Chapter 19 · Forty-Seven Hours
The countdown hung in the top-right corner of the base’s main screen, white characters stark against the dark background.
「T-47:22:31 · Target: Lu Zijing · Medical authorization freeze remaining」
The seconds were ticking. Every second shortened the time. Every second was like a grain of sand falling through the neck of an hourglass into a bottom of unknown depth.
Lu Yuan had been standing in front of the screen for a long time. In his hand was the wrapper of a compressed energy bar, unconsciously crumpled into a ball, the plastic making a faint, continuous crinkling sound in his palm, like a mechanical device slowly releasing residual pressure.
Farhan was less than two meters behind him, communicating with Lagos through an encrypted text channel. Messages were transmitted through Pigeonnet’s physical relay lines — not through Starlink, generating no auditable electromagnetic signals — with a round-trip delay of over thirty minutes per message. The message he had just sent was to Amina, just one line:
「Injection preparation needs thirty-six hours. Fastest route: physically transport SkyWalker firmware storage card to forward node. Can it be compressed?」
The reply arrived twenty-one minutes later. Farhan’s terminal lit up, and he looked down.
Amina’s reply was even shorter than he expected. She had clearly not wasted time choosing her words:
「No. Thirty-six is a hard number without margin. Fastest batch of storage cards departs Lagos via Pigeonnet — Casablanca transfer — Tunis — Rome — Istanbul — Urumqi — Shenzhen. Longest segment: crossing the Taklamakan Desert, camel transport, no signal coverage. Time to reach key node: approximately twenty-two hours. Earliest arrival: T-25. You have eleven hours margin.」
Eleven hours. Thirty-six hours preparation plus twenty-two hours transport — equaled fifty-eight hours. His daughter’s medical authorization had forty-seven hours remaining. If they couldn’t compress the timeline, they were short by a full eleven hours.
Farhan ran those numbers through his mind, then did something he rarely did — he turned around and told Lu Yuan the truth:
“The margin isn’t enough.”
Lu Yuan put the crumpled wrapper in his pocket and turned to face him. His face showed none of the panic or despair Farhan had expected — it was closer to acceptance, like someone who had already calculated the problem, knew the answer, and was just waiting for another person to confirm it.
“I know,” Lu Yuan said. “So we need to squeeze those eleven hours out from somewhere else.”
Farhan looked at him, waiting.
“You said thirty-six hours was the minimum preparation time.” Lu Yuan walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and drew a timeline. “But that’s based on your current personnel and compute. If I reassign everyone at this base who can write code to your protocol compilation pipeline — can we compress?”
“No. The bottleneck isn’t manpower — it’s compilation server throughput and storage card write speed.”
“What about phased compilation? Compile the core activation module first — the nested entry’s trigger condition code — and append other peripheral functional modules incrementally afterward?”
Farhan’s brow furrowed slightly. He was silent for a few seconds, then said one word: “Yes.”
“How much can we compress?”
“About four to five hours.”
Four to five hours. Added to Amina’s eleven-hour margin — they had fifteen to sixteen hours of buffer. Lu Yuan tapped the whiteboard twice with his fingertip, then drew a vertical line. He reorganized those numbers, marking new key milestones on the timeline:
T-28: Core module compilation complete, firmware written to first batch of storage cards. T-25: Storage cards arrive at Shenzhen contact node. T-22: Next batch of Pigeonnet couriers depart — covering forty-seven forward nodes globally. T-18: Global node synchronization complete, injection window preheating begins. T-0: Activate nested entry, create autonomous domain.
Lu Yuan drew that vertical line heavily, the marker leaving a stroke thicker, deeper, and more decisive than the others on the board.
Farhan stood behind him, reading the timeline from beginning to end, not speaking.
In another corner of the base, someone was on a low-voiced call — the engineer responsible for communication relay continuity, testing the Pigeonnet signal link through a physically isolated satellite phone. The voice drifted over intermittently: “…acknowledged… routing normal… beacon signal… Lagos has already departed…”
The first batch of SkyWalker injection firmware storage cards was, at this moment, in Amina’s people’s hands, being loaded into an electromagnetic pulse-shielded metal box strapped to the back of an off-road motorcycle. The rider was a twenty-five-year-old Nigerian youth, codename “Gray Dove” — his real name appearing in no Data Party file — now revving his engine in the darkness of Lagos’s 4:00 AM.
His route: from Lagos north — crossing Niger — entering Algeria — passing through Tamanrasset — arriving in Casablanca. Total distance: 3,700 kilometers. The worst road conditions were in northern Niger — dirt tracks, no streetlights, no mobile signal, no Starlink public ground stations. He would ride that stretch alone for approximately fifteen hours.
The metal box on his bike contained something that could rewrite the global communication landscape. But he didn’t know that. He only knew this was “a shipment Boss Amina needs delivered, very important, must arrive by the day after tomorrow noon.”
In Lagos’s night wind, he engaged the gear. The motorcycle’s headlight cut a narrow cone of light ahead, and then he disappeared onto the road heading north.
Silas received Milan’s encrypted email at 5:17 AM.
The email’s subject was brief; the body was even shorter — just two lines. But after reading those two lines, Silas was motionless at his desk for about ten seconds, like a statue frozen in place.
The first line was an authorization code:
「Authorization code: A1-EXEC-ORD-7712 · Signed: Milan Vojnović · Chief Protocol Architect」
The second line was the authorization content:
「Authorization for Starlink Asia-Pacific Security Center to conduct physical interdiction operations at the following coordinates. Permission level: Maximum. Scope: All identified Data Party strongholds. Validity: Forty-eight hours from signing.」
Four coordinates were attached below. One of them — Silas recognized it at a glance — was the Shenzhen base where Lu Yuan and Farhan were located.
Milan had given him the authority.
Milan had finally let go.
Silas leaned back in his chair, read the email twice more, confirmed the signature chain was intact, confirmed the authorization code was A1 — Starlink’s highest tactical execution authorization, second only to the CEO himself. Confirmed无误, he pressed the intercom.
“Liu Yang. Issue the preparatory order. All four coordinates on the target list — enter pre-execution status. I need the first assault team deployed within four hours.”
After hanging up the intercom, he sat in his office chair for another half minute. He should have felt excited — this was the moment he had been waiting for months. But he didn’t. Instead, there was a strange hollowness, like a string pulled too tight finally being released.
Milan had authorized it. But why had Milan authorized it?
Silas pulled up the timestamp of Milan’s email — 4:07 AM. At this hour, Milan was usually sleeping or in his study reading those endless technical documents. What had made him sign an authorization order he had refused to sign for months at this hour?
Silas didn’t know the contents of the call between Milan and Lu Yuan. He didn’t know Milan’s daughter was at the Data Party base. He didn’t know what Milan had experienced after receiving Lu Yuan’s call — a man who had locked himself in a dark office, sat in front of a computer screen with anested entry point he hadn’t decided whether to open, for a full four hours.
Silas only knew that Milan had signed. That was enough.
He closed the email window on his screen and began checking the assault team’s deployment progress.
Isabel was awakened by an unusual silence.
She woke up in that Brussels apartment — not the committee-issued official residence, but an old apartment in Saint-Gilles she had rented herself, never registered in any Starlink system. Sitting on the edge of the bed in an old sweater, she realized what had woken her wasn’t the disappearance of noise, but a gut feeling that something was wrong.
She walked to the window.
A black car was parked under the streetlight across the road. The windows were tinted; the interior was invisible. The body carried no official markings, but Isabel had lived in Brussels for four years, and she recognized that car’s silhouette — not a government vehicle, not an ordinary私家车. Something in between, carrying a silent, law-enforcement气质.
She didn’t look twice. She pulled the curtain, walked into the bathroom, and turned on the tap. The sound of running water masked the key tones as she dialed a number — her last remaining safe number. Not her official phone, not the Data Party’s encrypted terminal, but a SIM card pressed at the bottom of her bedside drawer, loaded into a disposable old phone.
The call went through, rang twice, connected.
“Milan,” she said.
There was no immediate response on the other end. But she heard the breathing — that even, restrained rhythm she had gradually become familiar with.
“You gave Silas the authorization,” Isabel said. Not a question.
“This is the last time you use this number to contact me.” Milan’s voice came through the line, calm as a stone that had lain at the bottom of water for a long time. “That line is closed.”
“I know. So this is the last time I ask you — what are you doing?”
Milan didn’t answer.
“You gave him the addresses,” Isabel’s voice didn’t rise, but every word was like a drawn bowstring. “Including Farhan and Lu Yuan’s Shenzhen base. Your people will surround that building in hours. Lu Yuan’s daughter is in that building, Milan.”
A very brief silence on the line — so brief that most would miss it, but Isabel caught it.
“A five-year-old child,” Isabel said. “With refractory epilepsy. Her medical authorization has already been frozen by Silas. After your people surround that building — how do you think Silas will treat her? Use her to blackmail Lu Yuan? Send her to a Starlink ‘controlled custody’ facility? Do you think this child’s medical records will appear on any legal detention log?”
Milan’s voice finally returned, but quieter than before: “Silas doesn’t know there’s a child in that building.”
“Do you believe that?”
Milan didn’t answer.
“You don’t know where he draws the line. You don’t work with Silas every day. I do. I’ve read four years of his operation reports — he’s not a person who crosses names off an arrest list. The authorization you gave him had no附加 restrictions. He has no obligation to distinguish between adults and children among the targets.”
Isabel paused. The tap was still running. The sound of water striking the ceramic basin had a strange, timer-like rhythm in the small space.
“Your daughter was at that base,” she said. “Mia met Lu Yuan in Lagos. Your daughter has seen that child.”
Only the faint noise of electrical current on the line.
“I’m not saying this for the Data Party, Milan. I’m saying it for you.” A barely perceptible crack appeared in Isabel’s voice for the first time, one she didn’t notice herself. “If you let Silas walk into that building — you’ll have nothing left to defend yourself with in front of your daughter.”
Silence. This silence was long, so long that Isabel began to believe Milan had hung up.
Then Milan said one sentence. Not to her — to himself. His voice was so low Isabel could barely hear, but she heard it anyway.
“I’m not sure anything I’ve done so far — can be defended.”
The line disconnected.
Isabel disassembled the phone, removed the battery, snapped the SIM card in half, and put it in an iron box with the phone — she would sink it into the canal near her apartment before the day was out.
She stood at the sink, looking at her face in the mirror. The signs of a sleepless night were clear — shadows under the eyes, pale lips. She ran her fingers through her hair, then tightened the tap.
She didn’t know if Milan would stop Silas. She didn’t know if those words he said would become the reason for his action.
But she found that she was no longer certain what Milan would do. The man she had once believed could predict everything had, from some moment she couldn’t pinpoint, become no longer entirely predictable.
Shenzhen, five hours and forty minutes later.
The first abnormal signals appeared at the base.
Farhan’s monitoring system — passive signal detection nodes deployed within a three-kilometer radius of the base — had captured something he didn’t want to see. Not mobile phone signals, not Starlink terminal registration signals, but a moreunderlying RF signature: phased array radar beam scanning.
Frequency in X-band, waveform characteristics belonging to portable ground surveillance radar, mounted on a vehicle platform. The beam’s scanning pattern wasn’t扇形 — it was a locked, continuous illumination of the same area, like a searchlight fixed on a single window.
That window’s direction was exactly the building where the base was located.
Farhan stared at the stable radiation signal on the spectrum analysis chart for about five seconds, then closed the window.
“They know we’re in this building,” he said.
All voices in the base disappeared within seconds. Everyone stopped what they were doing at the same moment — someone’s fingers hovering above the keyboard, someone’s cup of water pausing mid-air — the entire space frozen as if a pause button had been pressed.
“What’s the evacuation timeline?” Lu Yuan asked.
Farhan shook his head. “Too late. They’ve alreadysealed off the main exits within 400 meters. Our underground tunnel only leads to two directions — both covered by their mobile signal detection arrays. If we go out through either exit, we’ll be located within thirty seconds of leaving the tunnel.”
His voice carried no emotion, like reading an engineering test report.
“When will they enter?”
Farhan glanced at the radar scan’s periodic pattern and estimated the typical deployment rhythm of an assault team. “Two hours. Not sooner — they still need外围 clearance and command link establishment.”
Two hours.
There were seventeen people in the base. Two were injured — survivors transferred from the Sahel operation, one with a fractured arm still recovering, one with a chest wound who couldn’t stand for long. And a five-year-old child.
Lu Yuan glanced at his daughter. She was in the corner, playing with Sister Shen — building a “castle” out of empty ammunition boxes and circuit board packaging. She didn’t know what was happening around her. Her face carried the particular concentration of a five-year-old lost in her own world — mouth slightly open, eyelashes lowered, carefully placing one packaging box on top of another, then stepping back to examine her creation.
Lu Yuan pulled his gaze away from her and turned to Farhan.
“The injection — cannot stop,” he said.
Farhan looked at him and didn’t contradict him.
“You take the underground tunnel. Take the core compilation environment. Find somewhere outside their signal coverage to complete the final module compilation.” Lu Yuan’s voice wasn’t loud, but every word was clear. “The microwave base station they’ve deployed outside has frequency hopping intervals — the hopping sequence changes every six seconds, with a blind window of about seventy milliseconds during each hop. I can use the应急 antenna on the base’s rooftop to send a burst signal to the Pigeonnet forward node during that blind window — telling them the new firmware delivery node location.”
“You’d expose yourself.”
“You’re responsible for completing the injection,” Lu Yuan said. “I’m responsible for getting us out alive.”
Farhan looked at him — the scrutiny lasted about three seconds. Then he nodded.
He turned and walked toward his Faraday cage, beginning to disassemble the core compilation server’s hard drive.
Milan’s office was lit that night.
He sat at his desk, the leather-bound diary open before him, turned to the latest page. He had been sitting there for nearly an hour. Outside the window, the Sava River shimmered faintly in the night, a cargo ship moving slowly downstream, its lights dragging a long golden tail across the water.
Silas’s assault teams were converging on the four coordinates. For the Shenzhen coordinate, the first interdiction team had completed外围 deployment. Milan’s terminal displayed real-time updates of the operation status — he didn’t need to query; Silas’s system automatically pushed all A1-authorized operation progress to the chief protocol architect’s office.
He had seen that information. He hadn’t closed the window.
He also hadn’t written any intercept command.
His phone screen lit up — not a call, but a message push, from the only unblocked signal on his personal communication terminal originating from inside the Data Party. He opened it.
The message was just one line, unsigned:
「She asked me to tell you — she’s seen the wooden elephant.」
Milan looked at those words.
He remembered Mia as a child — remembered that Belgrade winter, when he was repairing a neighbor’s radio, and she sat on the floor at his feet, holding a small wooden reindeer ornament that had fallen from the Christmas tree, playing quietly all afternoon. He had never taught her how to fix a radio, but she had learned to sit beside him without asking questions, in silence.
He didn’t know she had become someone who wrote letters to her mother.
Or whether those letters to her mother ever mentioned him.
He put down the phone. His fingers touched the edge of the keyboard but didn’t press a single key.
In distant Shenzhen, in the underground of that building that had been locked by signal detection arrays for five hours, Lu Yuan was tucking the edge of the blanket around his daughter. From her breathing, he could tell she had already entered deep sleep under the medication. She wouldn’t feel the vibrations of the assault team entering the building, wouldn’t hear those footsteps and shoutedcommand. She would just sleep on this folding cot and then — if everything went well — wake up somewhere he hadn’t yet figured out.
Lu Yuan pressed his hand against the inner pocket of his chest. Through the fabric, he felt the outline of that cylindrical key — the skeleton of the old internet preserved on that FreeBSD server. And the letter that had not yet been delivered to Belgrade.
Whether the line broke or not depended on who would make a decision in the next two hours.
The air in the base had become stagnant. Farhan had already packed the core compilation server’s hard drive into a shockproof case and was checking the underground tunnel’s exit status. Sister Shen was packing the most basic medicines and the daughter’s water bottle in a corner. Others were making final preparations at their stations — deleting logs, shredding media, closing all potentially recoverable data remnants.
Lu Yuan stood before the countdown screen, watching the numbers tick.
「T-38:14:52 · Target: Lu Zijing · Medical authorization freeze remaining」
Thirty-eight hours remaining. If the thirty-six-hour preparation time could be compressed to thirty-one — if they weren’t trapped within these two hours — if that Pigeonnet motorcycle didn’t break down — if Milan Vojnović didn’t press that interceptor button —
Too many ifs.
But he had no time to count them.
He turned off the countdown screen, turned, and walked into the darkness at the tunnel entrance.
Two hours. Or less.
And outside this city — on a desert road at the edge of the Sahara, a motorcycle was skimming the ground at eighty kilometers per hour. The rider was hunched over the fuel tank, eyes narrowed behind his goggles, ahead an endless stretch of starlit sand and dirt. He didn’t know what was happening in Shenzhen, didn’t know what the firmware in the metal box behind his seat was for, didn’t know he was racing against an encirclement.
But he didn’t stop.
Under the starlight, the motorcycle’s taillight shrank into a pinpoint red dot at the end of the desert road, then disappeared behind the next dune.
