American variety show: Sniper Elite

Chapter 15 Debt Collection Part 2
Beta picked up Matilda, who was disguised as a little girl, and secured her under his arm like a briefcase, then walked to the monitoring console. His fingers danced across the keyboard, and the entire monitoring system went black instantly.

“Remember the script.” Beta set Matilda down, casually pulling a Glock from the corpse’s waist and shoving it into her hand. “You’re a hostage now; you need to panic and run.”

He knelt down on one knee, meeting Matilda's gaze: "Go straight to that gray Ford on the corner."

Matilda skillfully cocked the gun, the metallic clang crisp and clean: "Understood, I remember. The whole plan is to disrupt the police investigation. Don't cause any trouble, don't run around."

“Remember,” Beta checked the pistol one last time. “This is a double-action trigger; if there’s danger, pull it all the way down.”

He patted Matilda on the shoulder: "Action."

Matilda instantly got into character, dashing out the door like a startled fawn. She stumbled across the street, her blonde hair flying in the night wind, perfectly timed to portray panic in front of the security camera on the opposite building. Turning the corner, her petite figure vanished into the darkness.

Beta watched her leave, then pressed the control panel. The lobby lighting system went out, and the electronic blackout glass activated. With a faint hissing sound, all the glass curtain walls facing the street gradually fogged up, eventually turning completely opaque milky white, completely isolating the four corpses lying in pools of blood from the outside world.

Beta pulled a magnetic card from the security guard's corpse and lightly touched it in the elevator's sensor area.

With a "ding," the elevator doors opened. He stepped into the car, feeling a sense of weightlessness, as the elevator carried him straight to the top floor where the servers were located. The heavy security doors to the server room were impenetrable by ordinary security cards. But in this money-driven world, no electronic lock is unbreakable.

Beta calmly pulled a "cell phone" from his pocket—a modified card writing device. As a blank card was inserted, the device's screen lit up with a blue light.

Beta placed the device's sensor area on the access control lock, and a connection progress bar immediately appeared on the screen.

The message "Connecting to system" flashed, indicating that the networked device had established a remote connection with a hacker somewhere in the world. The decryption program was quietly dismantling the access control system's defenses at a speed far exceeding the local computing power.

Data streams flickered on the screen, and countless lines of code scrolled rapidly.

In a dimly lit room across the ocean, a hacker who had never met Beta before was smoking a cigarette, his fingers flying across the keyboard. For a single gold coin from a mainland hotel, the hard currency of this underworld, he unhesitatingly offered his professional skills, using this small device to tear through layers of encrypted access control.

The access control system emitted a series of rapid electronic beeps.

First, the first red indicator light turned green with a "beep", and then the other four indicator lights changed color one after another, eventually forming a neat green light strip.

With a click, the heavy security door slowly opened a crack.

The hacking device in Beta's hand vibrated slightly.

The rewritten white card popped out automatically, then the screen flickered a few times, restoring factory settings and completely erasing all data, turning it into a brand new device without even a basic system installed, as clean as if it had just come off the production line.

Beta put the device back in his pocket and pushed open the security door.

A wave of cold, metallic air hits you, along with the eerie blue light emanating from the server array. Dozens of server racks are neatly arranged in a temperature-controlled environment, the hum of cooling fans creating a unique white noise in the enclosed space.

He scanned the server racks, unsure which server's hard drive to take. But Beta quickly found the answer. Some racks were equipped with electronic locks, while others used only ordinary mechanical locks. This design difference pointed Beta in the right direction.

Beta placed the white card on the sensor area of ​​the cabinet, and with a soft "beep", the cabinet door popped open.

A dense network of cables crisscrossed like a spiderweb, and indicator lights flickered in the darkness. He grabbed six running hard drives, violently pulled them out, and threw them all into a prepared anti-static bag.

Over the next ten minutes, he repeated the process, opening each lock-and-access cabinet and emptying all the hard drives. The heavy bags rattled in his hands, making a dull metallic clanging sound. Back in the lobby, Beta turned the air conditioning up to 36 degrees Celsius, 8 degrees higher than usual, and set it to automatically shut off after 5 hours. The change in ambient temperature would interfere with the forensic examiner's determination of the time of death.

Finally, he pushed open the glass door and disappeared into the London night.

The damp fog swallowed his figure, leaving only four corpses in the hall that were gradually warming up.

Turning the corner, the gray Ford lay silently in the shadows, untouched by the streetlights. Betta opened the car door and climbed into the passenger seat, finding Matilda still clutching the Glock, its muzzle pointed at the floor.

"Is it over?" she asked, looking up as her finger rested on the trigger guard.

Beta reached out and gently grasped the gun barrel: "Two things."

He deftly removed the magazine: "First, all traces of this gun need to be removed."

With a "click," the socket was disassembled.

“Second,” he said, separating the parts, “it’s too early for an eleven-year-old girl to play with this.”

Matilda squirmed in her seat, making it creak: "That's discrimination! If it weren't for me—"

Beta chuckled and casually pulled the blanket over her head: "Save your breath, go to sleep."

He adjusted the rearview mirror: "Let's sleep for a while, and then leave when the morning rush hour traffic gives us cover. Cars still scurrying around at this hour are as conspicuous to the police as lice on a bald man's head."

Matilda snorted defiantly, wrapped herself in a blanket, and crawled towards the back row like a silkworm, burying her face in the seat gaps.

Beta slowly reclined the driver's seat, placed his hands behind his head, and took a deep breath. His eyelids drooped, maintaining a light sleep state, his muscles relaxed but his nerves alert, ready to engage in battle at any moment.

Matilda tossed and turned under the blanket, adrenaline making it impossible for her to close her eyes. She propped herself up and asked in a low voice, "What do we do next?"

Beta, with his eyes closed, said, "Your scenes are finished, little one."

He adjusted the neck pillow: "You're not part of the rest of the plan. It's the same old problem: your height makes you as conspicuous as a moving police light on the street. Anyone with a discerning eye can remember you."

Matilda retorted, "I'll grow taller!"

Beta replied, "We'll talk about it when you've grown taller."

Matilda repeated, "I will grow taller!"

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　Beta: Local customers are just too unprofessional.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)