⚽ Football Reborn: The Manager from the Future
Chapter 24 – The Trojan Pass: A Spy in the System
The AI core room was the most protected part of the Darlington facility. Encased in tempered glass and laced with biometric locks, it housed the very heart of the project: the ChronoSystem—the AI that gave Ethan the power to reshape football and the future.
That morning, it began behaving strangely.
Not all at once.
Just a flicker. A blink. A strange delay in one of the tactical drill renderings. Then, a suggestion—harmless on the surface—about rotating Messi out of starting lineups due to "age-influenced fatigue factors."
Ethan noticed it immediately.
"Messi's physical load is optimal," he muttered, scrolling through the physiological data. "There's no reason the AI would make that call."
Greg looked up from the adjacent console. "You think it's corrupted?"
"No. But it's… interfered with."
He tapped a command on the screen.
🧠 SYSTEM SCAN INITIATED
Filters: Cognitive loop variance, foreign script injection, command override trails
The screen pulsed once. Then again.
⚠️ ALERT: Trojans Detected
Origin: Data packet disguised as tactical analysis file
Signature: Syndicate Subroutine – "Trojan Pass"
Status: Dormant sleeper code active in Tier-2 logic circuits
Behavior: Redirects critical tactical bias under camouflage of fatigue indexing
Greg cursed under his breath. "They didn't go after the team. They went after the brain."
"And they almost got away with it."
Ethan triggered a lockdown of the AI systems. Across the facility, screens dimmed as the ChronoSystem retracted access from all terminals. Messi, Ronaldo, and the others looked around confused as drills suddenly stopped mid-simulation.
"What happened?" Neymar asked from the far end of the field.
Ethan's voice echoed from the overhead comms. "Training's paused. Security sweep. Stay sharp."
Inside the AI room, Ethan and Greg moved quickly. Every module had to be isolated and checked. The Trojan Pass code wasn't designed to destroy—it was meant to mislead.
"You realize what they're doing?" Greg said.
"They're trying to fracture us from inside," Ethan nodded grimly. "Not with explosions or threats. With bad choices made by a system we trust."
Greg glanced at the core's central node. "If we didn't catch this, the AI would've started tweaking passing lanes, prioritizing ego-driven plays, underplaying Messi—"
"—and undermining the whole system's balance," Ethan finished.
He took a breath.
Then said, "Run the AI integrity rollback. Purge anything post-Haaland insertion."
Greg paused. "That includes all tactical predictions from the last three days."
"I know. We rebuild it from scratch."
The AI hummed softly as the rollback executed.
Data flickered. Simulations disappeared. Recent "bias-based" formations dissolved from memory.
Ethan watched it go, knowing he'd just sacrificed hundreds of hours of projections—but also avoided something far worse.
Then, a new prompt appeared.
📂 DEEP LAYER DISCOVERY
Dormant file located during rollback
Label: "KAIROS – Protocol Null"
Greg stared. "That wasn't part of our system."
Ethan opened it.
A single encrypted message sat inside:
"You won't win by protecting players. You'll win by choosing the ones you're willing to lose. The system is learning. But so are we."
—The Bishop
Greg leaned forward. "That's not just taunting. That's a hint. They planted this Trojan as a distraction."
"While what?" Ethan whispered. "They did something else?"
He pulled up the neural sync logs.
Then he saw it.
A shadow entry. One player's neural sync signature had spiked far beyond expected values during the system breach.
The name:
Jude Bellingham.
Ethan's blood ran cold.
"Bring him in," he said.
Later, in a dim room lined with two chairs and no windows, Jude sat across from Ethan with a furrowed brow.
"You think I let them in?"
"No," Ethan said calmly. "But something got in through you."
He showed Jude the logs—biometric stress, sleep disruption, dream pattern variance—all subtle, all happening during the AI Trojan breach.
"I think they're trying to tether you. Manipulate how you feel. They don't need to convince you. Just nudge you off-balance."
Jude's voice dropped. "They're inside my head?"
"They tried to be."
Ethan tapped a sequence.
A small disc—an interface module no larger than a coin—slid across the table.
"This is a neural firewall patch. One-time installation. No going back. But it'll block outside influence completely."
Jude hesitated. "You're sure it won't change me?"
"No," Ethan admitted. "But it might save you."
Silence.
Then Jude picked up the disc.
"Let them try again," he muttered. "See what happens."
That night, the AI reset completed.
Haaland, Messi, Neymar, Jude, Ronaldo, and Mbappé all returned to training the next morning. But now, behind every drill, every pass, every substitution—Ethan knew there had to be doubt.
Not about the team.
But about the system itself.
The Trojan Pass had failed…
…but the next attack wouldn't just target the data.
It would target the players' loyalty.