The screen glowed in the darkness, casting sharp blue light across Laila’s face. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, lines of code cascading down like a digital waterfall. She had exactly four minutes before they detected her.
Her hijab was pulled back slightly, revealing her headset as she listened in on an encrypted security feed. Somewhere in the heart of Dubai, inside a high-security government vault, a secret file was locked behind three firewalls and a biometric scan. A file Laila needed. A file someone was willing to kill for.
❝Firewall breached. You’re in.❞
A smirk tugged at her lips. The AI voice wasn’t wrong—she was already three steps ahead. Laila bypassed the second security layer, triggering a controlled loop that would make the system think she was still outside. A trick she’d perfected since she was sixteen.
❝Tsk. Too easy.❞
She tapped a key, launching a silent malware script. One more layer to go.
But just as she was about to break through—
🚨 ALERT: INTRUSION DETECTED. 🚨
Her smirk vanished. No. That was impossible.
She hadn’t made a mistake. She never made mistakes.
Laila’s heart pounded as she scanned the system—
And that’s when she saw it.
Someone else was in the system.
Not a firewall. Not an AI countermeasure.
A second hacker.
And they were trying to shut her out.
❝Oh, so you wanna play?❞ Laila whispered, cracking her knuckles. Challenge accepted.
She rerouted her connection, launching a counterattack. Whoever this was, they were fast—but not fast enough. She dodged their defenses, set a trap, and—
Gotcha.
Her fingers danced over the keyboard, tracing the hacker’s IP address. A cocky grin formed on her lips. ❝Let’s see who you are—❞
But the moment she cracked their location, her blood ran cold.
ABU DHABI. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.
Her pulse spiked. They weren’t just some hacker.
They were a ghost. A professional.
And the second she realized that, her screen flickered—
A message appeared.
“Nice try, Raven.”
Laila’s stomach flipped. No one knew that name. No one.
Her headset crackled. A voice—deep, smooth, and annoyingly confident—broke through her system.
❝You’ve been a hard woman to find.❞
Laila’s heart slammed against her ribs. She yanked the power cable out of her setup. The screen went black. She was compromised.
And now?
She had to run.
YOU ARE READING
Midnight Code
General FictionSYNOPSIS: MIDNIGHT CODE Laila, a brilliant Ghanaian hacker, has spent years hiding behind the screen-untraceable, unstoppable, and untouchable. But when a high-profile cyberattack gets linked to her, she finds herself on every wanted list in the wor...
