Chapter 460 Sudden Reversal


    Her hands froze above the keys. She had already ceased all input, so who on earth had taken control and shielded them? Thatst onught was nothing the department’s regr staff. could have handled.


    The sudden rattle of keys snapped Jacqueline out of her panic–stricken haze. For a heartbeat, she simply stared, pulse thudding in her ears. Someone right beside her was typing–fast.


    <i>Don’t </i><i>tell </i><i>me </i>it’s…


    She swung around to see Quinn’s fingers fly with the precision of a concert pianist,mand lines racing across the monitor in crisp white rows. Each string of code rose like a barricade, meeting the hackers‘ iing fire and holding the line.


    It was Quinn. Quinn was the one shouldering the entire cyber–onught. The thought was absurd–impossible.


    <i>No. </i>It’s <i>a </i><i>fluke</i>. <i>It </i><i>has </i><i>to </i><i>be </i><i>a </i><i>fluke</i>.


    “Quinn, stop messing around right now!” Jacqueline shouted, voice pitching higher than she intended. “You promised you wouldn’t get involved—remember?”


    “I did promise, and I meant it,” Quinn said without lifting her eyes from the screen. “But that promise hinged on you holding the perimeter. You can’t, so I will.” Another volley of keystrokes fired like automatic gunfire, every stroke deliberate, lethal.


    “You? Hold them off? Don’t kid yourself-” Jacqueline began, but the words strangled in her throat when the monitor shed green in confirmation. The attack had been neutralized.


    Blocked. Again. For the second time, Quinn repelled the world–ss hackers as though swatting a moth from candlelight.


    <i>Once </i><i>might </i><i>be </i><i>luck</i>. <i>Twice</i><i>–</i><i>how </i><i>could </i><i>that </i><i>still </i><i>be </i><i>luck? </i>


    “It must be a coincidence–nothing but a coincidence,” Jacqueline muttered, yet the protest sounded brittle even to her own ears. She was the prodigy here, the acimed genius. How could Quinn aplish what she could not?


    Then came a third interception. A fourth. A fifth. By the fifth sess, Jacqueline could no longer bring herself to mouth the word coincidence.


    Each wless defensended like a p across Jacqueline’s pride.


    Chapi 400 Duuut Reversal


    What she had failed to achieve after exhausting every tactic, Quinn executed with disarming <fn7fb3> Content originallyes from find~novel</fn7fb3>


    ease.


    “Impossible!” Jacqueline rasped, eyes wide, knuckles bleaching around the edge of the desk.


    Everyone said Quinn was nothing more than an undistinguished secretary back in Azania<b>–</b><b>a </b>divorcée who’d left her husband’spany to work for a friend.


    How could a so–called secretary repel an assault orchestrated by the globe’s elite hackers?


    “Why not?” Rowan cut in, voice steady as granite.


    He stillcked his full memory, yet that hadn’t stopped him from digging into his family’s job.


    “Quinn is aputer specialist. Back in the service, she upgraded the entire security grid for the Azanian Army Headquarters. Compared with that, fending off a strike on Fane Group’s firewall is child’s y.”


    A ripple of astonishment spread through the study and across the faces projected in the video conference. Executives froze mid–sentence, eyes widening at the revtion.


    Jacqueline’s cheeks burned scarlet.


    For years, she had styled herself the resident prodigy, certain no one in the Fane family could rival her mastery of code.


    Give her enough time, she believed, and she would be the n’s crowning glory.


    Yet Quinn had marched in unannounced and crushed her on the very battlefield she had imed as her own.


    The barrage she could not blunt kept roaring toward thepany servers, but Quinn stopped every strike–once, twice, then a third time–her hands moving so fast the glow of the monitors seemed to chase her fingertips.


    With each intercepted blow, it felt as though Quinn ground her rival’s pride beneath an unforgiving boot, pressing it into the dirt for everyone in the room to witness.


    Calm yet forceful, Quinn kept issuing orders, her voice a stato metronome guiding the rest of the Information Security Department as they synchronized their consoles to her rhythm.


    They were no longer merely blocking the intruder; Quinn was already tracing the hostile code. back through the shadows of the,unching darts of counter–code that made the attacker flinch.


    Defense turned to offense, the digital shield sharpening into a spear.


    A war without smoke, yet every heartbeat in the study felt loaded with gunpowder.


    Tension coiled through the room; nearly everyone forgot to breathe as their eyes stayed glued to Quinn’s monitor.


    Jacqueline was no different, her posture stiff, her knuckles white on the armrest.


    Yet, in the darkness of her thoughts, she prayed for Quinn to stumble; she would rather see Fane Group bleed than watch Quinn triumph.


    To her dismay, a sudden roar of celebration burst from the remote–conference speakers, and both Everett and Rowan exhaled in visible relief.


    Jacqueline’s heart mmed against her ribs, then dropped; color drained from her face, leaving it the color of ash.


    That meant Quinn had resolved the crisis.


    Come morning, Quinn’s standing in Fane Group would rise like a banner on the wind.


    And the prodigy everyone once praised would be remembered only as the, stone she stepped <ol><li>on. </li></ol>


    Jaw locked, Jacqueline bit down so hard she tasted iron, then pivoted on her heel and stalked out, her face a thundercloud.


    Several coteral rtives of the Fane family offered quick, syrupypliments before making the same discreet retreat.


    <b>3/3 </b>