The Thorne Heiress Unveiling Shadow novel Chapter 12

The Thorne Corporation's secure server room was known internally as "The Vault." It was a technological fortress in the sub-basement of the headquarters, protected by biometric scanners, armed guards, and a network infrastructure designed by the best minds in the business. Right now, it was a war room on the verge of collapse.

Chase stood in the center of the room, a thundercloud of controlled fury, as his IT team scrambled around him in a state of escalating panic. At the main console was Daniel Peterson, Chase's much-vaunted Head of IT. He was a cocky, brilliant MIT graduate with a string of impossible successes to his name, a man who spoke of firewalls and network security with the arrogance of an artist discussing his masterpieces. He had never faced a problem he couldn't solve.

Until today.

"It's impossible," Peterson muttered, his fingers flying across his keyboard, his face slick with sweat. "I'm trying to initiate a system restore from the isolated backup servers, but the malware is already there. It's like a phantom; it mirrored itself onto our offline backups the moment it breached the system. It anticipated our every move."

"Forget the restore! Find a backdoor! A vulnerability in their code!" Chase commanded, his eyes fixed on the giant countdown clock that was now displayed on every monitor in the room, a constant, mocking reminder of their failure.

00: 18: 47: 22.

"We're trying!" another tech, a young woman with terrified eyes, shouted from across the room. "But every port we try to open, it counters with a logic bomb. It's not just a program, it's an AI. The code is... it's adapting. It's learning our methods and evolving its defenses in real-time."

"No," Peterson said, shaking his head slowly, a look of horrified awe on his face as he looked at the elegant, deadly code still scrolling on a diagnostic screen. "Whoever did this... they are. The architecture of this attack is... it's alien. It's quantum-resistant, polymorphic... it's ten years ahead of anything I've ever seen in my life. It's not a program; it's a work of art. A beautiful, malevolent work of art."

He finally looked up at Chase, his eyes filled with a terrifying certainty. "There's no way to disarm it. We can't trace it. We can't fight it. Our only options are to pay the ransom... or watch this company's future get wiped from existence in eighteen hours."

The hope in the room died with his words, extinguished completely. The experts had given their verdict. They were utterly, hopelessly beaten.