Chapter 13 - The Slink.Live Counter-Offensive
To catch a ghost, you have to give them something worth materializing for.
Victor Thorne was arrogant, fueled by shadow wealth and a pathological need to dominate. He believed he was outsmarting us, completely unaware that our platform had already mapped the outer edges of his proxy network.
"We need a honeypot," I told the war room, pacing the length of the glass-walled office. "Victor wants the proprietary source code for Seedance 2.0 to control the Virtual KOC market globally. We are going to give him a backdoor right into our central mainframe."
"Claire, that’s suicide," Chloe gasped. "If he gets into the central server, he can wipe everything in seconds."
"He’s not going to get into the real server," Mark smiled, immediately catching on to my strategy. A thrilling, dangerous synergy sparked between us. "We are going to build a cloned, isolated server. A digital labyrinth."
Giang nodded eagerly on the video feed. "I can code the dummy server tonight. We will populate it with fake, highly encrypted files labeled as the master algorithms. When Victor breaches the honeypot and attempts to download the files, the payload will activate."
"What’s the payload?" Mark asked.
"A hyper-aggressive, self-executing beacon," Tới grinned, looking like a kid in a candy store. "The moment the file touches his local network, it will bypass his VPNs, shatter his proxy shields, and ping his exact GPS coordinates directly to our dashboard."
The trap was set. We intentionally lowered the firewall on one of our redundant IP addresses, leaving a breadcrumb trail that looked like a sloppy mistake by a panicked IT department.
We didn't have to wait long.
At 2:15 AM, the alarms in our war room chimed softly.
"He took the bait," Giang whispered, his hands hovering over his keyboard. "Victor’s syndicate is breaching the honeypot. He is initiating the download of the dummy files."
I stood next to Mark, my heart hammering a fierce, adrenaline-fueled rhythm against my ribs. We watched the progress bar on the massive monitor slowly fill. 50%... 75%... 100%.
"Download complete," Tới announced. "The beacon is active."
For ten agonizing seconds, the screen remained blank. Then, a massive digital map of the globe materialized, zooming rapidly across the United States and slamming directly into Silicon Valley.
A pulsating red dot appeared on the map, pinpointing a luxury commercial high-rise in downtown San Francisco.
"He’s operating out of a penthouse suite in the financial district," Giang announced, pulling up the building’s registry. "And Claire... you’re not going to believe this."
"What?" I demanded.
"Tomorrow is the opening day of the Global Tech Investors Summit at the Palace Hotel," Mark realized, reading over Giang’s data logs. "It’s the biggest digital marketing expo in the country."
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"Victor isn't just hiding in San Francisco," I said, a cold, predatory smile spreading across my face. "He’s attending the summit. He plans to announce his new AI tech firm using the source code he thinks he just stole from me. He wants to take my crown in front of the entire industry."
I looked at Mark. "Pack a bag. We are going to San Francisco."
