Chapter 159 Emergency Arrest

At four o'clock in the morning, the night was at its thickest.

Three license-plate-less off-road vehicles sped along the Gobi Desert highway with their headlights extinguished, gliding through the darkness like three black fish. Zhao Gang sat in the passenger seat of the first vehicle, clutching the photo he had just received.

The photo depicted a young woman with an ordinary face and cold eyes.

Black Sparrow.

She was in the small town just ahead.

"How much further?" he asked in a low voice.

The driver glanced at the GPS: "Five kilometers."

Zhao Gang nodded and picked up the walkie-talkie: "All vehicles pay attention, shut down communication equipment and maintain radio silence. We will reach the target area in five minutes."

Two soft taps came through the walkie-talkie—received.

Meanwhile, in a residential house on the outskirts of the small town.

Black Sparrow stared at the screen, her finger hovering over the Enter key.

She had already seen through that fake parameter table, but she wasn't panicked. The true killing move was never in those files.

She was waiting for a signal.

Lines of code were slowly running on the screen. It was the backdoor program she had implanted, which was currently attempting to activate the segment of code within the cooling water control system. As long as the activation was successful, the cooling system would fail at the critical moment of ignition.

Three minutes ago, the program reported: Backdoor awakened, awaiting trigger command.

Now, only the final step remained.

Black Sparrow's finger lightly descended toward the Enter key.

Just then, she heard movement outside the window.

It was very faint, but she could tell—it was the sound of footsteps on gravel, and it was more than one person.

Her pupils suddenly constricted.

There was no time left.

She slammed down the Enter key.

The screen flashed, and a line of green text popped up:

"Trigger command sent. Awaiting system response."

At that same instant, the door was kicked open.

Several dark figures rushed in and instantly pinned her to the ground. Her face was pressed against the cold floor, her peripheral vision only catching that line of green text on the screen.

Awaiting system response.

She smiled.

A cold, sinister smile.

"Stay still!" A team member pulled her hands behind her back and deftly handcuffed her.

Zhao Gang strode in and scanned the room. The computer screen was still lit, that line of green text hanging there eyesore-bright.

His heart suddenly sank.

"What did she do?" he pointed at the screen.

Pinned to the ground, Black Sparrow didn't speak, she only smiled.

Zhao Gang walked over and looked at the screen.

"Trigger command sent. Awaiting system response."

His head buzzed.

"Cut the network immediately!" he roared.

A team member lunged forward and yanked out the network cable. But it was already too late. On the screen, that line of text changed to another:

"System response successful. Malicious code activated."

Zhao Gang's face instantly turned ashen.

He turned around and stared at Black Sparrow on the floor, his voice as cold as a blade:

"What did you do?"

Black Sparrow looked up at him, that cold sneer still lingering on the corners of her mouth:

"You've caught me, congratulations. But your cooling system—it no longer belongs to you."

At 4:20 AM, Li Xiao's phone rang.

She had just dozed off for a moment and was jolted awake by the ringtone. The caller ID showed Zhao Gang.

"Engineer Li, something's happened." Zhao Gang's voice was more solemn than ever before. "Black Sparrow hit the Enter key before she was caught. She says the cooling system has been activated."

Li Xiao's heart skipped a beat.

She said nothing, hung up the phone, and lunged toward her screen.

On the cooling water control system interface, everything looked normal. Temperature, pressure, flow—all the numbers were within normal ranges.

But her gaze fell on the one number she had stared at countless times:

Response Time: 3.5 ms

Three hours ago, it was still 3.3 ms.

It had increased by 0.2 ms.

Moreover, it was ticking upward at a rate visible to the naked eye—3.5, 3.6, 3.7...

"No..." Li Xiao murmured to herself, "No, no, no..."

She began to frantically tap the keyboard, trying to find the anomaly. But all programs were running normally, all logs showed normal, and all diagnostic tools reported "No anomalies."

But the response time was soaring at a rate of 0.1 ms per second.

3.8, 3.9, 4.0...

At 4:25 AM, Lin Mo was awakened by urgent pounding on his door.

He pulled open the door to see Chen Xueming standing outside, his face deathly pale.

"President Lin, something's wrong with the cooling system."

Lin Mo didn't ask a single question; he threw on his coat and ran out.

In the control room, Li Xiao was on the verge of a breakdown. Her eyes were glued to the screen, her fingers flying across the keyboard, but every operation was like a stone sinking into the ocean.

"President Lin!" she cried out when she saw him, her voice bordering on tears. "I can't control it! All commands are being delayed!"

Lin Mo rushed to the screen, looking at the frantically jumping numbers.

Response Time: 4.7 ms, 4.8, 4.9...

"What's the cause?" His voice was exceptionally calm.

Li Xiao shook her head: "I don't know! I can't find it! That backdoor is activated, it's devouring system resources, and the response time is getting longer and longer. Soon it will—"

She didn't finish.

But everyone knew the consequences.

When the response time exceeded a certain critical point, the cooling system would be unable to respond in time to the temperature changes during ignition. The Divertor and the First Wall would overheat within seconds, and then—

Ignition failure.

Device destruction.

Lin Mo stared at the screen, his mind racing at high speed.

Then he turned and looked at Chen Xueming: "Can it be controlled manually?"

Chen Xueming was stunned for a moment, then nodded: "It can. But it requires two people to go into the equipment room and operate the valves manually."

"Then go," Lin Mo said.

Chen Xueming turned and ran.

At 4:30 AM, Zhao Gang's convoy rushed into the base.

He jumped out of the car and headed straight for the control room. Pushing open the door, he saw Lin Mo standing in front of the screen, his face devoid of any expression.

"President Lin—"

Lin Mo raised his hand, cutting him off: "I know."

Zhao Gang opened his mouth but found no words.

Lin Mo turned around and looked at him:

"Brother Zhao, was the person caught?"

Zhao Gang nodded: "Caught. She's on the way to being transported."

Lin Mo nodded: "Interrogate her. Find out exactly what she did and if there's a way to deactivate it."

Zhao Gang stood at attention: "Yes!"

He was about to turn and leave when Lin Mo suddenly called out to him:

"Brother Zhao."

Zhao Gang looked back.

Lin Mo looked at him, emphasizing every word:

"Tell her that even if she pokes a hole in the sky, we can patch it up."

Zhao Gang was taken aback for a moment, then nodded vigorously.

At 5:00 AM, in the equipment room.

Chen Xueming was with two technicians, crouching in front of the main control valves of the cooling water system. Massive pipes crisscrossed overhead, emitting a low, heavy hum.

"Teacher Chen," a technician asked in a low voice, "are we really going manual?"

Chen Xueming didn't even look up: "Really."

"But... during ignition, the flow changes too fast. Human hands simply won't be able to keep up."

Chen Xueming finally looked up and stared at him:

"Even if we can't keep up, we have to. Otherwise, are we just going to wait for the device to burn up?"

The technician fell silent.

Chen Xueming stood up, looked at the dense array of valves and gauges, and took a deep breath.

Then he picked up the walkie-talkie:

"President Lin, manual control is ready. When it's time to ignite, give the word and we'll act."

Lin Mo's voice came through the walkie-talkie, calm yet firm:

"Teacher Chen, thank you for your hard work."

Chen Xueming smiled:

"It's no trouble. Let's just do it."

That early morning, the night over the Gobi Desert was exceptionally thick.

In the control room, Li Xiao was still trying to regain control of the system. In the equipment room, Chen Xueming and his two men stood guard by the valves. In the interrogation room, Zhao Gang stared at Black Sparrow, questioning her word by word.

Lin Mo stood by the window, watching the sky outside gradually turn pale.

Twenty days left.

Twenty days until ignition.

In these twenty days, he had to resolve this activated backdoor.

He didn't know if he could do it.

But he knew he had to.

Because those people—Chen Xueming, Li Xiao, Zhao Gang, Fang Lin, Wang Zhenguo—were all looking at him.

Because that device was the culmination of all their hard work.

He took a deep breath and turned toward the console.

"Li Xiao, from now on, we're going to do one thing."

Li Xiao looked up, her eyes red, but her gaze was firm.

Lin Mo said:

"Race against it."