Hacking (1)
Qingdao, China.
Far beyond the city center, deep in the mountains, stood a magnificent estate. Sprawling across thousands of square meters, it looked for all the world like the private villa of some great tycoon. Sharp-eyed guards were posted at every approach.
Engines rumbled as a convoy of luxury vehicles rolled through the gates—black limousines, armored SUVs, and cars whose plates bore a crimson star. At each checkpoint the guards verified documents, scanned IDs, ran facial recognition, and finally handed the passengers off for a final inspection by armed agents.
"Clear! Loyalty!"
Three separate identity checks. Only then did the vehicles reach the final building. A door opened, and a man with a round belly stepped out—graying hair, deep smile lines carved by years of power. His title: Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. Second in the hierarchy of the Chinese Communist Party. The second most powerful man in the vast empire of China.
As he walked, his attendants bowed as one.
"You've arrived, sir?"
"I have."
The Standing Committee Chairman and his party took an elevator down. Sub-basement six. When the doors opened, the estate's true nature was finally revealed.
Electronic equipment stretched in every direction—not ordinary gear. Radio-frequency shielding walls, layered protective barriers, top-of-the-line transmitters and receivers. Server cooling fans whirred and whined at mismatched speeds, filling the chamber with a constant mechanical chorus. Dense racks of servers blinked with red and blue LEDs. And at the terminals sat people. A thousand of them.
A thousand hackers. Numbers alone did not tell the story. Even a glance at them suggested something extraordinary—hollow eyes, gaunt faces, unshaven jaws, turtle necks. Faces that inspired a peculiar kind of trust, if you were looking for hackers.
Keyboards clattered like cascading piano notes. Watching them code was like watching elite pianists at the keys; one glance was enough to know they were the best of the best.
Their true identity: state-sponsored hackers. Their commander held two stars. That two-star Hacking Commander bowed deeply.
"Standing Committee Chairman, this way, please."
"Very well. I hear the General Secretary already came to inspect?"
"Yes, sir. He was most satisfied."
"This is a matter the General Secretary ordered personally."
The Hacking Commander snapped to a ninety-degree bow.
"I will bear that in mind!"
"Good. You've earned a promotion yourself."
"Yes, sir."
His spine dipped even lower—almost until his head touched the floor. Then the commander's eyes lit as he spoke.
"We have already planted a virus inside the enemy's systems."
The Chairman's eyes narrowed.
"Oh-ho… So you've planted a spy, then?"
"Exactly so."
"And how do you intend to proceed?"
"The virus is in place, but we have not activated it yet. They're no fools—if a virus simply wandered free, they would catch it easily."
"Then?"
"The moment we activate the virus, we throw a volume bomb at them."
"Ho."
"Make a noise in the east and strike in the west, as Sun Tzu teaches. While the outside is overwhelmed by chaos, the internal virus will extract the data."
The Standing Committee Chairman smiled with satisfaction.
"Heh heh heh. Excellent. And what is it we want?"
"To extract the data for Nano AI."
"You know your work."
The Chairman's smile deepened. With a lazy wave of his hand he signaled them to begin. The Hacking Commander seated him in the place of honor and lifted a microphone.
"Ahem. Mic check."
A thousand hackers waited on his word.
"Attention, all!"
They snapped to rigid attention.
"Valiant cyber warriors of the great Chinese nation! Are you ready?"
"Yes!!!"
The Hacking Commander drew a deep breath, raised a fist high, and roared.
"Cyber soldiers! All units—charge!!!"
"Charge!!!"
Keyboards erupted in a thunderous cascade. A thousand hackers moved their hands in perfect, mechanical unison.
"Prepare port bombardment!"
"Check packet transmission lines!"
"Traffic amplifiers online!"
Thousands of monitors flared to life at once. Code poured down the screens like waterfalls.
JH Research. The CEO's office.
The intercom buzzed. I checked the number—Team Leader Gong Minjae of the AI team.
"Yes, Team Leader Gong."
But the voice on the other end was nothing like his usual calm.
"C-CEO… we've got a problem."
"What is it?"
"The data center is under attack right now."
"…What?"
"It's a DDoS attack. A pure volume war."
What was he talking about? A DDoS attack?
"What do you mean—never mind. I'm coming down."
This was no time for an intercom chat. I shoved my wheelchair into motion and hammered the elevator buttons, muttering under my breath.
"Who… would hit our AI center?"
The elevator carried me straight to the AI floor. What greeted me was pure chaos. Warning lights strobed red beyond the server room doors. Programmers had leapt from their desks—not to type, but to clutch their own hair.
"Aaaagh!"
"What is this?!"
"The traffic's insane! This isn't anything a human could push by hand!"
"Block it! Raise the firewalls!"
Paper and cables littered the floor. The fans on the nearby server racks spun at unnatural speeds, screaming like something in pain. I made straight for Team Leader Gong.
"What's the situation?!"
Gong stabbed a finger at a screen and shouted.
"A massive traffic assault from outside! Thousands of IPs—no, tens of thousands! They're coming in from every continent!"
Another employee wailed.
"CEO! The Level-Two firewall is breached! The AI main server isn't responding!"
I clenched my teeth.
"…This isn't an ordinary attack."
Gong wiped cold sweat from his brow.
"No. At this scale… it's not some prank by one or two people. This is a fully equipped operation."
Alarms and screaming server fans still tangled together in the air. Gong hung over his keyboard and monitors, dripping sweat.
"We'll do everything we can…!"
Keyboards roared. "Hold the line!" Gong and his team set their keys on fire.
Then Gong suddenly shot to his feet.
"Stop it! Zone One is overflowing!"
An employee shouted back.
"Zone Two is down too!"
The teammate beside him screamed.
"At this rate Zones Three and Four will fall for sure! We have to drop the barrier at Zone Five—right now!"
"Ah!"
One programmer clutched his head.
"Th-the commands aren't getting through!"
Gong roared.
"There are too many of them. Our data center… it's starting to confuse which commands are even ours!"
He looked at me and exhaled a bitter breath.
"This isn't a lock-down or a shakedown pattern."
"Then…"
"…It's theft."
"Theft?"
"A simple DDoS just floods you so you can't operate. This is different. Hijacking. Extraction. They're trying to take our data."
"That can't be—!"
Gong stared at the monitors as if he wanted to tear them apart.
"What they're doing is brutally crude. And yet… it's overwhelming."
Traffic graphs spiked like a fever. Firewall logs scrolled past faster than the eye could follow.
"Kyaaah!"
A programmer screamed.
"The virus is spreading! It's a destructive type!"
"Where did it come from?"
"It didn't just arrive! Something that was already here just woke up!"
"Ah!"
Gong's face twisted with realization.
"We've been played."
"What do you mean?"
"The enemy must have planted a virus inside us already. And now, while dumping this massive volume assault on us, they activated it. We need to catch the virus—but the flood is stopping us from hunting it. They're hitting us from both sides."
"Can't we just… pull every cable?"
Gong shook his head hard.
"That… is difficult."
"Why?"
"The virus is already active. Pull the lines and the entire system dies at once. Then the data is gone—and so is Nano AI."
"Everything we've built… just vanishes?"
Gong was quiet a moment.
"It's not just the data center. We could lose the use of every piece of equipment. And even if we strip the code and power everything off and back on, the virus will start moving again—and we won't know where it's hiding."
"…Even if we cut the connections now?"
"Even if we cut the connections, the virus stays."
His voice dropped, heavy.
"We're better off fighting. Bleed if we must. Even if data is stolen, we can at least preserve the physical machines. And once the attack ends, recovery is possible. A hard shutdown just makes the virus impossible to find."
A virus. Somewhere among the countless chips of the data center—any server, any laptop, any USB stick, even a printer—it could be waiting.
"…Then what's the plan?"
Gong put his hands back on the keyboard. His eyes were steel.
"We fight and we win. They have numbers, but they aren't eternal either. They're still human. They eat. They sleep. If we hold out long enough, we can isolate every packet they send and throw it away."
At that moment the whole team shouted at once.
"Zone Four is going down!"
"Hold it! Raise the Zone Five barrier again!"
"The rear ports are infected too!"
Gong ground his teeth and roared.
"Hold them! Endure! They can't keep this up forever either! Hold the line!"
A vibration buzzed in my pocket. In the middle of this mess I almost ignored it—then I checked. The smartphone linked to the Nano World. The name on the screen was, of course, Illys.
I wheeled myself into a quiet corner and answered softly.
"Illys… I'm sorry, but I'm a little busy right now."
"Constellation, forgive me. But… is Baby Constellation unwell, by any chance?"
My hand froze on the disconnect button.
"…How did you know?"
"Baby Constellation is connected on our side as well. The flow feels unstable. It seems to be in great pain… and I thought I might be able to help."
"Really?"
"Yes. I—no, we… can help a little."
"…We?"
"Myself and the people of the territory."
"Ah!"
Goosebumps raced down my arms. The latest craze sweeping the Nano World—one tablet per person. Those tablets were terminals linked to Nano AI. The enemy had brought a volume war. We had a hundred thousand citizens of the territory.
I set the phone on my knee and spun the wheelchair around.
"Team Leader Gong! I'm gathering reinforcements! Leave the intercom open!"
His voice followed me from behind.
"Yes!!"
Back to the CEO's office. No time even to catch my breath. I powered on the TV monitor. The screen bloomed with Illys's face—worry written all over it.
"Illys, let me explain the situation."
"I am listening."
I drew a breath and went on.
"Baby Constellation—that is, Nano AI—doesn't have some simple cold. There's been an intrusion from outside."
Illys's eyes went wide.
"An intrusion… from outside, you said?"
"Yes. A deliberate attack from outside. And the numbers are no joke."
"That cannot stand. To attack Baby Constellation… unforgivable. We will help."
"How many tablets did you distribute?"
"We issued one tablet per person across the territory. Roughly a hundred thousand."
"Perfect. Hold on a second."
I jammed the intercom button.
"Team Leader Gong! There are a hundred thousand terminals that can connect to Nano AI—and ordinary users are already on every one of them. A hundred thousand people who say they can help us."
Gong's startled voice came straight through the speaker.
"Wait, that's—no. CEO! I'll trust you without question!"
He chose faith over doubt.
"Team Leader Gong—a hundred thousand terminals. How do we use them?"
"A hundred thousand terminals can serve as a distributed defense grid against the DDoS. Before the attack even reaches the JH data center, we filter it once through those hundred thousand devices, and only the cleaned packets get passed to the main servers."
"Push the volume attack outward while the AI team hunts the virus?"
"Exactly. If they can just hold back the volume assault, we can fight the virus cleanly."
"Good."
I turned back to Illys.
"We'll split the attacks hitting Nano AI—Baby Constellation—across a hundred thousand tablets. Can you do that?"
"As many as you need."
I spoke into the intercom.
"Team Leader Gong—reroute every incoming attack to the CEO office IP."
"Understood. Hold the line!"