Release that Man

Cedrick’s identity was at most a source of entertainment at work, so naturally, Ye Shuang did not place her focus there. Han Chu spent most of the day away, and he only returned to the apartment around midnight. After a quick rest, the next morning, he called Ye Shuang and Anthony over to his place.

“Sit, the things Tony wants will arrive around noon, so you should go fetch them when you have time. Also, make sure Tony doesn’t stray from his work, and if there are any problems, call me.”

When Ye Shuang arrived, Han Chu looked like he was about to leave; he did not seem like he was going to stay for long. One would think that he was the father who was suddenly called out for work, reminding his wife to look after their son who had the habit of running away from doing his homework.

The drowsy Anthony yawned while seated at the dining table. As he munched on the sandwich, he rubbed his eyes. It looked like he might slip back to sleep at any moment. “I was dealing with the information until dawn, so I’ve slept for only an hour. You need to give me some time to rest.”

Han Chu had no pity for the man. “You can go back to sleep now. When the things arrive, Xiao Shuang will be here to wake you up.”

Anthony looked at the clock and faked some tears. “There is less than one hour until noon. Can’t I work after dinner?”

Han Chu stopped moving and turned his head to look at Anthony without a word.

“Fine, it looks like you’re not in agreement of that notion.” Anthony crumbled back weakly onto the table.

Han Chu huffed lightly and nodded at Ye Shuang, who was hugging her arms, enjoying the show. “Remember to watch over him.”

“No problem,” Ye Shuang promised with a smile. After packing all his stuff, Han Chu did not dawdle. When Su Zheng arrived, he grabbed his bag and left. Ye Shuang waited half an hour after lunch before hearing the doorbell from the carrier.

She could not recognize any of the tools, so she called Anthony to inspect them himself. After making sure that there was no mistake, she thanked the carrier. Other than ensuring that Anthony was working, that was practically her schedule for the rest of the day. After biting one apple, sipping two cups of coffee, watching three dramas, when the show cut to commercials, Ye Shuang finally got bored.

“Tony, do you mind if I go out for a while?” The bored Ye Shuang went to disturb the hardworking golden retriever.

Anthony lifted the small drill that he was holding. He pouted and shook his head. “I wish to leave as well, but I can’t. With you here, at least I have some motivation, but if I’m left all alone, I will feel that the world is too unfair.”

Misery loves company. Since he could not relax, he had to drag another down with him. If everyone had gone out to play and he was stuck indoor because he needed to work, then Anthony would go seriously crazy.

Ye Shuang sighed. “As a man, you should act more gentlemanly.”

“As a woman, shouldn’t you act kinder and gentler?” Anthony wiped away the tears that were non-existent.

Ye Shuang sighed and sunk back down into her chair. “But I’m so bored.”

“Hmm, I know.” The smiling Anthony also sighed. As he turned back to work, he said in a non-serious tone, “After I’m done, we can play.”

The table was not as clean as before. Other than Anthony’s laptop, there were also Ye Shuang’s notebook and the desktop that was moved there from the bedroom. Other than that, there were various devices on the ground flashing, signs that they were working. A cluster of electrical lines crisscrossed over the devices, and the three screens showed endless professional data and schemes. It only took a glance from a normal person to have a headache.

Even though Ye Shuang was a font of knowledge, she had no idea what the theory behind these things was. After all, on the other planet, the system of knowledge was not identical to that on Earth. Other than recognizing some hardware, other soft knowledge like AI science and nuclear physics eluded Ye Shuang.

Ye Shuang eventually got bored from staring at the three screens. So, she turned around to study the more eye-appeasing baby-faced golden retriever.

When a person was fully focused on something, they would subconsciously perform actions out of habit. Anthony normally liked to put on a cutesy face to let others underestimate him. When he was working, the corner of his lips would turn up, and he looked cute and sunny. If Ye Shuang did not know about his background before hand, she would not have suspected that this bright handsome man was a highly dangerous hacker.

After looking for a while, Ye Shuang could not help to reach out and poke the dimple on the golden retriever’s cheek. “If you run surveillance on an entire city, how much can you manage? How detailed can it be?”

“Hmm?” Anthony turned his innocent face around. He touched his cheek and blinked. “That depends… if the scale is limited to a city, the most effective method is to connect to the satellite, but are you sure that you want to survey an entire city and not a single person inside that city? You have to understand that the amount of information that happens every second inside a city is immense—a single person would not be able to parse all that information.”

Changing another hand, Ye Shuang poked at his dimple again. “Have you seen that racing movie? Is there a system like that sky watcher system, a system that tracks a person’s location no matter where he is in the world?”

“Who are you planning to track?” Anthony turned his head back to work while diverting part of attention to answer the question. “Naturally, the movie exaggerates. In real life, the system can only automatically follow a target’s movement through the street and not across countries. To reach the level shown by the movie, it is not achievable with a single program. To make a comparison, if you need to control the street, you need access to the satellite; to observe one’s phone, you need to access the ‘prism’; to observe the vehicle network, you need to access the CAN headquarters… This involves hacking through various confidential government bodies. No organization can access so much in secret and not trigger the detection by related bodies. That is not to mention the many programs that you need to run at the same time to control the glut of information that is going through at the same time…

“Of course, if you just want to track a single person, that is doable manually, but that also requires very high skill and extremely fast reactions.” Anthony puffed up his cheeks to think about it before adding, “Actually, one must be skillful enough to negotiate all these connections freely and have a hand speed of at least three hundred APM.”

“Hmm…” Ye Shuang hummed to herself. The American movies are getting more and more prone to exaggeration. Looks like I can’t trust everything I see.

Anthony was suddenly reminded of something, and he chirped excitedly. “But if you’re interested, we can go to Las Vegas together this July!”

After we deal with official business, we can directly register our marriage. The whole process can be done in fifteen minutes.

After all, Las Vegas was known as the city with the highest marriage rate. It was not a joking issue that the place was the go-to spot for newly-weds and honeymooners.

This way, there will be someone to bake gingerbread cookies and knit wool caps for me every year… Anthony thought sweetly.

“Go there to gamble?” Ye Shuang was confused.

“No, no!” Anthony shook his head. “We’re going to attend Defcon! I believe I can find a few old friends there, and we can try to build the system that is described in the movie.”

Ye Shuang typed this term that she had not heard of online. Half a minute later, she silently put her phone away and said with dark lines, “Thank you, but I think I’ll just stay within the country!”

It was the biggest conference for the elite hackers in the world where more than ten thousand electronic experts would be gathered. Every year, a large number of FBI and CIA agents would be there to recruit talent and capture any criminals. She would have had to have lost her mind to purposely go to attempt a map like that!

“Wait a minute, let me go answer this phone call. Don’t try to be lazy.” The phone happened to ring. Ye Shuang stood up and walked to the corner to answer it. As the call was put through, Edward’s lazy drawl came through the phone. “Hi girl, your little buddy has been apprehended by Luther’s people. Are you going to save that fragile handsome boy?”

“Handsome boy? Who?” Ye Shuang was confused. Who dared to use the term handsome before her these days?

Edward chuckled. “I assume you have not forgotten about that gentlemanly thief.”

“Cedrick?” Ye Shuang finally understood what the man was getting at. “Luther’s men were able to recover their boss’ face so soon? Regardless, they have to give Madam Grace face, so Luther probably won’t really harm Cedrick, right‽”

“That might not be true,” Edward said in a tone equivalent to a shrug. “If this Cedrick is obedient and if Madam Grace shows some grace, then perhaps the thief might be able to live, but who knows what emotions might overcome Luther. Perhaps he was suddenly struck by an inspiration.”

When the people from the organization were inspired, they would be far more dangerous than a normal person. Even Ye Shuang did not dare to say that she had complete confidence. Therefore, Ye Shuang knew that she had lost the argument. She grumbled, “Stop trying to go in circles. What is your purpose of telling me this?”

“Oh, who knows?” Edward chuckled wickedly. “Perhaps I want to know about the military arms information you have. Perhaps I want that 3D blueprints. Oh, perhaps I want nothing more than to make this bigger than it is so that Madam Grace and Luther would go at each other’s throats.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Ye Shuang warned. “There’s room for negotiation if the terms are relatively similar, but if you ask for too much, there is definitely no deal. Of course, I am the kinder person, but with Brother Han’s monster-like and brutish personality, he might not even care about Cedrick’s life…”

Before she finished, Han Chu’s voice came from the door, and the level tone that he employed made the content even scarier. “Monster-like and brutish personality?”

“Gasp!” Ye Shuang’s heart almost stopped. With her soul half-escaping her body, she turned to look at the handsome man walking through the door.

There was a small smile on the man’s lips, and he added for emphasis, “So, is that how you view me in your eyes?”

“Of course not!” At this crucial moment, Ye Shuang tried her best to stop the dam. She uploaded her skill of shamelessness and denied everything that she had said, “I was telling the fatty earlier, Brother Han, you are a paragon of rationality, calmness, and intelligence. You will never succumb to a threat of that horrible man!”

Anthony giggled and raised two thumbs up. Ye Shuang pretended not to see that and continued to ply her excuse. She did not hesitate to toss other people under the bus to change the subject. “Brother Han, someone wants to threaten us to surrender the military arms information!”

Han Chu tutted. He lowered his head to change his shoes and was too lazy to argue with a man, so he said softly, “Tell him, if we cannot find an ally in him, we’ll just approach Madam Grace with the truth and ask for her aid.”

Why should they be worried about another person’s son? To use another person’s child to trade for important information? Did Edward think that they were some kind of charity?

“Oh, okay.” Ye Shuang obediently relayed the words. After hanging up, she realized that something was not right. “Brother Han, how did you know Cedrick has been captured?”

Earlier, she was too flustered to notice that detail.

Han Chu walked into the room to check on Anthony’s progress. He had no idea what was happening, then he put down his bag, removed his jacket, and walked into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water before relaxing. “When Xiao Su and I found the local leader, he told us that a foreigner was kidnapped by another foreigner this morning. How many foreigners here would be involved in something like that?”

Grace, Luther, and Cedrick… Since it was Edward who made the call, then those involved must be within the other three. Cedrick was the weakest, so he was the most likely victim. If that was the case, what else could have been Edward’s purpose for calling?

The reality dawned on Ye Shuang, and she huffed. “He’s only calling when the kidnapping happened this morning? I believe he’s doing this on purpose!”

Then Ye Shuang got even more worked up. She was reminded of her earlier plan, and she sidled over. “Brother Han, I feel like this fatty’s stance is too hard to determine, and he appears and disappears like a ghost.”

She looked toward Anthony and thought with a frown. “I was thinking earlier, if we can get Tony to find a way to trace the man, I believe we may be able to get many more usable information from Edward.”

“Hmm?” Han Chu paused while he sipped on the water. He was interested. “Trace Edward? But his silicone masks pose a big problem. The person that we need to trace might change at any moment. If we need Tony to manually monitor him, it’ll be too much of a waste of resources… how about this?”

Han Chu turned to ask Anthony, “Tony, I have a bug that can be injected subcutaneously with me. Is it possible for you to enlarge its signal range and add remote controllability without changing its current shape and size?”

“Cough!” Anthony choked on air. “Han, you do remember I’m a hacker, not Doraemon, right?”

“I do,” Han Chu said matter-of-factly. “I remember you are an elite hacker that can make the impossible possible.”

“…Fine, I’ll give it a try.”