CHAPTER TWO : THE COLLISION (Sienna’s POV)

I never knew what my eyes saw,

Was it a dream or should I call a nightmare,I had always known something was off.

I looked down again at the screen, as a secondary line of automated code executed itself right before my eyes:

DIGITAL SIGNATURE VERIFIED: DR. SIENNA VANCE.

ENCRYPTION KEY OVERRIDDEN.

The warning on the diagnostic console pulsed like a fresh wound.

My fingers hovered over the glass screen, i was completely confused.

Someone was using my administrative clearance to breach Jaxson Cole’s profile, and the system was stamping my name into the audit log with every byte of  my data stolen.

“Sienna, what’s going on?” Kaja asked, her hands on the edge of the aluminum table she leaned on,her eyes widening as she read the red terminal prompt. “Is that… Cole’s pre-game telemetry? How do you even have access to their server?”

“I don’t have access to Cole’s team server” I whispered as tears ran down my chin, my voice tight. “I’m not the one accessing it.”

Before I could force a manual system hold , the  voices outside were already terrifying .The referee’s had to blow the  whistle, just to stop the noise.

“Doc! We need you on the field ! It was the head assistant trainer who walked in and said this.

 I snapped the tablet shut, my heart beat faster as I was grounded by fear.   Bronisław’s icy threats, the stolen digital signature, the suspicious corporate access all had to wait, on that field, bodies were about to collide at thirty miles an hour, and my primary duty was to keep our team mate on the safety line.

“Kaja, stay in this terminal,” I ordered her, grabbing my emergency trauma kit. “Run an IP trace on that authorization request. Don’t let anyone shut down the local server logs.”

“On it,” she said, her usual cynical face completely gone, replaced by a cold, sharp face. 

I stepped out into the freezing stadium air. The atmosphere was  crowded , with people and cold ..

Across the midfield line stood the opposing players . And right at the center of their team  was Jaxson.

He  looked around our team line, looking straight into our eyes as if we were nothing but a simple puzzle he would just solve at a glance.

He gave  a signal, his voice went across the crowd, after which he  stepped back to his team with a fluid, predatory precision. Our team  broke through the line, charging directly at him, but Cole didn't even flinch. He planted his foot, shifted his weight with terrifying speed, and gave out  a forty-yard spiral, down the left sideline. The ball punched through the freezing air, dropping perfectly into his receiver's hands for a great win.

The first quarter ended. Cole’s team didn't celebrate. They just prepared for the next quarter.

Just as Cole walked back to the huddle, my eyes got locked onto his right leg. He was wearing the new Vance Legacy bio-mechanical knee brace,a  high-tech, carbon-fiber sleeve designed by our subsidiary to stabilize high-impact joints. It was the best brace,meant to absorb thousands pounds of kinetic pressure.

So why did his gait look… off?

I know what it meant cause  I had spent my entire life analyzing biomechanics. There was a tiny, micro-fractional delay every time his right heel struck the turf. A minor delay in his hip flexor. I realized all this , and became more confused. Or is the brace fighting his natural stride.

By the middle of the second quarter, the opposing team were carving through our defense. Cole was playing like he was possessed, throwing two touchdowns and rushing for thirty yards himself. We had only  three minutes left before half-time.

Our defense brought a heavy blitz, collapsing the pocket from both sides. Cole scrambled to his right, looking for an open target. 

Marek, our star head, broke free from the block, diving low to make a standard, routine wrap-up tackle near the sideline.

What happened next,shocked the whole field;there was no hard impact to the joint. No extreme lateral force. But the moment Cole gave a hit with his right leg, a sound echoed across the field.

Cole let out an unexpected scream that overwhelmed the noise of forty thousand screaming fans. The stadium went dead silent in just a second.

He fell  onto the cold turf, holding his right leg,still screaming in pain.

The undefeated billionaire QB, the ruthless star of the league, was reduced to a man crying on the dirt.

Immediately, his team medical staff ran into  the field,rushing to check his knee . I stood frozen as I watched from our sideline.

Just then,the giant stadium screen above the field began to play slowly to show the fans what had happened.

The camera zoomed in on Jaxson Cole’s right knee at the exact millisecond of impact.

My breath caught in my throat, a cold, suffocating terror paralyzing my chest.

In a very slow-motion, the video clearly showed the custom bio-mechanical brace locking up at the same moment his foot was in,creating a rigid pivot point that acted like a lever, actively snapping his own knee joint apart under his body weight.

And right there,at the side of the black carbon-fiber brace he wore,was the gold eagle crest of Vance Sports Legacy.

Fear gripped me,as my phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out with shaking hands.

It was a text from Kaja, sent from the lockdown server room down below:

Sienna, look at the server log I just discovered . The access request that stole Cole's private diagnostic file ten minutes ago? It didn't just read his data. It uploaded a firmware patch directly to his smart-brace hinge control.

It was signed using your private encryption key.

I frozed…I could move myself for another three minutes 

 But how could this be ..

The incoming message on my screen didn't just feel like a technical error; it felt like a sentence handed down by an executioner.

It was signed using your private encryption key.