Jace woke up to the dim light filtering through the cracks in his cheap window blinds. His body ached, his limbs heavy with exhaustion.

  His mind, though? It wouldn’t shut up.

  Something felt off.

  He rubbed his face, trying to shake off the fog in his head. The events of yesterday drifted back in pieces—small victories, fragments of excitement—but the problem was, he had no idea how he had done it.

  Whatever "it" was.

  He had stumbled onto something. Some exploit. Some gap in the walls. He had slipped in without really understanding how.

  And now?

  Now, he was back at square one. A fool who had struck gold but couldn’t remember where he dug.

  Frustration curled in his stomach. Useless. If he couldn’t replicate what he did, then it wasn’t skill—it was just luck.

  Jace hated luck.

  Luck was what separated people like him from the ones who never had to worry about rent, food, or the electricity bill. Luck was unreliable.

  And if he wanted out of this hole, he needed to be better than that.

  He sat up, staring at his desk. His laptop was still there, waiting. But something told him that jumping straight back in wouldn’t fix the real issue.

  No. He needed structure. A plan.

  He opened a blank notebook and wrote down the only thing that made sense:

  What the hell am I actually doing?

  Jace didn’t plan. That was the problem.

  He survived. He reacted. But planning? That was for people who had options.

  Still, he had to try something different.

  He turned to the only thing that made sense—the AI assistant on his laptop. A tool he had used more for answering coding questions than for anything deeper.

  He typed out his frustration.

  Jace: I need to organize myself. I don’t know what I’m doing.

  A pause.

  AI: What is your goal?

  That made him pause.

  He knew what he wanted. Independence. Control. A way to never be in this position again. But how did that translate into an actual plan?

  He stared at the blinking cursor, then typed:

  Jace: I need to get better at hacking and security. I need to actually know what I’m doing instead of just messing around.

  AI: Do you have a structured learning approach?

  Jace: No.

  AI: Do you track your progress?

  Jace: No.

  AI: Would you like to start?

  Jace exhaled through his nose. Yeah. Yeah, I would.

  And so, for the first time in his life, Jace started a log.

  A digital diary of his failures, his experiments, and the things that actually worked. He wrote down what he tried, what broke, what he understood, and—most importantly—what he didn’t.

  It felt stupid at first. But as he wrote, something clicked.

  Patterns.

  Mistakes.

  The same gaps in his knowledge, repeating over and over.

  This? This was progress.

  And progress meant control.

  But skill alone wasn’t enough.

  Jace needed connections.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Not just tutorials and YouTube videos—real people. People who knew the game. People who had done this before.

  But where the hell did someone like him even start?

  The answer came from the same AI assistant.

  AI: Have you considered joining a cybersecurity community?

  Jace frowned. “Like what?” he muttered to himself.

  A quick search led him to Discord. A place where people gathered, shared knowledge, and—more importantly—helped each other.

  He found a few servers. Some seemed legit. Others? Probably filled with script kiddies and wannabes.

  Still, it was a start.

  Meanwhile, in the quiet suburb of the Garcia family home, a technician knelt beside the router, frowning.

  “This thing’s been acting weird since last night?”

  Mrs. Garcia crossed her arms. “Yeah. Keeps cutting in and out. My husband was in a meeting, and the connection dropped three times.”

  The technician plugged in a diagnostic tool. Data flooded the screen.

  Something was off.

  The router logs showed anomalies. Connections that weren’t supposed to be there. One device in particular stood out.

  A MAC address mismatch. A ghost. Something had connected and vanished.

  The technician’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. He had seen this before.

  Somebody had been in their network.

  “Ma’am,” he said carefully, “has anyone in your house been messing with the Wi-Fi settings?”

  Mrs. Garcia frowned. “No. Why?”

  The technician hesitated. He didn’t want to alarm them yet, but this wasn’t normal.

  He pulled out his phone and took a picture of the logs. He needed to check something.

  Before the technician even reached Jace’s doorstep, he already knew who he was dealing with.

  He had asked around.

  The neighbors didn’t say much—people like Jace didn’t make much noise. But there were whispers, bits and pieces of a story unraveling in the cracks.

  “Used to be sharp, that kid. Real smart. Thought he’d go places.”

  “He tried. Failed. Couldn’t keep up. You know how it is. School ain’t for everyone.”

  “He still tries, though. Always on that damn laptop. But you can tell—he ain’t making it.”

  “Poor thing. No job, no prospects. His mama used to be proud of him. Now? He don’t talk to nobody.”

  Failure.

  That was the word hanging over everything.

  It clung to Jace’s name like a shadow.

  The technician didn’t judge. He understood.

  Because once, not long ago, he could have been Jace.

  The only difference?

  He had made it out. Barely.

  Jace opened the door, eyes heavy with exhaustion.

  He looked worse up close. Thin. Hollow. Like a man who had been living off caffeine and nothing else.

  The technician had seen this before. Too many times.

  It was always the same. The hunger for knowledge eating away at the body, because the mind was racing too fast for anything else to keep up.

  The technician didn’t introduce himself. Didn’t need to.

  “You wanna tell me what you were doing on the Garcia family’s network?”

  Jace froze.

  His face flickered between emotions—shock, calculation, defense. A mind running through every possible exit strategy.

  Then, like a man backed into a corner, he exhaled.

  “I was testing something.”

  The technician nodded. “Yeah. I figured.”

  Silence stretched between them.

  Jace’s fingers curled slightly at his sides, like a fighter deciding if he should throw a punch. “You mad?”

  The technician raised an eyebrow. “Mad? No. Curious? Yeah. You’re sloppy, though. Left tracks. That’s how I found you.”

  Jace clenched his jaw. “So what now? You gonna turn me in?”

  The technician snorted. “If I was, you’d already know.”

  Something shifted in Jace’s expression. A flicker of something wary, but hopeful.

  “You got talent,” the technician said, crossing his arms. “But right now? You’re just a guy swinging a sword with no stance. You don’t know how to fight yet.”

  Jace’s lips pressed into a thin line. “And you do?”

  The technician let out a slow breath.

  He saw himself in this kid.

  The difference?

  Jace was alone.

  The technician had barely scraped by, but he had help. A few people had given him the right nudges, the right warnings, the right tools to keep him from burning out before he even started.

  And if someone hadn’t done that for him?

  He’d be exactly where Jace was standing now.

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a scrap of paper, and scribbled something down.

  A Discord invite.

  He held it out. “Try this place. If you’re serious about learning, they’ll set you straight.”

  Jace took it, turning the paper over in his hands.

  “But listen—” The technician’s voice dropped, tone sharpening. “Before you dive in, you need to learn how to be anonymous.”

  Jace frowned. “I use a VPN. I cover my tracks.”

  The technician chuckled.

  “No, kid. I don’t mean ‘use a VPN.’ I mean disappear.”

  Jace tilted his head, skepticism creeping in.

  “You stand out. Too much. You leave trails—not just digital, but in how you act, how you talk, how you move.” The technician tapped his temple. “If you want to do this for real, you gotta start thinking like a ghost.”

  Jace swallowed, his fingers tightening around the paper.

  The technician studied him for a long moment.

  Then he sighed. “One more thing.”

  Jace looked up.

  “You need to watch your health.”

  Jace blinked. “What?”

  “You look like shit.”

  Jace scowled. “Thanks.”

  The technician didn’t back down. “I mean it. I’ve seen people like you before. I was you before. You push too hard, you burn out. You lose focus. You make mistakes. And in this game? One mistake is all it takes.”

  Jace looked away.

  The technician’s voice softened, just a little.

  “You ever hear about people who dive too deep? Obsess over something until they forget to eat? To sleep?”

  Jace didn’t answer.

  “Look at me.”

  Jace met his gaze.

  “If you burn out, you don’t just lose progress. You lose yourself.”

  Jace’s throat tightened.

  The technician held his stare. “Take care of yourself. Or you won’t last.”

  Silence.

  Then, finally, Jace gave a slow, almost reluctant nod.

  The technician stepped back, nodding toward the paper.

  “And Jace?”

  Jace looked up.

  “Be careful who you trust.”

  With that, he turned and walked away.

  The door clicked shut.

  Jace stood there, staring down at the slip of paper, feeling the weight of change.

  A door had just opened.

  And for the first time in a long, long time—

  He wasn’t alone.