Fractured Code: Atlas Code, #2

By Adam Simeer

The shrill rasp of the emergency alarm wrenched Mira Lin from her focus, her fingers freezing mid-keystroke. Under the sickly half-light of her monitors, lines of code pulsed like a dying heartbeat, flickering at the edges of her vision. She exhaled, slow and deliberate, the mechanical clack of her keyboard a familiar anchor in the storm. Every second counted. Somewhere in the labyrinth of the datacenter, an unseen hand was prying at the doors of Vault 7—the one place that wasn't supposed to have doors at all.

Her boots struck the raised floor panels with the precision of a metronome, each step a countdown. The hum of the cooling fans swelled around her, the air thick with the metallic tang of ozone and the ghost of burnt circuits. Red warning lights bled across the white walls, turning the corridor into a vein of the beast she served. She paused only to swipe her badge, her reflection in the glass door betraying the truth she usually hid: dark circles beneath her eyes, the toll of three nights chasing phantoms. The corporate machine demanded perfection, but perfection was a lie. And lies, she knew, were the first cracks in the code.

The lock released with a sigh. Inside, the server room stood like a cathedral of secrets, rows of rack-mounted sentinels pulsing green—until her script flipped them, one by one, to crimson. The terminal flashed a single breach point: Vault 7. Twenty-five seconds ago. Her stomach twisted. She gripped the steel rack, her knuckles white, and began to trace the intrusion. The system fought back. Firewalls crumbled in real time, her commands rerouted as if the datacenter itself had turned against her. She leaned in, scanning the hex signatures of the rogue packet. Nothing matched. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Simeer
• Release date: Oct 17, 2025
• ISBN: 9798232349400

Book preview

Table of Contents

Fractured Code (Atlas Code, #2)

Dedicated to my family and my TWO amazing boys, now grown men whom I love without limit.

Chapter 1: Midnight Alarm

Chapter 2: The Rogue Packet

Chapter 3: The Atlas Gambit

Chapter 4: The Singapore Syndrome

Chapter 5: The Fractured Path

Chapter 6: The Omnipresent Shadow

Chapter 7: The Desert Gambit

Chapter 8: The Moroccan Lab – Secrets in the Sand

Chapter 9: The Global Fracture

Chapter 10: The World Stands With Them

Chapter 11: The Spark of Revolution

Chapter 12: The Global Uprising – A World in Flames

Chapter 13: The Weight of Revolution

Chapter 14: The Dawn of Peace

Chapter 15: The Calm Before the Storm

Epilogue:  The Promise of Tomorrow

Dedicated to my family and my TWO amazing boys, now grown men whom I love without limit.

Chapters:

Chapter 1: Midnight Alarm

Chapter 2: The Rogue Packet

Chapter 3: The Atlas Gambit

Chapter 4: The Singapore Syndrome

Chapter 5: The Fractured Path

Chapter 6: The Omnipresent Shadow

Chapter 7: The Desert Gambit

Chapter 8: The Moroccan Lab – Secrets in the Sand

Chapter 9: The Global Fracture

Chapter 10: The World Stands With Them

Chapter 11: The Spark of Revolution

Chapter 12: The Global Uprising – A World in Flames

Chapter 13: The Weight of Revolution

Chapter 14: The Dawn of Peace

Chapter 15: The Calm Before the Storm

Epilogue : The Promise of Tomorrow

Chapter 1: Midnight Alarm

The shrill rasp of the emergency alarm wrenched Mira Lin from her focus, her fingers freezing mid-keystroke. Under the sickly half-light of her monitors, lines of code pulsed like a dying heartbeat, flickering at the edges of her vision. She exhaled, slow and deliberate, the mechanical clack of her keyboard a familiar anchor in the storm. Every second counted. Somewhere in the labyrinth of the datacenter, an unseen hand was prying at the doors of Vault 7—the one place that wasn’t supposed to have doors at all.

Her boots struck the raised floor panels with the precision of a metronome, each step a countdown. The hum of the cooling fans swelled around her, the air thick with the metallic tang of ozone and the ghost of burnt circuits. Red warning lights bled across the white walls, turning the corridor into a vein of the beast she served. She paused only to swipe her badge, her reflection in the glass door betraying the truth she usually hid: dark circles beneath her eyes, the toll of three nights chasing phantoms. The corporate machine demanded perfection, but perfection was a lie. And lies, she knew, were the first cracks in the code.

The lock released with a sigh. Inside, the server room stood like a cathedral of secrets, rows of rack-mounted sentinels pulsing green—until her script flipped them, one by one, to crimson. The terminal flashed a single breach point: Vault 7. Twenty-five seconds ago. Her stomach twisted. She gripped the steel rack, her knuckles white, and began to trace the intrusion. The system fought back. Firewalls crumbled in real time, her commands rerouted as if the datacenter itself had turned against her. She leaned in, scanning the hex signatures of the rogue packet. Nothing matched. Whoever had written this wasn’t just skilled—they were rewriting the rules.

The alarm screamed. Mira forced a halt, isolating Vault 7 on an air-gapped subnet. A temporary fix. But as she spun up a manual scan, the console chimed—a single encrypted packet, blinking like a distress signal. No header. No sender. Just five words, burning magenta on the screen:

Hello, Mira.

Her breath stalled. The last time a breach had known her name, Daniel—her mentor, the closest thing she’d had to family in this world of ones and zeroes—had vanished into the static. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, the weight of that loss pressing down on her like a physical force. Identify yourself, she typed, her voice steady, her hands betraying nothing. The cursor blinked. Then the packet dissolved, leaving only a directory in its wake: FRACTURED_CODE.

A chill slithered down her spine. She should report it. Protocol demanded it. But protocol hadn’t brought Daniel back. It hadn’t stopped the nightmares of doors locking from the inside, of memories rewritten without consent. She activated her secondary console, severed its connection to the network, and copied the directory across. If she took it to