The Thorne Heiress Unveiling Shadow novel Chapter 12

The Thorne Corporation's secure server room was known internally as "The Vault." It was a technological fortress in the sub-basement of the headquarters, protected by biometric scanners, armed guards, and a network infrastructure designed by the best minds in the business. Right now, it was a war room on the verge of collapse.

Chase stood in the center of the room, a thundercloud of controlled fury, as his IT team scrambled around him in a state of escalating panic. At the main console was Daniel Peterson, Chase's much-vaunted Head of IT. He was a cocky, brilliant MIT graduate with a string of impossible successes to his name, a man who spoke of firewalls and network security with the arrogance of an artist discussing his masterpieces. He had never faced a problem he couldn't solve.

Until today.

"It's impossible," Peterson muttered, his fingers flying across his keyboard, his face slick with sweat. "I'm trying to initiate a system restore from the isolated backup servers, but the malware is already there. It's like a phantom; it mirrored itself onto our offline backups the moment it breached the system. It anticipated our every move."

"Forget the restore! Find a backdoor! A vulnerability in their code!" Chase commanded, his eyes fixed on the giant countdown clock that was now displayed on every monitor in the room, a constant, mocking reminder of their failure.

00: 18: 47: 22.

"We're trying!" another tech, a young woman with terrified eyes, shouted from across the room. "But every port we try to open, it counters with a logic bomb. It's not just a program, it's an AI. The code is... it's adapting. It's learning our methods and evolving its defenses in real-time."

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