Chapter 22: The IP Lock-On

Kaelen's POV

In my private mobile command suite, I could hear the quiet, mechanical hum of six liquid-cooled server racks—a blacked-out Mercedes Sprinter was parked two miles north of the Port Campbell turnoff.

The rain hit the roof in continuous torrents, but inside the air was ice-cold and had the smell of hot copper and dark coffee.

I stood over Devlin's shoulder, my heavy wool coat thrown over the leather bench that was behind me, my sleeves rolled up to my elbows. My silver eyes were focused on the primary telemetry monitor since three different dark-pool trading feeds were flickering in real time.

“Hold the signal, Devlin,” I ordered, my voice rough from thirty-six hours of no sleep.

“I'm making an effort, Sir," Devlin muttered, his fingers flying over his dual-tier split keyboard. Even with the air conditioning on, sweat appeared on his forehead.

"The people carrying out this buy script aren't making use of standard VPN relays or onion networks; they're employing a dynamic multi-hop proxy which piggybacks on commercial satellite broadband signals going over the Bass Strait."

"I don't give a damn if they are routing it through a lunar satellite," I snarled, placing my hands flat on his desk, standing over him as he felt the uneven breath coming from me.

"The trade script has just swallowed another sixty thousand shares of Vance Global Class-B stock. That has brought Aegis Capital's total holdings up to 14.2%."

14.2%.

They were just under one percent from reaching the fifteen percent threshold required to trigger a hostile board meeting and force a forensic audit of my mother's private accounts. Whoever was sitting behind that terminal was systematically dismantling the financial fortress my family had spent forty years building.

"It's not just the automated trades, Mr. Vance," Devlin murmured as he focused on a blue packet stream on the lower monitor. "Look at the packet headers; they aren't coming from corporate servers in Singapore or Zurich. There are micro-delays in the execution signatures—less than twelve milliseconds—meaning the physical machine sending these commands must be local."

My blood pumped quickly and vigorously through my veins. "How local?"

“Within a four-mile radius of the Port Campbell exchange,” Devlin whispered.

He pressed a key and a high-resolution topographic map of the Victorian coastline appeared on the wall display.

A crimson target grid began to shrink, narrowing from the whole township down to a jagged section of limestone cliffs overlooking the ocean.

"Filter out the commercial businesses,” I commanded, my heart beating with a violent rhythm against my ribs. “Filter the harbour authorities, the hotels, and the fishing cooperatives.”

"Filtering..." Devlin's fingers moved rapidly. "Finished. Reduced to eleven active residential IP addresses along the bluff."

"Now cross-reference these eleven lines with the power grid drawn for the last four hours,” I said, leaning closer to the screen. “A high-frequency trading script using dark-pool algorithms needs a lot of raw processing power, and draws current. Look for an abnormal voltage spike on a domestic residential line."

Devlin froze for half a second, the pupils in his eyes expanding behind his wire-rimmed glasses. "Of course, the battery banks... if they're operating off-the-grid or drawing on supplementary power..."

He executed a deep query into the local power provider's regional substation logs.

The screen pulsed blue for three agonising seconds before ten of the eleven yellow dots on the map of the cliffside changed to grey and disappeared.

A single red marker remained blinking steadily over a deserted and densely wooded area located right on the edge of the collapsing limestone bluffs.

IP ADDRESS LOCKED: 114.78.209.4

LOCATION: 42 OLD LIGHTHOUSE ROAD, PORT CAMPBELL SUBSCRIBER

REGISTRATION: DR. HAMISH CROFT (UNLISTED UTILITY RELAY)

I drew in a sharp, painful hiss as the air escaped my lungs.

Old Lighthouse Road, the rusted pump shed and isolated cottage where my men had reported the fire half an hour ago.

"Devlin," I whispered, gripping the edge of his console with my fingers so tightly that the plastic groaned under the pressure. "The fire report... Was the entire property destroyed?"

Devlin quickly raised the local emergency dispatch feed.

"The principal residential house has been destroyed, sir," Devlin whispered, meeting my eyes with a look of terror. "The local volunteer fire brigade has just arrived at the scene. But the utility shed on the bluff—the one connected to this particular IP line—is still standing."

“She is in the shed," I said, the truth striking me like a physical blow.

Valkyrie did not escape the fire. She didn't run down the highway with Croft. Instead, while the house was burning and my mother's hired arsonists believed they had destroyed all the evidence, she remained inside a damp, rusted shed by the edge of a crumbling cliff, using up the final amount of power in an off-grid battery bank to enable the remaining stock to bring Victoria Vance down.

She was fighting for her life with a keyboard in one hand and her child's hand in the other.

"Get the Mercedes moving," I snapped, sat up, and picked up my heavy coat from the bench. "Tell the security team to fall back two miles. Nobody approaches that property except me."

"Mr. Vance, wait!" Devlin shouted, pointing a shaking finger at the live packet monitor. "Look at the terminal status! The trading script has just locked up!"

I stopped at the door of the Sprinter, turning around.

The blue hex code which had been scrolling across the screen suddenly stopped. In its place, a flashing crimson alert banner spread out over the display:

PRIMARY TRANSCEIVER LINE SEVERED INTRUSION DETECTED AT LOCAL NODE AUDIO FEED LINKED: LINE 01

Live audio, characterized by a loud static noise, was transmitted through the speakers in the command suite.

A loud, strange voice, speaking with a heavy Sydney accent, was heard in the truck amid the rush of the wind and the roar of the burning timber in the background.

"We found the laptop, boss. The girl's pinned against the battery rack, and the kid is screaming. What do we do with them before the police arrive?"

Then came my mother’s voice—cool, calm, and unmistakably clear over the speaker:

“Get on with it and set the shed ablaze.”