The leaves outside the window rustled noisily in the fiercely cold January wind. Somewhere in the office, a wall clock ticked steadily - its arms casting eerie shadows at right angles.
2:15 am.
There was not much noise in the small but classy looking office cabin. Just the low, constant hum of servers stacked behind reinforced glass, the soft whir of cooling systems, the occasional flicker of fluorescent lights that flickered almost beautifully against the warm light issuing from the lamp. Outside, rain tapped faintly on the glass windows, blurring the distant glow of the city into something indistinct and cooling the midnight air .
This was probably as close as Edinburgh would ever come to being quiet.
Callum Fraser sat slouched in his chair, sleeves pushed up, one hand loosely wrapped around a mug that had long since gone cold.
There was nothing remarkable about him at first glance—average height, dark hair slightly unkempt and parted right down the middle and broad round framed glasses.
It was the kind of face that could easily blendinto a crowd unless you managed to notice the quiet focus behind his eyes.
Across from him, Isla MacLeod sat with one leg tucked under another, posture relaxed but not drowsy yet, her light brown hair falling loosely over her shoulder as she scrolled through routine logs. She had the kind of sharp, observant gaze resembling that of an iffice matron, though tonight it softened under the weight of monotony.
Between them, the room carried a soft silence and relaxation—two people settled into a night. they expected to pass without incident.
In fact, he barely looked up when the first alert came in.
A soft ping— slightly enthusiastic over it's calm background.
"Latency spike," he muttered, eyes still half on his phone screen, half on the clock that indicated that three minutes had passed since his last glance. "Node C."
Across from him, Isla MacLeod didn't even pause her scrolling. "Auto-correct will handle it," she said, pursing her lips slightly.
It did, just as she had thought.
The graph dipped, corrected itself, and smoothed out like nothing had happened.
At 02:21 AM, the alert came back.
Still not unusual enough to be worried.
Fraser casually swept his hand on the keyboard but the alert remained fixated on the computer.
Isla frowned, her chair creaking softly as she sat up a little straighter.
"That's… odd."
Callum didn't answer immediately, his eyes now sharp on the monitor screen.
Not casually—but properly.
"Probably a loop," he said after a second, though there was less certainty in it than before. "Run diagnostics."
By 02:26, Node C stopped responding.
It had not crashed, but simply became unresponsive.
Callum quietly typed requests but nothing came out. Like knocking on a door that no one opened—even though you knew someone was inside.
Isla had now straightened herself fully . She dragged her chair forwards and her eyes indicated silent alarm.
Callum kept moving, fingers sharper on the keyboard. "Trigger failover ".
The system reacted instantly.
Node D came online—clean, efficient, seamless.
For half a second, everything looked fine.
Then the screen flickered.
"Why is D picking up the same delay?" Isla asked, her voice tightening despite herself. She had now kept her phone aside, her attention fully on the weird antics of their server.
This was far from normal.
The issue was not identical, but felt close enough to feel intentional.
The alarm hit seconds later, as the system finally started drowning . It lwas clear that something foreign had entered the server and was trying to gain further access.
Every monitor shifted at once—blue replaced with urgent red, dashboards flooding with warnings, access panels locking behind layers of authorization that neither of them had triggered.
There was no doubt now. Someone out there was trying to gain access into semi high prioritized security system at 2 am on a mundane night.
"What the hell—who authorized that?" Isla snapped, confused at all the sudden notifications popping on the screen.
"No one did," Callum shot back, already pulling up access logs. "I don't even have—"
He stopped.
CPU usage was starting to climb.
Not erratically.Not like a system failing.
But in a steady and controlled manner.
"They're good", Isla muttered, finally understanding what was going on, though she could not think of anything to stop it.
Fayser's voice dropped. "That's not a crash."
At 02:31, the logs began to change.
Isla leaned forward, eyes narrowing as she replayed a sequence.
"That entry wasn't—"
It shifted.
Right in front of her.
Timestamp adjusted. Route altered.
Authentication redirected, folding back into itself like it had always belonged there.
Her breath caught.
"They're editing the logs."
Callum didn't respond.
He was already somewhere else—digging through outbound channels, scanning for anything that shouldn't exist.
"Check transfers," he said, voice tighter now.
"Nothing major," Isla replied automatically.
Then she stopped.
Her cursor hovered.
"…Callum."
He looked over. "What?"
"This account."
It shouldn't have been there.
No flags.
No recent activity.
"He never told us about anything like this ", Fraser nodded.
It was a dormant account in a system too large to remember everything it held. Perhaps an hidden overseas bank account .
And yet—
it was active.
Small transfers were slowly getting automated through the foreign access, the notifications piling one on top of the other - routed through layers so clean they barely registered as anomalies.
It kept getting redirected and reassembled somewhere far outside their reach.
His brow creased. This wasn't random.
Whoever was doing this knew exactly where to look—and more importantly, what to leave untouched.
And all he could do was to prevent the unknown person from taking over the server.
"How much?" Callum asked, his fingers still typing furiously.
Isla didn't answer immediately.
The number was still climbing.
"…You're not going to like it," she said under her breath.
"How much?" he repeated.
She swallowed.
"A lot."
By the time they tried to isolate the breach, there was nothing left to isolate.
No clear entry point.
No visible override.
No damage in the way systems usually showed damage.
The room felt different now.
Like something had passed through it—unseen, untouched—and left without a trace.
Callum leaned back slightly, running a hand through his hair, eyes still locked on the screen. He had already typed a hurried emergency message to the concerned man and could already imagine his reaction at that message popping up as soon as he opened his phone.
"You know, right? "
He didn't want to admit so easily.
Because there were only two names that fit something like this.
But neither of them were famous for theft or such.
"…It's too clean," he said finally.
Isla nodded.
"Vixen?"
Callum hesitated.
Then shook his head.
" Maybe not . "
He pulled up one final sequence—buried deep, where no one usually looked unless they already knew what they were searching for.
A pattern.
Familiar.
Isla exhaled sharply.
"…Lynx."
Silence settled between them. It was clear that it resembled both the Vixen's precision
and the Lynx's defensive bypass style.
The same question, heavy but firm, settled between them.
"Since when did these two start working with each other?"