Take My Breath Away

When Evelyn saw the pic Calvert sent her, she quickly turned her screen off. She didn't want Carlos to catch a glimpse of it.

Too late! Carlos had seen it anyway.

Evelyn was a little embarrassed about it. She shifted in her seat and went quiet.

She wouldn't talk about it unless Carlos brought it up.

Carlos' face darkened. 'No wonder we haven't seen much of Sheffield. He's two-timing my daughter! I think another lesson is in order.'

Just then, Evelyn's phone buzzed as another message came in. This time, she was smart enough to keep her phone away from Carlos, balancing it on her leg under the table. She'd wait till she had a chance to check her messages away from prying eyes. When Carlos wasn't looking, she checked the top bar for notifications. 'His ex-girlfriend, ' the message read.

She took another look at the picture. The woman held Sheffield's hand, looking up at him. It seemed that the two were talking about something.

The message was from Calvert.

She tried not to show any emotion as she turned the screen off again. She knew Calvert was trying to stir up shit between her and Sheffield. But that didn't make it hurt any less.

Sheffield had been busy for awhile now. He didn't even have time to see her, but he did have time to see his ex-girlfriend.

Evelyn was in a trance as the meeting continued. She had no clue what the others were saying. Her thoughts were a million miles away.

But none of this escaped Carlos. He knew his daughter better than anyone, knew something was bugging her. He ended the meeting early, a frown on his face.

When everyone left, only Carlos and Evelyn remained. "I'm surprised at you, Evelyn. Losing your cool over a random pic?" he asked.

Evelyn was confused. 'What does Dad mean?'

"I'm not trying to mend anything between you and Sheffield. But has he torn down those walls already? You were always the ice princess. And now a picture gets you upset." It wasn't just here.

She was distracted at work, too. That angered him.

Embarrassed, Evelyn nodded, "I'm sorry, Dad."

Carlos stood up from his seat and said, "I can't tell you who to love. Think about this, though: this is the guy you gave your heart to. While you were working, he was with another gal. You might want to chew on that. Do you still love him? Do you still trust him? Those are questions you need to answer for yourself."

Then he left, and Evelyn was alone with her thoughts.

After a long while, she sneered. It was just a photo. When Sheffield was around Dollie, she was all over him, not the other way around. A photo didn't matter at all! Was it really his ex? And was there any reason to worry? Probably not. Like Carlos said, she was always calm. How could she let this mess with her head?

At this moment, Sheffield was exhausted. He'd performed a couple surgeries and it was quite late. Evelyn was the only thing on his mind. But before he could leave to see her, he got a call from the lab. "Mr. Tang, we're down to critical levels on a couple compounds."

It meant Sheffield needed to invest more money to buy the materials. And he had to do it soon. After a short pause, he said, "I see."

He thought for a while in the car, and finally drove back to his apartment.

As soon as he entered his domicile, he went straight to the study. He booted up his computer, and began to make money.

Three days later

ZL Group's latest open world MMO was a huge hit. In any given Internet cafe, the place was illuminated by glowing screens. A chaotic, caffeine-fueled corner, where two thirds of the patrons were logged into the game.

As the game was popular among the young, so were the cheating programs. All kinds of cheating programs were being sold online.

One day, a special one showed up on the market. Players using it would be able to get massive amounts of gold, as well as level up quickly. Everyone liked it. It was difficult, if not impossible to detect, so server-side anti-cheating protections were no help. The sales reached a fever pitch. The designer made hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Within days, he was a millionaire.

The MMO department head soon heard about the cheating program. He asked the developers to step up their anti-cheating methods.

But despite their best efforts, they failed. It was like trying to herd cats.

Helpless, the manager in charge had to report it to his superior.

One thing led to another, and eventually Carlos got wind of it.

Without a second thought, Carlos contacted Star Anise and asked him to figure out a way to disable or even destroy the cheating program.

"Okay. Three hundred million," replied Star Anise.

"One hundred million," Carlos haggled.

"As far as I know, the designer earns more than 100 grand a day. On a good day, it's more than that. He's a millionaire already, and might eventually become one of the richest men in the world. Of course, that's not the point. You know as well as I do how much money ZL Group invested in this game."

Carlos fixed his eyes on the computer screen. The subsidiary of ZL Group had gone all out on this online game. In addition to the Project Leader, Lead Designer, and Lead Programmer, the leads had their own teams consisting of character artists, world artists, creature artists, writers and quest designers, and 3-D modelers. A composer had to be brought in for the music, and they needed video game sound designers to create entire libraries of custom sound effects. And 5.5 million lines of code later, they had a game. Most importantly, the commercial fees were bottomless. So far, they had spent over a half-billion dollars on this game.

If it was destroyed by this cheating program, everything they did was for nothing. Carlos' reply was to the point. "Deal," he said.

Within a day, Star Anise had coded a client-server firewall and a way to identify whether the program had been used. He updated the heuristics used to identify cheat programs and viruses, making it more robust. He also patched the subtle alterations the program made to the game's code. Current players would need to update their games. For new players, the additions would be seamless and part of the original download package.

Staring at the screen of the online game, Carlos was lost in thought again.

Thus far, Star Anise had extorted over a billion from him. It was possible that he would ask him for more money in the future.

He started wondering if Star Anise was either Matthew or Sheffield. Those were the only two who braved his wrath to defy him.

But on second thought, Carlos knew his son; Matthew was unlikely to be behind this. So, that left Sheffield.

But he didn't think it was Sheffield either. He had a feeling that a young man like Sheffield couldn't have done this.

For the first time in his life, Carlos felt so helpless and troubled, and it was all because of a mysterious hacker—Star Anise.

Carlos had a hunch that if he didn't find out who Star Anise was, the hacker would be able to wrest ZL Group away from him one day.

He called Dixon on internal line and instructed, "Go and check on Sheffield's R&D project. See if there's been any new funds, and how much he invested."

"Yes, Mr. Huo."

Two days later, Dixon told Carlos dejectedly, "Mr. Huo, I couldn't find a thing."

"What do you mean?" Carlos put down his pen heavily and glared at the man.

"As far as we know, Sheffield himself keeps the books, while the rest of his team are only responsible for the research and development. They don't know how much money has been spent or on what. He's hid himself too well, and the people working with him are very tight-lipped. It is almost impossible to find out anything..."

Carlos' face went livid. "Then just keep an eye on Sheffield and his research and development center, and where they go for materials. If we know who their suppliers are, at least that's something." He didn't believe that there was no way to find out anything about Sheffield. He had a reputation to protect.

"Yes, Mr. Huo." Dixon shook his head resignedly and left the office.

Actually, many people wanted to know more about Sheffield. And there were also just as many people who wanted to have a hold over him and ruin him.

Sheffield also figured a high-level person had been investigating him recently, so he immediately hid the important things and burned the insignificant ones, so there wouldn't be anything for anyone to find.

In the dead of night, at ZL Group

Evelyn rubbed her temples and checked the time. It was already past 11 p.m.

She yawned as she put the documents back in the folder, and placed them on her desk. She was definitely ready for the end of the workday.