The operation was carried out in lightning fashion to surprise the most wanted man in all of New Furj.
They speculated he was after Yisiro Nakamura's nano chip, the contents of which were said to be part of what would change the financial world forever.
The five members of the SWAT team arrived in a matter of minutes on the 11th floor of Sky Tower 1. There, in room 201, the prodigious Japanese computer scientist was supposed to be alone.
However, when the SWAT team broke down the door, they found that Miles Val-Hik, their worst nightmare, already had the nano chip in his hands, and was taunting them by pointing at the infrared barrier he had activated throughout the room, while Yisiro could be heard snoring peacefully.
The SWAT leader broke the maneuvers and ordered his subordinates to capture him. He wanted to get Miles, if it was the last thing he did.
His men swarmed out like angry bees after an intruder. But, once again, Miles had calculated everything and, in addition to having night vision, he had a bird-like glider that allowed him to fly out of the room after breaking the windows.
“When are we going to put an end to this smug yuppie?” shouted Bruce, the SWAT leader, to his team in complaint when he saw the escape.
“Looks like we're fighting an alien, sir,” replied one.
“Alien, human or Batman, I want that guy captured now!” declared Bruce, watching his team try to calm Yisiro Nakamura down, as they explained the context.
“He doesn't know it, but we have an ace up our sleeve that God only knows exists,” said Bruce looking with narrowed eyes at the cold and blurry cityscape of New Furj.
“Why are you taking such a risk for people who will surely squander all the money you want to get?” questioned Sophie Hives, elite hacker and Val-Hik's confidant.
Miles set aside his morning coffee, and with a blank stare into the sunrise, replied:
“I'll be my whole life guiding them.”
“Look where we are, Miles,” said the girl pointing all around, at the broken chairs, holes and leaks in the suburban house where they were hiding, ”you're always going to be on the run, no matter if you go to Africa or Asia.”
“The world can't go on the way it is. People getting poorer and poorer, and the rich getting richer,” Miles commented before putting on his uniform and walking to the door.
“One more nano chip and the world economy will change forever,” he reminded himself.
Sophie grimaced sadly with her mouth, knowing that he wouldn't change his mind for anything in the world. At once, she rose to crestfallenly dismiss her companion.
“You're going to get caught, silly,” she whispered after a tender kiss on his cheek.
“We've already made the plan. We know it's possible, love. Meet you in Lateville in two hours to take off to Africa,” Miles replied.
Soon the figure of Val-Hik was no more than a faint shadow on the horizon, while the rising warm colors of dawn harmonized with Sophie's flamboyant gaze on a day that she sensed would be the true and final awakening.
Miles had already got three of the four nano chips needed for his plan to create anonymous digital stock exchanges in underprivileged areas of the world. He only needed the last element that lay, no more and no less, in the Central Bank of New Furj.
The search for the other nano chips was relatively easy as they were privately owned. However, this last one was the most complicated as there was all the State security to guard it. In fact, it was not available in the physical world. The fourth chip was in a cyberspace inside the bank itself.
From the top of the Full Moon skyscraper, Miles gazed at the bank and its surroundings. His eyes denoted dark circles under his eyes and his pupils, attrition. But his mind, still anxious, only traced over and over again the plan to get the nano chip.
In the blink of an eye, the New Furj renegade yuppie adjusted his electronic watch and timed the operation since his leap into the void and deployment of the glider.
Several officers tried to stop him while he was still in the air, but Miles dodged everything. Part of his strategy to counter the defensive strategy was to summon a bunch of people who were tired of the State, and to whom he himself had promised part of that bright economic future.
The avalanche of people ran through the streets of New Burj, until they reached the Central Bank and swept away any defenses put up by the State defense agencies.
As someone who had it all figured out, Miles took advantage of all the chaos sown to head promptly for the vault. He knew that they had emptied the normal vault, and moved everything to the secret subway vault.
When he got there, he only had to move the giant handle that separated him from his greatest treasure. He was almost tasting victory, but when he opened the vault he realized there were unwanted guests.
SWAT had been waiting for him inside the vault itself. Miles was completely surrounded by all the team members and his illusion, even without anyone having laid a hand on him, lay already undermined.
“I wasn't going to allow any more humiliation for my team. I knew we would make it, even if it was the last thing we did,” Bruce shouted walking towards Miles as he stretched out his right arm to capture him.
“How could you? I was sure you had gone after my decoy minions at Block Square and Diamond Rooftop,” confessed Miles in surprise.
“On the night of Sky Tower 1 I launched a tracker on you before you escaped. We knew the real Miles was coming here. You're not the only one thinking ahead,” Bruce clarified in a triumphant tone.
“I congratulate you, but I'm the one who's going to checkmate,” said Val-Hik, jumping back, out of nowhere.
In a single movement the renegade yuppi propelled himself backwards and, leaving the vault, released a smoke bomb.
It was an extremely risky move, and although he was exhausted, he finally had a chance to enter cyberspace undisturbed.
Miles was able to hack into the vault software with the help of his watch from the outside, and just as Sophie had instructed, he suddenly found himself immersed in a world of infinite digital fluctuation. It was all numbers and letters moving from one place to another.
Somewhere in that place, in what looked like a big diamond, the nano chip was glowing.
Val-Hik looked at his watch and there were still three minutes left before escape deadline finish. Then, still feeling a great tiredness, he went running towards the precise good and with all the euphoria of having taken it, he shouted: “at last, at last the world will be free.”
Within seconds, however, the self-proclaimed hero, felt a rush throughout his body.
Realizing this, Sophie contacted him right away and notified him that he had been affected by malware. He had to return to reality as soon as possible to be cured.
The yuppie disconnected and, as soon as he was back in reality, he flew to Lateville, where his beloved accomplice was waiting to help him.
Unlike in the past, his landing at his place of arrival was a crashing one. Fatigue, and the malware's ever worsening shocks, prevented him from performing well.
But there was Sophie. The girl put her hand to her mouth at the sight of her companion's condition, and as soon as she saw him land, she ran to him.
“My dear, Sophie, here's the-” then Miles saw his speech interrupted by an attack from his own companion.
“I'm so sorry, Miles, but your project is naive,” Sophie said softly as she administered a powerful sedative.
“What on earth are you talking about, darling?” questioned Miles, not seeing any of what he was witnessing coming.
“The current economic order must continue, except for me as the CEO of a new financial system: cryptocurrencies,” the girl replied, snatching the nano chip from Miles' trembling hands.
Just before closing his eyes for the last time, Val-Hik watched his life pass by as a kind of short film in which the final scene highlighted how he managed to help people all over the world become financially independent until Sophie appeared out of nowhere, and tore him to pieces by giving him a fatal kiss, laden with juicy betrayal, just as she seemed to have done in reality.
Years after this event, a platform called Hive was emerging as a solid decentralized source of income for a small group of people around the planet, based on rewarding the coolest inventions that would lead mankind once and for all to leave the polluted Earth to live on the Moon.
Sophie Hives' dream of becoming the lunar empress was about to come true.
