Chapter 1 - THE ZEROES THAT BROKE THE SYSTEM
"Delete Him from the System—Or We All Die Tonight!"The silence inside the flagship branch of Alliance Bank in Polanco was no longer cold; it was suffocating.
Director Garza’s hands shook so violently that the heavy gold-colored card slipped from his fingers twice before he successfully swiped it through the high-security terminal at Window Number One.
Mr. Robles, still wearing his smug, superior smirk, leaned over the counter. "Sir, with all due respect, you are giving this street urchin far too much attention. Look at his shoes! They are literally falling apart. The card is obviously a sophisticated counterfeit designed to—"
BEEP.
The terminal’s ultra-high-definition screen flashed. A prompt appeared that Robles, in his fifteen years at Alliance Bank, had never seen before:
WARNING: LEVEL 9 CLEARANCE REQUIRED. PROCEEDING WITHOUT DIRECTORIAL AUTHENTIZATION WILL TRIGGER AUTOMATIC LOCKDOWN AND INTERPOL NOTIFICATION.
Garza pushed Robles out of the way with such force that the teller stumbled into a filing cabinet. Garza’s fingers flew across the keyboard, entering his private, encrypted 16-digit biometric bypass code.
The screen turned pitch black.
For three agonizing seconds, nothing happened. The wealthy VIP clients in line, who had been recording the confrontation on their iPhone 17s hoping for a laugh, lowered their devices. The atmosphere had shifted from a public humiliation to something deeply unsettling.
Then, the screen lit up in brilliant gold text.
Robles’s eyes dilated. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He stared at the nine zeroes following the number one. Then he looked at the next line—the bonds. Five and a half billion dollars. That was not just wealth; that was the GDP of a small nation. It was more money than Alliance Bank’s entire domestic branch network held in liquid reserves.
"This... this is a system glitch," Robles stammered, his voice cracking into a high-pitched whine. "It's a hack! A cyberattack! Director, call the federal police! The boy is a Trojan horse!"
"Shut your mouth!" Garza roared, his face turning a deep, dangerous shade of crimson. He spun around to the security guard who still had a firm, heavy grip on Mateo's shoulder. "Take your hands off him! If you so much as scratch his skin, I will personally ensure you spend the rest of your life in a federal penitentiary!"
The guard recoiled as if he had touched hot iron.
Mateo stood perfectly still. He did not look triumphant. He did not look smug. He simply clutched his grandfather’s cracked leather briefcase tighter to his chest, his dark eyes filled with a profound, crushing sorrow.
"Mr. Garza," Mateo said softly, his voice trembling but clear. "Is my grandfather’s medicine safe now? The hospital said they would turn off his life support at 3:00 PM if I didn't pay the deposit. It's 1:45 PM now."
Before Garza could answer, the bank's main server lights began to blink red. The overhead lights flickered.
On the terminal screen, a giant flashing warning overrode the balance display:
CRITICAL ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED BY OUTSIDE ENTITY. INITIATING HOSTILE SYSTEM PURGE. ACCOUNT LIQUIDATION IN PROGRESS.
"What is happening?!" Robles screamed, panic finally setting in. "The money... the balance is dropping!"
On the screen, the digital counter began to rapidly spin backward.
$1,000,000,000
$980,000,000
$950,000,000
Someone, somewhere in the world, had detected that Don Alejandro’s card had been swiped—and they were actively wiping the account to zero.
"They found us," Mateo whispered, his eyes widening in terror. "Grandpa warned me. He said the moment the card touched the machine, the Shadow Board would know."
Garza grabbed his desk phone, his face pale as death. "Lock down the server room! Cut the external fiber-optic cables! Do it now!"
But it was too late. The vault doors in the basement suddenly groaned, their electromagnetic locks engaging with a deafening slam. The glass doors of the bank slid shut, trapping everyone inside.
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The digital balance on the screen was now at $720,000,000 and falling by thirty million dollars every second.
"Director!" Robles cried out, clutching his head. "If that account empties, our bank’s liquidity is gone! We will go under before the sun sets!"
