Chapter 15 – Beneath the Surface
Mumbai – 6:42 AM, Four Days Later
The headlines had moved on.
The news cycle, hungry and impatient, had chewed through SilentNode's leak and spat it out in favor of shinier scandals. But the damage had been done. Arjun Verma was no longer just an anonymous prodigy. He was a ghost the tech world feared—and wanted to own.
Multiple firms had begun digging quietly.
SynCore Technologies hired a former NIA agent to trace down development footprints.
ByteField Inc. offered a public bounty for code snippets that matched BrainLine's backend.
One startup even announced a beta app called NeuroWeave, clearly a reverse-engineered imitation of BrainLine Nexus. It trended on GitHub for three days.
Arjun watched it all from below the surface.
Literally.
---
Underground Shelter – Navi Mumbai Periphery, 8:00 AM
Beneath a decommissioned textile mill, Arjun, Rehana, and Karthik worked in silence. They had relocated everything—servers, prototypes, comms, routers—overnight.
The shelter was crude but shielded. Its walls thick with cement and layered steel piping. No signals in. No leaks out.
"I've triple-routed everything through isolated modules," Rehana said. "No chance of digital signature leaks unless we connect to a live line."
Karthik nodded. "Power's sustainable for 6 days using the modified battery stacks. After that, we switch to solar trickle."
Arjun didn't speak. He just stared at the screen.
The System World had been suspended.
Clones paused. Framework frozen.
> AIF Status: Locked
He needed quiet. Reflection. Solitude.
Not escalation.
"I didn't think it would happen this fast," he finally said.
Rehana looked over. "What?"
"Being hunted. Copied. Buried in noise."
"You flew too close to the sun," she said simply.
Karthik gave a tired grin. "Now we dig into the earth and build deeper foundations."
---
System World – Isolated Node, 2:12 PM
Arjun accessed a fragment of the system—detached, non-networked. It contained only his earliest projects. The base version of BrainLine. A sandbox AI he'd written at 17. Even a prototype of a learning assistant he'd once called 'Niyati.'
He stared at the crude lines of code.
There had been no enemies then. Just curiosity.
Now he was wrapped in walls.
---
Real World – Basement Discussion, 6:47 PM
"We have two choices," Arjun said, facing the others. "We lie low and rebuild slow. Or..."
Rehana raised an eyebrow. "Or?"
"Or we launch something public—but harmless. A decoy. Something that buys us credibility without revealing what we're really building."
Karthik tapped his chin. "Like a side-product?"
"Exactly," Arjun nodded. "An open-source productivity suite. Run-of-the-mill. No AI. But coded flawlessly."
Rehana smiled faintly. "Give them a trail. One we control."
---
Four Days Later – Online Launch
'NodeSync Lite' went live.
A clean, modular task planner. Beautiful UI. Smart tags. Offline-friendly.
People loved it.
Tech companies stopped poking. News outlets praised SilentNode for being 'calm amidst chaos.' Hacker forums declared him 'one of us.'
Arjun watched the attention turn.
And then, finally, turned the System World back on.
> [AIF Reactivating… Clone Modules Syncing…]
[Sovereign Path: Reinforced]
The underground would be their forge.
And the surface? Just the smoke.
End of Chapter 15