The vacation was canceled the moment Silver connected the dots. Julie's betrayal was just the surface. Daniel—the name still burned in his mind—was the real poison, corroding everything Silver had built.
The notification of the romantic dinner refund arrived before Julie finished packing her clothes, the sound of suitcases dragging across the floor echoing like an epitaph of what remained of the marriage.
She left through the door with guilty eyes, without a word. Silver didn't look back.
Sitting in an empty apartment, with the laptop as his only company, he dissected Daniel's movements. His mind traced lines between disconnected facts: months earlier, Daniel had mentioned details of Azure Xpace's confidential project—the same one that had partially leaked, costing Silver's team months of work. In interviews, Daniel spoke of "cross-inspiration" with a smile that now seemed like a knife.
"It's not revenge, it's justice," he thought, fingers gripping the pen as he wrote frantic notes.
He started with reputational attacks: anonymous articles on tech blogs questioned the originality of Daniel's work, suggesting poorly disguised reverse engineering. Comments planted in aerospace forums, with untraceable pseudonyms, insinuated ethical conflicts in collaborations between NASA and Azure Xpace. Strategic leaks and a discreet hack into NASA's system cost Daniel two contracts, and rumors about his competence began to circulate.
Daniel's reputation crumbled, like a structure under slow erosion. The codename "Silver"—used in closed technical circles—gained respect: a whisper among engineers who admired the precision of the "leaks." But Daniel, feeling the tightening noose, cut Julie without hesitation, discarding her like a useless piece.
Victory had a bitter taste. Julie didn't return. NASA didn't reinstate Silver. And he, looking in the mirror, saw a stranger.
Julie tried to come back. A timid message: "Can we talk someday?" Silver deleted it without opening. The calls came until he blocked the number. When Julie appeared at Azure Xpace's headquarters, begging to go up to the 21st floor, security stopped her. The head of security informed Silver, expecting a reaction.
"Maintain protocol," said Silver, eyes fixed on the monitor, tracking mentions of Daniel in scientific networks.
That week, the rain fell relentlessly, cold and persistent, as if the sky wept what Silver refused to feel. He walked through the city, trench coat soaked, lost in calculations and strategies.
In a small café, under the rain, Julie found him. She ran to him, without an umbrella, hair clinging to her face, eyes red with tears disguised by the water.
"Are you going to ignore me forever?" Her voice trembled, almost swallowed by the rain.
Silver looked at her with a void more cruel than any word.
"I don't have time for you anymore, Julie."
She tried to touch his arm, but he stepped away, slow and deliberate. Her tears mixed with the rain, but Silver was already walking, his steps muffling the sobs she couldn't contain. He left behind love, the past—and any remnants of the man he once was.
But Daniel wouldn't let it go. The shadow game turned into a cold war. Daniel counterattacked, subtle and dirty, scouring Azure Xpace's technical connections, pressuring investors with rumors of instability, leaking false information to undermine Silver's credibility.
He was smart, but not enough. Silver knew Daniel—every tic, every pattern. He anticipated his moves, dodged every blow.
But victory came at a cost. To defend himself, Silver had become what he despised: a manipulator, a ruthless strategist. Every anonymous article, every planted comment, was a stab at his own soul.
He saw it in the tired eyes staring back at him from the monitor's reflection, late at night, while reading veiled threats in NASA's communications.
"Enough of this," he thought, closing the laptop.
He needed peace. A place where he could remember who he was before the betrayal. The island came to mind like an echo from childhood. He and his father, under the stars, fishing in calm waters, laughing at bad jokes. It was the only place that still felt pure.
He left a notice of extended leave at Azure Xpace, sold what was left—some furniture, an old car—and bought a ticket to the nearest destination to the island. The plan was simple: disappear, breathe, maybe even write something that wasn't a manifesto against Daniel. But deep down, he knew that running away wouldn't erase what he felt.
Moscow, before Silver's arrival
In an underground bunker, under the cold light of fluorescent lamps, a Russian general examined reports on a table covered with maps. Beside him, an intelligence agent adjusted a radio, picking up intermittent signals.
"Have the tests been completed?" asked the general, his voice deep, eyes fixed on the map.
"Yes, sir. All tests yielded favorable results. We can begin preparing the transport at any time," replied the agent, hesitant.
"No unforeseen issues?" the general insisted. "Know that if anything goes wrong, it will be your head that rolls, not the technical team's."
"No, sir, none," said the agent, swallowing hard.
After confirmation, the general authorized the team to prepare the soldiers and the plane that would be equipped with the new space wave technology—undetectable by satellites, radars, or sonars.
The island, a remote point chosen for its obscurity, would be the stage for the final test before the main operation.
Amid the war with Ukraine, the Russians saw victory within reach, but the US and its allies complicated the scenario with sanctions and military support. All this would change with the space wave device, which used signals impossible to track, canceling any conventional technology.
The plan: hit the rear of Ukraine, a point the US wouldn't even imagine.
But the cold war between Silver and Daniel had unexpected consequences. The US, through contacts at NASA, gained access to Silver's personal research—"Space Waves and Their Effects Within Gravity." What no one knew was that this research, now in American hands, could be the key to dismantling the Russian plan—or, by a cruel twist, place Silver at the center of a conflict he never wanted.
Silver took a commercial flight to the nearest destination, then rented a small boat, sailing alone through gray waters. The island was as isolated as he remembered from vacations with his father, when they spent days fishing, exploring trails, and listening to the roar of waves between cliffs. At that time, the island was a piece of nothing, touched only by seagulls and lost fishermen.
He never imagined anyone would use it for anything beyond tranquility.
He set up a simple camp on the beach, under the shelter of twisted trees, and spent days walking the trails, the cutting wind on his face.
"I came here to clear my head, not to carry the world," he thought, kicking a stone with more anger than necessary.
The weight of Julie's betrayal, the war with Daniel, still suffocated him, but the solitude seemed to calm him.
Until the seventh night, when chance decided to kick tranquility.
While observing the stars, lost in their beauty and mysteries, a deafening noise tore the sky. Fire shone in the darkness, and a burning plane passed above him, plunging into the depths of the island. An impact boom echoed, followed by a rain of debris: twisted metal, burned clothes, and... weapons?
Silver threw himself to the ground, heart racing, as incandescent pieces fell around him.
"Weapons? Why is a plane here carrying weapons?" he murmured, examining a smoking wreckage.
The fuselage had strange markings. They weren't American—perhaps Russian.
"What the hell is going on?"
Looking toward the jungle, where smoke rose, he felt a mix of fear and curiosity. Something big was at play—and he, by a hellish chance, had landed right in the middle.
"If this is a movie, I'm the extra who dies first," he thought, nervously laughing, unaware that fate had already prepared an ending worthy of going viral.