“Shouldn’t we hurry?”
Then, Yoon Hwa-kyeong spoke from behind.
Under the dim shadows, a sleek Omega stood slightly askew, arms crossed, looking down at Lee Young-jin.
Without turning his gaze from the laptop screen, Lee Young-jin shook his head.
“Isn’t there no time?”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong asked again.
Only then did Lee Young-jin lift his head. His silent black eyes stared at Yoon Hwa-kyeong.
“Yeah. There’s no time left. Probably not even enough time to take it with us.”
At the same time, he took off the backpack he was carrying and placed it on the desk. His hands skillfully took out a slender laptop from the backpack, along with a long cable. It was a multi-cable with several types of connectors he had prepared in advance.
“What are you planning to do?”
“I’m going to strip the code. It’s made to sync with a cloud server upon discharge, so if we can find that, and identify the server, and if we can infiltrate it, we can intercept the contents when the battery is drained.”
Lee Young-jin spoke quite rapidly. Of course, he was slow enough that Yoon Hwa-kyeong had to wait a bit longer until he finished. After Lee Young-jin closed his mouth, Yoon Hwa-kyeong slightly tilted his head.
“I see. I don’t really understand… But you mean to hack… or something to steal the item from its real owner?”
The real owner of this item.
Lee Young-jin mulled over Yoon Hwa-kyeong’s words inside his lips.
The Alpha who had injected him with nanobots.
Seo Seung-hyun.
The developer of the time-limited code.
Whoever it was, what did it matter? Hadn’t Lee Young-jin come this far without knowing anything? What would change by knowing more of the truth now?
Lee Young-jin gazed down at the laptop screen with sorrowful eyes.
“I’ll return it to CEO. It belongs to CEO, after all.”
Even if it wasn’t, what did it matter?
He calmly connected the two laptops with the cable he had taken out of the backpack. He opened his own laptop lid and turned on the power. The screen lit up. His movements were neither swift nor hesitant.
“I’d like you to help with something else in the meantime,” he said to Yoon Hwa-kyeong.
Yoon Hwa-kyeong smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“What can I do for you?”
“I’ve bypassed the external defenses and opened the red door. Please move these documents onto the boat.”
“All of them? There’s quite a lot.”
“Yes. All of them.”
“It will take about an hour. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine. My task will take longer than that.”
Lee Young-jin said, placing both hands on the keyboard.
No more words were exchanged.
Yoon Hwa-kyeong swiftly turned and left the vault like the wind. His light footsteps faded away.
Lee Young-jin’s gaze returned to the laptop monitor.
The focus in his large black pupils sharpened.
He took a deep breath. No more hesitation was needed. As long as he had a computer, he could do anything. This time would be no different.
***
When Yoon Hwa-kyeong returned, Lee Young-jin’s work was almost at its end.
Yoon Hwa-kyeong was out of breath, but faint sweat marks remained on his pale temples. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and lightly brushed his bangs aside as he stared at Lee Young-jin.
Lee Young-jin’s gaze did not leave the laptop monitor.
“I’ve moved everything.”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong reported lightly.
“And you?”
“I’m still….”
Lee Young-jin mumbled without taking his eyes off the monitor.
“I need a bit more time….”
His voice was soft, but Yoon Hwa-kyeong understood.
“Then is there anything else I need to do? Just wait?”
“No.”
Lee Young-jin replied as is.
“Move those documents to CEO’s house. You said you also move things that aren’t alive, right?”
“Hmm. Normally, I move things that aren’t alive more often.”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong tilted his head slightly.
“But who is CEO?”
“I’ll send you the address….”
Lee Young-jin answered vaguely. His left hand groped on the desk and picked up a smartphone. He tapped the screen a few times without looking at it. Soon, a message with an attached map arrived on Yoon Hwa-kyeong’s phone. Yoon Hwa-kyeong didn’t check it. Instead, he asked Lee Young-jin.
“And you?”
Only then did Lee Young-jin slowly turn his neck.
His frail and powerless chin jutted out over the zipped-up hoodie.
His pronounced lips moved silently.
“I need to finish this. Go ahead.”
“And you?”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong repeated the question.
“It doesn’t seem like there are other boats on the island. How do you plan to leave?”
“I don’t need to leave the island.”
“Weren’t you here to take something?”
“Right. I’ll take it with me.”
After that, Lee Young-jin turned his gaze back to the monitor.
“There’s no need to take it in physical form….”
Lee Young-jin intended to strip the code to find out the cloud server it was linked to. If he could infiltrate that server, it would be possible to intercept the data when the laptop’s battery drains and the programmed code transfers the data to the server.
Yoon Hwa-kyeong silently looked at Lee Young-jin. Then, he took out his smartphone to check the address Lee Young-jin had sent.
The current time was 4:34.
He slid the smartphone back into his back pocket.
“I’ll wait until 5:30.”
Lee Young-jin flickered his eyelids.
“You don’t have to wait.”
“Of course. But you said you can’t swim, right?”
“…I can swim.”
It’s just that he couldn’t swim through these cold waves and currents for two hundred kilometers.
“I’ll wait until 5:30. If we don’t leave by then, we’ll run into the coast guard’s patrol schedule.”
Yoon Hwa-kyeong said once more.
“I’ll have the engine running on the boat. Contact me when you come to the beach. I’ll lower the boat to pick you up.”
Lee Young-jin flicked his lips. He intended to say thank you, but Yoon Hwa-kyeong was quicker.
“You don’t have to be too thankful. It’s just work.”
After that, he winked one eye. A smile twisted his charming lips, along with a glint in his eye.
“See you at 5:30 then.”
He turned swiftly.
Lee Young-jin watched his retreating back for a moment.
As Yoon Hwa-kyeong disappeared, a dense mix of cold darkness and dry, dust-filled air filled the panic room.
A drop of cold sweat trailed down his nape. The hand wiping away sweat stiffened momentarily. His carotid artery throbbed intensely. A pain as if pressing on a bruise was felt. More sweat flowed down. The air inside the unheated panic room was chilly. With every breath he exhaled, white breath spewed into the void. He wrapped his vein-bulged neck with his palm and took a few deep breaths.
After several deep breaths, Lee Young-jin regained his composure.
A twelve-hour limit. The current time was 4:35 AM. Unlike the laptop, there was still time. There was no need to worry yet.
His pale fingertips moved calmly over the keyboard without trembling.
Alphabets and numbers flashed fluorescently on the focused surface of his pupils, appearing and disappearing endlessly.
Though there was no sound of ticking, the smartphone’s digital clock steadily changed the numbers.
As the first digit of a three-digit number changed, followed by the last digits changing places, countless lines of code started to appear and scroll down the monitor. Lee Young-jin’s chest swelled with a flutter.
His eyelids fluttered incessantly.
The codes filling the screen suddenly stopped.
PING UNKNOWN (valid user) (221.144.0.0) 1,394,993,001(32,999,182,999) bytes of data.
— UNKNOWN ping status —
7291443 packets transmitted, 7291443 received, 0% packet loss, time 192ms
— valid.user —
VALIDATE A TARGET . . .
Lee Young-jin’s eyes sparkled. His eyes, returning to brightness, stared at the monitor for a few seconds, then his hands started to move rapidly.
Alphabets were entered one by one on the monitor.
After a few lines scrolled down, another line automatically appeared.
TRANSMITTING ALL DATA TO A VALID TARGET . . . 0%
Lee Young-jin stared intensely at that one line.
After what felt like an hour, or ten hours, perhaps even a billion seconds, the percentage changed.
TRANSMITTING ALL DATA TO A VALID TARGET . . . 1%
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