Chapter 136
She pulled out her phone and saw it was Mireille calling.
Instantly, Charlotte felt something was wrong.
It was so late—why would she suddenly call? Unless...
At that thought, Charlotte quickly swiped to answer.
"Hello? What's going on?"
"Ms. Johnson, we have a problem! The company... the company's core database is under attack! They're hitting us hard, and our firewall's about to give out!"
On the other end, Mireille's voice was thick with tears, her emotions running high.
Charlotte's eyes sharpened the moment she heard those words.
The Langley Group's core database held all the company's trade secrets—it was the foundation of The Langley Group's future! There could be no mistakes!
"Hold steady! Cut all external network access immediately! Switch to backup servers and buy us time! I'm on my way!"
After issuing those instructions, Charlotte hung up and turned to leave.
"I'll drive you." Alexander had somehow already grabbed the car keys from the coffee table. He stepped in front of Charlotte, his tone brooking no argument.
Charlotte looked at his serious expression, warmth flooding her chest.
But she knew there was nothing he could do about this.
So she shook her head. "It's okay. This is an internal company issue—I can handle it myself."
Before leaving, she glanced back at Alexander. "Get some rest."
Then, without giving him a chance to respond, she pulled open the door and vanished into the night.
Alexander stood there, staring at the hastily closed door, his brow furrowed.
After a moment, he pulled out his phone and dialed a number.
"Look into what's happening at The Langley Group right now."
The black sedan tore through the quiet streets. Charlotte stared at the road ahead, her mind racing.
Whoever was attacking The Langley Group's core database—and could pinpoint the weak spots in their network architecture with such precision—was no amateur.
A business rival? Some kind of underground organization? Or were they specifically targeting her?
Charlotte bit down hard, frustration creeping across her face.
Fifteen minutes later, she arrived at The Langley Group.
The building was still blazing with light, especially the top floor where the IT department was located—it looked bright as day.
The moment Charlotte stepped inside, she was hit with a cacophony: the clatter of keyboards, frantic shouting from staff members, and the piercing wail of alarms—all competing to give her a headache.
On the massive central screen, endless streams of red data cascaded down like a waterfall, relentlessly battering the blue firewall.
"Hold the line! The third defense layer's about to break! Quick! Activate Barrier Plan B!"
Arthur Pembroke, the IT manager—a man in his forties—was drenched in sweat, his voice hoarse as he barked out commands.
"It's no use, Mr. Pembroke! They've bypassed our tracking—they're like a ghost, we can't lock onto them!" A young programmer hammered away at his keyboard before crying out in despair. "And they've locked us out of the activation password for the plan!"
"What?!" Arthur reeled as if struck by lightning, his body swaying.
Just as everyone sank into despair, convinced they wouldn't be able to hold out this time, a cool voice cut through the chaos.
"Everyone move."
All heads turned to see Charlotte striding toward them with purpose.
The panicked employees instinctively parted to let her through.
"Ms. Johnson!" The moment Arthur saw Charlotte, it was like seeing his savior. "Thank God you're here!"
Though many in the company knew that their new arrival—the chairman's biological daughter—was the legendary top-tier hacker known only as 'S,' this was the first time most of them would witness it firsthand.
Charlotte didn't waste a single word. She walked straight to the main console.
The programmer immediately stood up and vacated his seat.
Charlotte glanced at the dizzying display on the screen, then her hands flew across the keyboard.
"They're using a three-layer disguised distributed denial-of-service attack as cover. Their real target is the authorization keys in the database."
As she spoke, confidence flickered in Charlotte's eyes—along with a trace of barely concealed contempt.
Her ten fingers danced across the keyboard so fast they were nearly a blur.
On screen, line after line of complex code refreshed and scrolled at a speed nearly impossible for the human eye to track.
"Want to steal something? Let's see if you've got what it takes."
Charlotte let out a cold laugh, her eyes dark.
She didn't choose defense—she went on the offensive, using even more aggressive code to attack the invisible enemy.
Soon, the data flow on the big screen began to change in strange ways.
The red data that had been savagely hammering the firewall suddenly seemed to be gripped by an invisible hand around its throat—its assault slowing dramatically.
Meanwhile, the green code Charlotte was typing struck like a lightning-fast viper.
The programmers watching gasped, eyes wide.
Those who knew their stuff couldn't help but cry out in shock.
"Oh my God, she's reverse-tracing the intrusion source!"
"No—she's not tracing it! She's invading it!"
As they murmured among themselves, the assault on screen intensified.
The intruder on the other end clearly hadn't expected The Langley Group to have someone this formidable!
The instant the green code latched on, they sensed the danger and began frantically cutting connections and erasing their tracks.
The two sides' code clashed in the virtual world—attack, defense, reversal—each trying to crush the other.
As time passed, the person on the other end seemed to realize just how good Charlotte was and decided to make a run for it.
"Trying to run?"
Charlotte's eyes narrowed, her fingers moving even faster.
This time, she abandoned tracking the main body. Instead, she spent a few seconds writing a micro data probe, disguising it as a fragment of defeated junk code and attaching it to their retreat path.
'Boom!'
With a deep, simulated system sound, all the red data on screen vanished without a trace.
The room fell into deathly silence.
Everyone stared at Charlotte, sitting calmly at the main console, unable to speak for a long moment.
"Arthur." Charlotte stood up from her chair and rolled her wrists.
"Ah? Yes! Ms. Johnson, go ahead." Arthur snapped back to attention and hurried forward, his gaze filled with awe.
"Run a full check on the server logs, patch every vulnerability, and raise the security level by three tiers." Charlotte's instructions were crisp and clear. "Also, I want a list of everyone who participated in tonight's defense and a proposed reward plan on my desk by ten tomorrow morning."
"Yes, Ms. Johnson. I'll get right on it!"