Chapter 7

7. Black Wing

“How’s company life? Is it bearable?”

Late that night, Songi called and asked in a teasing voice.

She seemed amazed that Jiseul, who had always sworn she’d never work at a company, had suddenly gotten a job.

“It’s okay, I guess.”

Jiseul smiled faintly and answered with a sigh.

It wasn’t as if she’d never worked at a company before.

She had simply needed to keep her work at the National Intelligence Service a secret, so she’d always pretended to be a freelancer.

That was what being a Ghost Agent meant.

Someone who could never be exposed to the outside world.

“Are the people there treating you well?”

“Yeah. They’re nice. They’re just all way too energetic.”

Honestly, Jiseul was exhausted after meeting so many people all day.

As always, dealing with computers was easy.

Dealing with people was hard.

Led around by Kangbin, she’d greeted every single member of the New Technology Team one by one.

On top of that, she’d been given a detailed tour of the entire building, from the first floor all the way to the fifteenth.

She greeted people everywhere she went.

By the end of the day, she’d easily introduced herself to more than a hundred people.

“More importantly, did you find someone to work at the café? I quit so suddenly, so there must’ve been a huge gap.”

Jiseul asked carefully, feeling guilty.

Songi laughed brightly.

“Yep. They’re starting the day after tomorrow. They even have a barista certification and seem really reliable. They’re a bit older, though.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Exactly. So stop worrying about things here and focus on your job. Show them what you can do.”

“I will.”

Songi fell silent for a moment before speaking again in a cheerful voice.

“Still, I’m glad you’re doing better. A month ago, you looked completely broken.”

“Hey. Broken is a bit much. I wasn’t that bad.”

“Not eating, not leaving the house, keeping blackout curtains closed, and lying motionless in a dark room all day. That’s exactly what being broken looks like.”

“Fine, fine. Don’t worry. I’ve gotten over it now.”

Jiseul deliberately put energy into her voice.

The truth was she hadn’t completely recovered.

She never knew when another panic attack might hit.

Still, she was much better than before, and she didn’t want Songi worrying about her.

After making sure Jiseul had eaten properly, Songi finally sounded reassured and ended the call.

She was always a kind friend.

After hanging up, Jiseul reluctantly opened her bag.

She was exhausted, but there was something she absolutely had to do tonight.

What she pulled out was an apple juice bottle carefully wrapped in tissues.

The same bottle Woohyun had personally handed her in the CEO’s office.

Placing it in front of her, Jiseul fell into thought.

Did she really have to go this far?

Woohyun’s fingerprints were undoubtedly still on the bottle.

And she intended to use those fingerprints to gain access to the Server Room.

Her plan was to create a silicone fingerprint copy of Woohyun’s print.

She had even stopped by a science supply store on her way home and purchased all the necessary materials.

But now that the moment had come, she hesitated.

Maybe she should just tell Woohyun the truth.

Maybe it would be better to explain everything and openly tell him she intended to install defensive software on his computer.

But how much could she trust him?

And if he learned that she herself was the reason Prosecutor Shin Junghyeon had been killed, there was no way he could remain friendly toward her.

Still, she had unexpectedly received a stroke of luck.

The smartwatch Woohyun had personally fastened onto her wrist.

Since it had belonged to him, it almost certainly contained his access credentials.

That meant she could probably move freely throughout the WS Soft building.

When opening the CEO’s office door, Woohyun had first scanned his fingerprint.

Then he had tapped his smartwatch against the security system.

‘The Server Room’s security system probably isn’t much different.’

That was Jiseul’s assumption.

The security devices on both doors looked identical.

All she needed was the fingerprint and the smartwatch.

With those two things, she could enter the Server Room without much trouble.

As for the CCTV cameras, she could simply hack and disable them.

Jiseul immediately began creating the silicone fingerprint.

Her heart pounded nervously.

Every time the image of Woohyun’s cold, composed face surfaced in her mind, her emotions became complicated.

But she pushed aside all her anxiety by thinking of Prosecutor Shin Junghyeon.

Protecting Shin Woohyun properly.

At this moment, nothing mattered more than that.

* * *

Late that night, Woohyun was searching for information about “Black Wing.”

It was the hacker alias Kyunghoon had told him about.

Black Wing’s record was astonishing.

The name had appeared countless times in newspaper articles.

Even while still in high school, Black Wing had possessed enough skill to hack government agencies, financial institutions, the National Intelligence Service, and even international criminal organizations.

Fortunately, it appeared that Black Wing had only left behind the signature “Black Wing” after infiltrating servers.

There was no evidence of stolen information being misused.

Sometimes warning messages had been left behind instead.

[Your systems are as fragile as glass.]

Most of them were things like that.

The words perfectly captured the arrogance and confidence of a teenager.

Woohyun couldn’t help laughing.

After being arrested in high school, it seemed Black Wing had become a white hat hacker.

For several years, she had developed and distributed free security software.

She had also contributed numerous articles to IT newspapers discussing countermeasures against emerging hacking techniques.

If he had been living in Korea at the time, there was no way he wouldn’t have heard of Black Wing.

The name had caused far too much of a sensation.

But he had been studying in the United States back then and hadn’t paid much attention to domestic news.

The last news article about Black Wing dated back to her DEF CON championship victory.

After that, there was nothing.

No trace whatsoever.

Then came the five-year gap after graduation.

No matter how hard he searched, he couldn’t find any information about what Jiseul had been doing during that time.

The fact that she hadn’t even listed it on her résumé suggested another possibility.

That she might have been involved in something illegal.

With skills like hers, she could’ve earned a fortune operating in the shadows.

Just what had that woman been doing?

The more he searched into her past, the more his curiosity and suspicion grew.

Could he trust Jiseul?

Or did she possess some connection to his brother’s death?

It was a night that only left his thoughts more tangled.

* * *

Jiseul remained at the office well past midnight.

She was waiting for an opportunity to access the Server Room.

She had expected the building to be quieter by this hour.

It wasn’t.

Because employees were free to choose their own working hours, quite a few people had started work in the afternoon and continued well past midnight.

Once it was after one in the morning, Jiseul finally gave up waiting.

No matter how she looked at it, the building wasn’t going to get any emptier.

Picking up her laptop, she calmly left the office while pretending she was heading to the break room to work.

After confirming no one was in the hallway, she headed toward the emergency staircase.

The moment the stairwell door closed behind her, she sat in a CCTV blind spot tucked away in a corner.

Then she opened her laptop and hacked into the company’s internal CCTV system.

She altered every camera feed in the building to replay footage from thirty minutes earlier.

The security control room would no longer be watching live footage.

Instead, they’d be viewing recordings from half an hour ago.

She had thirty minutes.

That was more than enough.

Jiseul quickly descended from the fifteenth floor, where the New Technology Team was located, to the ninth floor, where the Server Room was.

Leaving the emergency staircase, she cautiously approached the room.

She carefully checked her surroundings in case anyone was nearby.

Perhaps because it was the middle of the night, she saw no one.

Jiseul immediately reached for the security device beside the door.

She pressed Woohyun’s silicone fingerprint onto the scanner.

Then she tapped the smartwatch against it as a second authentication step.

She was so tense that even the brief moment before the system responded felt unbearably long.

Fortunately, the thick reinforced glass door opened silently.

Jiseul carefully stepped inside.

The room was quiet.

Cold air from the cooling systems flowed across the floor.

The steady hum of server rack fans echoed softly through the space.

Putting on the gloves she had prepared, Jiseul headed straight for her target without hesitation.

She carefully connected a cable to an L3 switch port and opened her laptop.

After working for a while, an exact copy of Woohyun’s desktop screen appeared on her display.

The user was away from the machine.

The security software was idle.

This was her chance.

Carefully, she launched the defensive program she had personally created on Woohyun’s desktop.

『UpdateDriver_KB98233.exe』

The filename looked like an ordinary Windows update.

Nothing about it would seem suspicious.

Woohyun himself would never notice.

But a powerful defensive shield called had just been installed inside his system.

The defensive program she had built personally lived up to its name.

Silently and faithfully, it existed only to protect the system.

Its purpose was singular.

To stop from infiltrating.

After finishing her work, Jiseul thoroughly checked for anyone nearby before calmly leaving the Server Room.

She returned to the emergency staircase as if nothing had happened.

After restoring the CCTV system to normal, she casually opened the door and stepped out.

And just as she released a sigh of relief, it happened.

Jiseul nearly stopped breathing from shock.

A tall figure she had never expected to see was standing directly in front of the door, completely blocking her path.