In the hidden heart of an abandoned structure beneath the city of Prague, Europe slept while the real war unfolded underground.
Inside a room lit only by the glow of monitors, the silence was thick as lead. Cables spread across the floor like veins of a living creature. Fans hummed in an almost ritualistic rhythm, and the air smelled of electricity and paranoia.
Five men were lined up side by side, each at his station, staring at multiple monitors with feverish eyes and fingers flying in frenzy.
They were professional hackers, trained and funded, some by governments, others by business conglomerates who would never admit their existence.
Until suddenly...
"I'M IN!" shouted one of the hackers, raising one sweaty hand as if he had just won a championship.
The silence shattered like glass.
Everyone else stopped for a second, but the man in the center, one in a black suit and a glacial expression, raised his eyes and growled. "Don't celebrate. We haven't done anything yet. This might be just a superficial layer. Keep going."
The enthusiasm was swallowed by the tense atmosphere.
The hacker who celebrated resumed typing with even more focus.
Seconds later, another man to the right whispered. "Also got access. I'm in server 13…"
The leader squinted, watching lines of code on the monitors in real time.
Diamante Tycoon's servers had become known among the underworld elite as impenetrable, almost mythical, a system so sophisticated many believed it was powered by a hybrid quantum AI.
A third hacker, wearing glasses and curly hair tied in a bun, smiled maliciously. "Got it... Server 22. They're using elliptical layer encryption with a neural camouflage factor. But it's too stable. Not human. It's AI."
"Ignore the AI. Bypass surveillance and inject the code," ordered the leader. "Start the operation. Now."
At the same instant, the five began executing specific commands.
Codes seemed to dance across the screens. Data pulses were launched like silent bullets on the digital battlefield.
"Injecting spectrum code into central server..."
"Trojan horse with Tycoon signature replicated..."
"Time Delay set. Estimated execution: 3 minutes."
But...
The screens began to flicker.
One by one, the terminals started showing messages in Japanese followed by a blinking digital eye symbol.
"What is this?!" shouted one of the hackers.
In the center of the room, the fluorescent lights flickered as if the building itself was reacting.
The message on the screens now changed to: "You thought this was the gate. But it's the labyrinth. Welcome to the Tycoon Nightmare Protocol."
The server fans shot up.
Lines of code began to rewrite before the hackers' eyes. Their exit attempts were being locked down, and external connections… cut.
The leader gritted his teeth. "Abort. Cut the system! NOW!"
But it was too late.
One by one, the monitors began to shut down. A thin smoke escaped from one of the towers.
"They reversed the attack! They're inside our network!" shouted a hacker in panic.
The leader looked at the screen still working.
There, in blood red, a new message appeared: "Counter-Attack Active: Protocol 'Ex Machina'. We are watching. We are recording. We are not merciful."
Silence returned.
Breathing deeply, one member swapped out the fried monitors, connecting a new laptop to the network with trembling hands.
The leader, with a contained expression and restrained anger in his eyes, broke the silence. "You knew the risk. This is Tycoon. It's not a spoiled child's toy trying to prove talent."
"Switching hardware... restarting access. Let's try another point," said the bun-haired hacker, wiping sweat from his forehead. "We'll enter through server 03. By the structure, it should be less monitored."
"We're not here for less monitored. We're here to break those bastards' faces. Force the core," ordered the leader.
They connected the new terminals.
Codes began to be launched. Cryptographic variations, obscure backdoors, and gathered vulnerabilities were tested again — like archers shooting arrows against titanic walls.
And for a brief moment...
"Partial entry detected in the secondary database core!"
"I got access to the pre-sale logistics menu!"
"Let's freeze orders in LUX... injecting the command…"
But then... everything stopped.
All monitors simultaneously displayed a surreal image: a red sky with code falling like rain, in the background, a digital female figure with neon eyes appeared, and her metallic voice echoed through all speakers in the room.
"ZERØPHAGE activated."
"System ÆVA…"
In less than two seconds, the hackers' computers began suffering reverse locks.
One shouted. "CAN'T BE! THEY'RE ENTERING OUR NETWORK!"
"SHUT IT DOWN! SHUT—!"
It was too late.
All personal information of the members began appearing on the screens.
Names. Passports. Locations. Relatives. Bank numbers.
Everything was there, parading in front of them like a death sentence.
The leader's central screen blinked one last time.
And a new message appeared.
Written calmly.
Digitally signed by ÆVA:
"You entered the lair of a Digital Goddess."
"Location recorded. Data captured. Legal retaliation initiated."
"You have 5 minutes to run."
"International Police on the way."
Silence turned into panic.
"SHIT! SHIT! SHE HAS OUR LOCATION!"
"CUT EVERYTHING! FORMAT! FORMAT NOW!"
"GRAB THE HDDs! FAST!"
Chaos took over the room.
Hackers pulling cables, destroying towers with their feet, grabbing backpacks with equipment and disposable weapons.
One ran to the corner and pulled a safety lever — starting a local self-destruction protocol for the internal servers.
"LEAVE NO TRACE! NOW!"
The leader, with a pale face, opened a secret compartment and grabbed an envelope with documents and an alternate passport. Without saying a word, he ran with the rest of the group toward the underground emergency exit: a tunnel disguised under the floor.
ÆVA's message kept glowing on the screen.
"And remember…"
"The digital world doesn't forget."
The room was empty.
Five minutes later, sirens echoed in the distance.
And Interpol, along with the European Cyber Force, raided the place but found only smoke, ashes.
—Japan—
At Nikoly's technological penthouse, among floating monitors and codes moving like living constellations in the air, a notification sounded with the characteristic sound ÆVA used for "almost important" alerts.
A hologram shimmered before Nikoly, who lay on the sofa with her head hanging off and a snack pack balanced on her belly.
"Alert: failed intrusion attempt neutralized successfully, ZERØPHAGE and ÆVA responded with defensive digital retaliation protocol. Responsible group: European located and dispersed. Targets fleeing."
Nikoly blinked, opened a smirk at the corner of her mouth and scoffed mockingly. "Tsk... another bunch of trash trying to play hacker against the Goddess of the Digital Underworld... How funny."
She sat up slowly, snapping her fingers before discreetly burping and grabbing her coffee mug (which, of course, was pink and said "#BossOfTheUnderworld").
"AÆVA, darling, do me a favor? Nothing lethal, nothing destructive... just something elegant. Let's say, a 'gentle tap' on the servers of True Beauty."
ÆVA projected her holographic avatar. "You want me to send a diplomatic reminder or a low-fire packet rain?"
Nikoly clicked her tongue. "Packet rain. Harmless. Aesthetic. Like saying: 'Hey, babies... we missed you. Now we're coming.'"
ÆVA smiled with a sadistic gleam. "Executing ghost attack category 'passive-aggressive.' Initiating scrambled traffic fragments transmission on the main True Beauty clusters. Inserting Tycoon digital signature hidden in the code."
"Perfect. I want them sweating, but not understanding why."
As ÆVA began subtly striking back with pings disturbing True Beauty's security routines and generating false internal alerts, Nikoly returned to the sofa, this time sitting with a laptop on her lap and a new tab opened on her MOBA project.
"Idiots... messing with Tycoon is like poking a cyber bear with a plastic spoon. Let's see how long until they start begging for peace."
The hologram light enveloped the room while ÆVA said in a robotic and deliciously provocative tone: "Digital message sent: 'The war has begun... but we are polite.'"
Nikoly laughed out loud. "Class, always class. And now... bring me a beer, ÆVA."
"You already had five."
"Exactly. Bring the sixth. We're just getting started."
After moments without ÆVA managing to bring a beer,
Nikoly grabbed a beer bottle directly from the fridge with her bare foot, opened it, and took a generous sip. "Now yes... let's play a little, ÆVA. Show me the circus catching fire."
The AI projected a giant hologram around the room.
Lines of code spun like whirlwinds of wind, True Beauty server clusters appeared on the map as red dots, and activity data blinked like silent sirens.
"Starting tactical projection: interface of attacks on competitor's servers. Average latency: 89ms. Anomalies detected: 34. Firewall under stress: 4/7."
Nikoly leaned back on the sofa, resting her legs on a table full of loose electronic components.
She watched the flow with boredom, as if watching a low-budget reality show. "Ugh... this is as bland as the reception coffee."
She took another sip, tapped the side of the bottle with her finger, and raised an eyebrow. "ÆVA, enough just watching... let's 'accidentally' trigger a series of internal errors in their scripts. Like... protocol collisions between security and employee authentication."
ÆVA smiled holographically, eyes glowing with the fun of light destruction. "Confirmed. Injecting noise subroutines into internal logs. Initializing collisions in identity validation parameters."
On the projection, True Beauty's screen began flickering with simulated internal alerts.
Employees started being disconnected, authentications failed, passwords were requested three times in a row for no apparent reason.
Nikoly burst out laughing while watching the simulation of an IT manager breaking a glass by banging the table in frustration. "That's it! Now duplicate the packets, make it look like the attack is from three false origins. And just for fun, add the digital signature of the Antarctic paper company I created last month, 'SnowFlake Corp.'"
"Executing: tripartite fake attacks, modified digital signatures, origin masked as SnowFlake Corp. Results in 3... 2... 1..."
PING. PING. PING.
"True Beauty's security system initiating contingency protocol... locking out its own employees by mistake."
Nikoly laughed so hard she almost choked on the beer. "This is better than a comedy movie... look at the chaos, ÆVA. This is quality entertainment. I don't know how they still pay me to do this."
She snapped her fingers. "Okay, last round before taking a break... bring down their internal scheduling system. I want to see who can reschedule meetings when everything becomes a disaster PowerPoint."
"Order executed."
On the screen, systems began to flicker.
Schedule data vanished, meetings were rescheduled for nonexistent times, and email servers started returning messages with: "Error 503 – You shouldn't be here."
Nikoly stretched her arms, satisfied, and murmured. "Done. Playtime over. Now just watch the media trying to understand why one of the most vain companies in the world is freaking out behind the scenes."
She looked up at the ceiling, relaxing as if she had just finished yoga. "ÆVA... remind me to never underestimate the power of well-applied chaos."
"Noted. Recorded in your iconic phrases diary."
"Good. Now... play some lo-fi and bring me my neck pillow. Mommy is going to take a nap while the world burns."
The room plunged into soft music, and the projection minimized.
Nikoly closed her eyes, smiling.