Chapter 4 Frenzied Breach
A sudden vibration from Sophia's phone broke the silence as an encrypted message flashed across the screen.
It read: [Boss, we've confirmed it! The last people your father contacted before his disappearance were indeed members of the Caldwell family!]
Sophia's fingers froze. The Caldwell family? The man she'd encountered at the airport today?
A silent smile curved her lips as she opened her closet and extracted a set of pure black clothes from a hidden compartment.
After tomorrow's cemetery visit, she would pay this man a visit. As for Olivia—her amateur schemes posed little threat. Let her play her games a while longer.
On the nightstand sat what Olivia called "your mother's keepsake"—a handcrafted photo album. Sophia flipped through it dismissively; each carefully selected photo had her mother's face conveniently obscured by stains.
"Childish," she muttered, closing it and retrieving the real family album from her suitcase's hidden compartment.
In these photos, her mother stood in a laboratory holding a young Sophia, with complex encryption data covering the whiteboard behind them—her mother's final research project.
Sophia gently traced the image, her gaze softening momentarily. "See you tomorrow, Mom."
Outside, the rain intensified, shrouding the villa in mist.
The following afternoon, after paying respects at her mother's grave, Sophia sat in the back of a taxi.
With a lollipop between her lips, her slender fingers danced across her keyboard while the screen displayed the Caldwell Corporation's public financial reports, recent news, and various semi-restricted information streams.
An encrypted chat window flashed urgently in the corner of her screen.
Agent A: [Boss! Breaking news! The Caldwell Corporation is desperately searching for you! They're going ballistic!]
Agent B: [Their market division's been completely compromised! The attacker left a "half-circle" signature. Could it be the Binary Phantoms trying to frame you? Or are they fishing for something?]
Sophia: [What's the current situation?]
Agent A: [Attack still ongoing. Caldwell's security team is on the verge of collapse. CEO Henry Caldwell is at a loss—his secretary, Edward Whitmore, specifically requested you by name. The price they're offering is astronomical! Should we take it?]
Agent B: [Holy shit, boss! Latest update—the attack source uses multi-layered encryption. We're stuck on the third layer; it's in some obscure foreign language!]
Agent A: [Fuck! So are we focusing on breaking through the firewall or translating languages? The Caldwell Corporation is in deep trouble!]
Sophia's fingers hovered over the keyboard for half a second before she let out a cold laugh. She slammed the enter key, instantly splitting her screen into three windows—the left showing Caldwell's firewall collapse in real-time, the center displaying the attacker's data flood, and the right filled with dense characters from an obscure foreign language.
"What a devious approach," she muttered, crushing the lollipop between her teeth with a sharp crack that sounded like a battle cry.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard while she simultaneously pressed her phone to her ear. "Patch me into Caldwell's internal voice channels."
Through the connection came the panicked shouts of Caldwell's tech team: "Another breach! We're done for! Someone report to Mr. Caldwell!"
Sophia's pupils contracted. This wasn't an ordinary hack—the attacker had embedded voice-recognition codes in the data stream!
"Silence!" she commanded sharply, startling the Caldwell technicians into immediate quiet as they searched for the source of the voice.
Simultaneously, her right hand entered a final command, and the foreign characters on screen rearranged themselves into a clear message: [Black Ice Project, Phase Two Initiated][Black Ice Project, Phase Two Initiated]
"Just as I thought!" Sophia's eyes flashed with cold determination.
She grabbed her microphone and, addressing the mysterious hacker through Caldwell's internal network, delivered a crude insult in the obscure foreign language: "Get lost, loser."
The vulgar taunt precisely triggered the voice-recognition lock's reverse-tracking protocol! The attack source IP instantly revealed itself.
The red invasion flood on her screen suddenly froze as if someone had hit pause. Sophia seized the opportunity to implant her counter-program—cobalt blue data streams slicing into the enemy system with surgical precision.
Three seconds later, the opposing server experienced violent data convulsions.
Agent B: [Incredible! Boss, when did you learn such an obscure language?]
Sophia ignored the message, instead sending a screenshot of her successful breach to Henry's computer with a simple addition:
[Meet me.]
Ten minutes earlier at Caldwell Corporation's Technical Department.
Firewall alarms screamed through the main control room as red warning lights cast ghastly shadows across every face.
The Technical Director, drenched in sweat, futilely hammered at his keyboard while watching the green columns representing system defenses retreat before the encroaching red of the invasion.
"We can't hold! Data package leakage is accelerating!" a technician cried, voice trembling.
At this critical moment, the seemingly unstoppable red tide on the monitoring screen—just as it was about to touch the core database fortress—crashed against an invisible, impenetrable wall.
"Wait—what's that?" someone exclaimed.
Before the red data stream, a vibrant, pulsing cobalt blue data flow suddenly materialized. This blue light wasn't from their defense systems; it appeared from nowhere, wielding an undeniable, cold authority that precisely intercepted the red invasion flood.
The blue light moved like the most dexterous scalpel, weaving through the vast data network—intercepting, cutting off, even outflanking! It wasn't merely defending; it was hunting.
"Third-party intervention! We have third-party intervention!" the Technical Director's voice cracked with disbelief. "They're analyzing the attack source! Reverse-tracking!"
The technical department fell silent. Everyone stared in astonishment at the silent yet heart-stopping data battle unfolding on the main screen.
The mysterious third party's cobalt signature was containing the brazen red invasion with incomprehensible, overwhelming dominance—and beginning to push back.
Henry's phone rang again—the Technical Director, so excited he could barely form coherent sentences.
"Mr. Caldwell! It's incredible! A top-tier operator has stepped in—but not one of ours! A third party with a blue signature! They've blocked the attack and are reverse-tracking the attackers!"
A blue signature?
Henry stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, gazing at the sprawling cityscape below, his heart pounding violently in his chest. Cobalt blue light—the color on her screen at the airport just before it went dark, the reflection in her eyes at the luxury boutique as she manipulated her phone...
It had to be her.
"Whatever it takes," Henry's voice was deep and resolute, carrying the determination of someone clinging to their last hope. "Lock onto that blue signal. I need Sophia's current location!"