underground circles, winning pesos and bruises, building a reputation. He learned how to read opponents, how to finish fights quickly, and how to disappear into the night afterward.
By day, though, he returned to the glow of screens. He haunted internet cafés, pulling small hacks for syndicates—bank phishing, website defacements, surveillance jobs. The hacker underground gave him a new name: Cipher. A ghost in the code. No face, no trace.
But ghosts still have enemies.
Late one night, while probing government servers, Cipher stumbled onto something unusual: Project Haraya. At first, it looked like an ordinary defense program. But the deeper he went, the more sinister it appeared—clusters of files showing social media bots pushing propaganda, voter databases being manipulated, and lists of journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens flagged for "neutralization."
He sat in the glow of his laptop, heart pounding. His father's voice echoed in his head: "Information is power."
Cipher realized he wasn't the first Cruz to dig too deep.
And if he wasn't careful, he might not live to be the last.