451: Must Protect

Must Protect

Ketchup immediately obeyed her mommy's order. She abandoned her task and retreated, quickly heading her way back to the safety of their home network. Unfortunately, she was unable to poof out of her current predicament. She had been more or less locked inside the virtual place she was in. Even her emergency escape doors were either corrupted or completely destroyed.1

It wasn't that Ketchup had been careless. Not at all. Iris programmed Ketchup to apply all safety precautions of the highest level first before performing any task, no matter how simple or complex it was. Not to mention that Iris was also present this time to oversee the situation and to make sure that Ketchup was performing exactly as she was instructed.

Just a few moments ago, Ketchup had been digging and gathering information about the members of the Young family who had history working for the Singapore branch of Jin Corporation. Since Iris didn't give her any specific type of information to focus on, Ketchup randomly collected anything that she laid her paws on.

Everything was going smoothly…until Ketchup triggered some type of an intrusion detection system (IDS). It was hidden and very sophisticated that even an advanced AI like Ketchup failed to detect it in time.

Usually, Ketchup was able to circumvent or even completely disable any IDS because Iris had stored several ways to do so in her cat AI's extensive database which continued to grow each day through self-learning. This IDS, however, wasn't something Ketchup recognized. No matches were found in her own database. It was a completely new, never-before-seen IDS that was practically undetectable by hackers before triggering it.

It wasn't Ketchup's fault, nor was it Iris'.

The IDS was just that powerful. After triggering it, Ketchup instantaneously became the target of a malicious attack. This was the moment Iris reacted and shouted at Ketchup to retreat.

Back to the present, Iris immediately went into full hacker-mode in order to protect and retrieve Ketchup from her precarious situation. Ketchup wasn't equipped to deal with such forceful and malicious attacks from an unknown source, so Iris had to manually defend her. Iris' fingers flew over several keyboards in front of her in a blur. Her expression showed that she was in deep concentration.

Jin Liwei stood beside her and watched her in action. He didn't dare make any sudden movements or noise that might disturb his baby girl and break her concentration. Her earlier shout had alarmed him. He looked at the image of Ketchup in one of the computer monitors on the side.

The white cat lay unmoving in her earlier sphinx-like position. Her green eyes lost their usual glow. They became dull and frozen instead. Her expression was blank, not animated like usual. It was as if her soul had left her body.

Jin Liwei knew that she was just an AI, not a real cat or person, so it was impossible for her to have her own soul. Nevertheless, he and Iris still treated her like their own child—a very smart one at that. Everyone in both their households also interacted with Ketchup like a human, even more so than they did with Ice Cream and Popcorn because she could hold an actual conversation with them.

Jin Liwei had actually grown to love a virtual cat as if it was his own child. In a normal situation, he would think that it was something ridiculous and even childish. It was similar to those news reports about weird people marrying anime characters. But ever since he fell in love with his baby girl, there wasn't anything normal about their lives anymore.

He was engaged to marry one of the most brilliant yet dangerous hackers in the whole world. He had confirmed that she was the real Drakon. Not to mention that she was also a student of the legendary school of geniuses, Cross Academy. She also made him a father of three kids (so far)—two live cats and a virtual one. Her eccentricities influenced him to adjust his own definition of what was weird and what was normal.

Ketchup might be weird to others but for him, his baby girl, and everyone in both their households, the virtual white cat was an important member of their family. No matter what others thought, Ketchup was his child with Long Xiulan! He didn't want anything bad to happen to their child. Seeing Ketchup's almost lifeless appearance on the computer monitor filled him with a parental kind of fear.

Jin Liwei gripped the edge of the ergonomic chair, mentally sending his baby girl strength to defend their third child from danger. He was worried, but he believed in her hacking skills.

'You can do it, love,' he silently cheered for her.

As for Iris, she had already figured out the pattern in the automatic attacks on Ketchup. The attacks may seem random at first, but a hacking-aid software she developed had successfully calculated the attacks' algorithm.

Iris was about to activate Ketchup again and feed her the algorithm so that she could also start defending herself, when the attacks suddenly changed patterns and even increased in intensity. The attacks this time no longer felt random but targeted and more vicious.

"It's a person!" Iris exclaimed.

Her fingers increased in speed and became more fluid, as they flew all over the several keyboards surrounding her. She entered a deeper level of concentration. Although her body wasn't tense and was performing in its optimal state, the deepening furrow between her brows and the droplets of sweat trickling down her forehead and back showed that she was actually struggling against the enemy hacker.

"Must protect Ketchup, must not let her be discovered, must not let anyone steal her…" she muttered like a mantra, even as her entire aura began to change.

The furrow between her brows smoothed out. Her expression became cold, and her movements more mechanical. It was like she had transformed into a highly efficient robot. She even stopped sweating.

Jin Liwei, who was standing beside her and was watching her the whole time, frowned and did a double take. Then he rubbed his eyes and looked at her again.

For a moment, he thought he saw a beautiful but emotionless blonde woman instead of his baby girl. But when he looked again, it was still his beautiful Long Xiulan. He shook his head at what he thought was his overactive imagination.

'I must be tired. My eyes are playing tricks on me,' he thought to himself.

pqdm.com