Ethan’s first step was to secure funding for the mission. He wasn’t naive enough to believe Langston’s promises of expense accounts and government backstopping. His trust in bureaucracy was paper-thin. Pulling an encrypted hard drive from a hidden compartment in his desk, he connected it to his laptop and entered a labyrinthine series of passwords. The screen flashed to life, revealing a cache of Monero, the hacker’s cryptocurrency of choice.

Monero wasn’t just a currency—it was a tool, designed for anonymity and untraceable transactions. Unlike Bitcoin, which left a public ledger of every transaction, Monero’s blockchain obscured sender, receiver, and the amount transacted. To Ethan, this wasn’t just convenience; it was survival. It was also becoming his clients preferred method of payment for things they wanted to keep away from public scurtiny.

He navigated to a marketplace on the Tor network, scanning for the hardware and software he’d need to infiltrate Cobalt Solutions. High-gain Wi-Fi antennas, portable exploit kits, and secure virtual machine images—all could be acquired with the click of a button and paid for in Monero. Within minutes, he’d assembled an arsenal and arranged for discreet delivery to a series of dead-drop locations across Europe.

Once his shopping was done, Ethan focused on the first layer of the mission: reconnaissance. Cobalt’s digital footprint was vast but carefully curated. Publicly, they were a legitimate software development firm. Privately, they operated in the shadows, selling exploits and malware to rogue states and criminal organizations. Ethan needed to dig deeper, past the glossy corporate facade and into their true operations.

Before the mission could advance, Langston delivered a chilling addendum to the operation: Cobalt’s tools were being used to coordinate a domestic threat. Satellite intercepts suggested adversarial drones had begun surveilling critical infrastructure along the East Coast. More alarming still, intelligence hinted that smuggled nuclear devices, hidden deep within American soil, could be remotely triggered by these drones. The exact locations of these weapons were unknown—but Cobalt held the digital keys to unraveling the plot.

Ethan stared at the classified brief, his pulse quickening. The stakes had escalated from espionage to national survival. Langston’s voice echoed in his head: “If we don’t find those weapons, we’ll be playing catch-up when it’s too late.”

He activated a virtual machine running Tails OS, a privacy-focused operating system that routed all internet activity through the Tor network. Using a mix of open-source intelligence (OSINT) tools and custom scripts, he began mapping Cobalt’s infrastructure. IP addresses, domain registries, server configurations—it all formed a web of data that Ethan could exploit.

The hours slipped away as Ethan worked. His fingers moved instinctively across the keyboard, his mind consumed by the intricate puzzle before him. By the time the first rays of dawn broke through the window, he’d identified a potential weak point: a subsidiary’s server in Lithuania, poorly secured and likely connected to Cobalt’s main network.

Ethan leaned back in his chair, exhaustion tugging at his eyelids. The real work was about to begin. For now, he allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction. The rabbit hole was opening, and he was ready to dive in.

[Index]

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