Fahad rose from his chair, he crossed the office in unhurried strides and pulled the door open.
Rima stood in the corridor. Her chest was still rising and falling quickly. Her hair had slipped loose from its clip on one side.
When she saw him, she stiffened a involuntary jerk of the spine, like a soldier caught off guard.
Fahad looked at her for exactly one second. Then walked past her. Rima turned and followed — half a step behind, matching his pace, too afraid to speak and too afraid to fall behind.
They reached the elevator. Fahad pressed the button. The doors opened immediately, he stepped inside. Rima stepped in after him.
[FOURTH FLOOR — IT WING]
The floor was chaos wrapped in silence.The IT wing occupied the entire level . A wide, open-plan floor divided into rows of desks, tangled cables, cooling units and the quiet hum of machines that were never supposed to stop working.
Tonight, they had stopped.
Every screen on the floor was lit. But none of them showed code, or spreadsheets or dashboards. They all showed the same thing.
HELLO, FAHAD SUNAYANA.
The words sat there in plain white font against a dead black background. No logo. No signature. Just a greeting — which was, somehow, worse than any threat could have been.
The IT team was moving fast. A dozen analysts stood or sat at their stations, fingers flying across keyboards, voices overlapping in low, tense bursts.
"Check the firewall logs—"
"It's not coming from outside—"
"It has to be coming from outside—"
"No, it's already inside. It's already inside the network."
"Then find the door!"
A young woman in a headset turned from her monitor, her face pale.
"Sir." She spotted Fahad the moment he stepped off the elevator. "Sir, we're trying to isolate it but it's—" She stopped. Swallowed. "It's spreading too fast."
Fahad walked forward.
The analysts parted around him. He stopped in the center of the floor and looked at the nearest screen. Rima hovered near the elevator . She watched him — the way he stood there, hands loose at his sides, eyes fixed on the screen.
He did not look angry. He did not look afraid. He looked like a man reading a weather report he had already predicted.
Rahat appeared at Fahad's right shoulder. He had arrived through the stairwell — his breathing was carefully controlled but there was a tightness around his mouth that had not been there before.
"Sir."
"Report."
Rahat glanced at the screen, then at the room, then lowered his voice.
"We're doing everything we can to stop the attack, sir. But — the opponent is far stronger than we anticipated.
I reached out to a few contacts in the security sector. This isn't random. This isn't amateur work, sir. This isn't a breach."
Fahad's eyes moved slowly from the screen to Rahat's face. "A signature."
"Yes, sir. In my assessment — this is the work of the Mirza Group of Industries."
Fahad's expression did not change.
But something behind his eyes shifted — a faint, almost imperceptible narrowing, the way a blade settles into its sheath before being drawn.
"The Mirzas," he repeated.
"Yes, sir."
Fahad turned back toward the screen. He studied the words once more — the same lines, sitting there in silent mockery.
"Bring in more hackers. Additional cyber security personnel. Private contractors . Pull people in from our regional offices if you have to — now."
"Yes, sir."
"And Rahat—"
"Sir?"
"The message says my name." Fahad's tone did not change. "They wanted me to read it. Make sure they regret that."
Rahat bowed his head once. "Understood, sir."
He turned and walked quickly toward the far end of the floor, already lifting his phone to his ear.
Sadia had been standing near the corner of the IT floor,arms folded watching the analysts scramble around their monitors like ants whose nest had just been kicked open.
Rima appeared beside her without a sound. She leaned in close, her voice dropping to a whisper that barely carried past the two of them.
"Mirza Group of Industries." She glanced around once, checking the nearest desks. "That's Mirza family."
Sadia's eyes didn't leave the screens. "I know."
"I mean— This entire continent runs on the Sunayana family and their companies. They don't just dominate — they are the market."
Sadia finally turned her head. Her expression was calm but her fingers had tightened around her coffee cup.
"Do you know anything about the other three families? There are still three families you could compare them to."
Rima's brow furrowed.
"THE MIRZA FAMILY. THE ASHRAFI FAMILY. AND THE KAINAT FAMILY."
A short silence passed between them.
Rima nodded slowly, as though she had heard the names before in business journals, in faint whispered conversations at the Ahaka branch.
"Oh...Oh Right. The big four," she murmured. I've heard the names. Everyone has. But — nobody knows. Because knowing is dangerous."
She smiled faintly, her voice had settled into something steady — the tone of a person who had spent years in HR and had learned exactly how much to say and when.
"Then listen. You came from Ahaka, so you should at least know the basics.
The Sunayanas are the oldest, the most powerful family on this empire. Their real strength is this — the military and the law.
One hand wages war, the other writes the laws. That combination — that's what makes them untouchable."
A pause.
"The Mirzas — well they are entirely different. They never fight openly. They fight — invisibly. Information. Technology. Intelligence."
Sadia's voice dropped lower.
"And the prince of that family — Rahi Mirza. The one they call TheCrazy Maniack. "
Rima whispered, "So tonight's hack…"
"Possible but not certain because the Mirzas don't strike directly. They signal."
Silence.
"The Ashrafi family are the quietest, they don't join wars. They own stakes in private hospitals. In pharmaceutical companies.
In entire supply chains that nobody realizes are all connected to the same family. They invest and wait—for empires to fall and then they buy the ruins.
And here's the interesting part — Anik Ashrafi, He's the only son. The sole heir. But unlike his father, he is… visible."
She stopped for a moment. Her expression shifted.
"I don't know much about KainatFamily. Nobody does. They're the most mysterious of the four. There are theories but no one knows what they actually do."
"Are they powerful?" Rima asked.
" When you can see your enemy, they're less dangerous but the Kainats, they're shadows."
"Then why are they in the Big Four?"
"Because no one has ever dared to leave them out. These families don't fight, Rima. Not openly. They don't issue statements. They don't need to.
They exist in parallel. Separate industries, separate territories, separate spheres of influence. A quiet understanding.
You Stay In Your Lane, I Stay In Mine."
She paused.
"But underneath all of that— There's always a cold war running . Acquisitions that happen a little fast, contracts that get pulled at the last minute. "
Rima exhaled slowly. "I've heard rumors at Ahaka But I always assumed it was… exaggerated. The way people talk about rich families."
Sadia gave a small, humorless smile. "It's never exaggerated. It's just never proven."
Rima's gaze drifted toward the far end of the floor — toward Fahad, still standing motionless in the middle of the chaos, surrounded by flickering screens and frantic analysts.
"But this, this isn't a pulled contract, this is direct. Someone walked into Sunayana territory and put a message on every screen in the building. That's not cold war. That's—"
"An open move," Sadia finished quietly.
"Exactly."
Maya sat on the sofa , exactly where she had been for the past hour. The bag of chips rested against her knee, half-empty now. Her fingers moved mechanically —
Chip, bite, chew, repeat — while her dark eyes stared at the cartoon on the phone without actually seeing it.
The screen flickered. The colorful characters danced. Some cheerful music played on a loop. Maya's expression did not change.
Then — the lights in the office dimmed for a fraction of a second. The phone screen went black. The cartoon vanished, replaced by a single line of white text.
HELLO, FAHAD SUNAYANA. Maya's hand, mid-reach for another chip, stopped. And in the back of her mind, something stirred.
Ohhhh.
Yama's voice uncoiled like a cat stretching after a long nap. Lazy. Satisfied. Delighted.
Finally. Finally, something interesting happened tonight. Do you know how long I've been sitting here, waiting? Do you know how boring this entire day has been?
Maya did not respond. She lowered her hand back to the bag of chips.
You spent the whole morning in a library. Then you sat in a car for twenty minutes. Then walked through a mall where everyone stared at him like he was some kind of god.
Then you sat in this office — this very boring office — for an hour, playing a cartoon game about sharing.
Yama's voice grew more animated. Sharing, Maya. A cartoon about sharing. Do you understand how humiliating that is?
Maya picked up another chip and ate it.
And then — finally, FINALLY — someone decided to do something fun. I was starting to think I'd —have to do something myself.
Maya's eye twitched. "...Don't."
What?
"Don't do anything."
I didn't say I was going to do anything.
"You were thinking about it."
Thinking about it and doing it are two different things.
"They're not different enough. My head is going to fry. Are you going to stop?"
Maya's inner voice was flat, the tone of someone who had already had this conversation a hundred times and had never once won it.
The response came instantly, curling through her thoughts like smoke through a half-open window — lazy, utterly delighted.
You're so mean to me. You always scold me.
Yama made a face. A cute face. The kind of expression that would have made a stranger
on the street stop and smile.
A cute face from the thing that had spent the last hour cataloguing the veins in Fahad's throat, "Where did you learn this cringe behavior?"
"From some people." Yama continued, her tone brightening as though she had just remembered something wonderful.
But anyway,I didn't I tell you your afternoon would be weird? I predicted it. And I succeeded.
And then, inside Maya's mind, Yama struck a pose . A dramatic, self-satisfied, ridiculously theatrical pose.
Maya closed her eyes for exactly one second,
"Go to sleep."
I'm going, I'm going. Yama's voice was already receding, sulky and sing-song. She pouted.
You're so mean. Do you know that? You're the meanest person I've ever met.
"I know."
You never let me have any fun.
"I know."
You're boring. You're so boring. You're the most boring person I've ever—
"Yama."
Fine. I'm going but only because you're boring me.
"Good."
Don't miss me too much.
"I won't." And then — slowly, like a flame being extinguished — Yama began to fade. Or rather, she was quiet, which was the closest thing to gone that Yama ever allowed.
-----
The attack intensified. What had begun as a single message on a single screen became something far more aggressive — a living, breathing assault on the entire network.
The IT wing descended into chaos. Analysts shouted across desks, keyboards clattered like rain on a tin roof. The cooling units hummed louder, struggling against the heat of a dozen machines running at full capacity.
Rahat had taken over a workstation near the center of the floor. His jacket was gone, sleeves rolled to the elbow, fingers moving across the keyboard with a speed that made the younger analysts stop and stare.
He had been trained for this. He had spent four years at Fahad Sunayana's side and in those four years, he had learned things that no university could teach.
"Status," Fahad said . He stood like a statue, hands clasped loosely behind his back, eyes fixed on the wall of monitors.
Rahat didn't look up. "Whoever this is, they're good. Very good. They're not just breaking in — they're rewriting as they go. Sir. "
Fahad's expression did not change.
Rahat turned back to his screen. His fingers resumed their rhythm — faster now,
"Priya, I need the firewall logs from the last six hours. Now."
"On it, sir."
"Dev, isolate the eastern server cluster. If they're moving through the system, I want to know which door they used to get in."
"Already on it."
"And someone get me a clean line to our regional office in the north. I want their security team on standby. If this spreads, we contain it before it touches client data."
The floor became a machine — not of metal and wire, but of people. And at its center, Rahat sat, his eyes never leaving the screen.
He had seen attacks before. He had spent years learning to anticipate them, to counter them, to bury them before they ever saw the light of day.
But this was different.
Whoever was on the other side of this attack was not just skilled . They were — and Rahat hated to admit it — better than him.
And then, for just a moment, the code stopped.
A line appeared at the screen.
YOU'RE GOOD. BUT NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
Rahat's jaw tightened. "Sir. It's worse than we thought.
Whoever this is, they're not just inside the —system. They're inside our security protocols. They know our defenses better than we do."
----
Maya looked at the phone. The screen was flickering, uneven pulses of light and dark.
The cartoon game was gone. The cheerful music had stopped. In its place, the screen showed a black background and then — for a fraction of a second — lines of code flashed across it.
Maya noticed, her dark eyes fixed on the screen. Then, slowly, she reached down and picked it up.
For the first time all evening, something crossed her face — not anger, not fear, not even curiosity.
It was something smaller than all of those things. Something quieter. IRRITATION. She turned the phone over in her hand once, then looked back at the screen.
"Fahad told me to watch this." Her voice was barely above a murmur. "And now it's broken."
She let out a slow breath — the kind of exhale a person makes when they have been patient for too long and have just decided that they are done being patient.
She set the chip bag down on the table beside her. Then, she picked up the phone and turned it over in her hand once.
Her fingers found the browser. She did not scroll. She typed an address — a string of characters that looked like nonsense, a combination no ordinary person would ever have reason to know.
The screen went dark. Then it loaded. And what loaded was not a webpage. It was a desktop. A full computer desktop — the kind of layout a programmer would recognize instantly.
Command lines, windows. A blank terminal with a cursor blinking in the corner. The phone was no longer a phone.
She shifted slightly on the sofa .... drawing her knees up a little, settling into the corner of the seat the way a person settles into a familiar chair.
Her gloved fingers rested against the screen and then she began to type. Not slowly. Not carefully. Or the way a person types when they are learning something new.
She typed like someone who had done this in the dark, in silence, with no one watching and no one to ask for help ..... Her fingers moved across the screen at impossible speed.
Line after line after line of code appeared in the terminal, building itself faster than the eye could follow. The phone screen glowed brighter. The network windows began to populate —
Connections, nodes, addresses, pathways. The architecture of the attack unspooled in front of her like a map being drawn in real time.
Her eyes moved across the screen — tracking, reading. She reached the intrusion point. She read it. She kept typing.
She found the anomaly in four seconds. A single entry. Timestamped three minutes before the first screen had flickered. It had come through a port that should have been closed.
It had been disguised as routine traffic. Maya's fingers moved. She opened a second window. Then a third. Then a fourth.
The third window showed the code itself — the actual lines the attacker had used — for the first time she stopped. Just for a second. Then she kept going.
She typed one more line, then another. Her fingers moved faster now.
She was not fighting the attack. She was not blocking it. She was undoing it. Line by line.
She traced every thread back to its source.
And then — quietly, efficiently she shut the attack down. The screens across the building stopped flickering. The code stopped moving.
The message — HELLO, FAHAD SUNAYANA — flickered once. Twice. And then vanished.
Maya lowered her hands from the phone. She set it down on the table beside her . She did not look at it again. She picked up the bag of chips. And went back to eating.
-----
Rahat shot up from his chair. "We won."
Every head turned. For a second, no one moved. Fingers hovered above keyboards. Eyes lifted from monitors. A woman near the corner —
Priya, who had been staring at her screen with the hollow focus of someone who had given up ten minutes ago — slowly straightened in her chair.
"We won," Rahat repeated as though he was trying to believe it himself.
"The attack has stopped. Every system. The code isn't just blocked — it's been undone. Someone reversed it."
"Wait," Priya said. "Back up. What do you mean, an unknown entity?"
Rahat leaned closer to his monitor .... scrolling through lines of data that no longer made sense as an attack. The intrusion path was gone.
The rewritten protocols were back to normal. The signature — the one he had been chasing for the last hour — had been quietly erased as though it had never existed at all.
He sat back slowly. "Someone helped us, An unknown entity."
A beat of silence.
The words seemed to hang in the air, too strange to fully absorb. An unknown entity. And whoever they were, they had done in minutes what Rahat and his entire team had failed to do in an hour.
"Someone else," Rima repeated flatly. "On our network. And you're telling me you don't know who?"
"I'm telling you I don't know who," Rahat said. "Yet."
Fahad's hands clasped behind his back."Good."
Someone let out a shaky laugh — half relief, half disbelief. Another person slumped back in their chair and pressed both hands to their face.
A junior analyst whispered something under his breath that might have been a prayer or a curse.
The whole floor exhaled at once.
Fahad turned toward the elevator. "Alright. Everyone — take a break. "
He did not look back. He walked across the floor with his usual unhurried stride — He pressed the elevator button. The doors closed behind him.
Rahat still standing beside his workstation — reached up and loosened his tie. He pulled it free from his collar and draped it over the back of his chair. "Tonight's dinner is on me."
"Wait—seriously?"
"Are you buying?"
"For everyone?"
"What, all of us?"
Rahat waved a hand vaguely. "All of you. All of IT. All of finance. Everyone who stayed. I don't care. Pick a place. Order whatever you want. I'll pay."
The floor erupted.