Chapter 160: Found

Ethan calmly walked out of Irina’s private jet, with her not too far behind and behind them were the Vigilants.The team had seen exactly how lacking their skills were after they had tried, and failed, to hack into sentinel.

So they had been.... branching out.

Or a more appropriate term would be, upping their skills in other fields under Irina’s guidance, and surprisingly, they were pretty talented in ways none of them had expected.

Now in their repertoire was black market dealing skills, assassination, infiltration, and a lot more, added to their already spectacular hacking skills.

They had basically become mercenaries but ones that were a lot more dangerous and they all belong to one person.

Ethan, on the other hand, now knew the identities of the ones that took his little Midas, and where they took her.

Well, still not exactly where just yet, just that they had flown her directly to China.

The press back in the US was going crazy trying to find answers or any bit of update on Lillian’s attack, but both OmniTech Corp and the authorities had remained completely silent, much to the frustration of the media and the public.


But with the lack of answers came dozens of theories that had already begun to circulate online.

Some speculated it was due to their recent unannounced dealings with the Caldwell Hospital, as shown by her previous attendance on some kind of party at the Caldwell estate.

Others believed that this was an attempt at coperate sabotage in order to stop OmniTech Corp’s unrivaled growth.

But despite all their theories, nothing was confirmed.

Irina and Ethan reached the black sedan waiting at the edge of the runway. Irina opened the door but paused before getting in, her brow furrowing slightly. "Your people already traced the jet that took her. China’s a big place, Ethan. If you don’t have an exact location—"

"I will," he interrupted. "By tonight."

His voice was completely calm and as confident as she remembered, but still, that didn’t change the fact that their search was basically like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Irina raised a brow. "And how exactly do you plan to pull that off?"

Ethan paused, looked at her and gave a small smile, "you’ll see." With that, he entered the car, before she followed suit.

The Vigilants boarded a second SUV, that drove them to the hotel where they’ll be staying.

The drive was a quiet one with Irina tapping away at her tablet while Ethan leaned back on the car’s seat as he looked at the passing buildings.

China was a country he had never visited before not even in his past life. While he did have a business meeting to attend here, Nathaniel had permanently made sure that didn’t happen, by removing Ethan from the face of Earth.... or so he thought.

Anyway, he never expected his first time here to be because of a kidnapping but here he was.

His eyes moved from the buildings to Irina’s face.

He guessed that he must’ve been staring too hard because she soon noticed, "do I have something on my face?"

"No," Ethan shook his head but still held her gaze as he asked, "you know, this was never a part of our agreement, so why are you doing this?"

Irina put the tablet aside and continued holding his gaze before she sighed and said, "would you believe if I told you that I had no motive?"

Ethan continued looking at her for a while, choosing to say nothing. Since Irina’s interest in him started growing, he had believe that this was all just a game for her.

She would try until she got bored and backed away, but that hadn’t happened at all, rather, she just got more persistent as the days past.

So persistent that Ethan couldn’t ignore anymore, and as much as he didn’t want to admit, he had to, Irina genuinely wanted to help him find Lillian.

He could clearly see how sincere she was.

With a sigh, he leaned back and said, "I believe you."

This caught Irina off guard.

Most times, he’d try to rationally explain how this felt like some kind of game that she was playing but today, today he actually acknowledged that she genuinely wanted to help.

A smile appeared on her face as she thought, ’I guess my efforts weren’t wasted after all.’

"Does Michael approve of you using your resources on people you barely know," Ethan said after a while.

"Not in the least bit," Irina replied with a small chuckle, "he also doesn’t seem to like you that much."

"I figured," he replied.

Well, that was might have his fault, since he had spent the entirety of their first meeting taunting the man.

There was no ’might have’, it definitely was his fault. But Erhan had been so easy to agitate that Michael had found it hard to stop once he started.

"Though, I don’t require his permission to do anything." Irina added.

"Of course, you don’t." Ethan responded with a chuckle, he was really amused at how much the two behaved like siblings.

With that, the two went back to what they were previously doing, tapping away on the a tablet and looking through the window.

Athena’s voice broke suddenly through the silence. {Ethan, I got something.} She informed.

"What?" Ethan asked as he sat up.

{Sentinel’s fake back end, the one created as bait, someone just inputted Lillian’s details and logged into it.} Hearing the explanation, a smile appeared on Ethan’s face as he said, "smart girl."

Irina immediately put her tablet aside, eyes narrowing. "Wait—fake backend? You’re saying she used a decoy system?"

Ethan nodded slightly, still smiling — but it wasn’t a warm smile. "I had added multiple mirror layers to sentinel and gave Lillian the keys to some of those layers. If she accessed the fake backend..."He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "...it means she’s finding a way to tell me where she currently is."

{Correct,} Athena confirmed. {The system registered a full admin authorization under her credentials, but all outgoing commands were redirected through the dummy architecture. I can trace the incoming connection’s signal source.}

"How long until we have a location?" Ethan asked, voice steady but sharp with focus.

{Thirty seconds, assuming the signal remains stable, though the first signal was all we needed as it had planted a big enough worm that I could use to find the location.}

"I see," Ethan nodded, "while you’re at it, send a message to them for me, will you?"

***

And that’s exactly how Jian Long and Madam Xu found themselves staring at a laptop with an avatar that had blue eyes and black hair.

The message they had received was a simple request to return Lillian, but when they refused, the man before them started showing exactly what he was capable of.

"Good evening," the avatar started, its voice sounded completely calm. "I believe you’ve taken something that belongs to me."

Madam Xu frowned and straightened her posture. "So, the ghost finally shows his face," she said coldly, crossing her arms. "You know, for a scare tactic, you could’ve done better than get our men when we can just as easily get them out."

"Oh you can try," the avatar said, "besides, you should be more worried about yourselves than the men behind bars, you’d soon learn that they got out the easy way."

At that, Jian narrowed his eyes. "Is that supposed to scare us? You’re thousands of miles away, and we’re in China. What exactly do you plan to do from there?"

"Quite a few things Jian Long," the avatar turned to him, "or do you prefer the Reaper instead."

"Anyway, regardless of what you prefer or not, I’m willing to give you a chance," the avatar said, "return what’s mine within the next hour and we’ll all forget that this ever happened."

"And if we don’t?" Madam Xu asked.

"Trust me, Xu," the Chibi avatar said, "you really don’t want to find out."

His words caused her to burst out laughing, an action she had been doing quite a bit during these past few hours.

"You sound so confident right now, as if you completely have the upper hand," she took a small pause, "but let me tell you something, the advantage you think you hold would soon vanish before you even know it and you’ll be exposed for the world to see."

"Is that so?" The avatar said, its time not changing in the least bit, "then I can’t wait to see what you have against me Madam Xu.. I’ll see you two in fifty minutes."

With that, the laptop frozen before glitching and restarting itself, showing the normal laptop screen again.

"He has to be bluffing right?" Zhao Ming spoke up as he had been watching the video call with the two, "after all, you have more cards than he does but he wants you to think otherwise."

"Exactly," Madam Xu responded, "so let’s remind him who has the better hand."