Ch-1 The Price of Survival
Concept & Written By: Nitish Kumar
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From the moment Robin learned that every door could be locked, he taught himself to look for hinges no one else could see. He had grown up in the stale warmth of a cobbler's shop — a cramped cubby that reeked of glue and damp leather, where his father bent for hours each day, patching worn soles for men who rarely remembered to say thank you. Every stitch his father pressed into a torn sandal carried an unspoken hope: that his only son would never know what it felt like to bow his head for scraps.
Robin absorbed that dream so deeply it became a hunger that rattled in his bones. Nights blurred into dawns as he hunched over borrowed textbooks beneath a flickering bulb, deciphering lines of code that felt like secret keys to a life that might finally be his. He fixed neighbours' battered phones for a handful of rupees, skipped dinners to afford an hour's worth of slow internet at a half-broken cyber café. When the university mailed him his software engineering degree, the old workshop rang with laughter for the first time in years — his mother's cracked palms pressed the certificate to her forehead as though it were a holy text. His father, ever modest, sat in silence, daring — just this once — to believe the world might treat his son differently.
But the world, Robin discovered, seldom keeps its promises to those who have no means to buy them.
The months that followed turned hope to rust. He sat for test after test, nailed interviews that should have been doorways, yet each "Congratulations" ended with the same muffled suggestion: a bribe, dressed up as "facilitation" or "good faith." The sums named were monstrous compared to what his father earned repairing torn slippers for strangers. Robin returned home each time with a paper smile and an empty wallet. He told himself — told his father, too — that one day, a door would open cleanly, without the need for a dirty key.
Inside their single-room house, the dream began to sour. His mother's eyes turned brittle; his uncles offered their counsel as though they hadn't once praised him for dreaming big. "You could have opened a shop like your father," they muttered. "At least you'd bring something home." Their whispers clawed at Robin more fiercely than any rejection letter. Yet he clung stubbornly to the idea that knowledge, well wielded, was its own kind of currency.
And then there was Binoy D'Souza.
In college, Binoy had been the boy with the smooth grin and wandering eyes — the one who hovered by Robin's desk, copying code he couldn't write himself. Somehow, after graduation, he'd parlayed that same cunning into Ampler Browser: a sleek, fast-growing company that threatened older giants. Many times, he'd found Robin, always with the same offer: come work for me, earn more than your father ever dreamed.
But the offer was always the same poison, too: Binoy didn't want a gifted programmer. He wanted Robin's genius for break-ins — a mind that could slip undetected into rival firms' servers, plant bugs, siphon money, gut competition from the inside out. Robin refused him each time, voice tight with the conviction that some lines, once crossed, could never be erased.
But sometimes, life corners a man so cruelly that the line dissolves into something you can't even see.
The final push arrived like a drip in the monsoon. Heavy rains tore through the brittle roof of his father's shop. Desperate to patch it before the season's end, the old man borrowed a small sum from a local moneylender — a man whose smile hid claws. The debt, once inked, morphed into something grotesque: hidden fees, forged signatures, threats whispered outside their door. The lender's men came to count the weeks before they'd claim the only two things they owned — the stall and the house — and they spoke of the eviction like it was already done.
Robin banged on the doors of distant relatives and was turned away at each threshold. The bank clerks shuffled papers while shaking their heads. Neighbours who once called him a genius closed their doors before he even finished explaining.
That night, he sat alone in the dark beside his father's workbench, breathing in the sour-sweet scent of old leather. His phone felt like a hot coal in his palm as he scrolled to Binoy's number.
When Binoy picked up, the smile was evident in his voice. "You've made the smart choice at last, Robin. It's time you earned what you deserve."
Robin said nothing. He pressed his forehead against the cold wall and listened to the unspoken truth ringing in his chest: he was about to become the very thing he had always feared.
The money arrived before dawn — enough to pay the lender off twice over. The threats disappeared like roaches when the light flicks on. For a week, the house seemed to breathe freely again; his father smiled through tired eyes, still believing that this, too, was just another stroke of luck.
But Robin knew: he had traded his soul for a roof and a pair of walls.
Binoy's plan was simple, elegant, and utterly vicious. Robin was to infiltrate B-Line Browser — Ampler's most dangerous rival — along with five other competitors. He would slip invisible worms into their systems, slow-drip viruses that would quietly drain micro-transactions from millions of unsuspecting users. One day, when the leak was exposed, the public's outrage would crush those companies into the dirt — leaving Ampler Browser untouched, triumphant.
Robin wrote the code as though it were a dirge for every honest hour he'd ever spent studying under flickering lights. Nights blurred. He scribbled notes on old receipts and napkins, afraid to trust any cloud. When the breach unfolded exactly as Binoy envisioned, B-Line's reputation imploded overnight. News outlets frothed at the scandal; investors fled. Binoy sent Robin a photograph from some rooftop bar, glass raised against a skyline that no longer had to fear competition.
Robin deleted the message without reading it twice.
But betrayal doesn't stay buried. Tushar and Syrelz — B-Line's founders — traced the hack back with dogged precision. Binoy was dragged to court in chains of paperwork and digital logs. The case fell to Inspector Niah, a woman known for seeing things others chose to ignore. She read Robin's code like a confession: brilliant, unmistakable, tragic.
Tushar and Syrelz saw a different value. They found Robin in a back-alley café and offered him a place at their table. "We don't care what you did for Binoy. Do it for us. You'll never worry about bribes again." But Robin looked at their polished watches and expensive shoes — men fattened by the same system that nearly devoured his father — and felt a chill coil through his chest. "No," he said. "Never again for men like you."
In that moment, Niah made her choice. She buried Robin's name in the files and let Binoy fall alone. The official record showed no sign of the desperate son who had sold his gift for the price of a dry roof.
But freedom does strange things to a man who has tasted how easily the world's locks can snap under his hands. Robin could have disappeared — found honest work in some corner too small to attract attention. But the bitterness, once sweet, bloomed into something darker. He turned his gaze back to B-Line — the company that had tried to buy him. The company that would pay for daring to believe they owned him.
He evaded the men Tushar and Syrelz sent to chase him down. He moved like a ghost between servers and café booths, his laptop humming with quiet malice. When he finally cracked B-Line's vaults wide open, he took everything: names, bank accounts, every scrap of data that had once made them powerful. He sold the trove overseas for a fortune. One breach, one night — and a lifetime of bribes couldn't have bought him more.
The government did what the system always does when something escapes its control: they came for him with black vans and plastic handcuffs. He went quietly — but his mind stayed free. In prison, he met men who needed his skills more than the outside world ever did. He rewired networks from behind bars, his fingers dancing through layers of security like they were nothing but paper walls.
Inspector Niah watched from her drab office, the boy she'd once protected flickering across her screens like a ghost. This time, when she went before the judge, there was no soft plea in her voice.
When they read the sentence — death — Robin didn't blink. He knew what it cost to keep the roof from leaking. And he knew, better than anyone, that some doors can never truly be shut again.
The story doesn't pause here. Step into the next chapter.
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Author's Note: Thank you for stepping through the first breach alongside Robin — a mind sharpened by necessity, cornered by a world that mistakes desperation for crime.
What do you think lies ahead for someone who now understands that every locked door can be forced open — for a price? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Your feedback fuels where this odyssey goes next.
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©️ Peninstinct 2020
