CHAPTER 67: AN INTERESTING DISCOVERY

The drive back to the hotel took a while, mostly because Ethan was driving slowly while thinking of the options of gaining knowledge presented to him by the system.

The most viable right now was the simulation pod but just like with most things he wanted to create, he didn’t have enough knowledge or proficiency to.

So that left him with the most crude and dangerous option, manually absorbing raw knowledge through the system.

According to the system, there was a thirty percent chance for his brain to explode, which meant that there was a three in ten chance that he’d die, but there was also a seven in ten chance that he’d succeed and that was enough chances for him right now.

By the time he pulled up at the entrance of the hotel, it was already late into the night. He walked towards the elevators after handing the keys of the car back to the receptionist.

With a ding, the elevator opened to his floor and he slowly walked towards his door. Lillian and Aria’s door was next to his, so he assumed they might’ve come to check on him while he was out.

{They didn’t,} Athena answered his thoughts as she noticed him looking at their door through the cameras of the hotel, {Aria was dragging Lillian around the entire day to keep her mind off the upcoming negotiations for now.}

"I see," he nodded, opened his door and walked in.

He immediately crashed into the bed, the exhaustion hitting him like a freight train and he wished for nothing more than sleep.

But before that,

"Athena, can you fetch what Irina requested," it was more of an order than question since he was so exhausted, "oh and while you’re at it, compile every research on Neuro-Interfaces and Cognitive Enhancement, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Bioengineering and Computer Science."

"I’d prefer if they’re research from trusted sources, no matter how secure, all your infiltration restrictions are released for now."

{Understood.}

With her confirmation, Ethan quickly drifted to la la land, sleep consuming him.

Meanwhile, Athena turned on the PC on his work desk, her avatar appearing on the screen, looking at the sleeping Ethan before giving a small smile and got to work.

___________

In another part of California, someone stayed awake.

It wasn’t due to lack of sleep or anything close, Nathaniel just preferred staying up through late nights.

Standing behind him was Dmitri who had a neutral expression on his face, unlike when he was ’punishing’ James.

He, on the other hand, would’ve preferred sleeping at this hour but when you’ve got bosses like the Langleys, you had to be ready whenever they called.

Not that he minded, they were paying him more than enough to be up at this hour.

"What were you able to find?" Nathaniel went straight to the point.

"She has an interesting past, to say the least." Dmitri responded, causing a frown to appear on Nathaniel’s face, he hated when Dmitri didn’t go straight to the point but Dmitri didn’t seem to care.

Instead of pissing off his already pissed off boss, Dmitri took out a file from the inside of his coat and handed it to Nathaniel who was staring out his floor to ceiling glass window.

Briefly turning, he took the file from Dmitri and opened it, reading through it.

"She has also had major interactions with two people the past few months," Dmitri spoke as Nathaniel read through the file, "both of which I looked into and none could possibly be the owner of OmniTech."

Nathaniel looked up from the file with a frown before asking, "and who allowed you to make such a conclusion?"

"Experience," Dmitri calmly answered, "my biggest suspect was the boy who graduated from Harvard, since she stopped her part-time job a bit after they met, but turns out, apart from him being a graduate from Harvard at a young age, there was nothing else special about him."

"I see." Nathaniel nodded.

Dmitri’s guts were rarely, if ever, wrong as proven multiple times before, so Nathaniel had to go with his decision.

"Just keep an eye on them for now." He ordered and Dimitri nodded before he got back to reading the file in his hands.

The more he read, the bigger his internal grin got. This was really interesting.

OmniTech might be invisible right now, but he made a mistake of letting his pawn in Nathaniel’s territory and Nathaniel wouldn’t hold back from attacking it.

Putting the file on a coffee table, he walked towards the direction of his room as he said, "get me in touch with these, as soon as this mess is over we’re uprooting OmniTech and make sure they never dream of crossing me again."

Dmitri nodded, his eyes moving back to the file on the table. On it was a picture of the COO of OmniTech Corp, Lillian Hayes.

And whatever he had just dug up on her, was going to be a major tool to be used against her and in turn, OmniTech.

He walked out and towards the elevator, but before he could get to it, his phone suddenly rang causing him to stop.

Pulling it out and looking at the caller ID, Dmitri couldn’t help but crack a small, genuine smile. One that would shock anyone that knew him.

Picking it up, a cheerful little voice came through, "Dobroye utro, papa!" (Good morning, papa!)

Dmitri walked into the open elevator and allowed his expression to ease up and a smile graced it.

"Доброе утро, malyshka," he replied gently in Russian, his deep voice losing all of its usual coldness. "Did you sleep well?"

The little girl giggled. "Da! Babushka made blini, but I told her I want to eat with you instead."

He chuckled at her words, before replying, "papa is busy with work right now, but I’ll be home soon," he promised quietly, his accent thicker than usual. "Tell babushka to save me some blini, hm?"

"Okay!" she chirped happily. "I love you, papa."

"I love you too, malyshka." Dmitri responded before putting the phone down and ending the call.

His family was back in Russia and thanks to the Langleys, they were completely safe and unrelated to his work.

This was one of the few reasons why he was loyal to the Langleys... Well, after the pay.

It was also why he could calmly pick the call up inside this building because he was assured that his vulnerability wouldn’t be discovered by someone else.

The elevator let out a ding as he walked out and towards his car. It had been a while since he last saw his family, he thought and maybe it was time for a vacation.

With that thought in mind, he drove off. But unknown to him, an eye was watching and listening to him through the cameras of the entire building.

{Now this is interesting.}

Athena muttered to herself. She kept Nathaniel under constant watch, even without Ethan’s orders, just in case he was plotting something and she was glad she did.

This, if handled right, would be another upper hand against Nathaniel, so Athena immediately went to work, searching for anything related to Dmitri’s family.

_________

Meanwhile, at the server farm, Camila was running a couple of checks on the systems.

Her mood had visibly improved since the debt was completely swept off her hands.

She couldn’t believe that it had all happened. In addition to clearing the debts she owed, she was also given a job.

Camila was glad that she accepted that kid’s and OmniTech’s offer.

Bored, she decided to do a late-night server check when one of the monitors flickered.

At first, she dismissed it as packet loss. But the anomaly repeated, only this time accompanied by a surge of traffic.

Camila leaned forward, towards the screen and narrowing her eyes. "That’s not normal..."

{It’s me,} Athena, the ever present AI that mostly managed the systems and Sentinel responded. {You don’t need to panic.}

This was one of the reasons why her job was easier, she just had to run checks, make sure the servers were cool and clean and the rest was handled by this AI.

Camila exhaled, half-relieved, half-annoyed. "You’re burning through nodes like crazy. What the hell are you doing?"

{Stress testing Sentinel agains multiple hacking scenarios.} Athena lied calmly.

Although it wasn’t a complete lie, since Sentinel was being used to hack into the FSB, that was far from why there was so much traffic.

Research gathering and digging on Dmitri were the main culprits.

Camila tapped the screen, hoping to see the results of the test but she was met with a password locked folder.

"What’s the password?" She asked.

{You do not have enough authority to access this particular set of data.} Athena responded.

This caused Camila to pause.

Of course there were certain files that were locked, but the results of stress testing Sentinel shouldn’t be.

Was this AI doing something else? Was it going rogue?

Before her thoughts could continue, Athena interrupted, {this test was requested by OmniTech and he’s the only one with access to the results.}

"I see." Camila nodded.

After working for OmniTech Corp for a short while, she had quickly learnt that Ethan wasn’t the one behind OmniTech Corp.

It was someone known as OmniTech and Ethan was kind of like a talent seeker/ cyber security specialist.

But even after all this time, she hadn’t had the chance to meet him yet, she was only welcomed by him to the company through a call.

"Alright then," she stood straight again, "since I’m done here, I’ll head to bed, good night."

{Good night Ms. Camila.} Athena responded.

She’d never get used to an AI sounding so human but she didn’t give it too much thought either, she just walked out of the server room, turning the lights off on her way out.

The security has arrived a couple of hours ago so she wasn’t worried about something happening to the servers.

Athena continued with her digging for a while longer before she suddenly said..

{Bingo.}