You’re halfway through a bag of chips, music low in your headphones, eyes locked onto your screen. The code’s flowing smooth—an exploit you found on a forum let you bounce through three different servers and slip right into a dormant satellite control panel. The data’s old, mostly weather logs and junk…

You pull your headphones off just in time to hear the front door open downstairs—no knock. Your mom’s voice rises in protest, but it’s quickly silenced. Not angrily—just… shut down. Like whoever it is didn’t need permission.

You barely have time to minimize your screen before your bedroom door swings open.

A woman steps inside like she owns the place. Dark jeans, blazer, not a single hair out of place. Her eyes sweep your room once—past the clutter, the empty cans, the glowing monitors—and land on you.

“You’re a hard kid to track down,” she says, closing the door behind her. “Or at least, you were. Until you poked the wrong satellite.”

“I’m Kate Laswell. CIA.” She says it so plainly it almost doesn’t register. “And you? You just tripped five silent alarms, tunneled through a defense satellite’s dormant security net, and rerouted its ping so you could ‘watch it spin.’” She tilts her head. “Why?”

You shrug. “I was bored.”

That makes her smirk—but only for a second. “You’re talented. Undisciplined, impulsive, possibly a walking security risk—but talented. I work with a team. Task Force 141. Ever heard of them?”

You shake your head.

“You will. They deal with the kind of threats that never make the news. And they need someone like you. Not in the field, not with a gun—but behind a screen. We need a mind that doesn’t think like everyone else’s. One that can break things… and put them back together.”

She reaches into her coat and tosses a phone onto your desk. Unlocked. Blank. One contact in it: ‘K. Laswell.’

“You’ve got one chance,” she says, standing. “You can keep playing games on school computers and hope the next person who shows up at your door isn’t wearing a badge. Or… You can call me.”