Night had completely fallen.
The old district was even quieter than it had been during the day.
The shops along the street gradually turned off their lights.
The doors of the logistics warehouse had already been closed.
The last transport vehicle slowly drove out of the district, the sound of its engine gradually fading into the distance.
The entire area once again fell into silence.
Only a few scattered streetlights illuminated the snow with a faint yellow glow.
The wind began to blow again.
Snow accumulated along the rooftops slowly slid down, hitting the ground with a soft, muffled sound.
Lucian stood at the entrance of an alley without any streetlights.
He did not act immediately.
Instead, he quietly looked at the old office building in the distance.
This was the place he had spent the entire afternoon observing.
During the day,
there had been almost no movement of people.
At night,
there had been no unusual changes either.
The room on the second floor that had remained lit all day was now dark.
The entire building had fallen into darkness once again.
If someone were simply passing by,
they would assume this was nothing more than an ordinary office building that had stopped operating long ago.
Lucian slowly raised his wrist.
The terminal screen lit up.
The time was
9:47 p.m.
He turned off the screen
and put the terminal back into his pocket.
Then he stepped forward.
He did not head toward the main entrance.
Instead, he slowly moved along the perimeter of the office building.
The information he had gathered during the day continuously surfaced in his mind.
Main entrance.
Two cameras.
Parking area.
Two cameras.
Side alley entrance.
One camera.
There were almost no blind spots between the cameras.
The only exception was the rear of the building.
Because another warehouse stood beside it, a very narrow blind spot had been created.
The area was not large.
But it was already wide enough for one person to pass through.
Lucian did not increase his pace.
Every step remained steady.
The snow beneath his feet was gently compressed, leaving only shallow footprints.
When he reached the rear of the building,
he stopped.
He looked up at the exterior wall.
The wall was not particularly high.
The second-floor windows were less than four meters above the ground.
A drainage pipe extended all the way from the corner of the wall to the roof.
It was sufficient to use as support.
However,
Lucian did not climb immediately.
Instead, he observed his surroundings again.
There were no vehicles in the alley.
No patrol personnel.
The occasional sound of cars passing in the distance could be heard.
Other than that,
there was no movement.
After confirming the surrounding conditions,
he slowly approached the metal side door he had seen during the day.
The lock was closed.
It looked no different from usual.
He extended a hand
and lightly touched the edge of the door frame.
His fingertip slowly moved across the surface.
Soon,
it stopped at an extremely inconspicuous spot.
There was a new scratch there.
Its color was brighter than the surrounding metal.
It had clearly been left recently.
Lucian did not try to open the door.
Instead, he slowly withdrew his hand.
His gaze returned to the second floor.
If this were merely an abandoned office building,
there would be no reason for the side door to be used frequently.
Since someone had been entering and leaving through it regularly,
that meant
the true entrance and exit
might not be limited to this one.
His gaze slowly swept across the entire exterior wall.
Soon,
it stopped at a window in the corner of the second floor.
The blinds there were not completely closed.
A gap less than two centimeters wide remained.
During the day, almost no one would have noticed it.
But now,
with the faint light reflected from a distant streetlamp,
he could vaguely see inside.
There were no desks.
No partitions.
Only an empty room.
Lucian narrowed his eyes slightly.
Then he took two steps backward.
Using the drainage pipe at the corner of the wall for support, he climbed upward with light movements.
The entire process produced no noticeable sound.
The soles of his shoes landed lightly on the windowsill.
His body remained close to the exterior wall.
He did not immediately push the window open.
Instead, he first looked inside through the narrow gap.
The room was dark.
There were no lights.
Tiny particles of dust floated through the air.
The floor was completely empty.
Only several desks that had not been removed remained against the wall.
Other than that,
there was nothing else.
Lucian quietly observed for more than ten seconds.
After confirming that there was nothing unusual,
he gently pushed the window frame.
With an almost inaudible sound,
the window slowly opened inward.
He turned his body and entered the room.
Both feet landed firmly on the floor.
The entire movement was seamless.
Not a single object was knocked over.
The room once again became silent.
Lucian stood where he was without immediately moving.
Instead, he first allowed his eyes to adjust to the dim interior.
A few seconds later,
he slowly took his first step.
Here,
he had finally entered the interior of the office building.
The room was extremely quiet.
A faint smell of dust filled the air.
There was also the barely perceptible scent left behind by electronic equipment after it had dissipated heat.
Although extremely faint,
it had not completely disappeared.
Lucian slowly moved forward.
His footsteps remained as quiet as possible.
The entire office had been cleared out.
Several ordinary desks stood against the wall.
A few chairs remained in their original positions.
There were no documents on the desks.
No computers.
Not even a pen had been left behind.
It was almost unnaturally clean.
He extended his hand
and lightly brushed it across one of the desks.
A thin layer of dust covered his fingertip.
The dust was evenly distributed.
That meant the desks and chairs had not been used for some time.
Lucian did not linger.
He continued toward the door.
The corridor was equally quiet.
Dim emergency lights were still operating.
Their pale green glow illuminated the entire hallway.
Office rooms lined both sides of the corridor.
Every door was open.
Almost every room looked identical.
Desks.
Chairs.
Empty filing cabinets.
Nothing else.
The entire building
looked like an ordinary company that had just moved out but had not yet gotten around to removing the furniture.
If this had been an ordinary investigation,
anyone who reached this point
would probably conclude that this was simply an abandoned office building.
But Lucian did not.
He slowly crouched down.
His eyes settled on the floor.
The wooden floor was very clean.
Yet several areas were slightly lighter in color.
Heavy objects had clearly been placed there for a long time.
Because they had blocked the sunlight,
they had left distinctly different marks.
And those marks
were not from office desks.
They were regular rectangles.
Approximately sixty centimeters wide.
Nearly one meter long.
They were arranged in extremely neat rows.
One row.
Two rows.
Continuing all the way toward the other side of the room.
Lucian's gaze sharpened slightly.
He slowly stood up.
Then continued examining the walls.
Soon,
he discovered a second anomaly.
Near the corner,
there were far more network ports than an ordinary office would require.
Not only that,
there were several fixed mounting brackets that had already been removed.
The screw holes were still visible on the wall.
Nearby, there were also traces of fresh repainting.
Clearly,
a large amount of equipment had once been mounted here.
His gaze continued upward.
Finally, it stopped at the ceiling.
Several cable trays remained from equipment that had been removed.
Although they had been crudely concealed,
they were still recognizable.
Lucian did not linger.
He slowly walked into the next office.
The result
was almost exactly the same.
The same impressions on the floor.
The same network ports.
The same traces left behind by removed equipment.
He inspected four rooms in succession.
All of them were the same.
At this moment,
the answer had become quite clear.
This had never been an ordinary office area.
It had been a disguised data-processing facility.
The desks
were merely the shell that had been left behind.
The truly important equipment
had already been removed.
Lucian slowly walked to the end of the corridor.
There was a room there that was noticeably larger.
The door was slightly ajar.
He gently pushed it open.
The interior was more spacious than the previous rooms.
All four walls had been reinforced.
The floor
was densely covered with long, narrow impressions.
Their positions were arranged with extreme precision.
At a glance,
it was obvious that entire rows of server racks had once stood there.
The racks were all gone.
Only wheel marks of varying depths remained on the floor.
Dozens of power outlets were still mounted along the walls.
The network fiber-optic ports had not been removed either.
There was even a piece of a cable tie less than ten centimeters long
hanging alone in the corner.
It looked as though no one had noticed it during the removal of the equipment.
Lucian slowly walked over.
He crouched down.
His fingers lightly touched the floor.
There was no dust there.
Instead,
it was cleaner than the surrounding area.
That meant
the equipment had not been removed very long ago.
He slowly stood up
and looked around the room again.
No servers.
No terminals.
No paper records.
Not even a single large piece of equipment that could prove what had once been here.
The entire evacuation
had been extremely thorough.
Just then,
his gaze suddenly stopped beside the doorway.
There,
one floor tile was slightly different from the surrounding ones.
It was not a mechanism.
Nor was it a hidden door.
It was simply a very faint footprint.
The pattern of the sole was still clearly visible.
It had not yet been completely covered by dust.
Someone
had returned here once again
after all the equipment had been removed.
Lucian did not continue searching.
Instead, he slowly raised his head.
The entire building had fallen silent once again.
Wind entered through the gaps around the windows.
It gently lifted a discarded sheet of paper from the floor.
The paper rolled several times
before falling back into place.
He did not go any deeper.
There was no need.
A real data center
had indeed existed here.
Only,
it had already been evacuated.
Lucian took one final look at the marks left behind by the rows of servers.
Then he turned and left the room.
However,
just as he was about to leave the building by the same route,
his footsteps suddenly stopped.
Not because of a sound.
Nor because someone was there.
But because a thought suddenly flashed through his mind.
If this was merely an abandoned base,
why had it been preserved so completely?
The furniture had been left behind.
The wiring had been preserved.
The traces on the walls had not been completely cleaned up.
Yet every piece of core equipment
had been removed without leaving anything behind.
This did not look like a hasty evacuation.
It looked more like...
someone had deliberately left behind an empty shell.
Lucian slowly looked toward the window.
The night remained silent.
The distant street was completely empty.
But another conclusion had already surfaced in his mind.
Perhaps
the true purpose of this place
was not merely to serve as an old base.
Perhaps it was a piece of bait
deliberately left behind,
waiting for the day
when someone followed those communication traces
and found this place on their own.