Walking Through Open Doors

Chapter 3 - Journey to Siji Mountain

~~ One Day Earlier ~~

"You're really leaving? Da Ge, are you being serious right now? We are in the middle of launching the full protocol for Corpse-Eating Ghost and you know what the agency is like! Luo Fu Meng is going to glare at me with her scary face," Gu Xiang scowls from across his corner office inside Ghost Valley Cyber Security headquarters. Her eyebrows sit like inverted breves above velvet-black eyes and her lips are pressed together. The golden hour filtering in through the tinted floor to ceiling windows does absolutely nothing to soften her expression.

"Well, I have a weeklong trip," Wen Ke Xing responds as if it's as obvious and equally as reasonable as taking the elevator down to the basement level food court where his favorite café is located, and grabbing a double shot hazelnut, iced mocha. Or a taro bubble tea if he is feeling indulgent and in need of a sugar boost instead of caffeine.

"Yunnan is quite far to go for a date." Gu Xiang leans back in her armchair, assessing the man on the other side of the office, "Who exactly are you seeing?"

"Why are you so dramatic? It's not even a two hour flight." He closes the lid on his computer and pops it in its designated pocket in the vintage, red leather sling-bag before standing up. "Besides, it's not like I actually have to be here to prepare for the launch. I can oversee things remotely. I'll bring satellite connection."

"... Satellite connection?" She shakes her head and decides to let that bit go, focusing on the more important part. "Come on, Da Ge! Just tell me who it is that has coaxed you into leaving Chengdu for the first time in years, for something other than business," she says, pouting and looking somewhat affronted, like a cat being served dry food when she knows that there is a perfectly reasonable piece of fresh salmon sitting in the crisper drawer in the fridge.

Wen Ke Xing slides his long arms into the black leather blazer and secures the bag around his shoulders. "And it's not a date. He's just someone I have admired for a long time. Don't jinx it."

"You just don't want me to run a background check on him," she retorts, her smile as smug as if she is going to open up the fridge and eat the salmon as soon as he looks away.

"That too." He winks, watches her smirk, and then he turns around and walks with long, elegant strides towards the elevator, totally oblivious to the slight spring in his step. Behind him, Gu Xiang shakes her head and picks up her phone.

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Truth be told, maybe it isn't perfect timing to skip town the week before their new security system goes live. But it's not like it's actually going live for the first time. Corpse-Eating Ghost has been operating in the background for months, it's just that the previous coding will be turned off at midnight next Friday and their new software will take control for the first time. No back-up.

He's not nervous. He knows that the software works. It's the best piece of source code that their team has ever produced. It's better and faster at detecting and uncovering cyber-attacks than anything out there, from single minded worms to multi-layered attacks. And no matter how many routers the hackers are redirecting through, his code will weave itself into their own all the way back to its origin and then send out the alert. Which means that it does exactly what Luo Fu Meng from the black ops directory has requested from him.

The slight twinge of excitement mixed with anxiety comes from the fact the Corpse-Eating Ghost protocol is the first software he's created that isn't built on the piece of source code he wrote during his scholarship sponsored master's in computer science at Tsinghua University in Beijing (1).