SELENE
She didn’t need a technical background to manipulate systems. She could access code, adjust firewalls, and retrieve whatever information she wanted with a few commands. No expertise required—just the right clearance and the ability to ask the right questions.
And right now, it was the only thing in the room she could control.
She closed her eyes, the quiet hum of the city outside grounding her and smoothing over the sharp edges of her thoughts. She needed a moment to put distance between herself and what had just happened.
Tate’s voice. The chuckles from the council. The way he so effortlessly, so publicly put her in her place.
She flexed her fingers, the movement precise. She let him play his little game in that room. Let him think he’d won. But silence wasn’t just retreat—it was recalibration. And when she spoke next, it would not be from a place of reaction. It would be calculated.
The interface flickered beneath her touch, responsive and expectant. At this moment, it was devoted to Eden Embry.
The dim glow from the display cast soft shadows over Selene’s bare legs, silk pooling loosely around her. A glass of wine sat untouched beside her, forgotten. She wasn’t in the mood for indulgence tonight.
Not when this was far more interesting.
Her screen pulsed with an unfiltered, unrestricted feed of everything Eden.
Surveillance photos. Digital footprints. Red-flagged government files.
And now?
Now, something new. Something fresh.
Selene flicked her fingers across the glass, and the screen obeyed, pulling up the logs from the compromised website.
The last breach lasted thirty-seven minutes before it was wiped and patched over. But traces remained—open data left exposed, IPs still visible, code fragments sitting there like breadcrumbs, waiting to be noticed.
That wasn’t sloppiness.
Whoever did this wanted to be found.
Selene leaned in, pupils constricting as she scanned the metadata.
The re-routed RSVP page.
The unauthorized data pulls.
The embedded protest messages.
And buried deeper—schematics for an unbreakable, high-decibel audio device, powerful enough to drown out sound at even the largest public events.
And there, beneath layers of encryption, a signature.
Not a name. Not an obvious mark. Just a slight deviation in the code. Its structure bending in a way that shouldn’t have mattered.
But it did.
Selene narrowed her eyes, tilting the screen slightly. The deviation wasn’t random. The colors shifted in pattern, subtle but unmistakable, shaping something within the lines of data?—
A blue iris.
Her lips parted slightly, then pressed into something closer to amusement. A message, clear as day. Not just a breach—an invitation to play.
Selene reached up, fingers curling around the charm at her neck, pressing it against her skin as if grounding herself.
Eden wanted her to see this.
You cocky little thing.
She tapped her thumb against the sleek edge of the screen, then flicked her fingers, running the anomaly through decryption software and tracing the fingerprint back to its source.
She barely had to wait.
The answer appeared, pulsing softly against the black of the screen.
Eden.
Selene licked her lips, her breath slow and controlled.
She wasn’t sure before.
She knew Eden was trouble—clever, dangerous, persistent. She saw it in her posture and in the way she watched the room at the brewery, always calculating and tracking.
But this?
This confirmed everything.
Selene tapped the screen again, pulling up a surveillance photo from two years ago. In it, Eden stood in the middle of a street protest, smoke curling behind her, a megaphone in one hand, her face sharp with determination.
Then, another image, six months old, grainy and pulled from a traffic camera. Eden walked alone, hood up, hands stuffed in her pockets, shoulders curled inward like she knew she was being watched.
Then, the most recent one. Last week. Birkenbrew.
Eden, caught mid-laugh, leaning against a barstool, her sharp curls catching the low light, her mouth curved in a way that made her seem reckless, alive, untouchable.
Selene’s fingers traced the screen absently.
She spent years reading people, dissecting them, and pulling them apart layer by layer until they were nothing but a set of decisions waiting to be controlled.
And Eden?
Eden was a puzzle with edges too sharp to fit neatly together.
Her name was background noise for years—just another activist, another inconvenience.
But now?
Now, Eden had fangs.
Selene flicked her wrist, and the image split into a dozen more.
Candid shots. Surveillance stills. Clips from hacked streams.
Timestamps. Locations. Patterns.
Her eyes darted between them, sharp, assessing.
Eden wasn’t just some protestor.
She was hunting them.
Not blindly. Not recklessly.
She was careful. Careful meant capable. Capable meant dangerous.
Selene inhaled deeply, rolling her shoulders back.
She felt it for the first time in a long time—the slow, curling hunger of a challenge.
This wasn’t some clumsy attempt at resistance.
This was personal.
Selene tilted her head, fingers flexing slightly as she weighed her next steps.
She could handle this herself.
Selene leaned back in her chair, the faint hum of drones drifting through the open window like a warning.
She wasn’t just watching Eden anymore.
She was studying her—measuring her.
And if Eden wanted a game?
Selene would play.
?