The hacker who knows too much

Eli Rowan saved my life at least three times before breakfast.

Not intentionally.

Just by existing.

My comm buzzed softly in my ear as I slipped into one of the compound’s unused corridors, pretending to reorganize inventory logs. The cameras here had blind spots—ones Eli designed.

“You alive?” Eli whispered.

“For now,” I murmured back. “Lucien asked my opinion today.”

There was a pause.

“…Why?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

Eli exhaled sharply. “Kael, normal crime lords don’t crowdsource strategy from omegas.”

“Wow. Thank you. I also thought that was suspicious.”

I leaned against the wall, tapping the datapad in my hands like I belonged there. Inside, my heart pounded.

Lucien Vale was paying too much attention.

And attention, in my line of work, was fatal.

Eli had been my partner since training.

Brilliant hacker, terrible social skills, fiercely loyal. Where I went undercover physically, he lived inside networks, ripping secrets out of fortified systems with surgical precision.

“Listen,” he said, voice serious now. “I found something.”

That got my full attention.

“What kind of something?”

“The kind that keeps disappearing when I try to dig deeper.”

My stomach sank. “That’s not ominous at all.”

“I’m serious, Kael. There’s a classified file tagged in Vale Syndicate archives. Not mafia-level encryption—government-grade.”

That made my blood run cold.

“Label?” I asked.

Eli hesitated.

“ENIGMA.”

The corridor suddenly felt too small.

“That’s not real,” I whispered.

“That’s what I said,” Eli replied. “Until I cross-referenced it with black-site records that also supposedly don’t exist.”

My grip tightened on the datapad.

“Eli,” I said slowly, “tell me exactly what you know.”

“Officially? Nothing,” he said. “Unofficially? Enigmas are individuals whose biological ranking disrupts the hierarchy entirely. They don’t fit. They override.”

“Override… what?”

“Everything.”

I swallowed hard.

“That’s insane.”

“Tell that to the data,” Eli said quietly. “Every time an Enigma shows up in records, something collapses. Governments. Crime syndicates. Whole chains of command.”

My mind replayed Lucien’s calm gaze. The way rooms bent around him. The way his presence rewrote instinct.

“Oh,” I muttered. “That’s… not great.”

“No,” Eli agreed. “It’s terrifying.”

Footsteps echoed nearby.

I straightened instantly. “Call me later,” I whispered.

“Kael—”

“I said later.”

The line cut.

I turned just in time to see Lucien stepping into the corridor.

Of course he was.

“You’re always in the quiet places,” he observed calmly.

I forced a smile. “I like peace and solitude. Also, murder-free environments.”

A beat.

Then—“You shouldn’t be here alone.”

My spine tingled.

“I could say the same for you,” I replied lightly.

He studied me, eyes sharp but unreadable.

“You don’t flinch,” he said.

“I flinch all the time,” I argued. “Internally.”

That corner-of-the-mouth almost-smile appeared again.

“Walk with me,” he said.

There it was again.

Not a request.

We moved side by side through the corridor, the space between us charged with something unspoken. I was acutely aware of his proximity. Of how my instincts reacted strangely—pulled toward him instead of recoiling.

That should not happen.

Not like this.

“You’ve been here almost a year,” Lucien said. “Do you regret it?”

The question hit harder than I expected.

I thought of the reports I delayed. The truths I buried. The parts of myself I’d tucked away.

I shrugged. “I regret a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know,” I said lightly. “Life choices.

Hairstyles. This shirt.”

He stopped walking.

I stopped too.

Lucien turned toward me fully now. Close. Too close.

His gaze dropped—just briefly—to the suppressor patch on my neck.

My pulse spiked.

“They work well,” he said. “But not perfectly.”

I froze.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I replied carefully.

He looked back into my eyes.

“Neither do you,” he said.

Then he stepped away like he hadn’t just detonated my entire nervous system.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

Eli sent a data packet.

Inside were fragments of declassified horror.

ENIGMA markers. Genetic anomalies. Notes wiped of context.

One line stood out, cold and final:

Enigmas recognize deception instinctively.

I laughed softly into my pillow.

“Oh,” I whispered. “So that’s how I die.”

Lucien Vale wasn’t suspicious because I was clumsy.

He was suspicious because he could feel the lie.

And the worst part?

Despite everything—

A traitorous part of me hoped he never stopped looking at me the way he did...

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