The Last CVE: A Science Fiction Short Story

this is a totally work of fiction not inspired by any events that happened today or anytime or by any people.

In the bleak January of 2035, Huda Ziade stared at her terminal, the blue light casting harsh shadows across her face. The air around her smelled like burnt silicon and broken dreams. Her breath formed clouds in the cold underground bunker, the latest hideout for the Rote Chapeaux collective she’d founded after the collapse of the global vulnerability management system.

Huda’s fingers traced the edge of the secure terminal where their final allocation was stored. She remembered the day the CVE program collapsed, in fact, everyone remembers where they were when they got the letter from the board. The frantic messages, the digital equivalent of a bank run as CNAs hoarded whatever allocations they could grab. No new allocations could be made, but CVE’s only grew in usage and importance, eventually becoming a precious and scarce material.

Huda had seen the writing on the wall for the small open source CNA where she was the only employee. She took what remaining allocations they had and went underground, establishing the Rote Chapeaux, a collective of ethical hackers and security researchers. For years they used their existing allocations, and whatever they could robin hood off of the corporations, to keep critical public infrastructure afloat. Naturally, the corporations didn’t like that, since it ate into the profits they would get from replacing public software with their products.

In the meantime, these CNA corpos had organized into digital fiefdoms, with security teams that rival small countries, treating vulnerability identifiers like precious metals. No matter how careful they were, the Rote Chapeaux kept getting raided, but they would survive and move. The last raid by MetaBet, one of the largest and most ruthless security shogunates to emerge from the chaos, on their Montreal hideout had been the most brutal. They’d managed to save only the essentials: equipment, their allocation database, and that single, precious remaining CVE.

Her terminal pinged. A message from Elias, their MetaBet insider. Her heart skipped. He was supposed to be deep undercover.

“Found something. Critical. At least 9.8. Get on secure channel now.”

She established the connection through seven proxy jumps and a three-hop onion router. When Elias’s face appeared, she barely recognized him. His once-meticulously trimmed beard was wild, dark circles shadowing bloodshot eyes.

“They’re onto me,” he said, his voice tight. “MetaBet swept my sector this morning. Three analysts disappeared.”

“How long do you have?” Huda asked, her mouth dry.

“Minutes.” Static distorted his image. “But what I found… it undermines everything—banking, medical systems, power grids, even nuclear ICBMs.”

“How?”

“Quantum authentication vulnerability in OAuth. And MetaBet isn’t patching it—they’re weaponizing it.” His voice dropped. “They’ll selectively protect their clients while letting everyone else burn. Deployment in seventy-two hours. I’m sending everything.”

This didn’t feel like a normal data transfer, instead it felt very solemn, as if the bits and bytes making their last confession before a digital judgment day. It crawled: 12%… 17%… 42%…

A crash came through the channel. Elias looked over his shoulder, his face settling into grim resignation.

“They found me. Use the last CVE, Huda. This is it.” The connection died with the file transfer frozen at 69%.

The lab door hissed open. Talia rushed in, face tense.

Huda minimized a second terminal window. “Let me guess. Three hours before they find us?”

“Who broke protocol?”

“Elias had no choice.” Huda swiveled her monitor. “Look.”

Talia’s eyes widened as she scanned the partial data. “We need to evacuate. Now. MetaBet aren’t your average script kiddies—they’re the kind of hackers with assault rifles and nano-drones.”

While Talia woke the others, Huda recovered what she could from Elias’s data. The vulnerability exploited how quantum states were verified during authentication challenges. With the right sequence, an adversary could bypass any QAuth system with minimal resources.

This wasn’t just a bug—it was digital doomsday, the cyber-apocalypse that would send humanity back to the stone age with a single keystroke.

The collective gathered, dismantling equipment with practiced efficiency. Huda laid out the quantum authentication flaw, its timeline, and the potential casualties—billions.

“Then it’s clear,” said Talia. “We use our last CVE to alert the world.”

An alert restored the hidden terminal Huda had minimized. A medical file glowed ominously—patient ID 7734-JL. Underneath, a treatment schedule with a message: “TREATMENT PROTOCOL READY. AUTHORIZATION WINDOW: 24 HOURS.”

“Is JL who I think it is?” asked Ravi, their youngest member.

Huda nodded. Jun-Li Ziade, her brother, was suffering from nanobot corruption. The experimental treatment protocol was being falsely flagged as malicious by security systems. Without a properly registered CVE, the protocol wouldn’t run on medical machines. This was the notification she’s been dreading for weeks: Jun-Li has reached the front of the treatment queue and she still hasn’t found a bypass that didn’t involve using their last CVE.

The room went still. Five pairs of eyes fixed on her.

“Your brother.” Talia’s voice hardened, her eyes darting to the terminal. “You’ve been hiding that from us?”

Huda didn’t flinch. “The treatment protocol could help thousands with nanobot corruption.”

“And MetaBet’s exploit will collapse civilization as we know it,” Marcus said, the former CERT coordinator’s voice gentle but firm.

“I knew what the choice would be,” Huda replied. “I thought I’d find another way.”

“The universe has a cruel sense of timing,” Dima said.

Ravi stood, his chair scraping against concrete. “We’re really considering this?”

“I have a chance to save my brother,” Huda said, her voice gaining strength. “I could save the world’s infrastructure, but these corpos—they’re relentless. They’ll find another zero-day, all while we’re out of allocations. This is it. We gave it the good old college try, but our war against them was always going to end this way. This is our last stand.”

“What about MY brother? Did you think about that when you sent him to MetaBet?” burst Ravi.

“Ravi—” Marcus began, but was cut off by the sudden wail of proximity alarms throughout the bunker.

“Motion sensors triggered,” Dima reported. “MetaBet team approaching.”

“We don’t have time for debate,” Talia urged, already packing essential equipment. “Make the call, Huda.”

All eyes turned to her. The world, or her brother. The last CVE. The answer was painfully clear.