Programmer

The city's air was especially fresh after a night of torrential rain. The whole city seemed to have taken a bath, washing the dust off the greenery lining the roads.

Huang Zhuowang pulled up the internet café's rolling shutter and stretched sleepily in his flip-flops. He raked a hand through his hair, decided he looked pretty cool, then settled contentedly into the swivel chair at the front desk. He switched on the computer, ready for a thrilling round of a shooter.

He played for a while and was just about to make some instant noodles when someone walked in. The newcomer's voice was as deep as a voice actor's. "I need an internet access card."

Before he could react, the man handed him an ID card. He took it in a daze and looked up again. For a moment, he seemed to hear his heart skip a beat.

It was as though a crack had opened in his peaceful life. The man before him stood distinctly apart from the internet café, which had faded into a backdrop. He looked like someone who ought to be conducting far more high-end business but had walked into the wrong place, as if he belonged on a different layer of the image.

The first thing Huang Zhuowang noticed was the man's extraordinary bearing. Then it occurred to him that this foreigner must be someone important.

Huang Zhuowang thought of the international mercenaries on the dark web. What's he doing in China?

"Are you going to process it or not?"

Xie De's face was expressionless, but he was getting impatient. He had already kept as low a profile as he could, wearing both a cap and a mask that covered almost all his features, along with perfectly ordinary clothes. How much longer was this guy going to stare at him?

"Oh, right, right." Huang Zhuowang quickly snapped out of it and gave an awkward smile. "Sorry, sorry. Right away, right away... uh."

Huang Zhuowang looked down at the ID, blinked slowly, and looked puzzled. Did the photo on this ID bear any resemblance whatsoever to the man in front of him? Even with the mask on, one glance at those striking brows and eyes made it obvious they were not the same person. At most, they bore a fifty percent resemblance. This was not something that could be brushed off with a simple claim that he wasn't photogenic.

The name was ordinary too, a perfectly unremarkable Chinese name-Xie De.

Damn, he's not even trying to hide it. And this fake ID looks so official!

"About this..."

"Put sixty on it." The man watched him with a casual gaze, but he hardly looked like someone to mess with.

"All... right."

Forget it. Better not make trouble for myself. Huang Zhuowang swiftly processed the card without daring to say another word.

At the same time, though, intense curiosity inevitably welled up in him, and he silently sized Xie De up.

Xie De was already irritated beyond belief. How could he spare any attention for Huang Zhuowang's barely contained curiosity?

He found an empty seat in the farthest corner. It was still early, and the café was almost deserted. Even those who had stayed all night were asleep, so he turned on his phone screen without much concern and told 455 to hurry up and get the computer online.

455's main code had become corrupted yesterday and was still under repair. It could no longer freely infiltrate the city's surveillance system and electronic device tracking system as it had before.

They had to use a more conventional method instead: find a computer, create a new user, use a proxy to get past the Great Firewall and download the necessary software, generate keys, and perform a series of complicated operations to add several layers of protection to their identity. Then they could sneakily, yet brazenly, open up the firewalls of those two systems and slip inside to look for someone.

The computer screen, which had only ever displayed games, finally got to show something sophisticated. Without warning, it filled with dense green binary code on a black background, scrolling up and down too fast to make out.

The camera behind him blinked red.

Huang Zhuowang stared open-mouthed at the surveillance feed he had brought up, zooming in again and again until his eyes were fixed on the screen. He had known someone like this could only have come to the café with an ulterior motive.

Huang Zhuowang might have been a little scatterbrained, but he was a genuine, high-achieving computer science graduate fresh out of university. He took some pride in his abilities. If he hadn't run into some academic trouble and lost the desire to stay at school, he could easily have earned a doctorate.

Of course he could recognize the code on the computer screen. Wasn't that the source code for their city's surveillance system? His professor had even taken him to a national competition to fix bugs in that very system back at university!

Good heavens!

Any other system would have been fine. Why did it have to be this one?

The competition he had participated in had gathered talented people from all over the country. Everyone had racked their brains over that system, building its firewall thicker than the Great Wall. Even a professional hacker hoping to crack it without top-tier equipment and skills would be dreaming.

So what I'm seeing on the surveillance feed has to be a hallucination!

Wait, calm down. Maybe this man works for the authorities. It'd be perfectly normal for him to have the source code. But why would someone from the authorities come to a little internet café like this? Is he carrying out some secret mission? No, he's a foreigner. How could he work for the authorities? No, he's probably mixed-race. He really could work for them!

Maybe he's an agent on a mission against foreign spies!

His thoughts took more twists and turns than a mountain road, and the more Huang Zhuowang thought about it, the more convinced he became that he was right.

He grew inexplicably excited, as though stumbling across secrets ordinary people could never access was something thrilling. He couldn't resist trying to investigate a little more.

But the next second, he abruptly realized the image on the surveillance feed was gone. The man stood at the front desk, silently watching him. Goosebumps instantly broke out over his skin, and his whole body stiffened like a mummy. He raised his head mechanically and offered a frightened, ingratiating smile.

"If I said I didn't look on purpose, and that I couldn't understand any of it and had no idea what it was, would you believe me?"

The man's gaze grew colder and colder. Clearly, he did not.

Huang Zhuowang felt as though he was about to cry. "Bro!" "I can sign a nondisclosure agreement! And, and I'm just an innocent, ordinary citizen with a completely clean background. I really didn't mean to snoop. I was just too curious."

"Bro, I've dreamed of living the kind of life you do ever since I was little. Please, take me under your wing. I came back from studying abroad at a top university, and my major was computer science! My university thesis was on artificial intelligence. I've applied for patents, and I specialize in cutting-edge technology! My paper was even published in an international journal. Bro, I'm talented too. I'm devoted to my country; I've just never had the chance to put my abilities to use! Please, let me work for you!"

Huang Zhuowang's eyes brimmed with tears. He was practically ready to leap up and demonstrate his worth.

Why's he suddenly gone crazy?

It left Xie De genuinely afraid to bring up canceling the card and getting his money back.

455 went into the surveillance system and took a few looks, then said thoughtfully, "Host, he seems to have mistaken you for some elite hacker."

"Then what do we do?"

455 considered it. "I think this guy's so excited he's about to pass out. Let's give him a way to contact us and talk this talent into working for us. Besides, if he's really that good, maybe he can help patch up my basic auxiliary code a little."

If he really could repair some of 455's damaged code, that would be an enormous help.

With that much said, there was little else to do.

Xie De wrote down a phone number and gave it to Huang Zhuowang.

"Wait for me to contact you."

With his heart racing and his hands trembling, Huang Zhuowang treasured it as though he had found something priceless. He felt his talent had finally found someone who could recognize it.

By the time his excitement subsided, Xie De was long gone.

When he went back through the surveillance footage, hoping to take a closer look, he was shocked to discover that every image of the man had vanished. He couldn't even find a trace in the computer's access logs.

If he hadn't still had that phone number in his hand, he would have wondered whether everything that had just happened was a hallucination.