"Headquarters! Headquarters, do you read!"
"We've secured a genuine S-class sample!"
"Repeat-"
"Its post-mortem Nen... has been successfully extracted!"
Orders came swiftly through the communicator, the speaker unable to suppress his excitement. "Upload the complete data and withdraw immediately! Suspend the Purge Protocol. Reset the countdown to ten minutes!"
Hearing this exchange, Bai Zhu merely raised an eyebrow.
He glanced at Milluki beside him: How are things on your end?
Milluki stared fixedly at his terminal screen, his massive shoulders shaking as he struggled to hold back a burst of laughter. He gave Bai Zhu an "OK" gesture, then quickly replied over a channel only their small group could hear.
"The fake-data upload link is running normally. Anvil headquarters just sent its third 'data validity confirmation.' The post-mortem Nen being extracted into that box and the 'battle footage' we're uploading aren't even going through the same network cable."
Camilla caught on as well. Her lingering terror quickly gave way to greed, and she asked in a low voice, "Do we act now?"
Bai Zhu shook his head, signaling them to wait.
He wanted this "data mule" to reveal every last hidden card before sending him on his way.
"Look at this!" Milluki excitedly turned his screen toward the other two. It clearly displayed a flowchart of the entire data-switching process.
"I used the backdoor my brother left to hijack upload permissions for the entire Hive Base Station in the Basha Islands. The 'live data stream' the Overseer thinks he's sending to headquarters has actually all been rerouted into my local cache drive."
He pointed to another green line and lifted his chin smugly.
"I also planted a timed 'data degradation virus' in the fake packets. For seventy-two hours, everything they receive will look perfectly normal. After that, the data will