The Data Packet Ghost

SRO-7.

That code had appeared again. Not through a roaring phone call, not through a distorted electronic voice, but as a 1 KB encrypted data packet, appearing like a ghost in the depths of the network before vanishing in an instant.

A signal. An echo.

He was telling me he was still there. Neither the Gatekeeper's annihilation nor Shao Guoping's self-induced meltdown had broken him. He had simply found a more concealed way to exist, one more in keeping with his "rules."

He was responding to my "iteration." In his own way.

An ice-cold data packet. Unbreakable encryption. From the deep waters of SRO-7.

He was showing off. Reestablishing contact while wresting the initiative back into his own hands. He was saying: look, I still control a realm you cannot reach.

My heart beat steadily in my chest. There was no anger, only a rekindled, icy excitement.

Yes, exactly. Mentor. Of course you wouldn't disappear so easily. How boring the game would be if I were the only one left.

That data packet... what was inside it? A new warning? Terms for a negotiation? Or... another trap?

Decrypt it? No. That would mean dancing to his tune. He would anticipate all my attempts to decrypt it and set up surveillance and traps accordingly.

I needed to respond. But not to the contents of the packet. To the act itself.

I needed a judgment. One that would puncture this "technical showmanship" with precision and tell him I didn't care in the slightest about his data tricks.

The target needed to be a vast, living, walking "data vulnerability." Someone who made a living devouring and manipulating information, whose very existence was the ultimate mockery of "cybersecurity." Their death shouldn't expose any specific "information." That would make me seem too invested. It should create only... an absolute vacuum at the informational level. A black hole that would terrify everyone who depended on information to survive.

My gaze swept like the most precise scanner across the chaotic analyses of Shao Guoping's death and the scattered technical discussions of the mysterious data packet on my screen. Information was power. Then who was selling that power?

Found it.

Insight Seer Ltd. Not a particular person, but an exceptionally mysterious private company offering "strategic intelligence analysis." No public address, no named executive, a confidential client list. But rumors within the industry claimed that what they sold wasn't ordinary business intelligence. It was "deep insight" capable of swaying national policy, overturning entire industries, and even triggering regional unrest. Their prices were outrageous, yet clients kept coming. Supposedly, their core asset wasn't a database, but a chief analyst code-named "Metis," whose abilities verged on prophecy.

An information broker. A ghost hiding in the shadows, selling the future to the highest bidder.

Her death should be... absolute informational silence.

I walked over to the desk. The Death Note lay open, its pages faintly yellowed, every word on them seeming to carry a cold weight.

["Metis"] (Her cognitive abilities are deeply integrated with the company's core analysis network, ["Oracle"]. Real name: Katherine Rain.)

Cause of death: cognitive overload. Time: four tomorrow afternoon, during her weekly closed-door video briefing on global trends (attendees include several multinational CEOs, foundation chairpersons, and political figures from certain small nations). Cause of death: her brain will briefly synchronize with the Oracle network at an overclocked rate, forcibly receiving and processing, within one millisecond, one percent of all unencrypted electronic communications worldwide from the next seventy-two hours (a massive volume of disordered noise), resulting in instantaneous brain death. Before death (at the instant of synchronization), she must transmit through the videoconferencing system to all attendees a three-second, extremely high-frequency shriek produced by vibrations in her throat, impossible for any software to eliminate (containing infrasonic and ultrasonic components), and cause every terminal worldwide running Insight Seer's analysis software to blue-screen simultaneously, displaying the same error code: [0xINFINITE_LOOP].

No data leak. Only an absolute information storm directed at the information predator herself. A brain bursting and software crippled across the globe.

This had nothing to do with technical details or encryption algorithms.

This was the purest, most violent form of... execution at the informational level.

Mentor, could your data packet compare to this?

The next day, at precisely four in the afternoon.

In dozens of lavishly furnished private offices and safe houses around the world, the heavyweight attendees joined the encrypted video conference on time, ready to hear Metis's insights.

The screens lit up, but the woman who appeared was not the usual calm, perceptive analyst.

Katherine Rain sat in her chair, her face deathly pale, her pupils dilated to their limits, as though she had seen something unimaginably horrific.

Then-

"AAAAAAAH!!!!!"

An indescribable shriek, impossibly high and impossibly low, blending the limits of human vocal cords with some inhuman frequency, exploded from her throat! It pierced the limitations of the top-of-the-line audio equipment and stabbed viciously into every attendee's eardrums!

Squelch!

Almost at the same instant the shriek erupted, her head jerked backward as though an invisible hand had wrenched it violently. Thick blood gushed from her eyes, nostrils, and ears, and her entire body went limp.

The video feed cut off abruptly.

At the same moment!

Across the globe, every computer with Insight Seer's analysis software installed, whether active or on standby, instantly blue-screened! Cold white code flashed across deep blue backgrounds before freezing on the same error message-

[0xINFINITE_LOOP]

The information black hole arrived on schedule.

In my room, the screen displayed chaotic reports from around the world about a sudden mass blue-screen incident and a horrific accident during a mysterious online meeting.

Ryuk slowly stood up. No longer curled into himself, he unfolded his enormous body, but his wariness and scrutiny hadn't diminished in the slightest. His crimson eyes fixed on the constantly refreshing [0xINFINITE_LOOP] on the screen, and a low rumble rose from his throat, sounding somewhere between confusion and caution.

He was waiting.

So was I.

Waiting for the data packet ghost to respond.

This time, he didn't keep me waiting long.

Half an hour after the blue-screen incident.

There was no ringtone.

The burner phone I had left on the desk suddenly lit up by itself.

There was no caller ID.

Only a single line of cold white text abruptly appeared in the center of the screen, like a system error message.

[Peak volatility: 3.7 sigma. Spillover range: controllable.]

The text remained for five seconds.

Then the screen went dark.

Dead silence returned.

I watched the screen turn black again, tapping my fingers lightly against the desk.

Volatility. Sigma. Controllable.

He was evaluating my judgment in his own terminology.

He was trying to drag this incomprehensible "informational silence" back into a realm he could measure and analyze.

He was telling me: I understood it. This was still within my model's predictions. The fluctuation was just a little larger.

Laughable.

And pathetic.

I picked up the phone, brushing my thumb across its cold screen.

Very well.

Mentor.

Keep making your model predictions.

I'll keep...

Iterating.

Let's see whose "volatility"

Breaks beyond the controllable range first.