Three weeks ago, he couldn’t even open the Command Prompt without panicking. Now, thanks to the "Ethical Hacking from Scratch" video series by a faceless YouTuber named TheCyberNomad , he was rewiring his laptop’s network adapter into monitor mode.

"Three lattes and a first-edition Asimov," Alex said, grinning.

He showed up with his laptop. The owner, a skeptical woman named Mrs. Kline, watched him plug in.

For four hours, he followed the videos step-by-step. He cracked a weak WPA2 handshake in twelve minutes. He set up a fake captive portal that looked exactly like the bookstore’s login page. He showed Mrs. Kline how her own employees were broadcasting passwords on unencrypted HTTP requests.

Alex stared at the glowing progress bar on the screen:

Alex paused the video. He lived in a cramped apartment building. His Wi-Fi was slow, but his neighbor’s—apartment 4B—was a wide-open unsecured network named "Linksys." For weeks, he’d been tempted. Just one look. Just to see if the lessons worked.