Benjamin froze. This wasn't Europol. This was a "honey pot"—a trap designed to look like a high-value target to lure in hackers.

Benjamin’s fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard. He didn't try to "brute force" the firewall. Instead, he had sent a "harmless" digital invoice to a low-level administrator three weeks ago. Hidden in the metadata of that PDF was a Trojan horse that had been silently mapping the network from the inside.

Suddenly, the screen flickered. A single line of red text appeared, overriding his terminal:

"They think their encryption is unbreakable because they use 256-bit keys," Max whispered over the encrypted comms, his voice distorted. "They forget that the weakest link isn't the code. It’s the person sitting in front of it."

"Max, pull out! It’s a mirror!" Benjamin shouted, but the line was dead.