Capítulo 1816: Chapter 797: Our Wish Is…_4
The counterattack has begun.
London, third basent level of an unremarkable office building in the Financial City.
On the surface, this is the “Global Data Security Consulting Company,” but in reality, it is a secret base for the MI6 outsourced cyber warfare team “Weaver.”
Twelve top hackers are sitting in front of computers, the light from the screens illuminating their focused faces.
Team leader Marcus Li stared at the main control screen, sweat trickling down his forehead.
“They’ve found us,” said a young hacker. “They’re tracing our proxy servers.”
“Keep attacking, increase the traffic,” Marcus ordered. “Their firewall should be about to give out.”
“Leader, sothing’s wrong,” another hacker turned his head, his face changed. “They’re reverse-injecting code, my God, this speed…”
Suddenly, all the screens flickered simultaneously.
Then blacked out.
Lines of green characters began to scroll rapidly on the screens, too fast for the eyes to discern. The characters ford lines in Spanish, finally freezing into a sentence:
“Next ti, we’ll find you.”
Imdiately after, all the computer towers emitted a slight “pop” sound, and a wisp of blue smoke rose.
The sll of burning filled the room.
“They burned our hardware,” Marcus muttered, “Destroyed it at the physical level…”
The door was pushed open, and Graham rushed in. Seeing the scene before him, his face turned ashen: “What happened?”
“We’ve been countered,”
Marcus stood up with a bitter smile. “Not only repelled but traced back along the network line, remotely overclocking all CPUs and graphics cards until they overheated and burned out. This kind of technology… I’ve never seen it before.”
“All equipnt is wasted, and the data… might not be salvageable.”
Graham closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
This system cost the Sixth Departnt twenty million British Pounds, now it’s just a room full of scrap tal.
Of course, half the cost was pocketed by soone.
“Their technology is obviously a generation ahead of ours. I suspect they’ve used so new kind of encryption and attack algorithm based on Quantum principles. This is not the capability xico should have unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless they’ve really recruited the top talents around the world and given them unlimited freedom and resources for research,” Marcus said. “Leader, we’re no longer facing a Third World Country. This is a quasi-superpower experiencing a technological explosion.”
Graham’s phone rang.
He picked it up, listened for a mont, and his expression turned even more grim.
“What now?” Marcus asked.
“Paris Station reported that the three xican recruitnt targets we’ve been monitoring all disappeared half an hour ago. The ones protecting them weren’t ordinary bodyguards; they were professionals. Our people tried to approach and were… politely dissuaded.”
“Dissuaded?”
“Had two ribs broken, but not killed.”
Graham gritted his teeth: “That’s really damn polite!”
He hung up the phone angrily and looked at the charred equipnt around the room, suddenly feeling a wave of helplessness.
Graham walked out of the underground base, up to the surface.
The morning in London remained gloomy, while the elites of the Financial City rushed by with their coffee cups in hand, and the newspaper front page still bore the photo of Sir Salisbury holding up a newspaper.
A man in a trench coat walked up to him and handed over a docunt: “Director, the Pri Minister wants your response plan by ten this morning. The Cabinet eting atmosphere is terrible.”
Graham took the docunt and glanced at it.
The list of demands was ridiculously long: recover diplomatic losses, ensure Salisbury isn’t publicly tried, restore influence in Latin Arica, curb xico’s technological rise…
The last one was circled in red: “Without triggering full-scale conflict.”
“They want magic.”
Graham smiled bitterly, “But I’m not a wizard.”
South of xico City, a construction site in the park.
The roar of bulldozers and cranes resud, but today the atmosphere was different from usual.
The workers were excitedly discussing the morning news while working; the national television broadcasted clips of the Special Forces operation and the Foreign Minister’s speech at the United Nations denouncing British interference.
National pride is a strange thing.
It can make people forget fatigue, forget complaints, even forget the hardship of mixing cent under 35 degrees of heat.
Bramo stood on the rooftop of the newly topped-out central laboratory building, overlooking the entire park. Three months ago, this was barren land; now, the main road was paved, six main buildings topped out, the fiber optic network was completed, and the first batch of experintal equipnt was being installed.
Dr. Turing walked up to him, holding a cup of coffee. This mathematician usually despised socializing, but today he seed in a good mood.
Turing said, “Our quantum encryption prototype system perford perfectly. Not only intercepted all intrusion attempts but also reverse-implanted a ‘logic bomb’ to burn the attacker’s hardware.”
“Quantum encryption?” Bramo raised an eyebrow. “I thought it was just a theoretical project.”
“It was,”
Turing rarely smiled, “But the team that Von Braun dug up from Germany, those madn from the Heisenberg Institute, had a breakthrough three weeks ago. They made the first usable quantum key distribution device, although still small, enough to protect the core network.”
“So we now have quantum encryption?”
“We have a prototype.”
Turing corrected, “But the British don’t know it’s a prototype; they think we’ve already fully deployed it. That’s the art of deterrence: you don’t really need an aircraft carrier; you just need others to believe you have one.”
Bramo laughed: “That sounds like sothing a leader would say.”
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