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You Mocked Me,I’m the One You Fear
Novelix
Completed
"For three years, Maya Quinn let everyone at Westbridge believe she barely understood cybersecurity—including her boyfriend, Ethan, and her best friend, Vanessa, the university’s celebrated cyber stars. Then an international competition goes disastrously wrong. Westbridge is crushed, Vanessa blames Maya, Ethan takes Vanessa’s side, and Maya finally walks away from both of them. But when their opponents publicly humiliate the entire university, Maya steps toward the empty terminal. Everyone laughs. Until she enters a username that hasn’t appeared in years. One letter. G. And suddenly, the people who mocked Maya realize they never knew who had been standing beside them."
Chapters (4)
第1章
My boyfriend, Ethan Cole, and my best friend, Vanessa Reed, were known around Westbridge University as the golden duo of cybersecurity.
He was famous for offense. She was known for defense.
And me? I was the engineering and computer science student who barely scraped by.
Whenever the three of us walked together, they talked about protocol vulnerabilities, privilege escalation, and ways around access controls while I kept my head down and walked beside them.
Every now and then, Vanessa would glance back at me with a smile.
"Maya, do you have any idea how many people at Westbridge envy you? You get to hang around Ethan and me and listen in whenever you want."
Ethan would laugh. "She can barely tell a port from an interface. Listening isn't going to help."
I never bothered answering.
I'd known the difference since I was thirteen.
That was also the year I wrote a little program that tore through nearly every simulated node in a closed cyber range shared by dozens of security labs. It took six hours.
But before my grandfather died, he left me with one instruction.
"Keep your blade sheathed."
Then came the International Collegiate Cyber Defense Invitational, where Westbridge was shut out by Kestrel Institute.
Kestrel's captain looked straight into the livestream camera and smirked.
"If this is what Westbridge calls a top-tier security program, maybe it's time to take the sign down."
The color drained from Vanessa's face. Ethan clenched his fists. Not one of them had an answer.
Finally, I spoke.
"They're disguising probes as normal requests, and you're accepting every one of them. Your perimeter's already been bypassed, and you've lost core privileges."
I looked at the warning panel still sitting there in silence.
"And you're waiting for a traffic alert? What, do you need them to send you a business card first?"
The chatter around us died down.
I took off my headphones and walked toward the main console.
"Move. I'll do it."
• • •
第2章
Round One ended 0-3.
It felt like a slap across the face of every Westbridge student in the arena.
On the giant screen, Kestrel captain Damian Cross leaned toward the livestream camera with an easy, mocking smile.
"So this is Westbridge's supposedly elite cybersecurity program. I'm not impressed."
The live chat moved so fast the comments blurred together, but the anger behind them was impossible to miss.
"What is Westbridge doing? Weren't Vanessa and Ethan supposed to be amazing?"
"Getting humiliated on an international stream is crazy. If I went to Westbridge, I'd turn off the campus Wi-Fi and pretend we didn't exist."
Inside the arena, someone shoved a water bottle hard against the floor by his feet. Others simply lowered their heads and started scrolling through the stream instead of watching the scoreboard.
Damian wasn't finished.
"If this is the best team Westbridge has—"
He spread his hands.
"—then I have no idea how that school built its reputation."
My fingers itched for the keyboard.
To peel those defenses open.
To make every Kestrel server go completely, utterly quiet.
I stood and took half a step forward.
Then my grandfather's voice rose in my memory.
"Maya, for most people, offense and defense is a contest. One side strikes, the other answers."
His frail hand had closed around my wrist.
"You're different. You're a hunter. Once you commit, you don't trade blows. You go for the kill."
Then, in English, as if he wanted the words burned into me forever:
"The brightest target gets hit first."
His eyes had carried the desperate plea of a dying man.
"Promise me you won't do this again unless you absolutely have to."
His fingers tightened.
"Please, Maya. For me."
I closed my eyes, then sat back down.
I lowered my head and tapped my phone.
An ambient track a friend had made for me began to play, soft as spring light through a curtain, smooth as water running over stones in a mountain stream.
I let out a slow breath.
By the time I opened my eyes again, I looked like the same mild, absentminded, harmless girl everyone thought they knew.
...
During the break, the Westbridge team room felt heavy enough to suffocate in.
Vanessa sat on the couch with her head down, shoulders trembling faintly. Ethan stood beside her, rubbing her back in slow strokes.
I twisted open a bottle of water and held it out.
"Drink something. Get a minute to breathe."
Vanessa slapped it out of my hand.
"Happy now, Maya?"
I stared at her. "What?"
"You follow us around every day and watch everyone praise Ethan and me. You've been waiting for me to fail, haven't you?"
I frowned. "Here we go again."
"Vanessa, every time you lose, you take it out on whoever's closest to you. Being under pressure doesn't give you permission to treat people like punching bags—"
Ethan cut me off.
"Maya, Vanessa's having a bad day. Can you not make this worse?"
Something in me went cold.
"She lost because of technical mistakes," I said. "That has nothing to do with me. I'm not responsible for absorbing her anger."
A few teammates glanced between us.
Someone muttered, "Easy to say when you've never competed in a real event."
Another guy snorted. "If she weren't Ethan's girlfriend, she wouldn't even be allowed in the team room."
A short, humorless laugh escaped me.
"Eight times out of ten, the reason I'm in here is because one of you asked me to bring coffee, dinner, or whatever else you forgot. Funny how I'm not an outsider when you need food delivered."
I looked around the room.
"If you reacted to attacks as fast as you look for someone else to blame, maybe Round One wouldn't have ended 0-3."
"Enough!" Ethan snapped.
He turned on me. "Can you even write code? Do you know how many proxy hops Kestrel used in that last attack? What exactly makes you qualified to stand here and say Vanessa—or this whole team—is bad at security?"
For some reason, that almost made me laugh.
"Ethan, the way you're defending her right now, anyone watching would think Vanessa was your girlfriend."
For once, Ethan had nothing to say.
Vanessa's voice shook. Tears gathered but didn't quite fall.
"Maya, this competition matters to us. I said a few things. Why can't you let it go for five minutes? Do you really have to do this right before Round Two?"
She pressed a hand to her chest.
"You have no idea what kind of pressure I'm under. What this whole team is under."
I raised one finger and slowly shook it.
"You're right. I don't."
I let the silence stretch for half a beat.
"I've never lost."
第3章
The room broke into laughter.
"Of course you've never lost. You've never competed!"
"Listen to her. She actually believes herself."
Vanessa laughed too, but there was nothing warm in it.
She stepped closer.
"I've wanted to say this for a long time, Maya."
Her eyes flicked toward the door.
"This is a team room. You're not even on the roster. So stop standing here telling us how to compete. Leave."
Then she shoved me.
I wasn't expecting it. I stumbled backward and slammed my lower back into the metal door handle. A dull bolt of pain shot up my spine.
Ethan moved instantly—not toward me, but in front of Vanessa.
He looked at me as if I were the danger.
"Maya, if you hadn't said all that, she wouldn't have pushed you. Don't do anything."
Then, as though realizing how bad that sounded, he added, "She still has to compete in Round Two. She can't get hurt right now."
I took my hand off my back and forced myself upright.
It hurt.
But suddenly, everything was very clear.
I drew in a breath.
"Ethan. We're done."
His pupils widened. "What?"
"You're breaking up with me because I told you to back off for five minutes?"
His brow furrowed.
"Maya, don't turn competition day into some relationship drama between the three of us."
I looked at him.
"You never forget Vanessa's coffee order, but somehow you still forget I'm allergic to peanuts."
His face changed.
"When my mom came for Family Weekend, you stayed in your dorm playing games. When her parents came, you planned their entire visit a week in advance and drove to the airport yourself."
With every sentence, more color drained from his face.
I looked straight at him.
"If I have to keep reminding you which one of us is actually your girlfriend, then there isn't much of a relationship left to save."
I unclasped the bracelet he'd given me and set it on the table.
Then I turned to leave.
Ethan reached for my wrist, but Vanessa caught his arm first.
Her voice turned cold.
"Fine. Then go. Ethan doesn't have time for this right now."
She looked at him.
"Don't chase her. Once we win Round Two and the final round, she'll be the first one crawling back."
His hand stopped in midair.
At that moment, a staff member rushed through the door.
"Round Two starts in five. Everyone at your stations now."
Ethan swallowed whatever he was about to say.
"Maya, I'm not doing this with you right now."
His voice dropped.
"We'll talk after the match."
Everyone hurried out.
I followed.
第4章
The moment Round Two began, Kestrel turned the pressure up another level.
They weren't probing anymore.
They were tearing into Westbridge.
Sweat beaded across Ethan's forehead as he led the offense, but Kestrel's defense seemed to see him coming before he moved. He changed proxy routes again and again. Every one of them was identified.
On defense, Vanessa scrambled to patch breach after breach, lips pressed into a bloodless line.
Voices overlapped through the team comms.
"Port-scan frequency is spiking!"
"They're escalating privileges. They're at the admin backend!"
"Backup node is down! We lost the middle segment!"
Someone in the audience covered her mouth.
"It's only been five minutes."
"What is Westbridge doing? They can't even hit back."
"This isn't a match. It's a demolition."
An alarm exploded through the arena. Red warning lights strobed above the stage.
The main screen flickered.
When it came back, the room seemed to stop breathing.
WESTBRIDGE CORE SWITCH: CONTROL LOST.
WESTBRIDGE FIREWALL POLICY ARCHITECTURE.
WESTBRIDGE TEAM PRACTICE LOGS.
Vanessa went rigid in her chair, all the color draining from her face.
Ethan clenched his jaw and slammed a fist against the edge of the desk.
The teammates who had mocked me earlier looked sick.
"We're done," one whispered. "We're actually done."
The arena broke into overlapping shouts.
"Did they just punch through the campus network?"
"Is that even part of the competition?"
"It's legal if it stays inside the competition environment. Westbridge could expose Kestrel's material too if they were good enough."
"So basically, they're just getting outclassed."
Damian Cross sat at Kestrel's main console, grinning toward the cameras.
"What is your network made of, cardboard?"
He looked toward Ethan and Vanessa.
"Westbridge's famous security duo. That's it?"
Then he raised a hand.
"We'll stop pushing for five minutes. Find somebody who can actually fight back. This is getting boring."
Vanessa whipped around and stared at me, eyes red.
"This is your fault!"
Anger burned across her face.
"You dumped him right before Round Two. Of course he's distracted. Look what that did to the team."
The others exchanged glances. It was as if she'd handed them a life raft.
"She's right. We still had a shot before the break."
"You couldn't wait until after the match to make a scene?"
Someone turned to Ethan.
"Tell us. Did the breakup mess with your focus?"
Ethan looked away. His throat worked.
"It... affected me. Yeah."
One sentence.
That was all it took to put me on the opposite side of the room from everyone else.
The live chat caught fire.
"Who's the girl? She dumped him during the competition? What is wrong with her?"
"Heard she sucks at tech too. Jealous, maybe?"
The arena broke into noise.
Someone in the front rows shouted at me, "Seriously? You picked now to break up with him?"
Another voice shot back immediately, "They got destroyed and you're blaming his ex? Come on."
Boos mixed with arguments. Some people waved toward the exit. Others simply held up their phones and kept recording.
"Just leave the team alone!"
"Let them finish the match!"
I stood by the entrance while hundreds of eyes seemed to press into my skin.
Then one comment began appearing over and over on the livestream until it was pinned near the top.
"If G—the one who wrote HIDE-AND-SEEK—were still around, Kestrel wouldn't be talking this big."
