Prologue

On the 24th of October 2040, an individual or organization posted a png file on the internet anonymously.

The photo contained a message like this,

'Hi! We are looking for extremely gifted individuals for our project. To find them, we prepared a series of tests.

There is a Quick Response code hidden in this image.

Solve the hidden coded message and form the matrix of dots for the QR code. Once solved, it will lead you to the next test. It delights us to meet the limited people that could enter our program before we close the project.

The rewards are unbelievably incredible, incomparable to any form of wealth in the world.

Please take note that this is a first-come, first-served basis.

Do your best, challenger!

Warden 0001'

It was a ciphered invitation with a blurred, unidentified background.

Quickly after, the photo gained a lot of viewers. Before they even realized, it had already become a trend worldwide.

People began to circulate rumors about the anonymous person or organization behind the ciphered invitation.

Some people believed they were insane cults.

Some said that they were from the government, which needed intelligence support for an unknown classified project.

And some even assumed that they were aliens that would only reveal themselves to highly intelligent and civilized beings like themselves to propose an absurd offer of cooperation to solve a universal crisis Earthlings were not aware of yet.

Regardless of people's beliefs about them, they promised an insanely glorious reward that was greater than any form of wealth anyone could achieve in the world, which easily stimulates people's greed.

To finish the puzzles, people at least need to know fields of study about codes like cryptography if they didn't have a knack for solving puzzles.

The greatest minds in the world were the frontrunners in solving the presented series of puzzles that gradually became harder the deeper they were in the puzzles.

ITs were included to them, who could create applications to decipher the code nonstop.

Embarrassingly, with almost everyone taking part in deciphering the coded messages, it surprised the internet surfers to a great extent that no one could solve the puzzles nor pass all the tests.

Or maybe no one just dared to say it in public.

Although months had passed already, no one still showed up to let others know about the anonymous person or organization behind it and the rewards they would give after finishing the tests.

Eventually, most people abandoned the tests after months of frustration as the popularity of the ciphered invitation dramatically dropped.

* * * * *

On the 20th of January 2041, an Asian college student who lived in the sprawling city in Southern California, Los Angeles, was reported missing.

After coming back from vacation, Liam Kai Smith and Selene Fay Smith, the only elite detective duo of the Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.) with a 90% + rate in solving their assigned cases, were tasked by the fastidious Chief of Police, William Grayson, to investigate a case, infuriating them and saying that they were now rusty after taking a very long vacation which led to offering them a simple case.

No, it wasn't a simple offer.

The Chief of Police was obviously playing with their emotions and disrespecting their image by forcing them to take a simple case.

Eager to prove to Chief of Police William Grayson that their top-notch detective skills remained the same, they promised to solve the case in just two days.

Based on the parents who reported the incident, their son named Christian behaved strangely before he went missing, notifying them he was solving puzzles that would give them the wealth they were expecting from him after he finishes college.

A dream that his parents sought but failed to accomplish on their own because of some sort of stupid reasons, treating Christian as a financial investment and a retirement plan than a human that eventually led him astray.

They imposed unnecessary things upon him to mold him into what they wished him to be instead of paying attention to who Christian truly was.

In that way, he would not need to endure being bullied in school most of the time, skipping the hard part by taking an easy route.

Liam understood and shared the feelings of the college student as a half Asian himself, who grew up in the Bay Area of San Francisco before he moved to Los Angeles for college.

Unlike Selene, who's a native Californian girl and pure white, Liam had a rough childhood in California as well.

Ostracized because of excessive racism and being called an illegal boat person, illegal immigrant, and all sorts of harsh things that made him tough mentally at an early age, brushing it all off since he knew none of it was true.

To rub salt on the wound, he didn't know where he belonged throughout his entire life as a mixed Asian-American before he met Selene, who was unbothered by how society perceived him. And he didn't want to hate either of his lineages either since that's just who he was.

At the beginning of their investigation, everything appeared pretty much like the normal abduction cases they handled before, or it could be about a college student who did something horrible somewhere and attempted to escape from it.

Regardless, the elite detective duo was confident that two days were more than enough to find the college student in a world where advanced technology could almost help in anything, thinking that it was a piece of cake for them.

As they checked the infamous ciphered invitation, they realized that if they want to understand the college student's behaviors before he went missing, they must know what's the message behind the photo which influenced the student to act strangely before he went missing.

If Liam were in the student's shoes, he was certain that he would be enticed by the promised reward as well, since the one who posted it seemed to be a big shot international organization.

Without further ado, they left the department and went to their secluded office to check the ciphered invitation.

They had printed the photo to see if they could find something about its unidentified background that they could hardly see on the computer's monitor.

The background appeared to be a creepy humanoid face with uneven teeth and purplish blood-like liquid dripping out of its mouth.

Liam squinted his eyes at the picture, believing that he had seen the face before but could not remember where.

After further checking, they found nothing.

At first, they thought that a hidden message would appear if they placed the paper on top of a light, but it didn't.

After several hours, Selene saw some flaws in the disturbing background.

They had edited it and raised its quality to identify the flaws after erasing the written messages, thinking that they were close enough to solve the case, but Selene had realized something was amiss about the results of their edit.

She hurriedly tried it again to save time, keeping the written messages and retaining the heightened quality of the background.

And so, they found a different message.

They hurriedly printed another sample of the ciphered invitation, but this time with a lower quality.

From that idea, they knew what was the next thing to do.

They zoomed 200% on different parts of the photo.

And once they were on the curly hair part of the creepy humanoid face with uneven teeth and a disgusting smile, they saw the Quick Response code secretly formed from the boxes of the pixilated photo.

They hid it nicely, but the two elite detectives still expected it.

After scanning the QR code on their seven-inch tablet beside the computer's keyboard on top of a table, it directed them to an unknown website with nothing but a saved mp3 file.

They played the audio file, and it stated this,

'Congratulations! You passed the first test. Please keep on going. More than half of the population failed this simple test, but you didn't. You have potential. Now, don't share it with anyone. If you do, it will get horrible for you. We are always observing you, Challenger.'

and at the end of the audio file, static that sounded like another code played for a few minutes.

'Is this Morse code?' thought Liam, crossing his arms.

The two elite detectives gazed at each other, realizing that they could not finish the case in two days if they kept going like this.

The case that seemed so simple at first turned out to be way harder than they had thought.

By basing on the first puzzle, they assumed that the rest would be as difficult as distinguishing colors in the darkness.

They did not even want to continue solving the ciphered invitation, which consisted of a series of puzzles since they didn't know how long they could finish all of it.

It didn't specify how many more tests they needed to solve either.

To think that many people worldwide attempted to do it already but could not finish it was insanely absurd.

BAM-!!

"That's not fair! The kid desperately put all of his faith into this. How could it ask a lot of work without assurance of getting anything in return?" Liam complained lightly, slamming his fist on the table, weak enough not to break it with his unparalleled human strength.

He sighed before he rubbed his fingers to his forehead, imagining how hopeless the kid's state was to bet all of his life for this obvious trick invitation.

His wife just nodded her head while sitting at the same table, agreeing with her husband's statement.

Selene narrowed her eyes and bit her lower lip, analyzing their situation for a moment before she replied, "Wooo... Take it easy, detective. You'll age faster like that. I know it's not quite reasonable. I checked everything about this student like a hundred times already but could find nothing that can lead us to the truth aside from this stupid cipher. Do you have any idea what we are supposed to be our next move in a situation like this?"

Normally, Liam always had an out-of-the-box idea that could aid Selene to assess the bigger picture, but it appeared that Liam couldn't give anything today.

"We don't have a choice but to continue this. It's not an ordinary ciphered invitation now that there's a weak threat in the second audio message. So much for a simple case, huh!?" Selene clicked her tongue, annoyed at how fast things escalated.

"I suppose so. But let's check similar cases first in the records that could lead us straight to the organization backing this stupid game. Our goal was just to find the kid, not to expose the organization. Maybe we could bargain or something. Let's concentrate on finding the kid first within two days and save that giant fish for later," suggested Liam before he forced a tight-lipped smile on his face.

Upon further investigation in the records, the unexpected troublesome case had even more complicacy than met the eye.

The shreds of evidence they gathered were tied to an unusual series of rapid worldwide abductions linked to highly intelligent individuals who deciphered the invitation of an anonymous organization.

They were nicknamed 'Warden' by web surfers all over the world, which strangely felt familiar to Liam.

And those similar unsolved cases began in the 1990s when the technologies were just blossoming.

The fact that there was a possibility that their enemy was an organization built before they were even born terrified and exhilarated them simultaneously.

They glance at each other, smiling ear to ear like maniacs after they had realized that they had thought the same thing...

Exposing an unfathomable enemy!