For the first few days, the effects of 'Black Death' were still there, although weaker. But it still helped me finish my homework.
By the time a few weeks had gone by, I could finally focus on coding and hacking. Although I still had to learn different protocols, how networking worked and how various architectures were structured.
Not to mention, I had to identify different devices just from reading the results after a nmap scan. It was not something I could just learn from theory, I had to constantly try out different things, look for command-line options that could give me more information.
Overall I was excited to finally move on to hacking.
Kid Brian, on the other hand, seemed even more motivated after hearing I had completed my homework.
"—rwin? Arwin!... It seems Arwin is not hungry today. Brian, you can take his share home with you, okay?" Antonio said.
"Wait! Don't touch my food, I am coming!"
I immediately got up from my chair and ran towards the bed. But Antonio raised a hand, barring me from approaching.
"Wash your hands first. And face too," Antonio said.
I turned towards the food, as Ron greedily gestured toward my share of food.
I hastily rushed to the bathroom, scrubbing my hands and my face in a hurry. If I didn't, that old man would steal my share of the food.
And I couldn't let that happen.
I hurried back out, wiping my wet hands on my pants. Antonio noticed, but thankfully decided to ignore it for some reason.
I sat at the edge of the bed and grabbed my slice of pizza. I immediately took a big bite, only to instinctively start blowing air through my mouth.
Hot! It was too hot!
"Calm down Arwin. No one's taking your pizza," Noose said.
"I don't know about Br-Noose, but I might take the last slice if you don't want it." Ron offered.
Noose glared at Ron, who immediately raised his hands defensively.
"Only if the kid offers it to me."
"One more word, Ron, and you're not getting a single parcel of food from me, ever." Antonio said.
Ron mimed zipping his mouth shut, as I heard giggling besides me. I turned toward kid Brian and narrowed my eyes, silencing him.
When I finally finished my slice of pizza, I noticed there was still a large amount of food left.
'Maybe Ron actually was a glutton. Otherwise, why would there be so much food?'
I continued to stuff my face, not caring about the emotional movie playing in the background.
As only, Antonio and kid Brian were focused on the movie, while Noose would sometimes glance in my direction only to focus back on the movie—and Ron.
That guy was just weird.
He was definitely not a customer, and seemed to work closely with Antonio and Brian.
Antonio never allowed any of his customer in his personal room. Especially when I and kid Brian were inside.
But I ignored it for the sake of filling my stomach as much as I could, even suppressing my instinct to throw up, when I felt full.
By the time the short movie was finished, my eyes would still glance on the unfinished food. Ron had eaten too much, which was weird since Antonio wasn't the kind of person to waste anything, especially not food.
Clap
Antonio clapped his hands to gain everyone's attention, as his android 'Con' turned on the lights.
"Arwin and Brian, both of you have shown your dedication by diligently doing your homework," His features softened as he looked at us, he continued, "But both of you are getting too many holidays. You only come here around three or four times a week. So from now on, whenever your old man Noose is not available, Ron will pick you guys up."
"From now on both of you will study, Every—day!"
Emphasizing on the last word. But my eyes lit up for another reason as I realized one important fact.
'My food problem was solved... just like that?'
Antonio looked at the unfinished food and added. "Kids, if you are not going to finish your lunch, then you will have to take it back home with you. I despise wasting food. You know that, right?"
I controlled my expression as best as I could and nodded. Kid Brian agreed as well.
"Brian, Arwin, get ready we are leaving in 10 minutes. Gather your stuff and meet me in the car." Noose said.
All the adults seemed to be waiting for us to leave the room, which I happily did.
I waited alongside kid Brian in the car. As Noose came out of the room within few minutes and got in, immediately started the car.
We waited for the car elevator to lower us to ground floor.
The drive was strangely silent as Noose didn't seemed interested in the usual chit-chat. By the time we had reached my home, the sky had taken on shades of orange. I had gotten home particularly early today. Normally, my study sessions with Antonio lasted until 9pm.
Noose broke the silence.
"How is Ambra doing, Arwin?"
I tensed up. "Wha-Oh! Ambra? Well you already know, she comes home in the morning and goes out in the afternoon. In the end its just me and Ti—Axel."
Noose nodded, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. His jaw tightened as stared at the decrepit, grey building that was my home.
After a moment of contemplation, he asked. "Is there something I should know, Arwin? Something you might wanna tell me?"
"I don't know... what you are talking about? Is it about me being distracted? Did Ant—teacher say I wasn't paying enough attention?"
His brows furrowed, as he tried to make sense of what I had said. "What? No! Its not about that, its..."
Sigh
"Its about Ambra, what has she done this time?"
Seeing no reply came, he continued. "Look I know Ambra, and I also know she isn't exactly the most wonderful woman in this world. So, no matter what it is, you can faith in me. I will stand by your side, kid."
"I am fine." Came my short reply.
"No, you are not! Look, we can see something has happened. Before, you rarely ate anything but now? You eat like you have been starved for days."
"Is it because I am eating too much?" I looked him in the eyes.
"No, Arwin. Its normal for kids your age to eat, but Antonio has been slowly increasing the amount of being food served, and even then you finish everything. Even when you're already full. And its not that hard to figure out the reas—"
I immediately cut him off. "No! I... I will deal with it."
"Deal with it? How will you do that? You are still a child, Arwin."
My silence only frustrated him, he clenched the steering wheel tighter. Then in the next breath, calming himself down.
"Very well. Lets go."
I immediately got out of the car, the food parcel held tightly in my arms. The last thing I wanted deal with tonight was the confrontation between Ambra and Noose.
I will do anything to avoid that—
Noose also got out and started walking towards my home.
'What the fuc-'
I immediately stepped in front of him, stopping him from taking another step.
"Please Uncle, please. I... I don't want to see you both fight."
His gazed softened, he replied. "I get it, but I will just have a word with her. You don't need to worry about it."
I shook my head and stared at him.
He unclenched his fists and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. Before opening them again with steady gaze, he asked.
"Why are you defending her, Arwin? You know you can trust me and your teacher right?"
I was not defending her, I just didn't want to deal with the fallout. As long as I endured until I become an adult, I could run away and live my life away from that crazy bitch.
'I just had to endure.'
"If something happens I will definitely tell you, uncle. But I am okay. Everything is fine. Really!"
His eyes hardened when he looked at the building, before becoming steady. He asked, "Promise me, if something happens—No scratch that. If you feel like something bad is about to happen, you will tell us. Okay?"
"Yes."
I stared into his eyes. He continued, "Pinky promise?"
He held up his pinky, and I interlocked mine with his.
"Pinky promise."
I was still standing in front of him, stopping him from taking another step.
He hesitated for a moment, before saying, "Just know that, no matter what happens, no matter what anyone says about you. I will be there. I. Will. Have. Your. Back."
I could only nod at his words.
He nodded back, before walking back to his car, and waved me goodbye.
My control over my expressions faltered as I felt a warmth spread through me, but I suppressed it and ignored the feeling as I turned around to look at my home.
Sigh
"Now I just have to deal with her only for few years more. Then I will be finally free."
***
I furiously typed on my keyboard, staring intently at the screen, only to suddenly get up from my chair, throwing my hands into the air.
"Yes! Fuck yeah. I am in, baby!"
My lips curled up deviously, as my target had finally downloaded the files I had sent. Allowing me to gain access to it's system. I continued to type away, using tools to try and leave a backdoor in its system for me to use later.
Creak
The door slowly opened as kid Brian walked in, dirty and covered in grime and grease from working on a car's fuel supply system.
Brother Ant had allowed him to tinker with a diesel car and fix an issue, while being supervised as a test to understand how much he had learned in three years.
Kid Brian had to first drive the car and do a basic check but did not allow him to conduct a deeper inspection. Instead, he had to figure out what was wrong with the information available to him and then offer solutions to fix it.
"You done Arwin?" he asked exhausted from being forced to think and answer.
"Yeah, just give me some time. I need to erase the trace and clear any logs of my actions-"
"English please, I am not as tech savvy as you." He said, as he laid on the floor mentally exhausted. Not daring to dirty our teacher's bed.
"And that's why I say, you should learn basics of how these systems work. So you don't get hacked and lose all your money." I replied without turning to look at him, fully focused on clearing the traces.
"And that's why I will never download or open any unknown link online. And why have a bank account? When I could just keep cash on me, what would they take? 200 credits?"
"Tch"
He roared out a laugh at successfully annoying me.
"Just you wait, when I am done with this. I will bury you in the snow myself." I replied, my eyes still focused on the screen, as I extracted the file from my target. Just as I was about to finish, only for the screen to suddenly flicker.
Errors flood my screen before everything crashed into a Blue Screen.
Then, in stark white characters, two words appeared: "Game Over"
"Ahh! Fuck! Fuck this level. It is just impossible to clear it. I spent days, just communicating with this bot. Sometimes this fucking bot his malware disguised as critical files, sometimes he just reports me to cyber police. I can't brute-force it's password without getting detected nor can I talk this bot into doing things that could make its system more vulnerable."
"Well you are playing against the most accurate depiction of a human by an AI bot."
I snarled from hearing that, "Well let me tell you, an average guy doesn't know shit about real hacking, they are fucking dumb. Hell, I could hack your tablet and get all your data."
I continued, "They all think its about not clicking or downloading from unknown websites or links. Hacking doesn't involve purely software and long lines of codes or hackers typing on their keyboards."
"We can just convince the target or hack the target's friend or co-worker to send a payload disguised as normal file. And the target would be none the wiser."
"Here it's like trying to hack another hacker who knows all the tricks in the book, making it utterly impossible to beat this fucking bot."
I slammed my palm on the desk, only to then deflate from exhaustion. "Movies show we are doing some kind of 5 minutes magic trick to hack systems. But it doesn't work like that, first we pick our targets then we need to collect personal information about our them, it's surprisingly easy sometimes, as people post an absurd amount of information about themselves online. Then—"
"Yeah, yeah that's called scamming, Arwin." he snorts upon hearing my reply, "Just tell brother Ant you want to be a scammer."
"Its Social engineering you dunce."
In the beginning it was fun to hack and try all different methods I could hack an AI bot. From sending job offers on mail, to sending payload disguised files to get access to just simply just rage baiting the AI.
I guess I will try again later. Right now I was really hungry, I hoped they had ordered something to eat.
I turned to face kid Brian as he laid on the floor, only for our teacher to enter the room.
"What are you two doing? Brian, I believe I told you to clean yourself up and Arwin." He stopped himself, looking at the PC behind me.
A smirk spread across his face, he asked.
"How does it feel to battle another hacker? Did you enjoy it?"
---
AN: The old ch "12" was posted on 5/1/2025. This is part 1. The first segment is newly added.