CHAPTER 222: CHAPTER 222 THE DIGITAL HYDRA

He ended the call, his hand slipping the phone back into his pocket, and stood there for a moment longer.

Then, his gaze shifted back inside, through the glass door. Bella was curled on the bed with her plushies, her face half-hidden as if she was sulking or hiding how red her cheeks still were.

Leo chuckled under his breath, but his expression stayed hard as he stepped out of his room.

"Sir," Jeffrey’s eager voice came through, a little breathless. "I’ve been studying the pattern. Just a few more days, and I’ll get you the IP address of that hacker." His tone was laced with excitement, as though he was chasing a prize he could almost taste.

Leo’s lips curved faintly, his storm-gray eyes narrowing on the city lights below. "Good," he said, his voice low but charged with anticipation. The idea of finally cornering that hacker—this mysterious ghost who had slipped through all his nets—sent a thrill through him.

"I’ve never seen anything like it," Jeffrey rushed on, unable to stop himself from talking about the strange code. "It’s not advanced in the way most top hackers write—it’s... so different. Unpredictable. Sir, it’s like they’re making up new rules as they go, rewriting the entire game."

Leo leaned one hand against the railing, his broad shoulders tense. "So you’re telling me this isn’t someone we can easily replace."

"Exactly, sir," Jeffrey said firmly. "If we find them, they could become the most powerful weapon in your hands."

A dangerous glint flickered in Leo’s eyes. He could already picture it—the hacker working for him, his empire reinforced, Pablo’s operations finally crushed without mercy. His voice dropped lower, almost like a growl. "Then don’t waste a second. I want results."

"Yes, sir. You’ll have them." Jeffrey sounded almost feverish with determination.

Leo ended the call but didn’t move right away.

Whoever this hacker was, he wasn’t ordinary. And once Leo had him, there would be no escape.

His jaw clenched as he thought of how close Pablo had come to hitting his warehouses last time. He couldn’t allow another weakness. This hacker might just be the key to ending it all.

And he wanted them under his control—sooner rather than later.

*****

Meanwhile, after Leo left the room, Bella sat quietly for a while, hugging her plushies and staring at the large wedding photo above the bed. The room felt strangely empty without him, but the silence was exactly what she needed.

On the coffee table near the sofa, her slim laptop sat waiting. She hurried over, her bare feet padding softly against the floor, and grabbed it. Hugging it close for a second, she felt her heart race with excitement. This wasn’t just any night. This was the start of something huge.

She set it down on the table again, flipped it open, and her fingers immediately shook as the screen came to life. The shadow server William had sent her gleamed in front of her, lines of code hidden within its depths like a locked vault.

"Oh my God..." Bella whispered, her brown eyes reflecting the green streams of text as they began to run. Her lips curved into a grin, unable to hold back her excitement.

She placed her elbows on the table and leaned closer, her hair falling to one side as her hands hovered over the keyboard.

The moment she connected, lines of code began to stream across the dark interface. Her fingers itched to fly across the keyboard. Every instinct inside her screamed with joy. This was the kind of challenge she lived for—the kind of work that made her forget food, sleep, even time itself.

Her lips curved into a grin as she began to type. First, she mapped out the entry point. Then she set a series of decoy codes, tricks so natural in her hands that she almost laughed.

"This... this is the biggest project I’ve ever done," she murmured to herself, her heart pounding.

Each new barrier William’s system revealed only pushed her adrenaline higher.

Bella’s eyes gleamed as she scanned deeper into the system William had given her access to. The interface was designed like a spine—nodes branching out like nerves from a central core. She leaned closer, her fingers flying lightly over the keys.

Hm... the central nervous system here is good. Strong foundation, she thought, her lips pursed. But these codes—they’re outdated. Stitched together from old structures, easy to predict.

Her pulse quickened. To anyone else, this system would still look formidable, nearly unbreakable. But to her? It was a fragile glass castle waiting to be rebuilt into something far greater.

I should replace it, she mused, her honey-brown eyes flickering with excitement as she typed. Not with the usual advanced coding—that’s too obvious. I’ll build something unique, something no one has ever seen. The kind that looks simple on the surface, but if an intruder tries to crack it, the system will rewrite itself, morphing into a new code like living tissue repairing a wound.

Her fingers tapped faster, and a grin tugged at her lips.

That was when she remembered a concept she’d studied long ago, a whispered legend in the hacker world: the Digital Hydra.

The theory belonged to Mr. Melbroon, a pioneer in cybersecurity who had once said it was impossible to replicate outside of theory. The idea was terrifying—one head cut off, and two more appeared. If an attacker destroyed one line of code, the system instantly generated two new, stronger ones, endlessly regenerating until the intruder was trapped in a labyrinth.

Bella’s heart thudded harder in her chest. She had mastered this—something most people could never achieve. She had first learned about the theory when she was sixteen, and it had gripped her so strongly that she spent an entire week absorbed in it, letting it distract her from the pain she carried.

She cracked her knuckles lightly, then began to weave the first threads of the hydra into William’s system. It was delicate work, like stitching living veins into dead metal, but her hands didn’t falter. Line by line, she watched the hydra grow, breathing life into the server, making it into something untouchable.