Morning.
Lu Zhou sat in the buffet restaurant at the Klinisia Hotel, enjoying bread and coffee while following his usual routine of checking his unread emails and browsing arXiv for the latest research in several fields he followed, including number theory, algebraic geometry, and differential manifolds.
The mathematics community had been quiet these past few days, with little interesting news. On specialized academic forums such as MathOverflow, most discussions were no longer about academic questions, but gossip from the mathematics community instead.
Not everyone had received an invitation to the IMU Congress, but almost every mathematician was following the international gathering that would soon open in Saint Petersburg.
Just as Lu Zhou was browsing a thread with a poll predicting the Fields Medal winners, a burly Russian man with sunglasses clipped to his collar sat down opposite him and whistled.
"Could I trouble you to stay in the hotel as much as possible today?"
Lu Zhou looked away from his computer screen and gave him a questioning look.
"Did something happen?"
"You could say we've run into a few problems." Taking the sunglasses from his collar and wiping them with a cleaning cloth, Maxim spoke in a casual tone. "Someone hacked into Saint Petersburg's power grid and inserted some malicious code. According to our National Security Intelligence Office's analysis, this may have been a premeditated operation."
Lu Zhou was speechless. "...Could something like that possibly not be premeditated?"
"You misunderstood me." Maxim raised his eyes to Lu Zhou and smiled slightly. "I mean this may have been a premeditated attempt to murder you."
The atmosphere at the table instantly froze.
Silence fell, as though a silence spell had been cast.
This was probably the first time.
His life had truly been threatened.
His throat felt a little dry, and Lu