Isaac stared at the screen, the glowing lines of code illuminating his dark room. His hands trembled slightly as the gravity of what he had created settled in. The potential of this algorithm, this living code, was unimaginable. With it, no firewall, no encrypted data, no security measure would be impenetrable to him.
He tested it on smaller networks at first—old government servers, abandoned corporate databases, the kind that no one cared about anymore. The results were instant and flawless. The algorithm wove through each system like water seeping through cracks in a dam. It left no trace of its presence, no digital fingerprint. It simply entered, absorbed, and left.
But this wasn't enough for Isaac.
He needed to see how far he could go, how powerful this creation truly was. He set his sights higher—Fortress, the world's most secure data vault. Known to be unhackable, it was said that even governments feared Fortress. If his algorithm could break through that, Isaac would know he had something that could change everything.
His heart pounded as he prepared the breach, but beneath the nervous energy, there was exhilaration. He launched the code, watching as the algorithm burrowed deep into Fortress's defenses. Layers of encryption peeled away like the skin of an onion. For a moment, Isaac thought it might fail, that the vault was too strong.
But then it happened.
The final layer cracked, and he was in.
Isaac didn't steal anything, not yet. He didn't even look at the files he had access to. For now, this was a test. And the result had exceeded his wildest expectations.
Sitting back, Isaac felt an overwhelming sense of control. The world had made him small for too long. It had diminished his genius, buried him under the weight of anonymity. But with this power, he could be something more. No longer would Isaac Hargrave be the invisible man who slaved away in the dark, unnoticed.
From that moment, Isaac knew: he would rule the digital world. And from there, the physical world would soon follow.
All he needed was a plan.