The glow of four different screens lit Ethan's hotel bedroom in pale, sleepless light. To anyone else, it might have looked like a tangle of meaningless spreadsheets and server logs. To Ethan, it was art.
On the far-left monitor, three sets of falsified wire transfers scrolled slowly across the screen—millions moved between Oscorp and faceless shell accounts in Latveria, Madripoor, and Symkaria. The second monitor displayed a neat trail of hush payments to fictional regulatory officials, each payoff small enough to look plausibly buried in budgets. The third screen showed the work he was most proud of: a fully fleshed whistleblower identity. Dr. Anthony Kelso—complete with a LinkedIn profile, HR files, payroll stubs, and just enough conference citations to make him look credible.
The final flourish had been linking it all to Mendel Stromm, Norman Osborn's old professor and soon-to-be disgraced partner. Stromm was high enough in Oscorp's company that if Norman saw his name involved in this, he'd doubt everyone around him. Ethan leaned back in his chair, lips curling faintly. Paranoia is more destructive than bullets at times.
On the desk beside him, a compact comms unit purred. A Frankenstein of Oscorp microcircuits and civilian hardware, it was one of the new encrypted channels he'd built from scraps and tech that Felicia had "liberated" for him. The signal hopped bands every two seconds, sliding through frequencies like a snake through tall grass.
"Kitty, come in," Ethan murmured, adjusting the gain.
Felicia's voice crackled back, smooth, cocky. "Loud and clear, junior. I'm outside their secondary lab. Signal holding. Also, we need better code names."
"Forget that. Any interference on your end?" Ethan asked.
"Not a blip. Your new toys work just fine." A pause, the sound of her shifting. "But I'm starting to see rotation changes. More guards. And it looks like they're planning to install biometric pads at the side doors."
Ethan's fingers froze over the keyboard. "Biometrics?"
"Mm-hmm. Probably fallout from the girl I borrowed credentials from to get your toys. I made sure she never saw my face, but Oscorp must've decided to lock every door tighter. Can't say I blame them."
Ethan exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through his hair. The window was shrinking, and Osborn was paranoid enough to keep shrinking it further.
"Stick to the plan," he said finally. "We can adapt later. Just… keep your head down. If the pads are new, it means they're not fully integrated into their current securities, meaning they're blind in other ways. I trust you can find these new holes."
Felicia chuckled, low and confident. "Always do."
The channel clicked quiet, leaving only the hum of processors around him. Ethan sat still, watching the endless crawl of fake records spool across the screens. His traps were set. Now he just had to hope Oscorp and Osborn walked right into them.
The next morning sunlight slanted through the cafeteria's tall windows, pooling golden light over the lunch tables. It had been almost half a week since Rachel returned to school, and the change in her was obvious. She smiled more now, still soft, still fragile, but no longer haunted. Amy sat close beside her, protective, while Paige waved her fork around mid-story.
"…and Chris swore the vending machine took his dollar, but when he kicked it, the soda dropped and it spat his dollar back out. He called it divine blessing, but I call it karma for a bruised toe."
Rachel laughed, Amy giggled, and Ethan—leaning back in his chair with studied ease—just smiled faintly.
When their laughter died down, he said lightly, "You ever think about going to a place like Xavier's School for the Gifted? The one upstate? Heard the X-Men train there. Must be wild to see them up close. I'd kill just to shake their hands."
Amy's eyes lit up. Rachel tilted her head, curious. Paige snorted.
"Please," she said, rolling her eyes. "Mutants in spandex throwing cars? Cool on TV, sure, but in real life? They ain't ever gonna let us near em."
"Maybe," Ethan allowed, watching her carefully. "But if they did…" He shrugged, like it was nothing. "Wouldn't that be something? Meeting real-life heroes."
Paige shook her head, still smiling, but Ethan caught the flicker—something thoughtful beneath the dismissal. He filed it away. Seeds didn't need to sprout right away to grow.
Back in his bunker of screens, Ethan sipped hot coffee and refreshed his decoy servers. The falsified Stromm/Kelso trail gleamed, perfect, absolutely perfect.
Then—ping.
A new alert blinked across the corner of his leftmost monitor, subtle enough that most eyes might have missed it. But Ethan didn't. His whole body went still, coffee halfway to his lips.
The trace was clean, deliberate. Not a kid with a cracked copy of Kali Linux throwing pings against the wall to see what stuck. No, this was scalpel-work—measured bursts of packets probing very specific seams in the scaffolding of his false accounts.
They hadn't pierced his shells yet, but the way the trail narrowed, methodical and patient, told him everything. This wasn't random background noise. It was too sharp, too focused, to be anything other than a pinpoint effort to find a hacker.
Ethan leaned forward, elbows on the desk, eyes reflecting in the glow of the code. He felt the thrill that most kids his age got from roller coasters or horror movies. For him, the pulse of danger came in green text crawling across black screens.
He whispered, almost affectionately, "About time. Someone's finally awake. I was worried these idiots might never have noticed."
His fingers slid across the keyboard, tapping commands in quick succession. A tunnel sprang open, routing the probing packets away from his decoy New Jersey node and into a relay bouncing out of Singapore. A beat later, he layered in a secondary mask, bouncing it again through a noisy gaming café in Warsaw.
The signature followed instantly—like a hound on a leash, nose pressed to the dirt, convinced it had the scent. Good. That meant whoever was behind this wasn't just competent; they were stubborn. The kind who would chase a phantom trail for hours thinking they were the hunter.
Ethan sat back, a grin spreading slow and thin across his face. Let them chase. Every second they spent following this trail was another second his real servers went untouched. He'd left enough digital crumbs on the Singapore relay to look like a hacker in full retreat—deleting files in a panic, rerouting traffic sloppily, making mistakes on purpose. To a trained eye, it would look like a ghost running with his back to the wall.
And Norman Osborn's people? They would eat it up.
Ethan's heart rate never spiked. If anything, it slowed. The quiet confidence of a predator. He'd invited the chase, lured the bloodhounds into a false trail, and now they were committed.
On another screen, the falsified transfers to Latveria ticked over, time-stamped and clean. On a third, the whistleblower Kelso's draft email sat ready to fire at watchdog groups.
Ethan flexed his fingers, cracked his knuckles, and whispered to the empty room:
"Run faster. I'll let you think you're close. You won't catch me until I want you to."