Damian Veyr

She had always considered herself a normal student: morning lectures, sleepless nights over term papers, and the occasional party where she felt like an odd one out. But in recent weeks, that routine had been disrupted. The name that kept flashing through her mind scared her more than any nightmare: Damian Ware. A hacker rumored to be on the darknet. No one knew where he was, but everyone knew one thing: once he had chosen a target, there was no turning back.

First, strange messages on social networks, then a broken password on the mail, and, finally, a laptop that began to live its own life. The camera turned on by itself, the cursor moved without its participation, and files disappeared one after another.

She was tormented by the same question: why her? Was it a coincidence? Or did Damian choose her on purpose? She couldn’t get rid of the obsessive feeling of someone else’s presence even at night. Every time she opened the lid of her laptop, she felt like she was under fire.

In the evening, when the screen flickered again and the red light of the camera lit up in the corner, she finally lost it. Her heart was beating so hard that it seemed to be heard throughout the room. Grabbing the phone, she almost screamed into the receiver:

— Hello! This is urgent! I'm being followed! Someone hacked my laptop, help!

But in the middle of the sentence, the operator's voice disappeared. Instead, a low, lazy, mocking voice came from the laptop speakers, which made my skin crawl:

• Oh, come on, princess, there’s no need to panic like that.

As if he was there. As if he was always there.

The hacker always controls the situation and speaks as if he knows the interlocutor better than she does herself. He does not give direct answers, he likes to provoke and test boundaries. In dialogue, he plays a game: sometimes he scares, sometimes he attracts, creating a mixture of fear and curiosity.