It was a crisp winter afternoon when Adrian realized he’d mastered every system he’d ever tried to hack—except the most intricate one of all: people. He had spent years hunched over keyboards, bypassing firewalls, decrypting secured databases, and scraping information off the Dark Web. But none of that brought him the thrill he once felt. Computers, for all their complexity, had patterns he could read—like a puzzle that only needed logic and persistence to solve. So he shifted focus. He decided to hack people. Adrian’s first target was an unsuspecting software engineer named Bridget. She worked at a high-security tech firm that boasted about their “impenetrable defenses.” Adrian knew better. While the company’s cybersecurity might be formidable, Bridget was not. He started small—researching her social media profiles and forging a web of knowledge about her. He discovered that Bridget adored a local bakery on Cliff Street. She posted pictures of herself enjoying croissants and cap...
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