Chapter 2 – The Warning

The note on her wall bled into her thoughts long after she tore it down. Even now, the faint outline where the tape had clung to the plaster seemed like a scar, an imprint of something she couldn’t erase no matter how hard she tried.

Maya sat at her kitchen counter, the overhead light humming faintly, casting shadows that bent and stretched across the room. The paper lay open before her, its edges curled, dampened from her grip as though the message itself resisted being handled.

The words cut across the page in jagged strokes, uneven, tilting, almost frantic. It wasn’t handwriting meant to be read so much as handwriting meant to haunt. Letters collided into each other, ink bleeding in places where the pen had pressed too hard. She ran her thumb over the ridges, feeling the grooves etched into the fibers. Whoever had written it hadn’t been calm. They’d been urgent. Desperate. Or dangerous.

She tried to convince herself it was just ink. Just ink on paper. But the color was too dark, too thick in certain spots, and the thought slithered back into her mind: what if it wasn’t?

Her stomach tightened, but she didn’t push the thought away this time. She leaned closer, the words catching the light:

You’re already being watched.

The air in the kitchen felt colder suddenly, and the hum of the light grew louder, filling the silence until it was all she could hear.

Her instincts told her to call the police. But what would she say? “My laptop was stolen, and someone left me a creepy note.” The officers would take the report, file it away, and that would be the end of it.

No this was bigger. Too precise. Too deliberate.

Her phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

She hesitated before answering. “Hello?”

Static. Then a man’s voice, low and urgent:

“Stop chasing ghosts, Miss Trent. Some stories aren’t meant to be written.”

Her stomach clenched. “Who is this?”

Silence. Then the line went dead.

She stared at her phone, her reflection distorted in the black screen. Whoever this was they knew her name. They knew her work. And they wanted her scared.

But fear had never stopped Maya before.

Two hours later, she was at the Chronicle archives, where every journalist in the city dug when leads ran dry. The old building smelled of dust and ink, shelves groaning under decades of forgotten scandals.

She pulled every file tagged with Elias Varga. Most were clippings from ten years ago, back when he was a rising star in cryptography. He’d been praised for developing “impenetrable” encryption systems. Governments lined up for his work.

But one article stood out.

A grainy photo of Varga, leaving a conference mid-presentation. The caption: “Renowned cryptographer storms out after heated dispute over algorithm misuse.”

Maya leaned closer. Someone had circled the date March 11, three years ago and scribbled two words in the margin: The Cipher.

Her fingers tightened on the page. The same word whispered in online forums she’d stumbled upon while chasing dead ends. Always vague. Always shadowed. The Cipher.

She copied the article, slid it into her folder, and slipped out.

The street outside was dark, the storm easing into mist. She hurried to her car, folder tucked under her arm.

But as she reached the driver’s side door, she froze.

Her window was already cracked open.

She never left it that way.

Her pulse quickened. She yanked the door open and stopped cold.

On the driver’s seat lay her missing laptop.

The screen was cracked. The hard drive ripped out.

And resting on top of it, another note:

“Last chance.”

Maya looked around the empty street, shadows shifting in the mist.

Someone was watching her.