Chapter 208
K: “Let me make myself clear: I am not your uncle or anything like that!”
Todd: “Does Hack Haven have that challenge duel thing every year?”
K: “Why the sudden interest? I offered you to be the defending champion last year and you turned it down.”
Todd: “Just answer the question, man.”
K: “Yes, it’s already started this year...”
A minute later.
A notification popped up on the Hack Haven’s interface:
[Supreme hacker Boss DeRoss challenges Bronze hacker Owen the Milk Drinker]
K: “Damn! You’re actually picking a fight with a bronze? That's shame on us supreme hackers! Hey, Boss DeRoss, don’t ghost me now, come out and let’s talk this through!”
But Todd had already logged off.
Facing Keith directly, he couldn't explain himself to his mother.
So, the solution? A head-to-head battle in Hack Haven.
“Ding, ding!”
Keith, who was normally off the radar, suddenly received a message.
Furrowing his brow, he opened it: a system notification. “Dear Owen the Milk Drinker, the supreme hacker Boss DeRoss has issued you a challenge. Please respond within three days or be deemed to have declined...”
That was the account he’d registered over a year ago on Hack Haven.
He’d been halfway through signing up when his dad called him away, and then Owen snuck into his study and finished setting up the account.
Which is how he ended up stuck with this ridiculous username.
Disliking the name, and with his dad forbidding any hacking-related activities, Keith had abandoned the account.
Until the night before last, a whim to dig into Haley’s background prompted him to use that account again, sneaking onto the official website of Star Technology under a pseudonym.
Keith glanced at his account information, finding an unexpected surge in followers, tens of thousands of them.
The hacker community sure was a tough crowd, he thought. Just a hint of activity and everyone’s eyes were on you...
He pursed his lips, deleted the system message, and logged out of the Hack Haven account.
He had zero interest in the challenge.
But the person who had issued it went by the name ‘Boss DeRoss.’
Could that be the formidable adversary he’d encountered on the company’s website?
What was their relationship to Haley?
The DeRoss family wasn’t large; could it actually be Haley herself?
But that didn’t quite add up.
The Hack Haven was a community for the world’s top hackers, and only those in the top ten rankings earned the title of supreme hacker.
Haley was a programmer, sure, but it seemed unlikely that she was also a hacker.
Keith furrowed his brows in thought for a while but couldn't come up with a reason, so he decided to put it out of his mind for the time being.
Todd had waited the entire weekend without a single response.
Come Monday, as Haley dropped the kids off at preschool, Todd reverted to the sweet, thoughtful big brother he was known to be.
Watching the kids enter the preschool, Haley finally drove off to work. She parked in the company lot, took the elevator up, and just as she stepped out, saw a crowd huddled in the hallway by the office door.
They were tightly packed in, leaving no way through. Even folks from the neighboring office had come out to rubberneck.
Just as Haley began to wonder what was going on, a woman in her forties or fifties suddenly emerged from the crowd...
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