Chapter 15: Blackout Protocol

The countdown clock glowed red on Arman’s monitor: 23:12:45. Every second ticked like a hammer against his chest.

“We have less than a day,” Zara said, her voice steady but urgent. “If they trigger the blackout, the entire city goes dark.”

Arman’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “We’re not waiting. We’re hacking into the grid now. If we can override their relay nodes, we can stop the cascade.”

Riya sat beside him, her notebook filled with hastily scribbled diagrams. “I’ll track the anomalies. If they reroute, I’ll catch it.”

Kian hovered near the door, tense. “And if they fight back?”

Arman didn’t look up. “Then we fight harder.”

The lab filled with the sound of clattering keys. Zara’s sharp eyes scanned the cipher streams, spotting patterns Arman missed. Riya called out shifts in the data flow, her voice trembling but determined. Together, they pushed deeper into Black Circuit’s servers, bypassing firewalls, cracking layered encryption.

For a moment, it felt like they were winning.

“Got it,” Arman muttered. “We’re inside the relay control. If I reroute the signals, we can stall the blackout.”

But then the screens flickered. A surge of hostile code flooded their system—Black Circuit’s counterattack.

Zara cursed. “They’re trying to lock us out!”

Arman’s jaw tightened. “Not if I burn through them first.” He opened a hidden partition on his rig—a failsafe he had built months ago, a system designed to overload his own hardware to push past impossible encryption.

Riya’s eyes widened. “Arman, if you use that, you’ll fry your system. You’ll lose everything.”

Arman’s voice was calm, resolute. “Better my system than the city.”

He pressed the command. The fans roared, the circuits glowed hot. His laptop screamed under the strain, data pouring through like a flood.

The countdown froze for a moment—23:12:44—then resumed, slower, disrupted.

But Arman’s screen went black. His system was gone.

He leaned back, sweat dripping down his forehead. “It worked. But my rig… it’s dead.”

The others stared at him, stunned.

And then, across the remaining monitor, a chilling message appeared:

“You’ve sacrificed your system. Now we’ll take the rest.”

---

✨ Cliffhanger Ending: Arman sacrifices his system to stall the blackout, but Black Circuit retaliates with a new threat, leaving the teens vulnerable and the city still at risk.