11

                                    

                                          
Ok, this was insane.
Neve was still trying to catch her breath, her mind reeling from what had just happened, when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She fished it out with trembling hands and saw Minho's name flashing on the screen. She glanced around the room, feeling the weight of all the eyes on her. She answered the call, putting him on speaker.
"Listen, we managed to reboot the system almost immediately. The blackout only lasted for a few seconds, not even a minute. Le Sserafim didn't miss a beat — they kept going like nothing happened. The audience probably thinks it was part of the performance."
Neve let out a sigh of relief. She glanced at the screen on the wall, where the group was already transitioning into their next song, "Crazy." The girls were captivating, their energy and precision impeccable despite the chaos that had been brewing just moments before. The crowd was eating it up, completely unaware of the danger they'd just been in.
"That's a relief," the hacker muttered, pushing a hand through her hair, feeling the tension in her shoulders ease slightly.
"Yeah, but we're not out of the woods yet," Minho continued, his voice tense. "The performance isn't over, and we're worried the hackers might try again. Right now, they're locked out, but they'll find a way back in unless we can reinforce the system. We've got a few minutes, maybe less."
Neve's heart rate picked up again, her relief evaporating. She glanced around the room, seeing the wide eyes of Seventeen and the staff members as they listened to the conversation. This wasn't over yet.
"Okay," she said, her voice firming up. "What do we need to do?"
"Can you access the system from where you are?" Minho asked, his voice clipped. "We need to set up a temporary firewall and lock down the external ports. It won't hold them off forever, but it'll give us more time to secure the mainframe."
Her eyes darted to the tablet in her hands. It wasn't ideal, but it would have to do. "Yeah, I can do that. Just give me a second."
She opened up a secure connection on the tablet, her fingers flying over the screen as she navigated through the layers of the system. She could feel the eyes of the room on her, but she forced herself to block it out, focusing on the task at hand. She pulled up the network security interface, her mind racing as she searched for the external ports Minho had mentioned.
"We need to close off all the unnecessary ports first," Minho was saying, his voice clear but urgent through the speaker. "Start with 22, 80, and 443. I'll work on the internal firewall from my end."
"Got it," she muttered, her fingers tapping rapidly as she brought up the command prompt and started inputting the codes. The screen filled with lines of code as she worked, her mind zeroing in on the task like a laser. She couldn't afford to mess this up.
The others in the room had fallen silent, their eyes fixed on her as they watched her work. She felt a bead of sweat trickle down her temple but ignored it, her entire focus on the screen in front of her.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Hoshi standing by the screen, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes wide with curiosity and concern. Jeonghan was next to him, his usually relaxed demeanor replaced by a serious expression as he watched her. The8 — was this his real name, she didn't know — was leaning against the wall, his gaze fixed on the tablet in her hands, his face unreadable.
"Alright, closing port 22," Neve said, her voice steady as she input the command. "Minho, I need you to disable the remote access permissions for the backup server. I'm rerouting the firewall through the primary network."
"On it," Minho replied, his voice slightly muffled as if he were talking while typing. "Give me a few seconds."
The screen blinked as Neve executed the command, a small message appearing in the corner confirming that the port had been closed successfully. She let out a breath and moved on to the next one, her fingers moving with practiced ease despite the tension coiling in her stomach.