Tali Zola carefully put the Claymore shotgun back into its weapon case.
She checked the safety latch three times, her movements as gentle as if she were covering a newborn baby with a blanket.
After the adrenaline subsided, that feeling of social anxiety and exhaustion returned.
" Chloe..."
Tali looked at Chloe O'Brien as he approached, her voice sounding somewhat sullen, her two fingers nervously twisting together.
"Was I too violent just now? Um... will the cleaning staff hate me? The bloodstains on the floor are hard to clean. Will Mr. Rorschach be angry with me?"
Chloe couldn't help but roll her eyes.
"Sir, those were three heavily armed terrorists, not the neighbor's little sister selling Girl Scout cookies," Chloe reassured her superior. "And Mr. Rorschach isn't angry; he even sent a text praising your 'pleasing' efficiency in handling the trash. That's his exact words."
"Mr. Rorschach found it pleasant?"
Tali shivered, and the glowing strip on her hood dimmed slightly.
"That sounds even scarier. What if he's going to write me down in that dark diary? 'Purple alien, violent tendencies, observation recommended'... Ugh, I'm going to be deported."
"No one will deport you unless you want to go back to that Migrant Fleet without antibiotics and drinking gruel."
Chloe sighed and forcefully steered the conversation back on track.
"Look at this. That squad leader wasn't lying; they really did come to steal the data."
Tali got into character.
The little girl who was trembling with fear a moment ago because she was worried about being written into her diary has disappeared.
She sat back in her swivel chair, her fingers leaving a trail of afterimages on the keyboard, her gleaming eyes fixed on the waterfall of data flowing across the screen.
"This isn't a simple download request," Tali's voice became more rational. "It's a two-way transmission. While they're trying to download the 'Superhero Genome Map,' they're also writing code into the underlying layers of our servers."
"Virus?" Chloe asked.
"No, that's too simplistic," Tali scoffed. "It's a location algorithm based on the principle of quantum entanglement. It seems the people behind AIM don't believe these bumbling thieves can smuggle the data out alive, so they want to turn Vought's mainframe into a signal tower."
Tali extended her left hand, clad in a multi-tool glove, and grasped a piece of red code from a distance.
"The architecture is outdated, looking like redundant instructions from the last century, but the core logic is extremely... malicious." Tali tilted her head. "It's mimicking our encryption protocol, trying to disguise itself as part of the system. Once activated, it can bypass the firewall and broadcast the ' Clock Tower's' real-time instruction stream directly to the outside."
"Damn it!" Chloe's expression changed. "In that case, every order Kusanagi issues to mobilize heroes will be monitored by the other side in real time?"
"That's theoretically true, but if you can't even get past me, how are you going to defeat Motoko?"
Tali released her grip, and the red code exploded on the screen, shattering into countless fragments.
"And they made a fatal mistake."
"What?"
"They're using Earth's programming logic."
Tali opened her personal terminal, and a purple octopus icon with an extremely cartoonish, even somewhat anime-like, style popped up on the screen.
"On my first day taking over the department, I replaced the underlying defense protocols with the Quarian Fleet's ' Pilgrim V3.0 ' system."
Tali gently pressed the Enter key.
" Chatika, serve the guests a 'dessert'."
The drone hovering in mid-air emitted an excited buzzing sound, and its two miniature projection probes emitted a beam of blue light, directly connecting to the port of the already burned-out black box.
"I not only intercepted their beacon, but I also slipped them a 'bait package' that looked delicious."
Tali's tone carried a sly glint of triumph.
"What's in that bait package?" Chloe asked curiously, "A fake hero roster?"
"No, that's a trick for children."
Tali shook her finger.
"I gave them what they really wanted—the original formula for Compound V. However, I modified the way two carbon bonds were linked in the molecular formula."
"If they manufacture super soldiers according to that formula..."
"Then they won't get Superman, they'll get a meat paste that explodes like a balloon." Tali shrugged. "Bang! A brilliant red firework. That was my favorite 'materials stress test' prank in my engineering class."
Chloe was silent for two seconds.
"Sir, remind me never to offend the tech guys."
"That was for self-preservation, for the sake of our homeland."
Tali muttered a proverb from her hometown to herself.
"Now, let's see who's so eager to receive this gift that's both fireworks and a beacon."
Tali stretched out a holographic map in mid-air with her hands.
As the decoy data was "stolen," a ghostly signal began to leap through the cyber world.
"The signal is being transmitted back." Tali stared at the glowing dot on the map. "It's been through seven jump pads. The first was in the Cayman Islands, the second was at an abandoned server at a Zurich bank, the third... um? A Pizza Hut in New Jersey?"
The speed of the light spot is getting faster and faster.
"The other side is very cautious and uses the onion routing protocol. But in the face of quantum tracing, as long as you have mass, you have nowhere to hide."
Finally, the light stopped.
It's not Washington, not Moscow, and not any known terrorist base.
That red dot stopped steadily in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, in a the Deep trench.
"Where is this?" Chloe frowned. "The seabed? Atlantis? Are we going to war with Poseidon wielding a harpoon?"
"No."
Tali zoomed in on the map coordinates. The area was uninhabited, but under deep scan, she could vaguely see the thermal reaction of some kind of massive man-made structure.
That's Leviathan-level data throughput.
"That's not Tony Stark's style. That narcissist likes to sign his name on every line of code."
Tali suddenly stopped; she suddenly remembered a piece of information in Vought's database.
Doctor Shinigami of the Shocker organization located Arnim Zola through Hydra's historical records and activated this Hydra elder.