Chapter 17
Ethan's bedroom had been converted into a state-of-the-art cybersecurity lab over the past year.
Monitors lined the walls, displaying cascading lines of code, network diagnostics, and encrypted servers.
Nathan burst through the door, clutching the black envelope and the photograph, Michael and Claire close behind him.
"Dad? What's going on?" Ethan asked, spinning around in his gaming chair, instantly dropping his headset.
"Someone left this for us," Nathan said, slamming the photograph face down on the desk. "They were at the gala. They were watching you."
Ethan stared at the red circle drawn around his own face. The color drained from his cheeks, but his eyes quickly hardened into absolute focus.
"Let me see the envelope," Ethan demanded, grabbing a pair of latex gloves from a drawer.
"Ethan, we need to call the police," Claire said, her voice shaking with barely contained panic. "We need to get you out of the house."
"The police can't trace a piece of paper, Mom," Ethan replied, turning the black envelope over under a high-intensity desk lamp. "But whoever left this might have made a mistake."
"What are you looking for?" Michael asked, pacing the floor nervously.
"A digital watermark, a micro-code, anything," Ethan muttered, sliding a specialized UV scanner over the dark paper.
Suddenly, a faint, glowing square appeared in the bottom right corner of the envelope.
"Got you," Ethan whispered. "It's a micro-QR code printed in ultraviolet ink."
"Don't scan it," Nathan ordered, grabbing his son's wrist. "It could be a localized malware deployment designed to brick our home network."
"I'm not scanning it on the main grid," Ethan replied, pulling away. "I'm routing it through a closed, air-gapped sandbox server. If it's a virus, it dies in the cage."
Ethan used a modified webcam to scan the glowing code.
For a moment, the monitors flickered, the screens going completely black.
Then, a video file began to play.
The footage showed a man sitting in absolute darkness. His face was entirely obscured by digital distortion, a jagged mosaic of pixels that shifted with every breath he took.
"Nathan Harper," the distorted voice echoed through the speakers, metallic and cold. "You broke my favorite toy yesterday. Marcus was an idiot, but he was a useful idiot."
Claire gasped, stepping closer to Nathan.
"You thought the truth would set you free," the voice continued. "But the truth is a luxury, Nathan. And you just bankrupted yourself. I want the fifty million dollars Marcus lost, and I want it transferred from your Foundation's endowment."
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"He's insane," Michael breathed.
"You have forty-eight hours," the voice concluded. "If the money isn't in the offshore account linked to this code, I'll stop taking photographs of your son, and I'll start taking pieces."
