The converted warehouse apartment in Seattle's SoDo district doesn't look like much from the outside, but behind the reinforced steel door marked "3B," Elena Sterling has built a digital command center that would make most penetration testers jealous. Three curved monitors dominate the main wall. The desk surface disappears beneath notebooks filled with drawings and diagrams showing how innocent role assignments chain together into devastating attack paths.
Elena "Phantom" Sterling earned her reputation the hard way. Unlike the script kiddies and ransomware crews that grab headlines, her specialty lies in surgical precision operations that leave no trace while extracting maximum value. Former colleagues from her days at a major West Coast cybersecurity firm would be shocked to learn that their methodical, regulation-obsessed teammate had evolved into something else entirely—a digital predator who turns organizations' own security measures against them.
**Becoming