Rebirth: A Second chance at life-Chapter 96: She died in a car crash!!

The ride to the mansion was cloaked in silence. Neither Aurora nor Sebastian spoke. The tension wasn’t uncomfortable—rather, it was contemplative.

Each had their own thoughts spiraling in the silence. Sebastian stole a glance at her now and then, his mind a whirlwind of questions.

His mind kept replaying the scenes of Aurora single-handedly fighting off those assassins.

The way she fought today, he thought, astonished, wasn’t something a regular girl could pull off. Those assassins were trained—brutal, precise, and efficient.

Yet Aurora, with fluid, lethal grace, dismantled them one by one. She didn’t hesitate. There was no fear, no panic—only cold calculation.

That wasn’t the work of an amateur. Who are you really, Aurora Smith? he thought, intrigued. Could she be an assassin too? Her reflexes, awareness, and control were on par with his own. Maybe more.

Aurora, meanwhile, leaned against the door silently. In her head, she revised her training regimen, planning how to strengthen this weak body further.

She had underestimated the limits of Aurora’s physique. Next time, she couldn’t afford to make such a mistake.

When the car pulled up to the azure mansion by the cliffs, both of them got out. Aurora walked ahead, but after a few steps, she turned back.

Her eyes, tired yet unyielding, locked with his. For a fleeting moment, something unreadable flickered in their depths—something that made time slow, just for a second.

A shadow of emotion danced across her gaze, too quick to name, yet too heavy to ignore.From childhood to adulthood, her life had been a relentless stretch of cold shoulders and cruel eyes.

No one had ever offered her a shred of kindness.

Only her master and the loyal squad she had bled beside had shown her what it meant to be seen, to be valued beyond utility.

The rest of the world... they didn’t just wish for her death—they would have celebrated it.If her heart had stopped beating in that very moment, there were those who would have thrown golden coins in the air and toasted to her demise.

But he—a man with no ties to her, no debt to repay, no reason to intervene—still chose to stand in front of her, to risk himself where everyone else would have turned their backs.

Something unfamiliar stirred in her chest. A warmth, hesitant and alien, flickered in her eyes—like the first fragile light after a long, bitter night.

"Thank you for saving me today, Mr. Harper," she said with composed politeness. "I will treat you to dinner."

Sebastian gave a lazy smile. "I’ll be waiting, Ms. Smith."

Aurora turned away quickly, biting back the irritation that bubbled within. Well, I said that out of courtesy... why did he have to actually agree?

If someone looked closely, they would have seen the tips of her ears turning red.

She stormed into the mansion and up to her room. Her clothes were stained with blood, grime, and gunpowder.

She headed straight to the bathroom and stood under the shower, letting the hot water pour over her.

She scrubbed away the filth and the tension, until her skin was raw. Only after she felt clean did she step out and wrap herself in a robe.

Settling on the couch, she pulled her laptop onto her knees and logged in. Just as she began scanning her files, there was a knock on the door. Bishop entered silently, eyes cool as ever.

"Boss," he said. "I looked into the scene. The place was cleared by Harper’s men. Efficient. We captured the Sharks’ branch leader. After a second round of torture... he cracked. Veronica tipped them off."

Aurora’s lips curled into a knowing smirk. "As expected. That woman must be furious Calvert failed."

Bishop tilted his head. "Do you want me to take care of her?"

"No," Aurora said simply.

Bishop nodded without protest. He knew Luna too well. She never spared her enemies. If she said no, it meant something worse was coming for Veronica.

When Bishop left, Aurora turned back to her laptop. Her fingers danced over the keys. In moments, she logged into a restricted server and opened a chat box with Jeremiah.

A message from him had just come in.

"Boss, I’ve uncovered something about Helen Smith. You asked me to look into her background, right? Well, aside from what we already discovered, there’s a new twist."

He paused in his message, perhaps expecting to build suspense.

Aurora’s reply was swift. "Don’t waste my time, Jeremiah. Get to the point."

"Alright, alright," came his next message. "Helen Smith was supposedly from the Smith Family in the capital. But here’s where it gets weird..."

"The real Helen Smith died in a car crash thirty-two years ago."

Aurora froze, her gaze narrowing. That meant the woman who later lived in the countryside under that name wasn’t the real Helen Smith.

"It wasn’t an easy task to get this report, boss. While I was tracing her trail, my search led me straight into the Estrian government’s secret archives—deep-level files buried beneath layers of classified networks.

And let me tell you, those weren’t just protected. They were fortified like a damn digital fortress.

"The place was loaded with security—layers of firewalls stacked one after another, surveillance systems that reacted the moment I so much as blinked, and IP trackers ready to strike.

With my skills, I only had about two seconds—just two—to grab what I could before the system fought back.

I managed to pull out a few bits of information, but that’s all I could get. They traced my IP, so now I’m on the run, boss. Hehehe... I don’t think they’ll catch me, but honestly, I wouldn’t bet on it.

I tried going back in, just to dig a little deeper, but the system didn’t waste time. It hit back—fast and hard.

I barely scratched the surface before their top-tier cyber team was on me. Sharp, fast, and too damn accurate.

I’ve hacked a lot of government systems before, but this one... this was different.

The security around those files is off the charts. Whatever they’re hiding—it’s something serious. And it’s guarded like the devil himself set up the firewalls."

I think only my idol—Queen—can handle this kind of mess, Boss," he muttered into the comm line, desperation laced in his voice. "I swear, if you give me shelter now, I’ll even kiss her feet if I have to—just to help you out."

He ended the message with a pitiful emoji, hoping for even a sliver of mercy.

Get lost.

That was the only reply he got.

A beat later, his boss’s profile picture turned gray. Disconnected. Gone.

He stared at the screen, lips curling into a pout before he muttered under his breath, "Cold-hearted witch."

Without wasting another second, he shoved the device into his pocket and slipped deeper into the crowd.

Thank God he’d chosen the airport over his apartment. At least here, among the sea of strangers and noise, it would take them longer to find him.

Aurora’s eyes glinted. Someone had gone to great lengths to hide Helen Smith’s true identity.

She minimized the chat and launched her own terminal. Her fingers began flying over the keys. Lines of code streamed across her screen in green and blue.

Aurora was no ordinary hacker—she was a phantom in cyberspace known as Queen. She broke through the first firewall, then the second.

On the other end, in a highly restricted cyber defense office buried beneath layers of steel and protocol, alarms suddenly blared to life. Red lights flashed against sterile white walls.

A mechanical voice echoed through the chamber, flat but urgent.

"Firewall one: breached. Firewall two: compromised."

Panic broke loose.

"What the actual hell—who is this?!" barked Programmer One, already hammering commands into his terminal.

"Who the hell attacks a secured government net at midnight?" muttered Programmer Two, already drenched in sweat.

"They’ve got a death wish," another growled.

A swarm of elite programmers snapped into action, typing furiously, trying to isolate the breach, seal the holes, and trace the attacker. The room buzzed with tension, keys clacking, commands flooding their consoles.

"Fast! Fast! Track the IP address—NOW!" shouted Programmer One, his voice sharp enough to cut glass.

But it was too late.

Just as they thought they were closing in, every screen in the room suddenly went black. All at once. No error messages. No system warnings. Just pitch darkness.

Five seconds of complete silence followed, heavy and suffocating. No one dared breathe.

Then the screens flickered back to life—but everything was scrambled. Their logs were wiped. The trace paths erased. The breach? Gone without a trace.

Meanwhile, back at her isolated location, Aurora leaned back slightly in her chair, her eyes still fixed on the screen. The data she needed—buried deep within multiple firewalls—was already safely extracted.

With a final keystroke, she executed a purge command. In less than a second, every trace of her signal vanished. And those who had tried to trace her?

Their systems were quietly and efficiently disabled—left spinning in circles, helpless.

Her lips curled into a faint, satisfied smile.