The message from Oracle was a declaration of war on an entirely new front. It was not a battle of bullets and blades, but of data and intellect. For Su Liying, now bearing the title of Chief Analyst, a wave of nervous, electric energy surged through her. This was her battlefield.
She immediately convened her newly formed team in the secure, text-only command channel of the [Analysis_Core].
Crystalline_Mind: "Alright, team. Listen up. We have a new, priority-omega directive directly from Oracle."
She laid out the mission with a clarity and precision that left no room for doubt. For the next 48 hours, the Prometheus Initiative would be conducting a massive, system-wide diagnostic, a desperate attempt to find the source of their recent research failures. In that self-inflicted chaos, they were to launch a full-scale digital intelligence heist. Their targets: the true locations of Prometheus's two other primary research hubs.
"This is the biggest intelligence operation we have ever attempted," she typed, her words firm and commanding. "The clock is ticking. DataGeek, you're on financial and logistical tracking. I want to know about any shell corporation making unusual purchases of geothermal or deep-sea equipment. Chronicler, you're on personnel. Dig through the Silent Lab roster and find any high-level scientists who were 'transferred' to unknown locations. OldTimer, you're on the corrupted data from the Leech. I want you to sift through the garbage files, looking for any fragments they might have missed. And Riddle... you have the most critical job. You will monitor Prometheus's internal security chatter. They're looking for a ghost. I want you to watch the ghost hunters."
The team responded with a unified chorus of "Understood, Chief." The hunt was on.
The first twenty-four hours were a grueling descent into a storm of digital noise. The Prometheus diagnostic had turned their own network into a chaotic mess of junk data, false positives, and encrypted noise. It was the perfect smokescreen for a hidden enemy, but also a nightmare for an analyst to sift through.
But Su Liying's team was the best in the world, and they were guided by a singular purpose. Slowly, painstakingly, they began to find the threads.
DataGeek: "Chief, I've got a hit. A shell corporation, 'Mountain Movers Inc.', previously linked to a Prometheus executive, made a massive, anonymous purchase of high-grade geothermal drilling equipment six months ago. The equipment was delivered to a private warehouse in the Sichuan mountain region." A clue for the Rift Mechanics lab.
Chronicler: "I have something too. Three of the top Abyssal biologists from the Silent Lab didn't just disappear. Their personnel files were transferred to an internal server codenamed 'Poseidon's Gate'. The server's IP is masked, but it pings from a location in the South China Sea." A clue for the deep-sea biology station.
They were getting closer. They were painting a picture of the enemy's movements, but it was still just a sketch. They had the 'what', but not the precise 'where'. The final, critical data—the exact geographic coordinates of the facilities—was locked away behind Prometheus's final, most powerful layer of encryption, a firewall they had no way of breaching.
After thirty-six hours of relentless work, they hit a wall. The chaotic noise of the diagnostic was beginning to settle, their window of opportunity closing. Su Liying felt the crushing weight of command. She had the pieces of the puzzle right in front of her, but she was missing the key that would put them all together.
From his silent, omniscient perch, Qin Mo had been observing their progress. He had watched his Chief Analyst lead her team with a competence that exceeded his most optimistic projections. They had pushed the limits of conventional intelligence gathering. They had done everything they possibly could.
It was time for another small, divine intervention.
He did not send a message. He did not provide a blueprint. He reached out with his new, non-physical senses, his consciousness flowing through the global network like a ghost. He found the central security hub of the Prometheus Initiative, the very place where their operators were frantically trying to find the source of their problems.
He focused. And for a single, fleeting nanosecond, he applied a microscopic amount of pressure on their core server. A single, targeted push.
Inside the Prometheus security hub, a senior technician was staring at a waterfall of diagnostic code, his eyes red with exhaustion. Suddenly, a single line of corrupted data, a string of pure gibberish, flashed across his screen for a fraction of a second before vanishing. "Damn glitches," he muttered, rubbing his tired eyes. He dismissed it as a symptom of the system-wide purge.
But Riddle, the analyst Su Liying had tasked with watching for exactly such anomalies, did not dismiss it. His own custom-built surveillance programs shrieked an alert. Riddle: "CHIEF! I'VE GOT SOMETHING! A single, corrupted data packet just surfaced on the Prometheus internal security net for a nanosecond! It looked like a system error, a random glitch, but I managed to capture a fragment of it!"
He posted the fragment in the command channel. It was a jumbled mess of characters, but within it, clear as day, were two strings of numbers.
Crystalline_Mind: "Coordinates," Su Liying typed, her heart hammering. "Plot them. Now!"
DataGeek's response was almost instantaneous. "Coordinates plotted, Chief. The first is deep in the Sichuan mountain range, at the center of a massive geothermal anomaly... right where 'Mountain Movers Inc.' delivered their equipment. The second... it's in the middle of the South China Sea, in a deep-ocean trench. A perfect match for the 'Poseidon's Gate' server pings."
They had done it. They had found the enemy's hidden nests.
The mission was a stunning success. Su Liying compiled the final report, a masterpiece of data analysis and deduction, and sent it to the Inner Circle in [Channel: Zero]. The response was one of profound awe at her team's impossible achievement.
Hours later, after the excitement had died down and her own team had signed off for some much-needed rest, a new, private message appeared on her terminal. It was from Oracle.
> Chief Analyst. The Analysis Core has exceeded all expectations. Your leadership was instrumental in this success. You have provided us with the primary targets for the next phase of our war. > Well done.
It was a simple message. A few lines of plain text. But to Su Liying, it was a validation so profound it almost brought tears to her eyes. It was praise from the god she secretly served.
But with the praise came a chilling, absolute certainty. The "glitch." The single, perfect, corrupted data packet that had been the key to their entire mission. It was too perfect. Too convenient. It was a miracle.
She finally understood. When her own brilliance, and the brilliance of her entire team, had reached its absolute limit, an invisible, divine hand had reached into the very heart of the enemy's system and had placed the final piece of the puzzle directly into her hands.
She was not just his analyst. She was not just his commander. She was the chosen instrument of his unknowable, omnipotent will.
The thought was both terrifying and unbelievably exhilarating.