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 of 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 8411'

It was a ciphered invitation with a blurred unidentified background.

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

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

Some people believed they were an insane cult.

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

And some even assumed that they are aliens that would only reveal themselves to highly intelligent and civilized beings like themselves to propose an offer.

Regardless of people's beliefs about them, they promised an insanely glorious reward that was greater than any type 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.

The greatest minds in the world were the frontrunners in solving the presented series of puzzles that gradually became harder than the last puzzle.

IT's were one of them, who could create applications to decipher the code.

Embarrassingly, with almost everyone taking part in deciphering the coded messages, internet surfers were greatly surprised 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.

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 Chief of Police William Grayson to investigate the case, infuriating them and saying that they are now rusty after taking a very long vacation and gave them a simple case.

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

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

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 Kai understood and shared the feelings of the college student as a half Asian himself.

Unlike Selene Fay, who's a native Californian girl and pure white, Liam Kai had a rough childhood in California because of excessive racism.

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 Kai was at the student's feet, 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 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 blood dripping out of the mouth.

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

After further checking, they could find 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 Fay saw some flaws in the disturbing background.

They 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 Fay 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.

'LQ!? We're going to guess the meaning, aren't we? I didn't know this is still a thing in the 40s,' Liam Kai asked inwardly while stroking his imaginary beard after he observed the image.

There were no other visible letters that formed aside from 'LQ' and there weren't other hints that could give them a lead.

However, if they are going to think about it, the process they did to see the hidden message had indicated the letters' meaning.

"Low Quality!!! Let's change the resolution of the background image and remove the written messages again," Selene Fay shouted excitedly, who unconsciously shook her husband's shoulders for a few seconds, after just a few seconds of contemplating.

She was as quick-witted as ever, surpassing all her peers in all aspects aside from her unbeatable husband in terms of investigation and combat skills.

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

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

They zoomed 200% on different parts of the photo.

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

They hid it nicely but the two elite detectives 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 Kai, 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 harder than they 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 since they don't know how long they could finish all of it.

It doesn'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 enough! How could it ask a lot of work without assurance of getting anything in return?" Liam Kai complained furiously, slamming his fists on the table.

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

Selene Fay 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 could lead us to the truth aside from this stupid cipher. Do you have any idea what is supposed to be our next move in a situation like this?"

Normally, Liam Kai always had an out-of-the-box idea that could aid Selene Fay to assess the bigger picture, but it appeared that Liam Kai 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 threat in the second audio message. So much for a simple case, huh!?" Fay 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 Kai 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 meets 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.

And those similar unsolved cases began in the 1990s when the technologies are just starting to blossom.

The fact that there is 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.

'Warden!? Why does it sound so familiar!?' Liam Kai thought to himself.