Security Vulnerability

When Baron Strucker gradually recovered from the numbness spreading through his entire body, he realized that the armor on him seemed to have been completely paralyzed. The display had gone black; perhaps the relevant circuits in its back had been damaged in the recent impact.

His limbs felt as though they weighed several tons, utterly unable to move. The power structures mimicking muscle fibers must have been damaged. But that was unlikely to have happened in the impact; it was more likely that someone had scanned the structure of his armor and precisely sabotaged it.

Yet the armor system was still running. Strucker issued the ejection command, and the intact mechanical components separated with a series of clicks. The heavy armor split open down the middle like a gray iron shell.

The Baron crawled out of the battered armor, filthy and disheveled. Only the Satan's Claw on the armor's right hand remained on him. This blood-red claw was a weapon completely independent of the armor system, and even on its own, it was a formidable weapon not to be underestimated.

Turning his head, he saw Ivan Vanko's armor deeply embedded in a nearby wall. The reactor in its chest had been blown apart from the outside, its functions completely paralyzed, and it was unknown whether Ivan himself was dead or alive.

Compared to that, his own condition was not too bad.

Strucker staggered to his feet. The moment he raised his head toward the exit, he discovered in despair that the Black Armor had already blocked his path, blue light glinting coldly in its V-shaped visor.

The Baron gritted his teeth and decided on one final gamble. With a low roar, he lunged forward. The mechanisms in Satan's Claw activated, and threadlike energy shrieked as it shot toward that icy figure.

Michael casually swatted aside the energy attack. The Baron darted in close, his blood-red claws blazing with heat as they slashed down viciously. Michael redirected his attack with one hand, then flipped his palm and seized Satan's Claw by the wrist. The system in his Gauntlet activated, power flowing into his palm. The sudden increase in grip strength effortlessly crushed the casing of the sophisticated Satan's Claw, sending sparks crackling wildly in every direction.

He lightly pushed Baron Strucker's shoulder. Deprived of his equipment, the Baron immediately fell backward, landing in a miserable heap.

Seeing that his last shred of hope had vanished, Baron Strucker finally gave up completely. He raised both hands. "All right, I lost, Dr. Norton. We all lost, utterly and completely."

He lay on his back atop a protrusion of shattered flooring with exposed rebar, slowly calming his ragged, frantic breathing.

"You dealt us a crushing blow. No one has ever done that before," he said. "But even now, none of us understands. How did you do it? How did you know everything? We considered every possibility and investigated every possible channel through which information could have leaked—"

"I'm certain you investigated, and more than once," Michael interrupted evenly. "But in truth, my source wasn't some hidden loophole. If I had to put it that way, your security vulnerability exists throughout your entire network system. It is everywhere."

"You're saying you hacked Hydra's internal network." Strucker sneered. "Impossible. No one in this world can hack into our network. It is so complex that even its creators are intimidated by it. The network systems of Hydra's branches each store a set of security protocols, yet they are all connected to one another. Attacking from any branch would alert the network worldwide."

"From the outside, perhaps. I admit that even I might not be able to do that."

Baron Strucker frowned. "You mean you started hacking our network while you were still inside the organization? That's even more impossible. That was over three years ago, and Hydra's network undergoes several full-scale purges every year. The security protocols are constantly updated and upgraded."

"But what I'm telling you is the truth." Michael interrupted again. He crouched down and leaned close to Strucker. "To be precise, I didn't take any aggressive action back then. I simply used the permissions I had at the time to create a backdoor in Hydra's entire network system, preparing for this day.

To be honest, it was indeed a long and massive undertaking. It took me one year, three months, and five days of persistence to finally complete it. It felt like a prisoner trying to escape by using a spoon to tirelessly dig at his cell wall every night—except I was digging through a firewall."

"But after you betrayed us, everything connected to you underwent a thorough review," Strucker said. "Even if your backdoor somehow escaped detection at the time, our network upgrades and self-checks every month. A vulnerability like the one you described couldn't possibly have gone undiscovered until now."

"Normally, that would be true," Michael said calmly. "But what if the vulnerability I mentioned could conceal itself?"

Strucker froze. "What?"

Michael continued, "What if it could think for itself, learn for itself, update alongside every system update, and relocate itself every time a self-check was performed?"

"Y-you mean... artificial intelligence?" Strucker was too shocked to control his expression. "You mean all this time... you hid an artificial intelligence in our network?"

"More or less."

Actually, that had not been Michael's original intention. According to his initial plan, he had merely wanted to dig out a one-time backdoor in Hydra's network, using the vulnerability to hack the security system of the base where he was stationed and help himself escape the organization's control.

But later, when he began studying this world's field of artificial intelligence, even he was startled by his own astonishing rate of learning. As mentioned before, the dimensional crossing process had somehow greatly enhanced his thinking ability in electronic information. Without even realizing it himself, he created the first artificial intelligence program of his life within Hydra—the prototype of Sherry.

From then on, that AI program took root inside Hydra's network. Every time he was promoted within the organization and gained greater security clearance, the roots of his AI dug deeper. Later, once it had learned enough, it no longer needed his help and gained the ability to keep digging deeper on its own. It learned to evade security checks in the data world, advancing into the independent networks of one Hydra branch after another until it silently infiltrated Hydra's entire network system.

When Michael left Hydra, he copied the core code of that original AI and used it as the basic framework to create the current Sherry. Today, it had become a part of Sherry. Its system maintained a one-way channel with Sherry, and for all these years it had continuously hidden within Hydra's internal network, gathering intelligence and secrets from every angle before relaying that information to Michael through Sherry.

That was why he could always stay one step ahead.

"You only need to know that much. I hope it helps you understand my next question," Michael said. "As for the ability data of those superpowered twins, as well as the experiments you conducted on them, I couldn't find that information in Hydra's network. So I'm guessing you hid it on some local server. Perhaps because you didn't want to share that information with the rest of Hydra?"

Baron Strucker snorted heavily.

"And the Scepter, sir," Sherry reminded him at once. "You told me to put it in the memo."

"Yes, the Scepter as well," Michael added. "The Scepter that gave the twins their superpowers. I believe that should also be in your possession."

"You want the Scepter?" Strucker frowned. "Then you'll be disappointed. The Scepter isn't in my hands. It was transferred long ago, but I don't know where it went."

Michael stared at him for a while, until the armor's lie-detection module combined its readings of Strucker's heartbeat, pupils, microexpressions, and other data, then displayed a prompt reading "Truth" on his visor.

"All right, it seems you weren't lying about that part. But it's fine. It'll show up again sooner or later," Michael said. "But you still have the experimental data, don't you? Tell me where it is."

"I don't know," Strucker answered coldly.

This time, the words "Lie" appeared on the display.

"Lying isn't a good habit."

"Then perhaps you should just blow my head off."

"That won't be necessary. You see, I was in Hydra. I know very well that you have certain special tricks for making people talk. But I've never been much of a fan of those methods. Compared with them..."

Michael raised his right hand. Dark green magical energy gathered in his palm.

"...I prefer my own methods."