Debt Collection II

Beta scooped up Matilda, disguised as a little girl, tucked her under his arm like a briefcase, and walked to the surveillance console. His fingers danced across the keyboard, and the entire monitoring system went black in an instant.

"Remember the script." Beta set Matilda down and casually pulled a Glock from a corpse's belt, stuffing it into her hand. "You're a kidnapped hostage now. You need to panic and run."

He dropped to one knee, meeting Matilda's eyes. "Go straight to the gray Ford at the street corner."

Matilda expertly racked the slide, the metallic click crisp and clean. "Understood. I remember. The whole plan is to interfere with the police investigation. Don't create complications, and don't run around."

"Remember." Beta gave the pistol one last check. "It has a double-action trigger. If there's danger, squeeze it all the way."

He patted Matilda on the shoulder. "Move."

Matilda instantly slipped into character and rushed out like a startled fawn. She stumbled across the street, her blond hair flying in the night wind, putting on a perfectly timed display of panic before the surveillance camera on the building opposite. Once she turned the corner, her small figure vanished into the darkness.

Beta watched her leave, then pressed the control panel. The lobby lights went out at once, and the electronic blackout glass activated. Amid a faint electric hum, every glass curtain wall facing the street gradually frosted over, finally turning completely opaque milky white and sealing off the four bodies lying in pools of blood from the outside world.

Beta pulled a keycard from a security guard's corpse and lightly tapped it against the elevator sensor.

With a ding, the elevator doors opened. He stepped into the car and felt the brief sensation of weightlessness as it carried him directly to the top floor, where the servers were located. A standard security card could not open the heavy security door to the server room. But in this world where money came first, no electronic lock was impossible to crack.

Beta calmly took a "phone" from his pocket—a modified card-writing device. As a blank card was inserted, the device's screen lit up blue.

Beta pressed the device's sensor area against the access lock, and a connection progress bar immediately appeared on the screen.

The words "Connecting to system" blinked as the networked device established a remote connection with a hacker somewhere in the world. The decryption program was quietly dismantling the access system's defenses at a speed far beyond the local hardware's computing power.

Data streams flickered across the screen, countless lines of code scrolling at high speed.

In a dark room across the ocean, a hacker who had never met Beta sat with a cigarette between his lips, his fingers flying over the keyboard. For a Continental Hotel gold coin—the hard currency of the underground world—he had not hesitated to offer his expertise, using this tiny device to tear through layers of encryption protecting the access system.

The access system let out a rapid string of electronic beeps.

First, the first red indicator light turned green with a beep. Then the remaining four lights changed color in succession, eventually forming a neat band of green light.

With a mechanical click, the heavy security door slowly sprang open a crack.

The cracking device in Beta's hand gave a faint vibration.

The rewritten blank card ejected automatically. The screen flickered a few times, then restored itself to factory settings. All data was completely wiped, leaving behind a brand-new device without even a basic operating system installed, as clean as if it had just rolled off the production line.

Beta slipped the device back into his pocket and pushed open the security door.

A blast of cold air carrying the scent of metal hit him, accompanied by the dim blue glow of the server array. Dozens of server racks stood in neat rows within the temperature-controlled room, the hum of cooling fans forming a distinctive white noise in the sealed space.

He surveyed the racks, unsure which servers' hard drives he should take. But Beta quickly found the answer. Some racks were fitted with electronic sensor locks, while others used only ordinary mechanical locks. That difference in design pointed him toward his target.

Beta pressed the blank card against a rack's sensor area. With a soft beep, its door popped open.

Dense network cables tangled together like a spiderweb, indicator lights blinking in the darkness. He grabbed six running hard drives, tore them out by force, and tossed them all into the prepared anti-static bag.

Over the next ten minutes, he repeated the process, opening every rack with a sensor lock and clearing out all its hard drives. The heavy bag swayed in his hand, producing dull clinks of metal striking metal.

After returning to the lobby, Beta set the air conditioning to 36 degrees, eight degrees higher than before, and programmed it to shut down automatically after five hours. The changing ambient temperature would interfere with the coroner's estimate of the time of death.

At last, he pushed through the glass doors and melted into London's night.

The damp fog swallowed his figure, leaving only the four bodies in the lobby, slowly warming.

Around the corner, the gray Ford lay quietly hidden in a shadow beyond the reach of the streetlights. Beta opened the door and slipped into the front passenger seat, finding Matilda still gripping the Glock with its muzzle pointed at the floor.

"Is it over?" she asked, looking up, her finger hooked around the trigger guard.

Beta reached out and gently held the barrel. "Two things."

With practiced movements, he removed the magazine. "First, we need to get rid of every trace on this gun."

With a click, he disassembled the slide.

"Second." He set the parts down separately. "An eleven-year-old girl is still too young to be playing with this."

Matilda wriggled in her seat, making it creak. "That's discrimination! If it hadn't been for me just now—"

Beta chuckled and casually tossed a blanket over her head. "Save it. Go to sleep."

He adjusted the rearview mirror. "Get some rest. We'll leave once the morning rush gives us cover. At this hour, any car still wandering around the streets stands out to the police like lice on a bald head."

Matilda gave an unconvinced huff, wrapped herself in the blanket, and wriggled toward the back seat like a silkworm, burying her face in the gap between the seats.

Beta slowly reclined the driver's seat, folded his hands behind his head, and took a deep breath. His eyelids gradually drooped as he maintained a light sleep, his muscles relaxed but his nerves alert, ready to enter combat at any moment.

Matilda tossed and turned beneath the blanket, the adrenaline keeping her wide awake. She propped herself halfway up and asked in a low voice, "What are we doing next?"

Beta kept his eyes closed. "Your scenes are wrapped, squirt."

He adjusted the position of his neck pillow. "The rest of the plan doesn't involve you. Same old problem—you're so short that walking down the street makes you stand out like a moving police light. Anyone paying attention could remember you."

Matilda retorted, "I'll grow taller!"

Beta replied, "Talk to me when you do."

Matilda repeated, "I'll grow taller!"

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Beta: The local clients are seriously too unprofessional.