Chapter 96 - Back On The Surface

**At the same time**

"How are we holding?" Kris asked, leaning over the set of monitors hastily rigged in the tunnel of Tom's making. Even though he held the highest rank in the place, he didn't bother to act haughty for no reason at all. 

"So far, so good," a youth sitting by the monitor replied. He did so without even a single stop in his furious tapping on the keyboard. "It seems that they have yet to locate the leak, but they already know that something is wrong," the young man explained before tapping into his keyboard a few more times and invoking a completely new screen to the biggest of his monitors.

"Look at those two sets of numbers," the youth said, pointing his finger at the monitor. "The ones above are how the connection usually gets reported and updated. Those below are the ones produced by our connection," he said, turning silent after he did so. 

Kris wasn't an informatic nor someone with any real expertise in the topic. While he licked a bit of the topic back in his early days, ever since he joined the military nearly three decades ago, he had no time to polish and update his knowledge. 

But the lack of IT background didn't stop him from noticing a strange pattern in both of the numerical sets. 

"It's like the entire thing is moved by four brackets," Kris muttered before looking at the youth. "Can we do something about it?" he asked.

"Sir, as much as I would love to help, this isn't a barrier. I can't just brute-force it," the youth replied with an anxious look in his eyes. "The problem is, the protocol constantly changes the registration token of the player. All the protocols are written into the hardware itself. And because we skipped quite a bit of it when wiring into their system..." the youth cut his sentence short. There was no need to finish it in order to pass the information he had on mind. 

"We would have to get into that place and mess with the cables again, I presume," Kris said, raising from his leaned position. "How long do we have before the error stacks up? Or rather, is there any risk of that happening?" he asked. 

"As surprising as it is, I think this error can actually stack up," the youth said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Realizing this took me several hours, but it seems that their protocols..." the youth turned silent, swallowing his saliva. 

"Speak," Kris ordered in a calm tone. There was no reason to shout at the young man for having his reservations. 'No one wants to be the bearer of the bad news,' Kris smiled to his thoughts, recalling how even his dearest friend would make the same face back in their early days in the military. 'Fuck, I'm getting nostalgic by thinking about him,' Kris thought, moving his attention back to the topic at hand. 

"Their protocols work as if they were from the previous age," the young man said, turning around on his chair and cupping his hands together. He rested his head over his hands for a moment before raising his eyes at Cleo's father. "Sir, I think that's the reason why we can't crack their system. It's too outdated for our machines to break it," he explained, still shaking his head in disbelief. 

"That's not all that surprising," Kris said with a smile. "Back in the days, the military would use the oldest technology that could still be made to work. The older your equipment was, the lesser chances were of it either malfunctioning or falling prey to the online attacks," Kris explained before shaking his head. "Well, keep up the good work. Make sure to call me if something happens," Kris said as he patted the young man's back before turning around. 

The road from the temporary operation center back to the surface was pretty annoying. With how long it took to move from the cave underneath the dome back to the farm made it pretty hard for anyone to take any breaks. Outside of few more essential officers, Kris was the only one capable of just having a walk outside to smoke a cigarette. 

"I wonder how they are doing down there," Kris muttered, thinking about the kids that went down to the dungeon. 'If they made it to the meeting point, they should be alright. I guess I need to be as confident in that little brat as I am in my own kids," Kris thought, recalling the sight of his daughter happily jumping into the capsule, without the slightest care for the danger that this operation could potentially bring. 

"Father?" Marvin asked when he noticed his father climbing up the ladder hatch out of the tunnel. "Something happened?" he asked with a worried look on his face. 

"So far, not yet," Kris replied, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and stuffing one of them into his mouth. 

"I thought you quit smoking," Marvin commented on the side, with his eyes already back on the tablet on his lap. 

"Getting scolded by a man on a wheelchair? My own son at that?" Kris muttered. As he walked by Marvin's place, he 'accidentally' slammed the back of his elbow into the kid's head. 

"Wah?!" Marvin twitched. "What was that for?" he asked, slightly angered by the unjustified violence. 

"Never doubt your parents, son," Kris replied in a voice full of pathos. He then walked out to the backyard of the farm before lighting up the cigarette in his mouth. 

For a single moment, Kris could relax. For a mere second, the world turned tranquil. As the smoke entered his lungs, Kris managed to calm himself down and clear his mind. 

And as he returned the smoke back to the world around him, all the peace broke into pieces. 

"Boss! Bad news!" one of the younger members of the family rushed out and shouted all the way from the corridor inside the farm. 

"I'm coming," Kris shouted back before releasing a deep sigh and throwing his still fresh cigarette on the ground. As he moved back inside, he made sure to close the doors behind him. "What's wrong?" 

"Boss, the system kicked Cleo out!"