Chapter 25
She didn’t even know when Callum had appeared behind Nadia at some point. He was now rolling up his shirt sleeves, revealing solid, muscular forearms.
Nadia didn’t even have time to question how he knew what he was doing–her instincts kicked in before her brain could.
She stepped aside without hesitation.
Callum sat down, eyes calm and focused as they swept across the chaotic battle unfolding on the screen.
“Key,” he said, short and to the point.
Nadia quickly scribbled a complex string of characters on a sticky note and handed it to him.
“02090630CNLFYAMS“.
Callum glanced at it. The next second, his fingers dropped to the keyboard.
He wasn’t exactly typing. It was a blur, so fast it felt like watching an illusion.
His hands moved with impossible speed, ghost–like afterimages trailing each motion. The keyboard clattered beneath a relentless downpour of keystrokes- sharp, rapid, like a digital storm.
Lines of code flooded the screen like a waterfall, and commands flew out with flawless precision.
He didn’t waste time patching her firewalls. Instead, he began writing an entirely new counterattack program from scratch.
Trace, locate, then reverse infiltrate.
The incoming attacks–so aggressive just moments ago–began collapsing under pressure. Hostile paths were severed, wiped clean, and turned back on their origin.
After about five minutes, the alarms stopped.
It was clear that the attackers were stunned by the counterstrike. With their momentum shattered, they were breaking formation, some even fleeing.
Callum’s eyes stayed cold, his fingers still moving quickly.
He didn’t just kick the intruders out–he traced their connections back through the network, triggering a flood of forced disconnect messages across the screen.
The once–threatening IP addresses turned grey, vanishing from the monitor as if they were snuffed out by an invisible hand. However, Callum didn’t stop there.
His fingers kept going, building yet another program–swift, seamless, devastating. Then finally…
“Done,” he said.
Callum embedded the program into the system, his fingers tapping a few quick, precise strokes across the keyboard.
A shield icon with a soft blue glow appeared on Nadia’s desktop.
“Made you a security shell. With that in place, it won’t be so easy for them to break in again,” he said casually.
Nadia stared at the shield, then glanced over at Callum beside her–her heartbeat still hadn’t fully calmed down.
If it hadn’t been for him tonight, she didn’t even want to imagine the consequences.
Once again, he’d become her hero.
There was a time she thought he was worlds away. Now, he felt impossibly close.
“Thanks,” she said quietly. Her voice was a little hoarse from the lingering tension.
Right then, her phone lit up and started ringing. Samuel’s name flashed on the screen.
Nadia picked it up and walked to the window before answering. “Hello?”
“Nad? What happened? Why didn’t you accept the network share?” Samuel’s voice was full of concern.
“It’s okay now,” Nadia replied, her eyes drifting toward Callum’s silhouette. Her voice remained steady.
“It’s been handled. Don’t worry, no data was lost. I’ll migrate everything to a new system tomorrow.”
After ending the call, she turned back around.
Callum was already on his feet, still facing her computer screen. His eyes were fixed on the name of an encrypted folder.
It looked like it held files connected to her and Samuel, possibly documents related to the Global Medical Summit,
“What kind of treasure are you hiding in this computer?” he asked, voice low but edged with pressure. “To attract that many top–tier hackers?”
Nadia paused, then answered quietly. “Callum, thanks for helping me today. But everyone has their secrets, don’t they?”
Her tone was calm, polite, but distant.
“I can only tell you that nothing in here is illegal, criminal, or anything that would hurt anyone. You can relax.”
Callum stared at her for a few seconds. Then, finally, he didn’t press further.
“Well, since I helped you, don’t you think you owe me something in return?” he said.
