Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 1365 Cybersecurity (First Update)

"So that's the origin of the Olympus furnace?"

"I have no idea."

"What is the name of that non-material city that fell from the sky?"

"I have no idea."

Although Epsilon-Rodney-Radium 223's barrage of questions was confined to the commanders' communication channels within the chain of command, Constantine was still thoroughly annoyed. He was unaware of Epsilon-Rodney-Radium 223's cybernetic transformation process; that was a secret of every Martian sage. He hadn't expected this Martian sage to have the energy to chatter on while simultaneously performing dual tasks. He could hear Dr. Horton Radcliffe's computer disks spinning at high speed, massive amounts of data being analyzed and processed by Epsilon-Rodney-Radium 223's mind-enhancing devices and brain.

A new mission silenced Epsilon Rodney Radium 223.

Meanwhile, the heavy trucks were heading towards the lighthouse base, and the Wind One, as the advance team that had set off earlier, maintained contact with the convoy. Their camouflage was excellent, and there was virtually no chance of them being stopped by highway patrol. Even if they were, the armed personnel hidden in the truck beds were ready to jump out at any moment for a brief but intense battle.

"The signal of the 'Wind-1' satellite is being interfered with."

The Martian robotic soldier Alpha-Bronze 2 communicates via implants implanted in its body, communicating independently with Epsilon-Rodney-Radium 223 within the command chain, rather than using the communication devices on Wind One. Dr. Horton Radcliffe sat dejectedly on the folding chair. He still didn't understand why these people wanted him, but he could easily guess the possible reasons—either the Inhuman genome, the Life-Model Decoy project, or the Dark Book—but he didn't immediately shout out all the information he knew. His experience from numerous missions taught him that if he made himself unworthy at this moment, they might not protect his life.

"The Lighthouse Base may have the ability to remotely control the Wind-1."

"Deploy the Rangers Triangulus-Alpha-10 to Triangulus-Alpha-17." Epsilon-Rodney-Ray223 finally let Constantine go. She told Alpha-Bronze 2, "I need their floating-point computing power. Link them individually and hard-link them to the Wind One. I need them as a springboard to launch an attack on the Lighthouse Base."

As Alfonso McKenzie began to speak, he saw the overhead light flicker twice.

At first, he didn't think much of it, assuming it was just a problem with the light bulbs. He, Daisy Jensen, and the armed personnel had been waiting there for almost ten minutes. Everyone was under immense pressure, and it was difficult to maintain focus for long. Even a minor hiccup could help keep everyone alert and prevent accidental discharges or other unforeseen events. But what happened next was anything but a minor repair issue—for a few seconds after the first light bulb started flickering, everything was calm, then the second bulb, and then all the lights in the entire corridor began flashing wildly at a chaotic frequency. The drastically changing intensity made all the agents feel nauseous.

"What's going on, Agent May?" Alfonso McKenzie shouted through the chaotic communication channel. "Have we been attacked?"

"Enemy intrusion...power system." Even Melinda May's voice became intermittent. "Server room...reboot."

“I understand.” Alfonso McKenzie narrowed his eyes, scanning his surroundings. “Daisy, I need you to take command of the first line of defense,” he said to Daisy Jensen. “Don’t hold out here. Retreat whenever you see an opportunity. Our goal is to delay the enemy’s advance, not to wipe them out completely. We don’t have that capability, and Agent Coulson doesn’t want you to get hurt.”

"What are you going to do?" Daisy Jensen asked hastily. The flashing lights overhead gave her a headache, and the yellow and black striped blast door in the distance made her feel like she was in a tomb. "We need you here, Mike."

"The server room needs me now too. The enemy has launched a cyberattack on the power system, and I must protect the cybersecurity department." Alfonso McKenzie weighed the shotgun and axe in his hand. "Don't worry, if there's an intrusion, I'll get back as fast as I can. Besides, Yoyo is on the second line of defense; she's capable of ensuring your safe evacuation."

Elena Rodriguez's nicknames are Yo-Yo and Slingshot because her ability allows her to run at incredible speeds but always return to her starting point, like a yo-yo thrown out of the water. This nickname was given to her by Alfonso Mackenzie, who was on a mission to search for Inhumans. After Elena Rodriguez officially joined S.H.I.E.L.D., their relationship became quite ambiguous.

Upon hearing that Youyou was on the second line of defense, Daisy Jason relaxed.

Unbeknownst to her, a ghost composed of electrical charges was currently lurking within the power lines of the Lighthouse base, observing their every move through the ubiquitous surveillance cameras. Even Alfonso MacKenzie's statement that he was heading to the server room and power room was being watched by the ghost in the circuitry—cybersecurity was far more dangerous than the Lighthouse base's cybersecurity agents imagined. Epsilon-Rodney-Ray 223, who had already infiltrated the base, bypassed layers of firewalls, jumped into the monitoring system equipped with independent generators and a sandbox network system, and within seconds grasped the SHIELD agents' deployment and countermeasures. Epsilon-Rodney-Ray 223 even saw, through the monitoring system, the SHIELD cybersecurity department confronting the Wind One firewall.

The electrical charge carries the fragmented consciousness of Epsilon-Rodney-Radium 223, depicting and responding to the intelligence she needs in binary form. Every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent's phone is a specially modified tool, capable not only of information security countermeasures but also of preventing applications from sending messages or manipulating hardware without the user's knowledge. However, such a firewall is no problem for Epsilon-Rodney-Radium 223. The computing power provided by the Rangers Triangulus-Alpha-10 to Triangulus-Alpha-17, coupled with the architectural information about the US Department of Homeland Security's chip factory design from the Mars database, allows Epsilon-Rodney-Radium 223 to infiltrate design flaws like a ghost and parasitize the phones used by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

The closer Epsilon-Rodney-Ray 223 was to the cybersecurity department, the more clearly they could see the code used to attack Wind One. This wasn't a visual feedback mechanism, but rather an intrusion carried out via a connection between a mobile network and a computer network, using multiple secure Wi-Fi networks as stepping stones.

"How is it?" Constantine asked.

"It's going smoothly," Epsilon-Rodney-Ray 223 said haltingly, "but the signal is poor."

Initially, it was just a few misplaced parentheses, which the coding software's auto-completion and correction tools could easily fix. However, the errors quickly began to escalate. From a few sporadic occurrences, code errors started appearing frequently, and error warnings appeared almost every time the program ran. The cybersecurity personnel at S.H.I.E.L.D. were highly experienced programmers; they quickly found and fixed the errors, attributing it to excessive nervousness or some other reason, without considering the possibility of intrusion. But when they called the code package, these programmers failed to realize that the package they were using had been replaced. Just as prions in mad cow disease attack the human body through food, simple code is the protein that invades the body. Now they had allowed the pathogen into the body, and there was no chance of recovery.

"It's done," Epsilon-Rodney-Ray223 said. "Now we can enter the Lighthouse Base."

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(End of this chapter)