CNS | Chapter 21

Chapter 21, Surveillance

Before moving house, he still had to make a trip to Eden first.

Jiede and the others had called Shen Run many times, so he had to go see whether something urgent had happened.

There was also what had happened on Overture, and he needed to find out the follow-up too.

While cleaning the room, Shen Run asked Shen Ze about the balcony glass door.

“So you also don’t know who did it?”

Shen Ze nodded. “One day I woke up, and it had already turned into this.”

“Such a huge commotion, and you didn’t hear a thing?”

“No.” Shen Ze blinked those beautiful eyes.

He didn’t seem to be lying…

And Shen Ze wouldn’t lie to him either.1

“What about the utility room door? Did you go in?”

Shen Ze shook his head again. “No.”

“Older Brother, did anything get stolen?”

“No, nothing got stolen.” He closed the apartment door and pressed the elevator button.

Although he was moving, there was nothing he needed to take with him. Clothes and guns, the other house had them too. @More great reads，at Jinjiang Literature City

As for Shen Ze, he had come empty-handed to begin with, and the only blue-and-black guitar was still at the bar in Eden.

“Your heart really is big. The door at home was smashed like that, and you’re not scared at all?”

The elevator slowly descended, carrying the two of them into the night of Emerald Bay District.

Shen Ze smiled. “I am scared, but what’s the use of being scared? Even calling the police doesn’t help.”

Calling the police?

Calling the police really wouldn’t help. SGPD wouldn’t dare take a case from Emerald Bay District even if they were given ten times the courage.

“Older Brother, you were still sick at the time. Even if I was scared, I still had to protect you.”

Shen Run looked at the sincere expression on that beautiful face and pressed his lips together. “So that was your reason for always hugging me?”

These three days, he had not been asleep the whole time. He had woken up several times in between, and Shen Ze had been sleeping beside him, using those mechanical hands fitted with the most advanced force-feedback adjusters to hold him tightly.

Shen Run’s cybernetic prosthesis had been overheating, and his whole body had no strength. He couldn’t push him away no matter how hard he tried.

“You hugged me too.” Shen Ze put on a dissatisfied expression.

“No!” Shen Run widened his eyes and argued back.

“You did!”

“Then, I was just afraid you’d squeeze me off the bed…”

The more he said, the more guilty he felt. Shen Run touched his own nose and said no more.

Outside the apartment was a commercial street. Shop windows lined both sides, hanging all kinds of neon signs. Most of them were food stores, selling the “pre-made semi-finished products” Shen Ze had mentioned.

Tables and chairs, along with sun umbrellas, were all set up at the entrances, except that lately the purpose of those umbrellas had changed from blocking the sun to blocking Saint Grange’s rain, which never seemed to stop.

It was already eleven at night, and the commercial street was at its busiest. Around the buildings were drug addicts huddled in corners smoking, hot-blooded clones, groups of gangs, and mercenaries with guns in plain sight.

This was the norm in Emerald Bay, and also a miniature reflection of Saint Grange, even of Guya Lan.

Just after stepping out of the apartment building’s front door, Shen Run noticed the man sitting under a sun umbrella sharpening a knife.

The man in a white sleeveless undershirt had obviously noticed him too. After putting the slender, sharp bayonet back at his waist, he stood up from the chair.

It was Lucius.

The two of them looked at each other. Without any extra movement or conversation, Shen Run acted as if he hadn’t seen him, opened the umbrella, and led Shen Ze into the rain.

Shen Ze snatched the umbrella from his brother’s hand and held it himself.

The umbrella tilted slightly toward Shen Run. Shen Ze’s other shoulder was left outside, rainwater sliding off the leather jacket.

“Brother, is that person your colleague?”

Shen Run was a little surprised. “Yes, you’ve met him?”

“He has been here these past few days, and he hasn’t even changed his spot.” Shen Ze’s face darkened. “The others left after hearing you were sick. Only him, no matter how I chased him, he wouldn’t leave.”

“Ah, Lucius. He’s different from the others.”

Shen Run fished a cigarette pack out of his pocket, put one in his mouth, then searched up and down his body, but couldn’t find the lighter.

The person beside him stopped walking. He extended one mechanical finger and held it in front of the slender cigarette, lighting it.

Shen Run stared blankly at Shen Ze, even forgetting to blink.

“Brother, your face is red.”

What the hell is red, you idiot!

Shen Run coughed a couple of times awkwardly, urged his younger brother forward, and continued what he had not finished saying.

“You don’t need to care about him. He, he was sent by my ‘superior’, uh, he’s basically here to protect me.”

Shen Run stammered out Lucius’s identity.

Shen Ze gave a cold laugh. “‘Protect’? Isn’t that surveillance?”

Shen Run widened his eyes again. How was this kid so sharp about things like this?

On the first day Lucius was transferred to Heimdall, he had said the same thing to his own superior.

– Do you think I need someone to protect me?

At the time, Joshua had answered him like this.

– Just in case. Having Lucius stay by your side to protect you is good for both you and me.

From that day on, Lucius had always stayed by Shen Run’s side. When they were in Emerald Bay it was fine, but once they left Emerald Bay, he was practically inseparable from him.

“All right, this is part of his job.”

Shen Run noticed the change in his younger brother’s expression and thought he was feeling uncomfortable because there was an unfamiliar person following behind them.

“You can just treat him like he doesn’t exist.”

“Employer?” Shen Ze’s whole body turned colder by a few degrees. “Joshua Phoenix?”

Shen Run nearly choked on his cigarette. “Y-you, h-how do you even know that?”

“That person’s tattoo.” He said, “And that day when we came back from the hospital, the guards saluted you.”

Shen Run was briefly flustered and didn’t know how to explain it to him.

“Xiao Ze, you, you listen to me…”

“No need to explain to me.” Shen Ze cut him off. “I said I didn’t care. I don’t care about your work. I only want you by my side, whether you are a murderer or a fugitive.”

Shen Ze’s words, as always, made Shen Run feel steady and warm, except for that last sentence.

“Hey, wait. What do you take your brother for?”

He threw the burnt-out cigarette butt into a puddle on the ground and muttered, “I’m not a murderer, and I’m not a fugitive!”

Eden had been reached. @More great reads，at Jinjiang Literature City

Shen Run took his younger brother up the stairs. As soon as they reached the top, they saw Chi Yu leaning against the railing smoking.

“If I remember correctly, you shouldn’t be appearing here right now?”

His shifu appeared like a ghost, and Chi Yu was startled.

Shen Run hadn’t said it clearly, but Chi Yu knew what his shifu was referring to.

He scratched his head. “Shifu, wasn’t that just a joke you made?”

Shen Run rolled his eyes, and Shen Ze beside him smiled as he greeted Chi Yu.

“Hello, Brother Chi Yu.”

His pronunciation was very standard and natural, and Chi Yu looked at that smile beautiful enough to seem inhuman, feeling a little uneasy inside.

Damn, am I younger than you?

“Where’s Jiede?”

Shen Run glanced inside the door, but didn’t see the girl with eye makeup like a panda’s dark circles.

“She was called away by Mizuno. It seems it was for some kind of d…”

Chi Yu’s words stopped halfway. Remembering that his shifu had told him not to mention work in front of his “younger brother”, he stopped himself in time. “Anyway, it seems there was a bit of trouble at work.”

Shen Ze was very tactful, knowing that with him present there were some things the two of them were not convenient to say. He pointed at Eden’s door. “You guys talk, I’ll go in first.”

After saying that, he took the initiative to walk into the bar.

This child really was still so sensible.

Shen Run sighed inwardly, looking in the direction Shen Ze had left, feeling that his younger brother’s back was gorgeous too, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, with proportions so unreal that below the neck it was all legs.

“Shifu, you’re about to drool.”

Chi Yu’s voice drifted over, and only then did he come back to his senses. After coughing twice, he said seriously, “What happened over there with the codename Gray?”

Chi Yu also restrained his smiling expression. “One of our strongholds in the Margaret District was attacked.”

“It was a fast-food restaurant, and all three people died. Also…”

Chi Yu scratched his head and added, “The attackers used the fast-food restaurant’s node to break into our database. Although they were driven out very quickly, I don’t know how much data they copied…”

“Who did it?”

Chi Yu shook his head. “Don’t know. Uncle rushed back to check the rifling, and Sister Yu went with Mizuno to copy the server logs.”

The Uncle he was referring to was Doctor Herman, the person in charge of codename Blue.

“That stuff is no use.” Shen Run’s expression did not change much. “The attackers could find our disguised stronghold, kill our people, and break into the server. No matter what, they couldn’t have left traces for us to discover.”

No data fortress was truly unbreakable. That was what Shen Run had always believed, after all, he himself was a living example.

He was able to use “black light”. With that thing, Shen Run could reach any corner of the cyber world.

Heimdall’s top-secret information was all stored on paper. As long as the other side wasn’t directly attacking Nirvana underground, he had never worried about data leaks.

But that didn’t mean this matter wasn’t serious. He had extreme confidence in the firewall he designed, and there were no more than three icebreaking programs that could break through it.

The “Yehuo” used by the Hua Union special operations team, the “Violet” of the Euro Union, and the “Gram” of the Yalan Security Bureau.

Among these three forces, Hua Union was too far away, the Euro Union didn’t care, and that left only the Yalan Security Bureau.

Shen Run thought of the opening records of the cold storage box. These two intrusions were highly likely to have been carried out by the same person.

“Shifu, do you already know who the attacker was?” Chi Yu asked, tilting his head when he saw Shen Run fall into thought.

Shen Run took out another cigarette and beckoned Chi Yu over. The other party obediently took out a lighter, originally preparing to help his shifu light it, but it was snatched away by his shifu.

“City Ranger.” Shen Run said those four words almost one by one.

“Him?” Chi Yu was a little surprised, not understanding why his shifu thought that the guy who had smashed his own head might be the suspect who infiltrated Heimdall’s database.

“I’m only guessing.”

Military cyberware, top-notch network attack skills, and mysterious, unpredictable methods of action all fit the behavioral traits of Yalan Security Bureau agents.

“Lucius.”

He did not turn his head, knowing Lucius would always stand two meters behind him.

“These past few days downstairs from my house, did you see any suspicious people?”

Lucius walked out from the shadow beside the wall. “No, only that, uh, ‘younger brother’, only he went in and out of your apartment.”

Shen Run nodded thoughtfully, and after a pause, said, “Looks like that person used a special method to hide from your eyes.”

Otherwise there was no way to explain it. It couldn’t possibly have been Shen Ze, right?

When that thought emerged from the corner of his mind, Shen Run laughed at himself.

His own beautiful child couldn’t bear to kill even a spider that crawled into the room. How could he possibly be the City Ranger who had created hundreds of attack cases?

“We have to find this person as soon as possible…” Shen Run murmured to himself.

Originally, he had not been obsessed with finding this “City Ranger” to any great extent. At most, it was just smashing the skull of a guy who was already vile enough. It hadn’t caused him any real impact, and these hundreds of attack cases looked more like a childish prank to him.

But now it was different. Prometheus was a secret he had guarded for so many years. Absolutely no one could be allowed to discover it.

This not only concerned his own fate, but also Jiede and Leon.

Far above, high beams lit up. Shen Run looked down and saw a black stretched limousine parked downstairs.

A “Constantine” from Skyvault Vehicles, made by the same company as Shen Run’s Damocles. The whole car was equipped with the most advanced deflection shields, with countless heavy machine guns hidden beneath the luxurious body.

The bodyguard with glowing implants embedded in his face and neck said nothing. He came up and took out the shotgun tucked at his lower back, sweeping a burst toward the cement ground.

The addicts and thugs lurking in the corner shadows scattered and fled.

Joshua Phoenix got out of the car, and as if sensing something, he raised his head to meet Shen Run’s gaze, and gave Shen Run a smile.