Thunder
The light at the end of the corridor cast Lin Jing's shadow long, clearly showing the worry on her face. Her steps were hurried, yet she maintained her usual composure. Shen Zhiyan silently put away the encrypted communicator. The message on the screen, "Do not trust anyone, including your mother," pierced his consciousness like a cold thorn. His father's final warning and his mother's current concerned expression formed a sharp confrontation in his mind.
"Zhiyan!" Lin Jing walked quickly to him, her gaze sweeping rapidly between his face and the closed hospital room door, her tone carrying just the right amount of urgency, "How is your father? What did the doctor say?"
“He's stable for now.” Shen Zhiyan said succinctly, his gaze calmly meeting his mother's. “It was a sudden myocardial infarction, but the discovery and hospitalization were timely.” He didn't reveal what his father had said before falling into a coma, nor did he mention the timed message. Trust, at this moment, became a variable that needed to be reassessed.
Lin Jing seemed relieved, but her brows did not relax: "How could it suddenly become so serious... Did he say anything to you while he was inside?" Her question sounded like a natural expression of concern.
"He only said some vague things, about the past, about... Li Qingyun." Shen Zhiyan deliberately brought up this name, carefully observing Lin Jing's reaction.
A fleeting, unnatural expression crossed Lin Jing's face, as if a long-forgotten corner had been touched, but she quickly regained her composure. She sighed softly, her tone carrying a complex emotion: "Aqing... that was a long time ago. Your father has carried this burden in his heart all these years."
Her reaction was flawless, conveying both regret for past acquaintances and understanding of her husband's inner turmoil. However, it was precisely this overly natural reaction that stirred a slight ripple in Shen Zhiyan's wary heart.
At this moment, the attending physician came out of the ward and informed the family that Shen Huaiming was out of danger, but needed absolute rest and should not be subjected to any further stimulation in the short term. Lin Jing listened attentively, occasionally asking about a few details, behaving exactly like a wife worried about her husband.
Shen Zhiyan stood to the side, his mind racing. His father's preconceived information, his mother's current behavior, the clues pointing to the Beichen Research Institute, and the mysterious "vaccine"... all these fragments needed a safe and undisturbed environment to integrate and analyze. He couldn't stay in the hospital any longer; there were too many eyes and ears, and the variables were uncontrollable.
"Mom," Shen Zhiyan said after the doctor left, her voice tinged with barely perceptible weariness, "I'll leave this to you and the medical staff. I'm a little tired, so I'll go back and take care of some things."
Lin Jing turned her head and looked at him with concern: "That's good, you don't look too well either. I'll take care of things here, don't worry." She raised her hand, as if to straighten his slightly wrinkled collar, her movements natural.
Shen Zhiyan subtly shifted his body, avoiding her hand, his tone remaining steady: "Thank you for your hard work." He then turned and left, his steps firm, without looking back. He could feel his mother's gaze lingering on his back until he turned the corner of the corridor.
Back in the car, Shen Zhiyan didn't start the engine immediately. He sat in the driver's seat, the car deathly silent. He took out the encrypted communicator again, pulled up the message, and his gaze fell on "Don't trust anyone, including your mother" and the infinity symbol "∞".
This symbol... has appeared in both his and Li Qingyun's surviving manuscripts, and is usually used to represent a self-iterating, never-ending system, or... an infinitely looping observation pattern.
He connected to Jiang Mo's encrypted channel and, instead of using voice, quickly typed text, concisely conveying the situation at the hospital, his father's warning, and clues about the "Beichen Research Institute" and the "vaccine."
Almost instantly after the message was sent, Jiang Mo replied, also in text format:
"Understood. The 'Beichen Research Institute' has been abandoned for a long time, has complicated ownership, and is surrounded by basic security. Linda has managed to obtain some of the original architectural drawings from back then, and there is indeed an undisclosed, independent structure underground, marked as 'Archives.' The entrance is hidden. When do we make our move?"
Shen Zhiyan stared at the words on the screen, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. Action was inevitable, but her father's warning lingered like a ghost. If her mother was truly untrustworthy, then their every move might have already been anticipated by the "observer."
He hesitated for a moment, then replied:
"Tomorrow night at 11 PM. We need a solution that can bypass all conventional and unconventional monitoring. Activate the 'Mirror' protocol."
The "Mirror" protocol is their pre-set, top-level concealment scheme that uses data forgery and behavioral misrepresentation to create false action trajectories in order to cover up their true intentions.
"Received. Deploying." Jiang Mo's reply was crisp and efficient.
After arranging everything, Shen Zhiyan slowly started the car and drove away from the hospital. The city's neon lights cast shifting shadows on his face through the car window. He felt an unprecedented loneliness, as if walking on a thin tightrope, with abysses of mist on both sides, and even what he thought was the most solid support now seemed precarious.
However, when he thought of the person in the studio who was developing plans for him and working alongside him, the loneliness seemed to lessen somewhat. Trust may need to be redefined, but some connections have already transcended suspicion and calculation.
He drove back to the cultural and creative park, but did not immediately enter the studio. Instead, he slowly circled the perimeter and used the vehicle's onboard equipment to conduct a counter-surveillance scan. After confirming that there were no abnormal surveillance signals, he quietly returned to the studio, which was full of unknowns and hopes, through an inconspicuous emergency passage.
Pushing open the heavy soundproof door, the studio was dimly lit, illuminated only by a few essential indicator lights. Jiang Mo was working intently at the control panel, the screen displaying complex data streams and 3D architectural models. Hearing the sound, she turned around, a hint of fatigue on her face, but gave him a reassuring smile.
Just then, the backup server on one side of the main control panel, which had been quietly receiving external information, suddenly emitted a short, sharp beep, unlike any other warning tone. A red warning window automatically popped up on the screen, displaying only one line of large, flashing text:
"Warning: An unauthorized access attempt was detected to the 'Mirror' protocol keystore. Source: Internal."
The air froze instantly.
Jiang Mo's smile froze. She abruptly turned to look at the main control screen, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she retrieved the access logs. Shen Zhiyan strode to her side, his sharp gaze sweeping over the data stream on the screen.
Logs show that just three minutes earlier, a process masquerading as a system maintenance task attempted to access the core encryption key of the "Mirror" protocol, triggering the highest-level intrusion alert he had set. The traced IP address, after layers of redirection and spoofing, ultimately pointed to—
The studio's internal network.
The threat doesn't come from external hackers, nor from distant "observers," but from the very internal space they currently inhabit, which they thought was absolutely safe.
Shen Zhiyan's eyes suddenly turned icy cold. He slowly raised his head, his gaze sweeping over every corner of the dimly lit studio: the server racks, the unused office area, even the glass door leading to the small courtyard at the back... This place was no longer just a refuge, but had become a potential prison that needed to be carefully examined.
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