Chapter 18 - The Honeypot Strategy
To catch a ghost, you have to give them something worth materializing for.
Morgan Vance was arrogant, fueled by inherited wealth and a pathological need to avenge her father. She believed she was outsmarting us, completely unaware that our slink.live platform had already mapped the outer edges of her proxy network.
"We need a honeypot," I told the war room, pacing the length of the glass-walled office. "Morgan wants the proprietary source code for Seedance 2.0 to control the Virtual KOC market. We are going to give her a backdoor right into our central mainframe."
"Claire, that’s suicide," Chloe gasped. "If she gets into the central server, she can wipe our entire global client database in seconds."
"She’s not going to get into the real server," Mark smiled, immediately catching on to my strategy. A thrilling, dangerous synergy sparked between us. "We are going to build a cloned, isolated server. A digital labyrinth."
Giang nodded eagerly on the video feed. "I can code the dummy server tonight. We will populate it with fake, highly encrypted files labeled as the Seedance 2.0 master algorithms. When Morgan breaches the honeypot and attempts to download the files, the payload will activate."
"What’s the payload?" Mark asked.
"A hyper-aggressive, self-executing beacon," Tới grinned, looking like a kid in a candy store. "The moment the file touches her local network, it will bypass her VPNs, shatter her proxy shields, and ping her exact GPS coordinates directly to our dashboard."
The trap was set. We intentionally lowered the firewall on one of our redundant Asian IP addresses, leaving a breadcrumb trail that looked like a sloppy mistake by an overworked IT department.
We didn't have to wait long.
At 2:15 AM, the alarms in our war room chimed softly.
"She took the bait," Giang whispered, his hands hovering over his keyboard. "Morgan’s syndicate is breaching the honeypot. She is initiating the download of the dummy files."
I stood next to Mark, my heart hammering a fierce, adrenaline-fueled rhythm against my ribs. We watched the progress bar on the massive monitor slowly fill. 50%... 75%... 100%.
"Download complete," Tới announced. "The beacon is active."
For ten agonizing seconds, the screen remained blank. Then, a massive digital map of the globe materialized, zooming past Europe, past the United States, and slamming directly into Southeast Asia.
A pulsating red dot appeared on the map, pinpointing a luxury commercial high-rise.
"Singapore," Giang announced, pulling up the building’s registry. "She is operating out of a penthouse suite in the financial district. And Claire... you’re not going to believe this."
"What?" I demanded.
"Tomorrow is the opening day of the Global Affiliate Marketing Summit at the Marina Bay Sands," Mark realized, reading over Giang’s data logs. "It’s the biggest digital marketing expo in the world."
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"Morgan isn't just hiding in Singapore," I said, a cold, predatory smile spreading across my face. "She’s attending the summit. She plans to announce her new AI tech firm using the source code she thinks she just stole from me. She wants to take my crown in front of the entire industry."
I looked at Mark. "Pack a bag. We are going to Singapore."
