Blackout City

When the power fails, can two kids out-think the hackers behind the blackout?Twelve-year-old coder Veda Sorano spends sweltering summer days in her garage lab, tinkering with salvaged tech and her homemade radio scanner. But when a record-shattering heat wave hits—and the city’s rich neighborhoods mysteriously lose power—her scanner crackles with something far worse than routine outages. Someone is hijacking smart-home devices to overload the grid and cut electricity where people need it most.With her parkour-obsessed best friend Remy Cortez, Veda traces the rogue signals to a so-called “abandoned” telecom hub bristling with military-grade servers. Every clue points to a ticking countdown that could leave hospitals and cooling centers dark city-wide—and bankrupt the utility with a single stock-market play.Armed only with DIY gadgets, rooftop agility, and a mother who works for the power company—but doesn’t yet believe her—Veda must seize the hackers’ own botnet before the city melts.