Chapter 35: Let Me Protect You (III)

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Chapter 35: Let Me Protect You (III)

Rowan’s computer had fairly ordinary specs. Judging from its condition, he hardly used it and hadn’t even bothered with the most basic routine maintenance. Shang Ke first patched several system vulnerabilities, then went online and downloaded a few useful tools, including programming software that supported multiple languages. If he could, he would have liked to replace the operating system as well, but unfortunately, this wasn’t his computer. He would have to wait until he had the chance to assemble one of his own.

“Keke, what are you doing?” Feng Juan leaned closer, curiously watching Shang Ke’s fingers fly across the keyboard.

Shang Ke paused and turned toward him. “Want to learn?”

Feng Juan nodded vigorously. He thought Shang Ke was incredible, as though there was nothing he didn’t know. First it had been English, and now computers. By comparison, Feng Juan knew nothing at all, and he hated the feeling of being left far behind.

“All right.” Shang Ke had Feng Juan sit beside him, then began teaching him how to use the computer from the most basic operations.

In this era, computer penetration in China was still below fifty percent, far lower than in Europe and the United States, and computer literacy among ordinary people remained fairly rudimentary. Of course, that only applied to the general public. It wasn’t as though there were no experts hidden among them.

Feng Juan truly was an exceptionally quick learner. Shang Ke only needed to demonstrate something once before he grasped it and could even extrapolate from what he had learned.

The morning passed pleasantly, with one teaching and the other learning.

Lunch was delivered by the officer assigned to protect them. By the time the officer left, Shang Ke somehow had an extra cell phone in his hand.

Feng Juan stared at him in astonishment. “You actually stole…”

“Shh!” Shang Ke motioned for him to keep quiet, then removed the SIM card from the phone and checked the device for Trojans or other surveillance software. Only after confirming that it was clean did he hide the phone inside a vase and flush the SIM card down the toilet.

“Keke, what are you planning to do?” Feng Juan asked.

“I need a phone for something. Hopefully that officer won’t mind.” Shang Ke gave the doorway an apologetic look. Once I have money, I’ll compensate him.

Rowan had given him some money, but it wasn’t enough to buy a cell phone. Besides, Shang Ke didn’t want Rowan to know he had one, so he had no choice but to resort to this. Now that he had the phone itself, all he needed was to use the money on hand to buy a new SIM card.

Feng Juan stared at him speechlessly. Stealing a phone was one thing, but he had actually stolen one from a police officer!

“Juanjuan, help cover for me in a little while.” Although they were currently under police protection, their freedom of movement was not heavily restricted. As long as an officer accompanied them, they were still allowed to go out nearby.

Under an officer’s supervision, Shang Ke and Feng Juan entered a small shopping center. At Shang Ke’s signal, Feng Juan helped divert the officer’s attention.

Shang Ke quickly bought a new SIM card and returned before the officer noticed. The entire detour took only two or three minutes.

They browsed for a while longer, bought some snacks and books, then headed home.

After returning home, Shang Ke retrieved the phone from the vase, inserted the new SIM card, then slipped into the study and began coding on the computer. He was writing a Trojan called Jumping Bug, which was not only highly difficult to detect but also capable of cross-infection between devices.

Back in the Hundred Training Space, Shang Ke had relied on his extraordinary memory to memorize the entire source code, so recreating it now came easily.

Shang Ke was completely absorbed in his work and failed to notice Feng Juan standing quietly beside him. Line after line of code flashed across the boy’s pupils as though an entirely new and wondrous world were unfolding before him.

Three or four hours later, Shang Ke finally finished coding Jumping Bug. Instead of stopping, he immediately began writing an counter-surveillance firewall.

Before Shang Ke had completed even one-tenth of it, Rowan hurried home.

Shang Ke quickly hid everything on the computer. Looking up and seeing Rowan’s serious expression, he couldn’t help asking, “Detective Rowan, what’s wrong?”

Rowan breathed a sigh of relief. “I couldn’t reach Jason’s phone just now. I thought something had happened to you.”

Jason was the officer responsible for protecting them—and also the unfortunate owner of the phone Shang Ke had stolen.

Without changing expression, Shang Ke said, “If his cell phone wasn’t answering, you could have called the landline here.”

Rowan fell silent for a moment before answering with two words: “I forgot.”

Shang Ke was speechless at first, but then felt a little touched. Rowan wouldn’t have been this anxious if he hadn’t genuinely been worried about them.

“Tomorrow I’ll take you to a Children’s Enrichment Center,” Rowan said. “Their supervision and security are both excellent. You can spend the daytime there.”

Naturally, neither Shang Ke nor Feng Juan objected.

That night, Shang Ke returned to the study and spent another five or six hours completing the counter-surveillance firewall. Rowan checked on them several times, but whenever he looked in, the two children appeared to be playing games. He merely reminded them, “Don’t play too long,” and left them alone.

Shang Ke installed both the firewall and Jumping Bug on his phone. Only after testing them and confirming that everything worked properly did he reveal a satisfied smile.

The next day, Rowan drove the two children to the enrichment center. While they were in the car, Shang Ke secretly took out his phone and activated Jumping Bug. The words Jumping… appeared on the screen. Ten seconds later, they changed to Jump Successful.

Shang Ke successfully transferred Jumping Bug onto Rowan’s phone. From that moment on, he could monitor every call, text message, and email on the device. More impressively, he could also use Rowan’s phone as a springboard to infect phones and computers within fifteen meters, provided those devices had Bluetooth or a network connection enabled and were not protected by particularly powerful anti-surveillance software.

Rowan led Shang Ke and Feng Juan into the enrichment center, where a female teacher immediately came over to greet them. Rowan had already spoken with the person in charge beforehand, so she showed no particular surprise at seeing the two children.

Shang Ke and Feng Juan were taken to a small class where more than a dozen children were playing. The youngest looked about six, while the oldest was no more than ten.

Rowan was very satisfied with the environment. After looking around once, he left, leaving a single police officer stationed outside.

The teacher responsible for them was named Julie. She first introduced the two boys to the other children, then led them to a cartoon-themed table and chairs and brought over a large pile of toys.

Shang Ke glanced over the selection. There was a Rubik’s Cube, Nine Linked Rings, jigsaw puzzles, a Tower of Hanoi, building blocks, shape cards, drawing supplies, and other educational toys.

Ms. Julie was probably trying to determine their interests so she could guide and cultivate them accordingly.

Shang Ke had little interest in children’s toys, but Feng Juan was quite curious.

He picked up and examined nearly every toy, with the sole exception of the Nine Linked Rings. Finally, he pointed at the Tower of Hanoi and asked Shang Ke, “Keke, how do you play with this?”

The Tower of Hanoi was the kind of puzzle used to test ape intelligence in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It consisted of three rods labeled A, B, and C. Several discs of decreasing size were stacked on rod A. Following the rules, the discs had to be moved back and forth until the entire stack had been transferred to another rod, with the goal of seeing how many moves it required.

Anyone who had studied computer science had probably encountered exercises based on the Tower of Hanoi. Its recursive solution was a classic introductory algorithm in C programming.

Shang Ke took the Tower of Hanoi and began moving the discs. Within a single minute, he successfully completed the puzzle six times using different sequences.

Feng Juan watched without blinking, while Ms. Julie looked equally astonished.

Shang Ke handed the puzzle to Feng Juan. Feng Juan first reproduced Shang Ke’s steps and completed it once, then began experimenting with different methods. In barely a dozen minutes, he had already worked out some of the underlying patterns.

Shang Ke suddenly realized that Feng Juan had real talent for computer science. The Tower of Hanoi algorithm itself wasn’t particularly difficult, but working through its logic could be painfully complicated. Without clear logical thinking, there was no way to derive it properly.

Ms. Julie watched the two boys working with the Tower of Hanoi, excitement rising in her heart. Neither of these children is ordinary!

After Ms. Julie walked away, Shang Ke picked up the Nine Linked Rings. “You don’t like this one?”

Feng Juan glanced at it and replied indifferently, “I got tired of playing with that ages ago.”

Shang Ke: “…” Could this guy actually be a genius?

Taking advantage of a trip to the bathroom, Shang Ke sat on the toilet, turned on his phone, and plugged in his earphones. Rowan’s call history immediately appeared on the screen, but Shang Ke ignored it. Instead, he activated Jumping Bug, had it search for networks around Rowan, then sent it hopping outward along those connections.

One gave rise to two, two to three, and three to the myriad things.

Shang Ke’s ultimate targets were the police service’s internal servers and electronic surveillance systems.

Although Jumping Bug could theoretically spread indefinitely, the limitations of the current phone system meant Shang Ke could only monitor one infected device at a time rather than several simultaneously. Moreover, once Jumping Bug spread to another computer, he could not remove it remotely unless he hacked into that device individually.

Shang Ke wasn’t worried about Jumping Bug being discovered, at least not for the next four years. It attached itself to other programs and could disguise its presence. As long as its main routine remained inactive, it was practically invisible and occupied almost no storage space.

With the technology currently available, no one would discover it unless they specifically conducted a targeted search for that kind of malware.

If Shang Ke had his own computer, spreading Jumping Bug would have been much easier. Unfortunately, for now he could only proceed one step at a time.

Over the next several days, Rowan practically became Shang Ke’s mobile carrier. Wherever he went and whoever he came into contact with, traces of Jumping Bug were left behind.

His persistence finally paid off. By chance, Shang Ke spotted the image of one of the organization’s members in surveillance footage. Following that lead, he located one of their hideouts.

“I think those two children may still be hiding some kind of secret,” Angelie said to Rowan. “Otherwise, there’s no reason those people would keep pursuing them so relentlessly—they even tracked them to the enrichment center. We still haven’t confirmed who the suspects are, but other than those two children, what could possibly be worth watching there?”

“I feel the same way,” another officer, Bant, agreed. “Rowan, you’ve spent the most time with those two. What do you think?”

Rowan shook his head. “Nothing so far. I’ll keep talking to them and see if I can get any useful clues. For now, let’s get back to the case we’re working on…”

Just then, a technician suddenly called out, “Come take a look at this. I received a strange email.”

Several people quickly gathered around. The email contained an audio file and an address.

When they played the recording, they heard a man on the phone apparently confirming the location for a delivery.

Rowan’s expression sharpened. “Can you trace where the email came from?”

The technician shook his head helplessly. “No.”

“Let’s go.” Rowan copied down the address from the email and immediately led his team out.

Whether the information was real or fake, they had to verify it.

Fortunately, the intelligence was genuine, and it allowed them to raid a criminal hideout.

At this point, however, they had not yet connected this small criminal group to Tobin Syndicate, the organization they had been investigating—the same people who had been keeping Shang Ke and Feng Juan under surveillance.

Over the next two months, the police service received three more similar pieces of intelligence, yet they were never able to trace the source.

After suffering raid after raid, Tobin Syndicate’s internal situation grew tense, forcing the organization to begin pulling back its operations.

The immediate danger to Shang Ke and Feng Juan temporarily receded, while Rowan and the others became fully embroiled in the fight against Tobin Syndicate. No one knew that a “child” had been quietly pushing everything forward from behind the scenes.

One year later, Shang Ke and Feng Juan were placed with a foster family, which received a monthly subsidy of $500. Although Rowan was extremely reluctant to let them go, he knew that given his personal circumstances and profession, he did not qualify to adopt them.

That same year, Shang Ke and Feng Juan officially became students at Fran Primary School and received their English names—Bruno and Ian.

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