December 18th, 2023, 18:00 (New China Time 17:00)

  Headquarters of the external network server room in the President’s Office, City Hall District, Beijing, New China

  Contrary to the worries of Chief Yoon Tae-jin, Director Yoo Ha-yeon was carrying out his duties as any black agent would. After waiting for a long time at the door to enter the room, a person who seemed to be an employee working there went through various procedures such as iris recognition and quietly entered the room while opening the door. Director Yoo Ha-yeon immediately headed to the emergency stairs, in an attempt to get a connection from upstairs.

  Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who climbed up the stairs quickly so as not to let his footsteps be heard as much as possible, stood on the staircase landing marked 3F on the wall and immediately attempted to communicate with his team.

  “This is Alpha Two Again to Alpha Four! Alpha Zero! This is Alpha Two Again to Alpha Four! Alpha Zero!”


  Unfortunately, there was no connection.

  When the silent communication did not work even after going aboveground, Director Yoo Ha-yeon slightly bit his lip and began to think deeply.

  Manager Lee Ja-Sung had trained the second team, which was involved in dangerous operations, basic guidelines in case such a situation like this arises.

  If you are isolated inside and cannot communicate with those on the outside, scan the inside of the building as much as possible in TCS mode and find the internal network server room. Afterward, if it is difficult to escape through the central entrance or emergency door, go up to the roof to resume communication and wait for support for evacuation.

  Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who had remembered the instructions in his head, began to search the inside of the building in earnest. At the door leading to the hallway, he used his SG-TAR shield glasses to check for CC cameras along the corridor. This is because if he were to open the door without checking, he might be caught by the CC cameras and things might look suspicious.

  After confirming the location of the CC cameras and that no one was in the hallway, he immediately operated the X-K02 terminal to temporarily disable the CC camera, then quickly opened the door and entered the hallway.

  Director Yoo Ha-yeon moved as carefully as possible along the wall. He then went to the windows on the doors on either side of the hallway to check them one at a time. The names of the offices were written on the door. However, it was all written in Chinese, making it was difficult to recognize.

  Continuing in this manner, Director Yoo Ha-yeon secretly moved to the seventh floor and spent about 30 minutes checking all the offices in the room one at a time.

  A middle-aged man appeared in the hallway and in his right hand was a Huawei-branded laptop.

  The middle-aged man stood in front of the elevator. Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who stood right behind him without a word, got on the elevator along with him without being noticed. Then he stopped breathing for fear his breaths could be heard.

  The elevator doors, which had traveled down for a while, opened and at a glance, a long hallway was visible. At the end of the hallway, two men standing guard. As the middle-aged man walked along the hallway, Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who had been holding his breath, got out just before the elevator doors closed and followed him quietly.

  The man, who made his way down the hallway by following the brightly shining light, showed his ID to the two men who were guarding the door, and then set his eyes on the iris recognition device next to the door.

  The door opened at the same time as a beep sound was heard from the iris recognition device. At that moment, Director Yoo Ha-yeon knew he was in trouble.

  Should he trick the two men and follow them secretly, or should he just escape with the internal scans of the building’s interior that he had gotten so far? However, the distress he felt was soon over. While he was trying to deal with the conflict in his head, his body instinctively followed the middle-aged man.

  Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who entered the room, was startled by the sight before his eyes. The wall barrier was made of transparent glass, and inside, hundreds of state-of-the-art servers on a tablet stand were spinning with various lights flashing, each emitting a soft purring sound.

  Even to a non-computer user, this was undoubtedly a server room. Was this an external network server or was it the server for the internal network? To find out, Director Yoo Ha-yeon continued to follow the middle-aged man walking along the glass wall.

  Another office space was located next to the central server room. When the middle-aged man scanned his eyes on the iris scanner, opened the door and entered, he followed in and stood against one wall.

  “Uh! Why did you come here? Haha!”


  A man stood up and greeted the middle-aged man in an office space larger than what he had expected.

  “Yeah, I have something to talk about in private…”


  The middle-aged man seemed to be conscious of the other employees who were around and quietly whispered to the man who approached him to shake hands.

  “Ah! Yes. Come this way.”


  The man guided the middle-aged man to the conference room.

  Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who secretly followed them to the conference room in delight, focused on their conversation.

  “Chief! What’s going on?”


  According to the man who asked as soon as he sat down, the middle-aged man had the title of manager.

  “I need you to check this laptop in private!”


  “Yes? What laptop is this?”


  The man who put the laptop on the table asked with a puzzled expression.

  “This department hasn’t heard it yet.”


  The middle-aged man who turned his head to ensure that they were alone in the meeting room, opened his mouth again.

  “Our external network server room was hacked. Fortunately, it was detected early and we managed to track down the location. But it was very close, so our security staff and Black Tiger agents attacked the hacked area. We, unfortunately, missed them but I was able to secure this laptop, which we tried to hack.”


  “Woah! Is that true? When?”


  The man, who had a surprised expression on his face, turned on the power while taking a closer look at the laptop.

  “The talented people in our department checked it but they couldn’t find anything special. So I brought it here with the manager’s approval. I was wondering if you could figure out something with your skills.”


  “Ugh! Is it unofficial?”


  “Right! This is unofficial. If it was, I would have sent an official letter to your superior and followed the rules. If I were to do that, it will be time-consuming. Xiaobing, please check it out!”


  “Right now?”


  “Yes!”


  The man named Xiaobing was a researcher in the internal network server room of the President’s office. At the age of 24, he obtained a doctorate in computer science from the Beijing Graduate School. He was a gifted person with exceptional computer skills and ranked among the top three in New China.

  “It will take some time to check it.”


  “How long will it take? About one week?”


  “Haha, no. It will only take an hour or two.”


  “Phew! You said it would take some time, so I thought it would take a few more days.”


  “Ah! I have to work overtime because of the manager. If you come back in two hours, I will tell you the result.”


  “Thank you. Today’s overtime pay will be specially taken care of by our department. So don’t worry and check it carefully!”


  “Who are you asking? Well alright, sir.”


  After checking the conversation between the two men through the X-K02 terminal screen from beginning to end, Director Yoo Ha-yeon raised an eyebrow and smiled.

  It was because he knew that there was no information on the laptop that Manager Namgoong-won had left in the living room of the hotel. It was very funny to see the two men having a serious conversation in such a situation.

  After the conversation, the middle-aged man who got up from his seat patted the researcher named Xiaobing on the shoulder and walked out of the conference room. Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who had followed him out, was in trouble once again.

  Should he follow the middle-aged man out of this place? Although now that he knows that this was an internal network server room, should he carry out his final mission?

  However, in the head of Director Yoo Ha-yeon, his thoughts were inclined toward the latter. It was rare to be able to enter the internal network server room so easily. This was an excellent opportunity.

  The screen of the X-K02 terminal indicated that he had 50 percent battery remaining. Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who thought that 45 minutes was enough time, immediately decided to carry out the final mission.

  Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who began looking along the glass wall behind the middle-aged man who had initially led the way, found the entrance to the central server room.

  Fortunately, there were no guards and no iris recognition scanner at the entrance, which meant he didn’t need to use the X-K02 terminal. In front of the door, which needed a password and an employee card to enter, Director Yoo Ha-yeon looked around the ceiling.

  A total of four CC cameras were facing the server room entrance.

  With the help of the X-K02 terminal, the four CC cameras could be disabled, but the short time it would take him to operate the door’s security device again may not give him enough time to get inside.

  However, Director Yoo Ha-yeon decided to leave it up to luck, and immediately operated the X-K02 terminal to disable the four CC cameras, which took about 10 seconds. He then immediately attempted to open and close the door’s security device.

  Because of his nervousness, a drop of sweat ran down his forehead and ran down his cheek and his jawline.

  In a situation where several seconds may have passed, as soon as the door opened, Director Yoo Ha-yeon went in immediately and hid behind the server without even breathing. Even though he was invisible, he was so nervous that he acted on instinct.

  As soon as the door was closed, Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who confirmed that the CC cameras were operating normally again, stood still, just in case.

  He was not wrong. Footsteps echoed throughout the floor, and soon he saw two security guards run past the clear glass wall toward the door.

  The team that were operating the CC cameras had noticed that the four CC cameras were out of order and gave the order to the security staff who was guarding the hallway to check if anything was amiss.

  The two security staff walked from the entrance door to both sides of the room, carefully examining the central server room through the transparent glass wall. After looking around for about five minutes, they sent a communication to see if there was anything unusual, and they then returned to their original positions.

  Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who stood still for five minutes, selected one of the numerous servers and took out a small case from his pocket. Inside the case was a small USB device.

  It was a state-of-the-art USB that had a built-in Turkion-Y communication system, which showed a transmission/reception rate that was several dozen times higher than that of the Turkion-X silent communication system installed by Director Yoo Ha-yeon.

  It was an essential device to hack something like an internal network server that was completely blocked from the outside.

  He inserted the USB into the USB slot on the back of the server at the bottom to avoid being detected. Then the blue light on the USB flashed three times and turned off, which meant that it had worked.

  All that was left now was to leave the server room undetected, and Director Yoo Ha-yeon, who wiped the sweat on his forehead with his sleeve, had already thought about how to get out.

  Yoo Ha-yeon, who had decided to head to the entrance by going through the central server room, took a deep breath and, as before, using the X-K02 terminal, disabled the four CC cameras in the same manner as he had previously done. Upon reaching the door, he could easily open it by pressing the yellow button.

  When the door opened, Director Yoo Ha-yeon quickly walked toward another door leading to the hallway. It was a door guarded by the two security guards in the hallway.

  When he approached the door as quickly as he could, without making as much noise as possible, the door opened as Director Yoo Ha-yeon had planned, revealing the security guards with dissatisfied looks on their faces.

  From the look on the faces of the security guards, it was clear that the CC camera operation team was instructed to check the room once again.

  Director Yoo Ha-yeon managed to escape between the two approaching security personnel and through the door that was about to close and made it into the hallway.

  After a long sigh of relief, Director Yoo Ha-yeon headed down the long hallway to the elevator……