Chapter 414: Trinity’s Ask for Help
While the other mafia families visited the Jade Palace, the three handlers were still busy dealing with the aftermath of the Onyx Cartel's destruction.
Since the Onyx Cartel had ties with other powerful criminal organizations due to the drugs they exported, those criminals were now entering Novaria and causing trouble in the cartel's former territory.
Nonetheless, the assault teams from each mafia family were enough to deal with the petty criminals, allowing Dante and his team to stay at their base, practicing primal magic.
During that time, Trinity had been tasked with gathering any information she could find on the people of Nekxis, and it turned out to be one of the most challenging tasks the hacker had accepted.
Even when Baba Yaga revealed some of the leaders' names, Trinity had to dig quite deep and hack into numerous secure databases to find a simple hint about them.
When Trinity looked into the people who had been traveling to Antarctica for the past few decades, she found a carefully encrypted file and cracked it open, revealing the addresses and names of individuals she supposed were members of Nekxis.
However, right as she sent that information over to Camille, Trinity realized that her location had been discovered by 'someone.'
Her personalized anti-hacking program caused all her screens to turn red, displaying an alarm message that stated her location had been disclosed, and the only thing that came to mind was to send a message to Camille.
Trinity didn't know how much time she had left before the people of Nekxis sent someone to her apartment, and now that her location had been discovered by their enemies, she decided to also reveal it to Camille.
As the hacker quickly stood up from her chair and gazed around her utterly messy room, she quickly thought about her escape options.
There was no time to pack all her belongings, let alone her entire hacking setup, so she pressed a button under her desk that initiated the deletion of every single file on her computer's drive.
She could run out to the streets and try to blend in with the people, but that could put some innocent bystanders at risk if she were discovered. And if she attempted hiding, she was sure that the members of Nekxis would have some kind of magical tool that would find her.
After sending her location to Camille, Trinity snapped her smartphone in half, knowing that it was being tracked, and took a deep breath to calm her nerves.
The hacker couldn't deny her extreme anxiety, but after pondering her options, she believed that hiding would be best, as it was the last location she had sent to Camile.
Although her apartment was brimming with filled-up trash bags, open fast-food containers, empty soda cans, and other junk, she still had a secret compartment inside her closet that she kept clean.
The compartment was small, resembling a box made of thick steel plates, with a width and height of approximately one meter. Inside the box, all Trinity kept were a few mementos and a family picture depicting her parents with her as a baby.
Fortunately for Trinity, she was able to squeeze her body inside the compartment, though she had to maintain a fetal position the entire time.
Not even thirty seconds later, she heard loud bangs on her door that prompted her to close the compartment's lid, leaving her in utter darkness inside the claustrophobic space.
Ever since the Jade Dragons saved her father and gave him a job, Trinity had decided to use all of her skills for their benefit.
She never wanted a room or an office at their base, knowing the dangers it could pose. Moreover, she had a crippling social anxiety that made it difficult for her to interact with others in person.
Still, when it came to online interactions, her anxiety was non-existent, so she genuinely believed that she would be more useful to the Jade Dragons if she stayed in her secret little apartment.
When the banging on her door became louder, she heard it break open, followed by multiple steps of people that seemed to be maneuvering around all her hoarded trash, making Trinity even more nervous.
The hacker wasn't sure if the Jade Dragons would help her, even after she sent her location. She knew they had been busy lately, and the fact that nobody had met her personally made her think that they would simply abandon her, as it would be easier for them.
From her point of view, there was no reason for the Jade Dragons to save her. She was just a freelancer who had been working with them for personal matters.
Hugging her knees inside the dark compartment, Trinity shed a few tears, pondering if she would have been safe if she had taken Camille's offer to move in with them, and as the steps inside her apartment became louder, signaling their approach, her body tensed up and waited for the worst.
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At the time Trinity sent her alarm message to Camille, the handler was in her office, taking care of the endless paperwork thrown her way.
As soon as she saw the message, she instantly sent it to every single member of the Jade Dragons, showing the location of the hacker and ordering anyone nearby to safely escort the "blue-haired" hacker to their base.
Contrary to what Trinity believed, Camille was prepared to send the entire mafia family to protect her.
Even if they hadn't seen each other in person, Camille always considered her more than just a superb hacker—she was also their friend, and as a handler of the Winter family, she couldn't bring shame to her name by forsaking her friend.
When the members of the Jade Dragons received the message, Dante was hanging out in the garden with Sylas, showing him his hammock as if it were a life-changing object, to which the stoic assassin seemed to agree.
Still, when he looked down at his phone, Dante's eyes sharpened, unleashing his black wings of Lucifer from his back and taking flight, telling Sylas that he would be back before blasting away at high speeds towards the location marked on his map.