The sterile glare of the NYU library's 24-hour study room felt like an interrogation lamp. Xu Lin hunched over his laptop, the glow reflecting in his unnervingly calm eyes. The rhythmic tap of his fingers on the keyboard was the only sound, a digital heartbeat in the cavernous silence. The blushing "Viper Hottie" persona was gone, shed like a discarded skin. Here, bathed in the cold light of the screen, he was something else entirely. A predator in his natural element: code.
He hadn't come for gossip. He'd come for answers. The rooftop incident was a dangerous anomaly, a wrench thrown into meticulously laid gears. Professor Nan Xi wasn't just an icy academic caught in a scandal; her reaction to the viper tattoo had been raw, visceral *fear*. Fear that resonated with fragmented, classified files Xu Lin had spent years piecing together. Files implicating a serpent coiled around his own family's ruin. Files pointing towards the Rhine Group.
He needed leverage. Proof of her connection. Something beyond the drunken plea on a rooftop. Her university email was the obvious, if heavily fortified, entry point.
Bypassing the standard firewall was child's play. The secondary encryption protocol guarding faculty communications was more robust, a sleek digital vault. Xu Lin's lips thinned in concentration. He deployed a custom-built algorithm, a ghost script that mimicked legitimate admin traffic, slipping through security layers like smoke through cracks. The login screen dissolved, replaced by the stark, efficient interface of Professor Nan Xi's inbox.
Hundreds of emails. Grant applications, student queries, departmental bureaucracy. He filtered ruthlessly. Keyword: Rhine. Zero results. Too obvious. He tried variations: Rhein, Rhine Capital, RC Holdings. Nothing. Frustration prickled. Was he wrong?
He expanded the search, scanning subject lines and snippets with lightning speed. His gaze snagged on a cluster of emails from a sender listed only as "Aegis Consulting". The dates correlated with major financial news: Rhine Group's aggressive acquisition spree in the Asian tech sector six months prior. The subject lines were bland: "Market Analysis Follow-Up", "Q3 Projections Discussion", "Data Compliance Review".
Too bland. Too… corporate sterile. Aegis Consulting had no significant digital footprint beyond a bare-bones website – a shell.
Xu Lin isolated one: *"Data Compliance Review - Urgent Clarification Needed."* Sent three months ago. He attempted to open it.
`ACCESS DENIED. LEVEL 3 ENCRYPTION ACTIVE.`
A thrill, cold and sharp, shot through him. Level 3? For a consulting follow-up? This wasn't university security. This was military-grade, the kind wrapping state secrets or billion-dollar deals. The kind he used.
His fingers flew, deploying decryption protocols he rarely risked outside his most secure environments. Layers of complex ciphers fell away like dead skin. The email body resolved, stark black text on white:
Professor Nan,
Per our discussion re: the Shanghai Horizon acquisition. Rhine requires absolute assurance on data integrity prior to final settlement. The target's legacy servers contain… problematic archives. Your proposed scrubbing protocol (see attached Algorithm: CLEANSING TIDE) is approved. Execute Phase One by EOD Friday.
Compensation for this discreet service will be deposited via the usual offshore channel.
Reminder: Non-disclosure extends beyond contract termination. Rhine remembers its friends… and its liabilities.
- A
Xu Lin's blood ran cold. Shanghai Horizon. A mid-sized AI firm swallowed whole by Rhine six months ago. His father's last investment before the "accident" that left him broken and penniless. Problematic archives. Scrubbing protocol. CLEANSING TIDE. The clinical terms couldn't mask the ugly truth: data destruction. Cover-up.
Nan Xi wasn't just connected to Rhine. She was their hired scalpel, slicing through inconvenient digital histories. Liabilities. The word echoed with terrifying clarity. Was his father one of those liabilities? Was he?
He needed the attachment. The CLEANSING TIDE algorithm would be the blueprint, the smoking gun. He initiated the download, routing it through five anonymized international servers. The progress bar crawled.
A sudden, jarring alert flashed in the corner of his screen – not his system, but a secondary monitoring program he always ran. `INTRUSION DETECTED: ORIGIN POINT - OSLO NODE.` His own ghost script, the one mimicking admin traffic, was being shadowed. Not blocked, not yet… tracked.
His heart hammered against his ribs. This wasn't university IT. They wouldn't have the sophistication or the Oslo-based resources to trace his ghost protocol so quickly. This was something else. Something with teeth. Rhine? Had his intrusion tripped a hidden alarm within Nan Xi's secure channel?
`TRACE PROGRESS: 40%... 65%...` The counter blinked relentlessly. They were peeling back his layers, hunting his digital signature. Oslo… then Reykjavik… Prague… They were closing in, leapfrogging through his anonymizing chain with terrifying speed.
He needed to bolt. Purge everything. But the attachment download was only at 78%. He couldn't lose it. Not now.
A shadow fell across his screen. Xu Lin's head snapped up, hand instinctively hovering over the laptop's kill switch.
Professor Nan Xi stood beside the study carrel. Her severe black suit was impeccable, her expression carved from ice, but her eyes… her eyes burned with a fury that could melt tungsten. She'd moved with panther silence. How long had she been watching?
"Mr. Xu," her voice was a low, dangerous hum, barely audible. "Enjoying the university's… digital resources?"
He didn't flinch. Didn't try to slam the laptop shut. That would be an admission of guilt. He met her gaze, his own expression carefully neutral, though adrenaline screamed through his veins. The trace counter hit `85%`.
"Research, Professor," he said, keeping his voice level. "Macroeconomic impacts of corporate mergers. Fascinating stuff." He subtly nudged the laptop screen an inch away from her direct line of sight. The download hit `92%`.
Her knuckles, resting on the edge of the carrel, were white. "Research," she repeated, the word dripping with venom. "On my private communications? With the Rhine Group?" Her gaze flickered to the screen, sharp enough to see the reflection of the email header even from the angle. She knew. She'd known the moment she saw him here, hunched and focused in the dead of night. The viper wasn't just curious; he was digging into her grave.
`TRACE PROGRESS: 92%...` Oslo, Reykjavik, Prague… Budapest. They were one hop away from his core IP. `ATTACHMENT DOWNLOAD: 97%...`
"You have no idea what you're poking at, Xu Lin," she hissed, leaning closer. The scent of her – jasmine and something coldly metallic, like ozone after a lightning strike – momentarily cut through the sterile library smell. "Those people… they erase loose ends. Permanently."
"People like you, Professor?" he shot back, his own control fraying. "The data scrubber?"
Her flinch was minute, but he caught it. The barb landed. `TRACE: 98%`. They were seconds from pinpointing his physical location in this library.
`DOWNLOAD COMPLETE.`
Xu Lin's fingers blurred. He didn't close the email. He triggered a cascading purge sequence – a digital self-immolation. The screen flickered violently. The decrypted email, the attachment notification, the trace alert… all dissolved into chaotic, meaningless static, then winked out. The laptop screen went abruptly, utterly black. Not sleep mode. A forced, total system crash initiated from a hidden firmware command.
He looked up at Nan Xi, the sudden darkness reflecting in his wide, deliberately alarmed eyes. "What the…? Professor, did you just…?" He injected just the right amount of confused indignation into his voice, playing the victim of her supposed techno-rage.
Nan Xi stared at the dead screen, then back at him, suspicion warring with shock. Had she imagined the Rhine email? Had he truly just been researching mergers? The speed of the system crash was unnatural.
Before she could speak, before she could demand answers, Xu Lin stood, shoving the inert laptop into his bag. The urgency wasn't feigned now. The trace might have been severed mid-flow, but they'd gotten close. Far too close. The hunters knew he was here, at NYU, digging. His time of passive observation was over.
"If you'll excuse me, Professor," he said, the politeness brittle. "My research seems to have… crashed. I need to get this fixed." He shouldered past her, heading for the exit with long, swift strides.
Nan Xi stood frozen by the carrel, the phantom glow of the incriminating email still burning in her mind. Data scrubber. The accusation hung in the air, toxic and terrifyingly accurate. But it was the look in his eyes just before the screen died – not fear of her, but a chilling awareness of a different, closing threat – that truly rattled her. He hadn't just hacked her. He'd triggered something. Something dangerous.
And then she saw it. Stuck to the underside of the study carrel he'd just vacated, barely visible in the low light: a tiny, disc-shaped device, no larger than a button. It wasn't university property. It pulsed with a faint, rhythmic red light. A transmitter. Active.
Panic, cold and sharp, sliced through her fury. They were watching. Not just Xu Lin. Rhine. Her employers. Her jailers. And now, thanks to the viper student poking their nest, they knew their scalpel had attracted unwanted attention. The "Phase Two" the maintenance spy had reported wasn't just coming.
It was already here.
Xu Lin burst out of the library into the cool night air, not slowing. He didn't head for the dorms. He vanished into the warren of side streets, pulling a disposable burner phone from his pocket. He dialed a memorized number, encrypted even on this basic device. It rang once, twice.
A voice answered, synthesized, genderless. "Status?"
"They're onto me," Xu Lin breathed, scanning the shadows around him. "Reverse trace originating Oslo. Military-grade. Rhine's cyber-hounds are sniffing."
"Location compromised?"
"Probably. The library node is burned." He paused, thinking of the fury and fear in Nan Xi's eyes. "But I got it. The CLEANSING TIDE protocol. And something else... she's terrified. Not just of exposure. Of them."
"The professor becomes an asset... or a liability," the synthetic voice stated coldly. "Handle her. Phase Two is active. Expect increased physical surveillance."
The line went dead. Xu Lin crushed the burner phone under his heel, scattering the pieces into a storm drain. He looked back towards the library, a fortress of knowledge now feeling like a trap. Nan Xi was inside, likely just discovering the transmitter he'd deliberately left behind – his own warning shot. The game had changed. The viper and the data scrubber were no longer just adversaries. They were targets in the same crosshairs. And the hunters didn't just exist in the digital shadows anymore. They walked the streets, watching, waiting for the perfect strike.