The Highest Bounty

Most jobs of Federation Government departments were cushy desk jobs, though the Federal Prisons department was relatively less lucrative, especially for low-level prison wardens. Thus, the Prison department always had open positions throughout the year. Even the prison internships offered by the Military Academy were usually unfilled.

 When Gu Ding showed up at the Cerulean branch of the Skyriver Prison one day with his resume, the worker in the Human Resource department was rather shocked.

 Gu Ding’s only work experience was with the tavern, though he was granted multiple awards in the Academy. The Cerulean branch of the Skyriver Prison was happy to accept an outstanding student like him. After spending less than five minutes going through his information and verifying that everything within was true, the human resources worker handed his resume to the chief warden.

 Old Henry, chief warden of the Cerulean branch, was processing information about the new inmates. The crackdown by the Federation Army in the past few days had caused the prison population to swell to the total population of the past three years combined. Old Henry massaged his temples that felt like they were swelling. He caught a glance on his workstation screen which had a new message from the Human Resources department. “A message from HR? Are we getting a new recruit?”

 The Prison was suffering from a major lack of manpower because of the sudden increase in the inmate population. Old Henry had been troubled by this problem.

 Old Henry’s eyes sparkled when he opened Gu Ding’s resume. Gu Ding’s information showed that he was perfectly capable of enrolling in the Advanced Academy. He would already be an army officer once he graduated from the Advanced Academy, and if his results were outstanding, he would be selected to undergo elite training. Old Henry was ecstatic that a student of such potential wanted to be an intern at his prison. If Gu Ding excelled in the future, the Cerulean Prison would also share his glory.

 Positions for prison interns had always been vacant. Moreover, the allowance for an intern was half of that of a normal worker. Financial resources for prisons were generally scarce.

 2Old Henry spent less than a minute reading his resume and immediately accepted the application. Gu Ding did not even need to go through an interview and was immediately inducted as a worker of the Cerulean Prison.

 Gu Ding was shocked when he received the reply. He thought he needed to pass an oral interview and a physical test, and would take at least an afternoon before his application was accepted.

 After receiving the passcard for a prison guard, a veteran guard brought him to the monitoring room. He spent several minutes explaining the various areas of the prison and anything he needed to be wary about. After answering a rather urgent phone call, he left Gu Ding alone in the monitoring room. Before he left, he told Gu Ding that if he saw something abnormal in the security cameras, he should inform everyone immediately.

 

Usually, there would be more than one person manning the monitoring room. These past few days had been very busy and most of the prison staff were in other departments processing new inmates and handling other jobs. No one had the free time to sit around in the monitoring room. They only put him there because he was an intern. They did not expect that Gu Ding had an ulterior motive for entering the monitoring room.

 Gu Ding scanned his surroundings and confirmed that no one was around. He allowed Neptune to black out the only security camera in the monitoring room and easily connected Neptune to a prison network terminal.

 In a few seconds, Neptune had scanned through all the messages in the Skyriver Prison Headquarters and its 249 branches.

 “So where’s this Pearson?” Gu Ding had already formulated a plan in his mind.

 “He’s on planet Fertilia. The prison network there was suffering from a small hiccup. He’s supposed to be there to supervise the repair works but actually, he’s there to look at girls. There’s a beauty pageant going on in Fertilia. However, he has already reserved a seat on the interplanetary transport to Cerule tomorrow morning.” After connecting to the Skyriver Prison network, nothing escaped Neptune’s eyes.

 “A small hiccup? Make that a large hiccup. Especially the sort of hiccups that allow prisoners to escape.” Gu Ding’s eyes flashed a hint of cunning.

 “I can introduce some contagious viruses into the network too. The more chaotic it gets, the higher our chances of success.” Neptune was not afraid that this issue blew up.

 “I think so too.” Gu Ding smiled.

 The virus that Neptune spread in the network was extremely contagious. When the Fertilian Prison network security detected the virus, more than half of the prisons in the sector had already been infected.

 The two network technicians did not know what to do. The Skyriver Prison network was an internal network and was isolated from the civilian network. Virus attacks were extremely rare. The job of a prison network technician usually consisted of downloading and applying patches from the headquarters and handing in a daily report of one or two sentences. They were not adept in technical work and were flustered when faced with this problem.

 Before the two technicians could report the incident to the chief warden, the chief warden of the Fertilian Prison slammed open the door to their office angrily. “What are you two doing? Why are half of the security feeds playing porn videos?”

 4“The system is under attack, chief !” Both of them answered miserably.

 

“Why did you tell me only now!” The chief warden was dissatisfied with the answer.

 “Actually, we’ve just discovered it…”

 In ten minutes, the Fertilian Prison network was entirely crippled by the virus. Neptune secretly unlocked all the doors and restraint systems of the prison. The prison immediately descended into chaos.

 Meanwhile, at the beauty pageant, Pearson was sitting cross-legged, one of his feet was shaking as he happily enjoyed the view. In less than ten minutes, he would be able to hold the hand of the pageant winner and lead her into a motel room.

 3At this time, the intelligent ring on Pearson’s finger blinked. He frowned, then answered the call.

 “Mr. Pearson. There is a major security breach in the prison network. Please return immediately. We cannot contain it and we are about to contact headquarters. If the chief warden knows that you’re not around, you’ll get into trouble.”

 “F*ck!” Pearson swore exactly one curse word when he ended the call. He had to leave. As the deputy chief warden from the headquarters, his task at Fertilia was to supervise the repair works. Now that the entire system had collapsed, the branch needed to send a report to the headquarters. If the chief warden knew he was not at the scene to supervise repair words, he did not know how he would be punished by that damned old man.

 Reluctantly, Pearson returned to the prison and was stunned. He had only thought that it was a hiccup in the system, but he did not expect a riot. He had been working in the Skyriver Prison system for more than twenty years, and this was his first time seeing a total collapse of the network causing a riot. He panicked.

 In the Prison, none of the alarms were silent. The sprinklers on the ceiling were spraying water, and all the doors were unlocked. The mob of criminals had already broken into the control room and the prison offices. Meanwhile, the smarter criminals had already found the exit in the shortest amount of time and had escaped.

 1Gu Ding cackled when he saw the security feed.

 1The virus was not only limited to Fertilia. It had spread across the entire Skyriver Sector Prison network to other planets. In half an hour, the virus had infected the Headquarters and eighty other branches in the prison network.

 The virus that Neptune had created was a very specific one. It hid in the root of a network system, and when the system security discovered it, the system was already on the brink of collapse. When the system collapsed, Neptune would unlock all doors and restraints and activate all the alarms and sprinklers to cause maximum chaos.

 Meanwhile, Gu Ding saw that Cerule was ready to be infected. He told Neptune, “Infect the Cerulean Prison network!”