I couldn’t focus.

  It wasn’t just a bad morning—it was the kind where your head feels too loud, like everything inside you is buzzing but you don’t know where the static is coming from. I sat at my desk, stared at my screen, opened tabs I didn’t read, typed out half-sentences I never sent. Even caffeine betrayed me. My espresso sat cold on the tray. I hadn’t touched it.

  I was supposed to be reviewing data—scrubbing logs from Castellan’s servers and tracing the IP fingerprints left on a corrupted loop—but none of it made sense anymore. Not because it was complicated. But because I was the problem. My mind kept circling Lucian. The server feeds. The blunt. His mouth when he said my name like it was some kind of incantation. And underneath all of it, the deeper itch: who the hell was watching him from the inside?

  I knew I needed to clear my head, but shutting down wasn’t an option. That wasn’t who I was.

  So I did the next best thing. I opened a new tab. Typed in one word: flights.

  And then another: Edinburgh.

  I wasn’t sure why at first. Maybe I needed something old-world. Somewhere colder than this sun-soaked Sicilian air. Somewhere that wouldn’t smell like Lucian’s cologne or remind me of how close I was to crossing a line I’d drawn for myself. But mostly, I wanted to feel normal. Like a woman in jeans with a passport and a boarding pass, not a walking firewall with encrypted blood and secrets buried under her skin.

  That’s how Edinburgh made the cut. Clean air. Cobbled streets. Layers of stone and shadow and stories. History built like code—each brick speaking to something buried, something hidden. I’d blend in with the ghosts.

  I booked a flight. No hesitation.

  From Sicily, I’d be connecting through Rome, then direct to Edinburgh. Just over seven hours with the layover. I could survive seven hours with my own silence.

  I pulled out my phone and sent a quick message to Kara.

  “Change of plans. I won’t be in for Friday’s meeting. Something came up. Draft a formal notice to Castellan Steelworks. Make it sound urgent, but not dramatic. I’ll remote in as needed.”

  I packed light. Carry-on bag and one small travel duffel. No makeup kits or extra shoes. Just my essentials—black jeans, two loose sweaters, charger cables, thermal undershirts. The rest of the weight was tech.

  My tablet. Laptop. Encrypted drive. Phone. Jammer. Local Wi-Fi bubble.

  They were in my carry-on, stacked with precision. Devices I trusted more than people. It was a quiet rule I lived by: never be separated from your firewalls. Not for flights. Not for sex. Not for anyone.

  When the car pulled up to the curb, I took one last look at the penthouse. The sun was already climbing, sharp against the stone walls, but I felt cold.

  Or maybe because I hadn’t told myself the truth, either.

  At the airport, I moved on instinct—check-in, passport control, boarding gate. I chose to fly commercial this time. No private jets, no company tags. Just a woman in oversized sunglasses, hoodie up, earbuds in. Trying to feel the rhythm of strangers again. Trying to forget what it felt like when Lucian’s eyes burned through me like I was something rare.

  The flight to Rome was uneventful. I read fragments of code between security checks, traced the pathways of data loops like others read newspapers. In Rome, I didn’t get coffee. I didn’t eat. I just sat by the gate and stared out the window at clouds moving across the tarmac.

  When they called for boarding, I moved with the crowd. Let myself get pulled into the quiet hum of forward motion.

  By the time we landed in Edinburgh, the sky was steel gray and soft with mist. I didn’t bother taking a car right away. I stood outside the terminal for a full minute, just breathing in the damp cold. No perfume. No sweat. No Sicilian heat curling behind my ears.

  I pulled my hoodie tighter and smiled to myself.

  This was better.

  This was mine.

  By the time I got to the penthouse, the sky was already washed in steel-grey. The kind that tells you the city’s been quiet for too long—and it’s not going to stay that way. The place was clean, minimalist, not cold. The windows stretched wide and tall, overlooking a cluster of slate rooftops and the distant shadows of castle turrets on the hill. The kind of view you only get when you pay for privacy wrapped in luxury.

  I dropped my bags just inside the foyer and took a moment. No calls, no texts, no meetings, no Lucian. Just breath. The silence clung to the space like it belonged there, and for once, I didn’t mind.

  I used the concierge service before I even finished walking through the living room. I told them I needed two things—food, anything local and hot, and blackout drapes drawn in the bedroom before sundown. They confirmed within minutes. Efficient. I liked that.

  I walked barefoot across the dark hardwood floor, pulling my jacket off slowly, methodically. My mind was still wired, stretched taut from travel and the residue of that last conversation with Kara. I told her not to expect me in any meetings, to notify Castellan Steel I wouldn’t be flying in Friday like planned. Something urgent had come up, I said.

  That wasn’t a lie.

  I stepped into the marble-tiled bathroom and turned on the shower until it steamed. The pressure was strong—Edinburgh didn’t play around with its water systems. I peeled everything off and stood under the spray until my spine uncoiled. Not fully. Just enough.

  Food came thirty minutes later, precisely. Something with venison and roasted root vegetables. Warm bread. Herbal tea. I ate on the low table in the living room, seated cross-legged, laptop beside me—though I didn’t touch it yet. The city outside was soft, foggy, barely making a sound.

  After the last bite, I rinsed the plate, dried my hands, and shut the world out for three hours. The bed was firm but not hard. High thread count. No dreams, but my muscles thanked me.

  I woke a little after 8:00 p.m., still in the silence. The only light came from the soft glow of the antique floor lamp and the faint reflection of the city in the glass. I sat up slowly, cracked my neck, and reached for my devices. I’d packed light—but not stupid. Encrypted tablet, primary laptop, burner phone, signal jammer, and mobile WiFi. All in the carry-on bag. Within reach like they always were.

  I powered up two systems—tablet on my left, laptop on the right. The screen lit my face like a searchlight as I slipped back into a familiar headspace. Quiet. Focused.

  The goal wasn’t to just get high—it was to explore the undercurrents of this place. Edinburgh was old money meets new rebellion. You just had to know where to look.

  I didn’t bother with legal dispensaries. Scotland wasn’t California. No glossy boutiques or budtenders with curated menus. What I needed lived under layers of encryption and pseudonyms, buried deep in grey market forums and invite-only message boards. The kind of places where a wrong click could open a digital trapdoor—or a dead end.

  I used two different VPN routes, cross-searched channels on the encrypted darknet threads, and finally landed on something. A rotating pop-up market, semi-permanent, off-grid. Moved locations every two weeks. Tonight, it was sitting just on the edge of Leith, near the docks. Coordinates locked. It wasn’t in plain sight—you had to know the code.

  And I did.

  I made a call through a scrambled VoIP and arranged for a rented car under a ghost name I’d used twice before. A matte black Jaguar I-PACE, clean, discreet, already parked two blocks from the building. I liked to be ready before I stepped outside.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  I looked at myself in the mirror briefly before heading out. Hair tied, minimal makeup. Combat boots, oversized trench over a fitted tee and jeans. Nothing that screamed money, but everything said I wasn’t lost.

  I grabbed the carry-on bag again. My kit stayed close. If you’re walking into a place that exists off-record, you don’t show up sloppy. And you sure as hell don’t show up unarmed—even if your weapon’s digital.

  I locked the penthouse behind me.

  Then I headed for the market.

  I grabbed the carry-on bag again. My kit stayed close. If you’re walking into a place that exists off-record, you don’t show up sloppy. And you sure as hell don’t show up unarmed—even if your weapon’s digital.

  I locked the penthouse behind me.

  Then I headed for the market.

  The rented Jaguar purred beneath me like it knew how to keep secrets. Edinburgh slid past in quiet stretches of cobbled streets and Victorian silhouettes. The city didn’t feel asleep—it felt like it was listening. Watching. I kept my hood low and my mind sharp, following the map I’d triangulated from burner chatter and archived routing patterns. The drop point was just off the edge of Leith, buried behind industrial warehouses with half-painted logos and old shipping containers stacked like tombstones.

  I parked three blocks away, out of view. No surveillance poles nearby. No obvious traffic. That was the first good sign.

  Boots hit pavement with practiced steps. I adjusted the strap on my carry-on, tugged the trench tighter, and made my way in on foot. No one paid me any attention. Not the cyclist cutting through the alley, not the couple smoking near the service entrance, not the man pissing behind the wheel of a junked-out van.

  Exactly how I wanted it.

  The grey market didn’t have a door. It had a corridor. A long, narrow passage that led between rusting walls, half-covered with graffiti and damp with condensation. At the far end was a man wearing a bomber jacket and mirrored sunglasses, even though the sun had been down for hours. He glanced once, twice—then stepped aside without a word. You didn’t get asked who sent you. You were either meant to be there or not.

  Inside, the place unfolded in a mix of soft chaos and muted shadows. Makeshift stalls lit with warm desk lamps. Fold-out tables with tarps hiding things better not seen in daylight. The scent was layered—machine oil, burnt rubber, spiced tobacco, and under all that, the sharp, herbal tang I’d come for. Everything was cash or coin. Digital payments would get you marked.

  I moved slowly, blending in. I was dressed like someone who belonged—just tech enough, just rough enough. Eyes scanned everything, but never settled too long. The cannabis vendors were tucked along the back wall, three stalls down from a guy selling military-grade power banks and two up from a woman whispering about drones modified for urban surveillance.

  I took my time selecting what I wanted. Local-grown, sativa-dominant, clean cut, wrapped in brown wax paper. No labels, no fluff. Just product. I tucked it into an inner compartment of the carry-on, zipped it clean. Then I lingered, pretending to examine a series of thermal cloaks two stalls away.

  I moved through the crowd like I’d been here before—unbothered, casual, unnoticed. The air smelled like burnt circuits, old oil, and something vaguely sweet beneath it—cooked sugar or cheap vape. My eyes scanned quickly, not in a rush, just reading the room.

  Two men leaned near a gutted cash machine, heads bowed low in conversation. I only caught bits as I passed.

  “You bring your rig?”

  “Obviously. Ain’t letting Leif take the top spot again.”

  “Hope your exploit library’s deeper than last time.”

  “I upgraded. Kernel-level, brute speed. No firewalls survive that.”

  I kept walking, didn’t look back. That wasn’t gamer talk. That was system-level. Clean ops language layered with ego. Scripts, exploits, duels—I’d heard it before. Berlin. Seoul. Mexico City. They were talking about a code match. Underground. Unofficial. A hacking competition.

  Something sparked beneath my ribs.

  I found what I came for—a tightly rolled sativa blend from a vendor with no name and no eyes for small talk. I handed over cash and tucked the package away, eyes still scanning for the two men. When they moved, I moved. Just out of view. Quiet.

  Whatever this competition was, I needed to see it for myself.

  They didn’t move fast. People like that never did—arrogant enough to believe no one’s watching, confident enough to act like they owned whatever backdoor they’d wormed through. I kept two stalls between us, just browsing, peripheral vision doing the heavy lifting.

  They passed a wall of retro hardware—gutted modems, stacked processors, something that looked like an old Soviet comms panel—and slipped out through a side arch disguised by crates and a flickering red bulb. I counted to five. Then I followed.

  The air changed the moment I stepped out. Quieter. Colder. A narrow alley lined with stained brick and moss climbing the sides like veins. My boots echoed, but I kept my pace steady. One of the men looked back once. I was tying my hair up. Non-threatening. They didn’t pause.

  They reached a corner and ducked left, into what looked like an abandoned loading dock built into the rear of a warehouse. Faded signage, steel shutter bent in the middle like something had rammed it years ago. I waited. Fifteen seconds. No one screamed. No one ran.

  I crossed the street and slipped in.

  The space wasn’t huge, but it pulsed. A low thrumming bassline came from the floor itself, not a speaker. Graffiti scrawled across every inch of wall. Neon tags. Symbols. Strings of code and old-school ASCII art. There were tables set up in a semicircle, each loaded with laptops, wireless rigs, drives, even a few old-school terminal monitors blinking green. About a dozen people hovered around them, some standing, others locked into chairs like it was a flight deck.

  Projectors lit the wall with shifting data. IPs. Code logs. Live breach simulations. This wasn’t an amateur’s game.

  I stayed in the back, behind a stack of crates labeled something they definitely weren’t. No one noticed me—or if they did, no one cared. I blended too well. Neutral jacket. No expression. Observing.

  I watched one of the screens shift as a timer ticked down. Someone had thirty seconds left on a breach challenge. A simulated server firewall was breaking apart in real time. Not bad. Not the fastest I’d seen, but clean. No evidence left behind.

  It had structure.

  A woman on the far side of the room tapped a panel and muttered something to a man next to her. He laughed—brief, sharp—and said, “If she ghosts the system in under three minutes, I’m buying her next round.”

  They were scoring each other. Competitive. Low stakes on the surface. But underneath it? Practice. Recruitment. Testing ground for something else.

  I exhaled once, quietly. Then I leaned against the crate, watching. I’d come for a high, not a hunt—but sometimes, when the city speaks, you follow.

  And this one was whispering straight in binary.

  They didn’t call it a competition outright—but it didn’t have to be. You could smell it in the way people hovered over their screens, the way hands flew across keys with quiet aggression. Subtle exchanges, fast switches between tools, occasional nods to encrypted logs scrolling in languages half the room didn’t even bother translating.

  I listened. Watched. Took note of the ones who held tension in their shoulders but didn’t show it in their faces. Those were the real players. The kind who came here with something to prove.

  It didn’t take long to hear what mattered. Grand finale. Tomorrow night. Elite round. No open invites—just last-minute entries if you had the nerve and the skill to back it.

  One chance. Not as myself.

  I leaned back into the shadow of the post I’d settled against, lips quirking. No way in hell I was showing up under my own name or signature. Too risky. Too traceable.

  But under a different skin, one they wouldn’t see coming? That, I could enjoy.

  With a quiet breath and the first hint of an amused grin, I decided—

  If they were opening the gate one more time, I’d walk in.

  Just not as Cyrene Tempest.

  By the time I got back to the penthouse, the streets were still slick from the drizzle. Edinburgh’s night air was quiet, but it had that edge—like something under it wasn’t quite asleep.

  I didn’t switch on the lights. Just the screen of my tablet was enough. I dumped the trench over the chair, kicked off the boots, and padded across the room like I still wasn’t supposed to be here.

  I started with the cameras.

  First, I scrubbed myself from the market—wiped the digital footprints clean. I tunneled into the grey market’s low-tier surveillance node and piggybacked it through two spoofed relays. I knew their setup: janky patchwork, minimal encryption. Cocky amateurs trying to act like ghosts.

  I was quieter.

  I looped my entry, ghosted the timestamp, then fed the feed a synthetic trace. Someone else’s walk, someone else’s back-of-head. Close enough to fool a glance, not good enough for facial recognition. I didn’t just erase myself—I replaced me.

  Then I went after the trail I left following the men. Backtracked street cams, rotated angle logs, and audio fragments. I didn’t rush it. I did it like it mattered. Because it did.

  When I was done, no one would even know I’d been curious.

  I powered down, slid the devices into their lined compartments, and locked the case. My alias? Still untouched. I wanted to keep it that way. No digital sketches, no dumb rehearsal. I didn’t even write the name down. It would come when I needed it.

  Tomorrow was the grand finale. And apparently, there was still an open slot.

  I wasn’t about to enter as Cyrene Tempest.

  That’d be too easy.

  Besides—where was the fun in that?

  I double-checked the deadbolt, drew the blackout drapes myself, and walked to the bedroom without checking my phone. No need. If something burned down, they’d find me. If not, it could wait.

  I needed sleep.

  I had work to do tomorrow.

  The kind I wasn’t being paid for.

  ________________

  Morning came slow, the sky barely shifting from charcoal to muted silver. I was already up.

  I didn’t lie in bed. Didn’t scroll, didn’t linger. Just sat up, feet on the cold wood floor, brain already cataloging everything I needed to do before tonight. The room still smelled faintly of herbs from the tea I didn’t finish last night and the faint trace of rain lingering through the open balcony door.

  I pulled on a black long-sleeve shirt and jeans—nothing complicated. No jewelry, no scent. Tied my hair back tightly before tucking it into a cap. One glance in the mirror confirmed I looked exactly like I wanted to: anonymous, forgettable.

  The rental car was still where I left it, tucked in the shadows near a faded lamppost two streets down. I kept the music off, the windows half-cracked. Edinburgh in the morning had a different rhythm—less edge, more hush. Still, I didn’t drop my guard. I drove through the back end of town where the boutique shops rubbed shoulders with discount retail, and parked near a side alley where no one cared to look twice.

  First stop was a wig shop that didn’t advertise online. Local place, worn signage, minimal questions. I walked in with purpose and walked out with a soft bag: short black pixie cut with curls tight enough to distort my profile. It didn’t look glamorous—it looked real. Exactly what I needed.

  Next was a pharmacy. I grabbed a pair of plain prescription-looking glasses with matte frames. Nerdy, forgettable. Off the same aisle, I picked up colored contact lenses—blue, to blur out my hazel eyes, shift the details. A different face would give me a different weight in that room.

  Clothing was last. I slid into a corner thrift store where no one asked names. Baggy khaki pants. A faded maroon hoodie with a cracked graphic on the chest. Black sneakers with dust already on them. Not pristine. Not polished. Just normal. Like someone who spent too much time in her bedroom coding and forgot how to match socks.

  I didn’t touch my phone the entire time. I paid with cash, carried everything in a plain brown paper bag, and stayed on streets without CCTV where I could help it. By the time I got back to the penthouse, it was almost 11:00 a.m.

  Inside, I locked the door and drew all the blinds.

  The disguise items went on the table beside my gear—organized, silent, waiting. I stood in front of them for a beat, then turned away. It wasn’t time yet.

  The equipment stayed in the carry-on: encrypted tablet, primary laptop, burner, jammer, mobile router. Same setup I always ran. No frills. No surprises.

  Still, I ran another camera sweep.

  Precaution.

  I’d already wiped my trace from last night—the looped footage covering the trail, the walk through Leith, the moments where I followed those men through alleys no city map would show cleanly. But caution wasn’t overkill. Not here.

  So I checked the market feeds again. No unusual pings, no new log-ins. I ran a silent loop over any external IPs that had scanned the footage timestamps. Nothing pointed back to me. Still clean.

  I shut the laptop slowly.

  I didn’t bother naming the identity I’d wear tonight. Didn’t sketch out her voice, her posture, her presence. I’d carry her when I needed her. Until then, she stayed dormant. Out of sight. Out of mind.

  A disguise only works if you don’t fall in love with it too early.

  I ate the last of the cold sandwich I’d left out and brewed tea without looking at the clock. No caffeine, no sugar. Just enough heat to keep me anchored. My stomach didn’t need more than that.

  One last glance at the window. The sky was shifting again. Light bleeding into the edges. This city held secrets in the daylight just as easily as it did in the dark—you just had to know where to stand.

  And tonight, I wouldn’t be standing as myself.

  I’d step into the competition wrapped in cloth and code, unseen and uninvited.

  Exactly how I liked it.