PART 1
I. The Gift
“Knock yourself out, Vera Igorevna,”
Stanislav said with his habitual smirk, handing her the flat, gleaming tablet.
“At least you can hang out on Odnoklassniki with your knitting circle.”
He smiled that lazy, superior smile—the one reserved for cashiers, interns, and, apparently, mothers-in-law.
“Either way,” he added, “the real internet’s not for you—with your, well, experience.”
Vera Igorevna accepted the box with both hands, as if it were a ceremonial offering. She didn’t bother correcting him.
Her experience wasn’t in gossip forums or social media.
For thirty years, she had worked at the Ministry of Defense’s Research Computing Center—developing data-security protocols before the word “hacker” existed in Russian.
She’d learned long ago that the surest way to win was to be underestimated.
“Thank you, Stas,” she said mildly. “It’s… very modern.”
Her daughter Katerina stood nearby—slim, pale, eyes flicking nervously between her husband and her mother. She smiled faintly, out of habit rather than joy.
Stanislav wrapped an arm around her.
“Come on, Katya, help your mom set it up later. Just don’t stay up all night, she’ll catch a virus.”
He laughed at his own joke. She didn’t.
That night, when the house went silent and the city outside sank into fog, Vera sat at her desk.
The tablet rested before her like a challenge.
She powered it on. A bright, sterile glow filled the room.
And instead of Odnoklassniki, she opened the terminal window of her mind—the one that had never closed.
II. The Intrusion
Her fingers moved automatically.
Every system has a weakness.
Every arrogant man leaves breadcrumbs.
Stanislav’s weakness was vanity. He liked to label things—his trophies, his “assets,” his “projects.”
On the corkboard above his desk at work hung a yellow sticky note:
“Main asset ‘91 + Main project ‘15.”
It meant nothing to the cleaning lady.
But Vera knew his main asset was his beloved Audi A6—1991 model year—and his main project was Alisa, his daughter, born in 2015.
Password: Audi91Alisa15
The screen unlocked.
Emails bloomed like toxic flowers. Correspondence in layers—each addressed to a different “her.”
“My tiger, can’t wait for Friday. Katya’s off again to her mummy-mom.”
Vera’s pulse did not quicken. Her breathing stayed steady.
Emotion was for amateurs. She was in surgical mode now.
She created a folder on the tablet and named it Diagnosis.
III. The Routine
Days passed like sluggish gray syrup.
Every morning at breakfast, Stanislav played the role of a successful man. He laughed too loudly, spoke too confidently, spread his arms when describing “important meetings.”
Katerina listened quietly, stirring sugar into her coffee.
“Mom,” he’d say, “you figured out that gadget yet? I hear you’re online all night. Careful, the old-timer forums might give you a heart attack.”
He’d grin, expecting laughter.
Only silence answered him.
Every night, when his arrogance slept, Vera worked.
Her “Diagnosis” folder grew.
Photos, receipts, chat logs, travel itineraries.
He wasn’t just unfaithful. He was efficient about it.
There was Olenka_Kitten for his “fishing weekends.”
There was Marina_Business, who helped him “launder” stolen ideas from his junior colleagues.
And Svetlana_Fitness, who received transfers disguised as “nutrition consultations.”
It wasn’t lust. It was empire-building. He didn’t love any of them—he simply fed the myth of himself.
IV. The Crack
One evening, Katya approached her husband holding a paper bill.
“Stas, our electricity costs have doubled. Do you know why?”
He looked up from his phone, irritated.
“Katya, do I look like an electrician? I handle strategy, not meters.”
“But maybe something’s wrong with the wiring?”
“The only thing wrong is your obsession with small things,” he snapped. “Please, spare me the domestic nonsense.”
He turned back to his phone, muttering, “Jesus, I married an accountant, not a wife.”
Katya retreated silently.
From her chair, Vera watched the scene unfold. She knew the truth—down in the basement, Stanislav had built a crypto-mining rig, sucking power to mint his secret money.
The same money he used to fund his “Olenkas” and “Svetlanas.”
Words wouldn’t save her daughter. She needed proof. Cold, clinical, irrefutable.
That night, Vera opened a new document and began to build a report—a full system log of his deceit.
V. Operation “Epicrisis”
She worked until dawn.
By morning, everything was in place.
Messages, time stamps, flight receipts, photos. Bank transactions. Transfers marked “charity.”
A visual map of every lie, every manipulation, every stolen minute of her daughter’s life.
She renamed the master file: Epicrisis.
Medical term for a patient’s full post-diagnosis summary.
Now, there was only one task left: execution.
Saturday morning. The air smelled of coffee and smugness.
“By the way, Stas,” Vera said lightly, rising from the table. “Thank you for the tablet. Very handy thing. I even figured out how to connect it to the TV.”
Stanislav chuckled.
“Well done, Mom! Next, we’ll teach you TikTok.”
Katerina smiled weakly.
Vera tapped twice.
The living-room TV flared to life.
On a white background appeared one word in black:
EPICRISIS.
“What’s that?” Stas frowned.
“A case history,” Vera said evenly. “Yours.”
VI. The Dissection
The first slide appeared:
A high-resolution photograph of Stanislav kissing a blonde woman outside a hotel.
Below it—a line item: “Hotel Astoria, Business Suite, 22,000 rubles.”
Katya froze.
She remembered that night. He’d said he was stuck at “critical negotiations.” She’d made his favorite soup, waiting till midnight.
His smirk faltered.
“This is Photoshop. Vera, have you lost your mind? You can’t even use a smartphone, for God’s sake!”
Vera ignored him and swiped to the next slide.
Chats. “Olenka_Kitten”: ‘Your wife’s away? Finally!’
Another slide:
Bank transfers labeled “charity donations” to “Marina_Business.”
Another: A schematic of the mining rig humming in the basement.
Katya’s hand flew to her mouth.
“The leak is in your head,” she whispered—his own words coming back like an echo.
Vera continued clicking through, precise as a surgeon exposing each infected organ.
Stanislav’s voice rose:
“Stop this! You hacked my email—that’s illegal! I’ll sue you!”
“Please do,” Vera said coolly. “But remember—copies of everything have been sent to the tax authorities. They might be interested in your ‘charitable’ crypto donations.”
He froze. The blood drained from his face.
VII. Amputation
“Katya!” he barked. “Say something! You believe this nonsense? She’s manipulating you!”
Katya didn’t answer.
Every slide was a knife cutting through her confusion.
Every photo a surgical removal of self-blame.
When she finally spoke, her voice was calm.
“I believed you, Stas. For years. Even when it made me sick.”
She rose, straightened her back.
“Thank you, Mom,” she said without looking away from him. “For the diagnosis.”
Then she turned to her husband.
“The treatment will be simple. Amputation. You have one hour to pack.”
For a long moment, he didn’t move. Then, slowly, his expression twisted into something feral.
“You’ll regret this, Katya. Without me, you’re nothing. You don’t even know how to pay the bills!”
He tore clothes from hangers, slammed drawers, cursing under his breath. It wasn’t packing—it was desecration.
Vera watched him without a word.
Katya stood by the window, silent, immovable.
When the door finally slammed, the silence that followed was immense.
Katya sank onto the floor, drawing her knees to her chest.
“Mom,” she whispered. “I was so stupid.”
Vera sat beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You weren’t stupid. You were trusting. He took advantage of that. He’s the broken one, not you.”
They sat there for a long time, listening to the quiet.
VIII. System Reboot
Months passed. The house grew lighter.
No more heavy footsteps, no more shouting about “strategic issues.”
The hum of the mining rig was gone.
Katya redecorated—painted the kitchen a bright green, changed the locks, bought a cat.
She enrolled in a landscape design course, then started her own firm: Green Logic.
Her first clients loved her calm, structured precision.
One evening, Vera found her in the living room. The big screen displayed a 3D landscape model—a park design with ponds and walking trails.
“Complicated?” Vera asked.
Katya smiled. “Not really. Logic is universal. You just have to understand the system.”
She hesitated. “What about… the file?”
“In safe storage,” Vera said. “Encrypted cloud. It’s not revenge—it’s insurance.”
IX. The Final Move
That summer, the evenings were long and warm.
Vera often sat on the terrace with the same tablet. On the screen—an online chess game against a grandmaster from Buenos Aires.
Katya’s laughter drifted from the garden below.
Stanislav had tried to sue once—but after an anonymous email reached his lawyer containing a file named Epicrisis.zip, all legal claims quietly disappeared.
He’d vanished from their lives like a corrupted line of code deleted from the system.
Katya came up the steps, carrying two cups of tea.
“Still beating Argentinians?”
“Trying,” Vera smiled, making her next move.
“Mom,” Katya said after a moment, “I never asked… why did you do it like that? So cold. So methodical.”
Vera thought for a moment before replying.
“Because a lie isn’t a feeling. It’s architecture. You can’t fight it with emotion—you dismantle it logically. I wasn’t avenging you. I was fixing a system error.”
She put the tablet down.
“He gave me this so I’d feel old. In the end, it helped me give you your life back. That’s the irony.”
Katya squeezed her hand.
“It wasn’t the tablet, Mom. It was you.”
Vera smiled faintly, eyes on the chessboard.
Checkmate in three moves.
Outside, the cicadas hummed. Inside, everything was in balance again.
The system was clean. The error—corrected.
PART II — THE TRACE
I. The Quiet Years
Four years had passed.
The house was no longer haunted by echoes of shouting or slammed doors.
Katya’s landscape design firm, Green Logic, had grown — she had four employees now, contracts with city parks, and a serene confidence that made Vera’s heart ache with pride.
Vera herself had settled into a peaceful rhythm. Mornings in the garden, evenings with online chess tournaments, and the occasional cybersecurity lecture at the local technical university — just enough to keep her mind sharp.
She had long since deleted the Epicrisis files.
Or rather — she’d thought she had.
But some things, once set in motion, never quite disappear.
II. The Visitor
It was late autumn when the knock came.
The kind of knock that is too deliberate to be a neighbor and too soft to be official.
Vera opened the door.
A man stood there — mid-forties, well-groomed, the sort of person who blends in because he has made invisibility an art.
“Vera Igorevna Sokolnikova?”
“Yes.”
He flashed a badge. “Major Denis Taranov. Department of Cybercrimes. May I come in?”
Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “If I say no?”
“Then I’ll stand here in the cold, which would be impolite. And you were never one for impoliteness, according to your former colleagues.”
That last phrase pricked something old in her chest.
Inside, over tea, the major didn’t waste time.
“We’re investigating a case,” he said. “A network of private data leaks targeting small businesses. Mostly women-led companies. One of them is Green Logic.”
Vera’s fingers tightened on her cup.
“Katya’s firm?”
He nodded. “Someone’s siphoning her clients’ contracts, layouts, bidding prices. She’s losing projects before they even go public.”
Vera’s mind began assembling the puzzle before he finished.
“Inside breach?” she asked.
“Possibly. Or remote infiltration. But whoever’s doing it, they’re good. Military-level encryption, ghost routing through old Institute servers — your kind of work, frankly.”
“So why come to me?”
“Because,” he said slowly, “you built half those servers.”
III. The Echo of Old Code
That night, after the major left, Vera couldn’t sleep.
She sat before her tablet — a newer model now, but the same sharp glow, the same cold whisper of circuits waking under her touch.
Katya didn’t know about the visit yet.
Vera didn’t want to worry her — not until she had proof.
She began to dig. Carefully, quietly.
Her fingers moved like a pianist’s — command, decrypt, redirect. The old instinct returned effortlessly.
But what she found made her blood run cold.
The breach wasn’t external.
It originated from inside Katya’s network — from the personal laptop of her assistant, Anya.
Except the IP didn’t match. It was ghosted through three VPNs and a university node in Belgorod. Sloppy in places, precise in others.
A hybrid.
The kind of signature only one person could leave.
Stanislav Belozyorov.
IV. The Ghost File
Vera hadn’t heard his name in years.
He had vanished — no address, no social media. Rumors said he’d moved abroad.
But the code pattern — the way the packets were rerouted, the signature encryption — she’d seen it before. In his emails. In Epicrisis.
It was unmistakably his.
She exhaled slowly, her reflection staring back from the dark tablet screen.
If he was behind this, he wasn’t just stealing. He was hunting.
The next morning, she met Katya at the café near her office.
“You look worried,” Katya said. “Mom, what is it?”
Vera hesitated. “Have you heard from him?”
“Who?”
“Stanislav.”
Katya froze. The question alone was enough to draw years of shadow back into her eyes.
“No,” she said finally. “He sent one message last year asking to see Alisa. I blocked him. Why?”
Vera stirred her tea. “No reason. Just… be cautious with your files. Don’t share your passwords with anyone.”
Katya smiled faintly. “I’m not you, Mom. My world runs on plants, not passwords.”
Vera smiled back, but her heart was pounding.
V. The Dilemma
Two nights later, Major Taranov returned.
“We traced the ghost signal,” he said grimly. “You were right. It’s not a random breach. Someone’s specifically targeting your daughter’s firm.”
“Who?”
He hesitated. “Her ex-husband. Belozyorov. He’s running a consulting shell company registered in Cyprus. They’re under investigation for data theft.”
Vera said nothing.
“We could catch him,” the major continued, “if we had access to his private communications. You were the last to access his system before he disappeared. We need your help to open that door again.”
Her fingers drummed against the table.
“You’re asking me to hack someone again. Without a warrant.”
He met her gaze evenly.
“We’re asking you to protect your daughter’s livelihood.”
She thought of Katya, finally happy, finally steady.
And of Stanislav — arrogant, poisonous, infecting everything he touched.
Then she thought of the rules.
The ones she’d spent decades teaching others: the system is only safe if no one believes they’re above it.
She looked out the window.
Snow had started to fall. The world outside was white — blank, neutral, waiting.
VI. The Decision
That night she opened her old encrypted drive. Inside were the remains of Epicrisis. Fragments she hadn’t been able to delete, ghosts of code.
She could rebuild access from there.
One keystroke and she could end this.
But what if she crossed the line?
If she did it once, it would justify anything — for her, for the police, for anyone who thought “the ends justify the means.”
Justice or privacy. Protection or autonomy.
The screen blinked, cursor waiting.
And then — her phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number:
“Still playing doctor, Vera Igorevna? Be careful. Some viruses mutate.”
Attached was a photo.
Her granddaughter, Alisa, outside school.
VII. The Counterattack
The following days moved like a fever dream.
Taranov filed an official report. Katya was put under temporary digital surveillance for safety.
But Vera knew what that photo meant.
Stanislav had found them.
He was trying to prove his control — not just over data, but over fear itself.
And that was his mistake.
Because fear, to Vera Igorevna, was just another variable.
And every variable could be isolated.
She activated a private protocol she’d designed decades ago, buried deep within an obsolete satellite communication hub. A sandbox system no one knew still existed.
For three nights she worked without rest.
She tracked his digital movements, reconstructed his proxy routes, and built a trap — a self-triggering loop disguised as a client database.
The moment he opened it, his servers would encrypt themselves beyond recovery, each file stamped with a single phrase:
“Epicrisis — Case Closed.”
VIII. The Fallout
On the fourth morning, it happened.
Somewhere, across the network, an arrogant man opened the wrong file.
The breach went dark instantly.
A week later, Major Taranov returned with an unmarked envelope.
“Cyprus operation collapsed overnight,” he said. “All of Belozyorov’s servers wiped clean. He’s vanished again. But the threat’s gone.”
Vera only nodded.
“Did you have anything to do with it?”
She met his gaze. “Major, I’ve been retired for years. I tend to my garden.”
He smiled faintly. “Of course.”
He left.
IX. The Cost
That evening, Vera sat by the window, watching snow fall over the city. Katya called to say she’d landed a government contract for Green Logic. Her voice was bright, strong, unafraid.
After they hung up, Vera opened her tablet.
On the desktop was a new folder — automatically generated by the sandbox. She hadn’t created it.
It was titled: “Collateral.”
Inside were snippets of intercepted conversations from dozens of unrelated systems — corporate secrets, bank logins, fragments of other people’s lives.
Her trap had worked too well.
In closing one infection, she’d caught hundreds of innocent strands.
She sat in silence, staring at the blinking cursor.
If she deleted it, the information was gone forever.
If she kept it, she’d have power she never asked for — the power to see everything.
She thought of her granddaughter, of Katya, of the fragile peace they’d built.
Then she whispered to the empty room,
“Even doctors must know when to stop cutting.”
She pressed Delete.
The screen went dark.
X. Epilogue — The System Restores
Weeks later, in the park near their house, Vera watched Alisa feed pigeons. Katya joined her, laughing, cheeks red from the cold.
“Mom, you seem lighter lately,” Katya said.
“Maybe I finally turned off some background processes,” Vera replied.
They both laughed.
High above them, satellites moved unseen across the pale sky — carrying bits of code, fragments of signals, ghosts of data that would never tell their story.
Vera looked up at the sky and smiled.
The system, once again, was stable.
And for now, that was enough.
