My husband indulged his protégée hacker, Chloe, allowing her to manipulate my life for practice.
The first time, our smart home system went haywire in the dead of night, blaring alarms and lights, terrifying me into a hospital bed.
The second time, it was a private video looping on screens during a crucial meeting, making me internet infamous.
And this time, she remotely hijacked my smart car, orchestrating a horrific crash on the freeway.
Lying in the ICU, covered in my own blood, I heard Julian, my husband, calmly explain as he “fixed” the system:
“Don’t hate Chloe, darling. She’s just a bit childish, trying to prove she’s as brilliant as me. You know how these bright young talents are.”
“She knows that no matter what happens, I’ll always save you – it’s just a game that got a little out of hand.”
Before he could finish, an encrypted call pulled him away.
But I saw his unsaved logs on the tablet. They clearly showed he’d known about allof Chloe’s attacks. He hadn’t just ‘condoned’ this sick ‘game’; he’d encouraged it, pushing her to ‘level up’ her skills.
What he didn’t know was that his recent “fix” had just activated the ultimate command I’d buried deep within his network. In a week, his digital empire would crumble.
1
“I’ve already had a word with her. Anyway, you’ve always been so understanding, you won’t hold it against her, right? Just tell me what gift you want, anything, as my apology for her.”
Julian returned quickly, taking the soup bowl naturally to feed me, but his words were all for Chloe.
I forced a smile.
They’d issued a ‘critical condition’ notice, for God’s sake, and he expected me to be ‘magnanimous’?
“No need to make her feel bad, and no need for you to apologize.”
Julian immediately brightened. “Oh, I have to tell her! Chloe’s been so wracked with guilt since your accident, she hasn’t eaten a thing. She’s lost weight.”
I looked into his eyes, eyes that once held only me.
He’d told me about his new protégée, Chloe, who resembled his late sister, taken too soon. He’d poured all his unresolved grief and protectiveness into her.
I wanted to protect his solace, so I gave way, again and again. I just didn’t know at what point things went so wrong, leading us to this.
Julian continued typing away, oblivious, his SnapChat avatar a photo of him and Chloe.
Looking at him now, I felt sick. I found an excuse to send him away.
Julian left happily, not even bothering to pick me up when I was discharged.
Scrolling through my feed on the couch, I saw it—the conference video, twisted and vile, with doctored images of me plastered everywhere, fueling the most disgusting jokes.
My fingertips trembled as I scrolled past the vile comments, blood rushing to my head.
It was like the ghost of my younger self, Eleanor, was screaming at me: “Are you really going to just takethis?”
I slammed my phone down, my nails digging into my palms.
Silence? Tolerance?
Never again.
I opened Ins, my fingers flying across the keyboard.
“The so-called ‘private video’ is an absolute fabrication! I strongly condemn this hacker attack and will pursue all legal remedies!”
I paused, then typed his name.
“Furthermore, I demand answers from @JulianInc_CyberSecurityOfficer. How exactly has your company’s system security become so utterly useless? Or is someone acting with malicious intent?”
Seconds after I hit ‘post,’ my phone exploded with calls, ringing like a death knell.
I stared at “Julian” flashing on the screen, took a deep breath, and answered.
“The company’s stock just dropped three points because of your post,” his voice was laced with fury. “Family business stays in the family. Do I need to teach you that?”
“Family business?” I almost laughed. “Julian, this is a crime! I’m not the one acting out here!”
“Chloe’s already promised to stop. Can’t you just let it go? Do you really have to make this public knowledge?”
“Our PR team will issue a statement saying your account was hacked. Understand?”
He hung up, adding one last thing: “Don’t cause any more trouble for a while. Avoid the press.”
I listened to the dial tone, my heart aching.
He used to hold meon a pedestal.
We’d been cyber prodigies, equals from childhood. But Julian had grand visions of an empire, a ‘champion’ to build it. So, I stepped back, deliberately creating openings, handing him the crown I could have worn.
His eyes shone back then. I thought that was ourfuture.
Now, he sat on his throne, basking in the spotlight, seemingly having forgotten the one who stood beside him, who even gave upher own glory for him.
True feelings truly are fleeting.
2
Julian came home for dinner, Chloe trailing behind him.
He placed a Tiffany blue box in front of me, his voice soft. “Eleanor, the necklace you always wanted.”
He took out the diamond necklace that had mesmerized me at an auction, fastening it around my neck himself. “I only think of Chloe as my little sister. Don’t overthink things, and don’t be so confrontational with her.”
Chloe tugged lightly at Julian’s sleeve, her eyes urging him on.
Julian produced a brand-new smart bracelet. “This is the company’s latest health monitoring bracelet. It monitors your heart rate, blood pressure, and even emotional metrics in real-time, connecting to our central database. That way, we can look after you better.”
I recoiled. It was nothing less than a 24-hour digital shackle.
“I don’t need it! My health status is my private information!”
Chloe chuckled softly. “Oh, Eleanor, what’s privacy compared to your health? Brother Julian is just worried about you. Besides, your smart home and car systems are already connected to our network, aren’t they? What’s one more bracelet?”
Julian frowned. “Don’t be childish. This is for your own good. Your little ‘episode’ at the meeting? Clearly an issue with emotional regulation, darling. Wear it, the data will tell us when you need help.”
He took a step forward, reaching to grab my wrist, intending to force it on me.
I struggled, pulling away. “Julian! This is surveillance! I’m not your prisoner!”
“Why do you always twist goodwill into malice?” He seemed to lose patience, his grip tightening.
Chloe quickly tapped on her tablet.
Instantly, the bracelet shrieked with a piercing alarm!
“See! Your emotions are unstable again! The system’s even alerting us!”
Hearing that, Julian pressed down on me harder.
“It’s not me! She’s controlling it!” I screamed, pointing at Chloe, but Julian wouldn’t listen.
Just then, the smart console cabinet in the hallway suddenly popped open, crashing hard into my shin!
I stumbled, crying out in pain, instinctively reaching for the nearby smart curtain track to steady myself.
Chloe’s lips curled into a cold smirk, her finger swiping on the tablet.
The slow-moving curtain track suddenly accelerated, retracting with a sharp clack! My fingers were caught in the mechanical gap, sending a searing pain through me!
At the same time, losing my balance, I was about to crash into the glass display cabinet beside me!
“Eleanor, what are you doing!” Julian spun around, roughly shoving me away, pulling Chloe tightly into his arms.
“You scared Chloe!”
I, with no one to catch me, was thrown by the curtain track’s momentum, my forehead slamming against the cabinet corner.
Warm blood trickled down my temple. I huddled on the cold floor, looking up to see Julian anxiously checking if Chloe was startled, his face etched with concern.
He didn’t even glance down at me.
“Brother Julian, I’m fine. Please, check on Eleanor.”
Chloe leaned weakly into his embrace, but her eyes met mine over his shoulder, a clear, icy smirk playing on her lips.
Julian finally looked at me, his eyes filled with nothing but disappointment and impatience.
“Eleanor, do you haveto make such a scene! Self-harm? Smashing things? You’ve truly disappointed me!”
He carefully picked Chloe up and instructed the housekeeper.
“Take her back to her room. And until I say so, she’s not to touch any smart devices! And jam any internet signal up here!”
I was too numb with pain to speak, only watching them leave.
The attic door locked with a heavy thud behind me.
Darkness enveloped me, only moonlight casting a pale patch on the floor. This used to be our first ‘lab,’ the walls still bearing the graffiti we’d drawn together – two intertwined ‘J’ and ‘E’s – for Julian and Eleanor.
Now, for someone else, he had locked me in our past.
3
Chloe reappeared three days later.
I’d been starved for three days, curled on the floor.
Chloe whispered into my ear, “All I had to do was lie, say I wanted to study data recovery, and Brother Julian handed over your mother’s USB drive without a second thought.”
She dangled the USB drive, letting out a mocking laugh.
I used all my strength to snatch it, but Chloe feigned a stumble backward.
“Brother Julian! I told you this thing shouldn’t be kept! Look how scary Eleanor is now!”
Julian caught Chloe, then looked at me with cold eyes.
“Chloe’s right. It’s these sad memories that are making you so extreme.”
I stared at the laptop in his hands, my voice trembling. “What are you doing!”
Julian approached, his voice like a doctor soothing a patient. “We need to help you move on.”
Chloe stood behind him, purring like a smug cat.
“Brother Julian is doing this for your own good,” she murmured. “Those sad memories, they shouldn’t be kept.”
“No—” I lunged for the computer, but Julian caught me in an iron grip.
His arms were like steel clamps around me. “It’ll be over soon, Eleanor.”
Chloe’s fingers danced across the keyboard. “Brother Julian, the original files and backups are all found. Should I format and shred them completely?”
Julian paused, then nodded. “Make it clean.”
The progress bar began to move.
Ten percent, thirty percent, seventy percent… I watched my mother’s smiling photos disappear from the screen, piece by piece, until it was all blank.
“Those were the last things my mom left me!!” I shrieked, struggling to break free, but Julian held me fast.
The arms that once sheltered me from storms were now the strongest chains.
He spoke earnestly, as if comforting a child: “Once the data is gone, I’ll help you create new memories. People can’t live in the past forever. We’re just trying to help you.”
“Help me?” I laughed, tears welling up. “Julian, you know what that data meant to me!”
“Precisely why I can’t let you keep living in the past.” His tone suddenly hardened. “Chloe’s right. You’re too extreme lately. You need a clean break.”
Overwhelmed by grief and rage, I grabbed a crystal ornament from the table and hurled it at the wall.
Shards flew everywhere, and I accidentally scratched Chloe, who tried to “comfort” me.
She let out a sharp gasp, crumbling to the floor, clutching her face and sobbing. “Brother Julian, it hurts so much! I was just trying to help!”
Julian kicked me away, rushing to check Chloe’s injuries.
“Eleanor, you’re absolutely insane!” he yelled, turning to me. “It seems you haven’t reflected enough!”
“When you’ve come to your senses, then you can come out!”
The attic door was locked again.
This time, even the windows were sealed shut by blackout curtains.
In the complete darkness and silence, all love and hate burned away, leaving only cold despair.
My fingers unconsciously traced a loose floorboard – our old snack hiding spot.
I carefully pried it open. Inside, a worn USB drive and a laptop lay quietly.
It was a backdoor tool we’d designed together when we first started our company, capable of silently accessing core systems. Julian had laughed then, saying, “This is our last resort, our secret weapon. Only you and I know about it.”
Now, it seemed he had long forgotten.
But I remembered.
I inserted the USB drive into the laptop, and the screen glowed with an eerie blue light. Fingerprint authentication passed. The low-level destruction interface slowly unfolded.
“Confirm initiation of destruction protocol?” The system prompt flashed.
My finger hovered over the enter key. My mom’s smiling face flashed through my mind.
Then I pressed it, decisively.
“Protocol initiated. Countdown: 168 hours.”
The system prompt silently flashed, then automatically cleared all traces.
When Chloe detected an abnormal access alert and rushed back with Julian, the USB drive was already back in its original hiding place.
I curled up in the corner, feigning weakness.
They thoroughly checked the entire system, finding nothing but that ordinary USB drive.
“Stop doing useless things.” Julian warned coldly, tossing the USB drive back to me.
As they left, neither of them noticed the faint vibrations from beneath the floorboards.
The destruction had begun. Irreversible.
4
I was confined to this small attic, as if forgotten.
Only endless darkness remained, terrifying, maddening.
Days later, Julian and Chloe pushed open the door together.
“Eleanor,” Julian handed me a new agreement. “Traditional therapy isn’t working, so we’re trying ‘mind therapy.’ Chloe has really put a lot of thought into this for you.”
I glimpsed the terms on the agreement; the fine print read: “Mental disorder due to excessive dwelling on the past.”
“Julian,” my voice was hoarse. “Using your most trusted logic, tell me, is locking me in a VR pod really called ‘therapy’?”
“You let her set fires, but you held me back from putting them out, and now you’re saying I’mthe sick one, is that it?”
Chloe suddenly started sobbing. “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have suggested using VR to help Eleanor face reality…”
“After all, anything I suggest, Eleanor naturally doubts.”
“But Eleanor, I’m truly thinking of you. How can I make you believe me? Should I prove it with my life?”
She made a move to bang her head against the wall.
Julian flew forward, grabbing her, then turned to me with a cold voice. “Don’t betray Chloe’s good intentions. Sign it.”
Seeing my resistance, he gestured to the housekeeper. Two men stepped forward and pinned me down, one of them forcibly prying my fingers open—
The searing pain made my vision go black, but I bit my lip, refusing to cry out.
My crimson handprint stained the agreement, like a grotesque scar.
I was led into a stark white VR therapy room.
Julian himself placed the helmet on me, a strange anticipation on his face.
Darkness descended.
Then blinding headlights flashed! My mother’s terrified face appeared in front of the car—
“No!!” I screamed, but I couldn’t move.
The car crash replayed again and again, from cruel angles, slowing down my mother’s final moments of agony.
Chloe had even synthesized my mother’s cries, calling my name: “Eleanor—why didn’t you save me—”
“Stop… stop it!” I thrashed wildly in the pod, tears soaking the helmet’s lining.
Outside, Julian watched my wildly fluctuating physiological data on the monitor, his brows furrowed. “Her reaction is too strong. Should we stop?”
“This means the therapy is working!” Chloe said urgently, her fingers discreetly cranking the pain level to maximum. “She’s confronting her deepest trauma! Stopping now would only harm her!”
Julian looked at the data, eventually nodding heavily. “…Continue.”
Inside the pod, I was curled up in agony, each crash sounding like it was crushing my bones.
“Julian… please…” I pleaded weakly. “Make her stop…”
But he, separated by the pod’s shell, softly reassured me: “Just bear it, Eleanor. Getting over grief always involves pain.”
His words hit me like a sledgehammer, making me completely collapse, plunging into boundless darkness.
In a daze, I vaguely heard Julian’s assistant frantically shout.
“Mr. Julian! Our system is locked out! The core program is self-destructing!!”
5
“Mr. Julian! All… all nodes are simultaneously offline! The backup system won’t activate! The underlying commands… they seem to be self-deleting!”
“What?!” Julian’s face contorted. He completely ignored me, still unconscious in the pod, and rushed over, snatching the tablet.
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