Chapter 17 Chapter Sixteen

In a place thousands of miles away from the "European Nuclear Center", the walkie-talkie rang. "Okay, I'm in the corridor." While checking the monitoring screen, the technician pressed the button on the walkie-talkie, "The No. 86 camera you are looking for should be at the innermost." The receiver did not respond for a long time, and a thin layer of sweat appeared on the technician's forehead.Finally, the receiver "tick-tock" sounded. "The camera isn't here," came a voice, "but I can see where it was installed before, and someone must have moved it."

The technician took a long breath, "Thank you, don't hang up the phone yet, okay?" He sighed, and shifted his gaze to the row of monitoring screens in front of him again.They've lost a few wireless cameras before, and most of the complex is open to the public, giving pranksters a chance to steal them as souvenirs.Once the camera is removed from the device and out of the effective range, it will not be able to receive and transmit signals, and the corresponding screen will be blank.The technician stared at the monitor in front of him, quite puzzled. It was strange that he actually saw the picture transmitted by camera No. 86, and it was very clear.

If the camera was stolen, he thought, how could it possibly receive a signal?He knew, yes, there was only one explanation, and that was that the camera was still in the building, and someone had just moved it.Who did it?Why do you want to do this? He studied the monitor carefully for a while, then picked up the walkie-talkie and asked, "Are there any closets in the hallway? Small closets or black alcoves or something?" A puzzled voice replied, "No, what's the matter?" The technician frowned and said, "It's nothing, thanks for your help." He turned off the walkie-talkie and pouted.

The camera is so small and wireless that the technicians knew that camera No. 86 could be hidden in any corner of this heavily guarded complex—this is a complex of 32 separate buildings densely packed within a radius of half a mile.The only clue is that the camera seems to be placed in a dark place, which of course doesn't help.There were countless dark areas in the complex—maintenance rooms, heating pipes, garden sheds, bedroom closets, and that subterranean maze of tunnels that would take at least a few weeks to figure out where Camera 86 was. Anyway, this is not my problem, he comforted himself.

In addition to the difficult problem of finding the camera, there is one more tricky thing at the moment.The technician squinted at the feed from the missing camera, a fixture, a modern-looking piece of equipment he had never seen before.He studied a flickering object at the bottom of the electronic instrument. Although this guard has undergone countless rigorous trainings and tests to deal with various tense situations, but now, he obviously feels his heartbeat quicken. He told himself not to make a fuss, there would always be an answer, and that object was so small, what danger could it be?Nothing to be afraid of.He read it again, something was wrong, it was true, disaster was imminent.

Why did he lose it today, he murmured to himself. Safety had always been a top priority for his bosses, but today it was more important than on any other day in the past twelve years.The technician's eyes widened, and he stared blankly at the device for a long time, as if aware of the rumble of the storm from far to near. Then, sweating profusely, he called his boss.