Chapter 4: The Eye of the ATM Storm
Part I: Quantum Ghost
The morning fog in Singapore's Marina Bay financial district had yet to disperse, and the first light of dawn refracted off the glass walls of skyscrapers in waves of cold, metallic gleam. Gu Zhenyan stood outside a high-end mall on Orchard Road, eyes fixed on an ATM screen flickering with rapid transaction requests. Six minutes ago, OCBC Bank's system logs had flagged an abnormal spike—someone was using multiple prepaid cards in quick succession to withdraw large amounts of cash, and each of those cards had been loaded with funds from untraceable USDT (Tether) addresses.
"Scan results are back," a teammate's whisper crackled in Gu's earbud. "Likely a flash loan attack. The contract call address shows up in Saigon."
Gu's eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses. A flash loan attack—so the perpetrators had conjured a massive sum via an instant decentralized loan, then funneled it through prepaid cards faster than the bank's security could catch up.
She strode toward a young man standing at the ATM. He wore a plain Malaysian courier's uniform and was intently focused on the screen. With a final tap, he completed a S$1,000 withdrawal. Gu noticed a translucent film pressed over his thumb—a synthetic fingerprint layer designed to fool the ATM's biometric scanner.
"OCBC upgraded their KYC (Know Your Customer) system recently," she said conversationally as she stepped up beside him. "That fingerprint foil on your thumb is last year's model. It won't work anymore."
The man froze for an instant, eyes widening in alarm. In the next blink, he spun on his heel and bolted into the thin early-morning crowd.
Gu's hand drifted to her waist, where a small taser was concealed in her belt buckle, humming with a faint electric charge. She didn't fire it yet. Instead, she followed the man at a steady clip, weaving through bystanders who stumbled aside in surprise. As she moved, she flicked a glance at the ATM's transaction log still glowing on-screen—each withdrawal was timestamped exactly 2.5 seconds apart, the total already beyond the daily limit. That meant he wasn't working just one machine, but an entire network of ATMs spilling out cash at his command.
"Your flash loan script is pretty good," Gu called out, her tone almost friendly. "Too bad you didn't include a failsafe."
The fleeing man glanced back in panic. For a split-second, his pace faltered—he hadn't expected to be found out so quickly. In a burst of desperation, he suddenly hurled himself against the glass door of a nearby eyeglass store, shattering it and sending startled shoppers scrambling. An alarm began to wail as shards of glass exploded across the sidewalk. Using the chaos as cover, the man darted into a narrow service hallway beside the shop.
Gu slipped through the wreckage in his wake. As the heavy door of the service corridor started to swing shut, she slid in and reached out, catching the man by the shoulder of his jacket. With a precise twist of her wrist, she redirected his momentum. To an outside eye it might have looked like he simply stumbled, but in truth she guided him seamlessly into a cramped concrete stairwell.
The metal door clanged shut behind them, the automatic lock clicking into place. Trapped in the sudden quiet, the man pressed himself against the wall, chest heaving. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple.
"Who… who are you?" he gasped.
Gu Zhenyan calmly checked the time on her watch. "That cash you just withdrew?" she said, her voice steady. "Within ten minutes, the bank's system will have those transactions reversed and the money frozen. And I doubt your boss will be willing—or able—to clean up the mess for you."
The young man's face went ashen. He opened his mouth as if to protest, but no words came. In the silence that followed, only the distant approach of sirens and his ragged breathing echoed in the stairwell.
Part II: Reverse Extraction
Meanwhile, in a dimly lit internet café in the Yishun district, Lin Shen hunched over a computer monitor, eyes following the cascade of code streaming down the screen. Behind him stood Chen Yongnian, idly drumming his thumb on the table. Beside the mouse lay a blank bank card, waiting to be brought to life.
"The system's been upgraded," Lin muttered as he adjusted the angle of his creaky swivel chair. "You want me to use prepaid cards at an ATM to pull out cash? Not very realistic now."
"Who said anything about using the ATM normally?" Chen replied with a slight smile. "We're going to make the ATM spit out the cash on its own."
He tapped a line of code on the screen as if to emphasize the point.
Lin's brow furrowed. His gaze flitted across a few lines of critical code—sure enough, it was an ATM jackpotting script. This attack method wasn't exactly new. The core idea was to infect an ATM's firmware with malicious code, trick the machine into thinking it was in maintenance mode so that it would unleash its cash reserves automatically, all without triggering bank alerts. Most major banks had long since patched such vulnerabilities, but some older, privately operated ATMs still had security holes.
"The problem is, all the big banks have updated their cores by now," Lin said, rubbing his temples. "Only small independent ATMs might still be exploitable. Are you sure the target machines will fall for this?"
Chen's grin widened almost imperceptibly. He pulled out his phone and opened a map of Singapore studded with a dozen red pins. "We're not talking about just one machine," he said. "These ATMs are privately run models still stuck on 2015-era firmware."
Lin tapped a finger pensively on the table. "So, what's the plan?"
"First, we test on one machine," Chen answered, tucking his phone away. "Then we copy it across the entire network," he added, as casually as if he were discussing a software update.
Lin gave a slow, reluctant nod. Chen's matter-of-fact confidence was hard to argue with. Before long, the two of them were on the move, putting that plan into action.
Later that night, in an underground parking garage off Orchard Road, the air hung heavy with the smell of damp concrete. Standing beside a nondescript ATM tucked in a shadowy corner of the garage, Lin flipped open his laptop. The machine's maintenance panel had been pried open, exposing a service port. Lin inserted a tiny USB dongle into his computer—this was a custom Data Hook device, built to tap into the ATM's firmware signals and inject fake administrative commands.
"If this script runs successfully," Lin whispered, fingers hovering over the keyboard, "every other ATM in the network will switch into admin mode soon after."
"Two minutes left," Chen said, checking his watch with a tense glance. "The exchange-rate arbitrage window is closing."
Lin drew a slow breath and began to type, each keystroke precise and swift. Lines of code blurred across his screen as the Data Hook fed instructions into the ATM. The machine's internals hummed softly in response. On Lin's monitor, a real-time diagnostic display showed the ATM's status codes flickering from normal operation into maintenance mode. So far, so good. Still, a knot of anxiety tightened in his gut. He flicked his eyes to a second window on his screen showing a grainy CCTV feed of the street outside. Across the road, in front of a bank branch, he spotted a woman in a dark jacket and sunglasses standing beside another ATM, her head bowed as she scrutinized that machine's transaction records. A prickle of unease ran through Lin. Who is she? he wondered.
"Executing in five seconds," Chen announced, his voice low but brimming with excitement. "5… 4… 3… 2… 1—"
Lin hit the return key. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then a line of text flashed on his laptop screen: Transaction Rejected.
Lin's stomach lurched. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he yanked up the system logs. The readout told a grim story: the ATM's management port had been remotely locked mere milliseconds after their exploit attempted to run. Simultaneously, a hidden process on the bank's central server had sprung to life; the backend systems were already tracing the source of the rogue commands.
"Retreat! Get out, now!" Lin hissed. He snapped the laptop shut, heartbeat thudding in his ears. "Someone countered our script!"
Chen narrowed his eyes and glanced toward the CCTV feed. On the tiny monitor, the woman with sunglasses across the street was gliding a fingertip across her phone screen. A faint, knowing smile was on her lips, as if she'd anticipated this very outcome.
"That woman…" Chen muttered under his breath, a spark of grudging admiration in his tone. "Interesting."
Lin didn't wait around to debate it. He yanked the Data Hook out of the ATM and ripped out the interface cables, then snatched the blank bank card off the table. Without another word, he melted away into the darkness of the parking garage. In seconds, he and Chen vanished into the night, leaving nothing behind but a faint whiff of ozone and the ATM's steady, oblivious beeping.
Part III: Aftermath and Underground Deals
By 3:00 AM, the two men had put several miles between themselves and the failed attack. Lin Shen and Chen Yongnian walked briskly down a deserted side street after slipping out of another quiet parking structure. Lin's mind was still replaying the sting of their defeat at the ATM. The weight of it pressed on him heavier than the late-night darkness.
"What's wrong? The ATM jackpotting fails and you're already shaking?" Chen asked, breaking the silence. He tried to sound lighthearted, his voice low with a barely perceptible trace of a laugh.
Lin tilted his head up to the sky. The night was ink-black and endless; the city's high-rises encircled them in every direction, their windows aglow and interwoven with the streetlights below in a tapestry of urban haze. He inhaled deeply. The failure of their plan still clung to him, a suffocating pressure. He hadn't fully recovered from the shock of it; his thoughts were scattered, as if trapped behind an invisible barrier.
"I'm just a bit stunned," Lin admitted, spreading his hands in a helpless shrug. "Seriously, what kind of world is this? Banks have AI fighting back, hackers are throwing around flash loans… People like us—'ordinary' folks—we've stumbled right into the middle of it, and at any moment we could become pawns in someone's high-stakes game."
"You?" Chen let out a dry chuckle. "You're not as ordinary as you think." His tone was cool—perhaps intended as encouragement, but it carried little warmth.
Lin gave a bitter smirk. "Alright, alright. Cut it out. Either way, there's nothing to be afraid of. It's not like one failed attack is going to bring the whole world down on our heads, right?"
Chen strode a step ahead, his long shadow stretching under the dim street lamps. "You're wrong, Lin Shen," he said, voice echoing slightly in the empty street. "It's precisely because you haven't seen the real threat yet that you think a failure like this is no big deal." He paused, turning to glance back at Lin, his face lit in hard amber by the streetlight. "You don't understand now, but you will soon—the banks' countermeasures are getting stronger by the day, and their control over money flows is growing ever more precise."
Lin raised an eyebrow and forced a short laugh. "Since when did you start sounding so serious?" he jibed, trying to lighten the mood. But the tightness in his chest only grew. This whole situation was already far more complicated than he'd imagined.
They walked on in silence for a few minutes. Eventually, their path led them past a small, unremarkable ATM tucked into the wall of a closed shop. An electronic advertisement screen beside it glowed softly in the dark, scrolling through late-night promos. Lin's gaze snagged on the screen's moving text without really reading it. He pulled out his phone, still stewing over Chen's warning. Under his breath, he grumbled, "Weren't we heading to that black market meetup? How did we end up loitering by an ATM again?"
"This is far enough. Let's stop here," Chen said, oddly casual. His breezy tone felt out of place, and it put Lin on alert. Lin frowned slightly; he was venturing deeper into a territory he knew he shouldn't underestimate.
They lingered a moment in the quiet, neon-tinted gloom. Just as they were about to move on, Lin's eyes suddenly widened. A new thought struck him—one that made his stomach clench. "Wait a second," he said in a low voice. "We need to confirm where this money trail is actually headed."
Chen responded with a short, cold laugh. "Don't tell me you're doubting yourself again. You've walked this far already. There are some things now only you can sort out."
"But maybe we can handle it better," Lin countered softly. He glanced down at his phone screen, the glow highlighting his furrowed brow. A subtle weight pressed on him. Once again, a wave of unease—and guilt—washed over his conscience. He couldn't help wondering if he was drifting further and further from the idealistic young man he used to be.
"You're asking yourself if you can keep going, aren't you?" Chen's voice carried a needle of sarcasm. "But this isn't a road where you get to pick and choose, Lin. Either you keep walking, or you stop right here and watch as people like us play the game bigger and bolder—until you've gambled yourself into a corner you can't escape."
Lin's thoughts spun in turmoil. His eyes were on the ATM's idle screen in front of him, but his mind was miles away, replaying the events of the night. Rejection. Pursuit. It had all hit so suddenly. Yet what disturbed him most was the question now echoing in his head: Can I keep doing this? Can I really throw away my conscience—discard my morals—just to pay for my mother's treatment and claim my father's inheritance?
He closed his eyes, forcing a slow, steady breath. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he heard the echo of his father's voice: "Energy should be a flow of goodwill." That was one of the principles his father had lived by.
But the reality was stark: here he was, using technology to push funds through casinos and black markets, perhaps even toward far more dangerous places. This was no flow of goodwill; it was a current of something else entirely.
Lin's fingertips trembled slightly. He knew this path would only get harder. He'd once hoped to use his skills to right a wrong from the past, to make something good come of them. But now he understood—the road he was on might stretch much further, and descend much darker, than he had anticipated.
"I don't regret it," Lin said at last, almost in a whisper. In that moment, he made his decision. His voice hardened, though a faint, self-deprecating smile tugged at his lips. "After all, life's like that: either you live as a good man, or you end up like me—a bad guy working his butt off just to survive."
He turned to meet Chen's eyes in the pale glow of the streetlight. "Tell me what we do next."
Chen studied Lin's expression for a moment, then a satisfied smile crept onto his face. He seemed to recognize a resolve in Lin that hadn't been there before. "You've decided? Good." He gave a tiny nod. "Get ready. The next round is going to be even more complex than you think."
He began walking again, and Lin fell in step beside him.
Lin exhaled and squared his shoulders, as if shrugging off the last doubts clinging to him. He knew now that there was no turning back.
"From here on out, it all depends on their response," Lin said, a wry note in his voice. He clenched his fist and steeled himself to dive once more into the world of complex code and shadowy transactions. "Who says hackers aren't romantic? Even if I have to crawl into a casino's darkest corner, I'll do it. I'll be a fearless wanderer if I have to."
A short time later, in the depths of Yishun district's abandoned Venture Mall, Lin and Chen stepped out of a freight elevator into an entirely different world. The elevator opened onto a corridor lined with faded marble and dim, amber lighting. Lin hefted a black duffel bag in one hand as he followed Chen toward an unmarked set of double doors.
"Why do we have to come to a godforsaken place like this to do a deal?" Lin muttered under his breath. The corridor smelled of mildew and disuse. "This is so textbook—a meeting in an abandoned mall basement. It's straight out of a gangster movie."
"Because this is the kind of place gangsters do business," Chen replied matter-of-factly. He gave Lin a sideways grin. "Welcome to the underground financial exchange."
The doors opened, and they were greeted by a pair of unsmiling attendants who gestured them in. Beyond lay a low-ceilinged but lavishly furnished private club. The contrast to the grime outside was startling—plush wine-red carpets muffled their footsteps, and golden light from ornate sconces bathed the room. Surveillance cameras peered down from the corners of the ceiling, but even more conspicuous were the silent figures seated in the shadows. Men in black suits occupied nearly every dark alcove. They lounged as if half-asleep, but Lin noticed the glint in their eyes as he and Chen passed. Each man had a telltale bulge under his jacket or at his waist. Guns, Lin realized. This place was swimming with concealed firepower.
Chen leaned close to Lin and murmured, "Smile. Don't look nervous."
Lin forced a dry, brittle smile onto his face. "This place gives me an 'either get rich or die trying' vibe," he whispered, only half joking.
They were led into a small, dimly lit meeting room off the main lounge. Inside, an air of heavy opulence hung like a curtain: teak-paneled walls, a crystal decanter of liquor set out on a sideboard, and a single round table illuminated by a green-shaded banker's lamp. Waiting for them was a man in a charcoal-gray suit, middle-aged and meticulously groomed. He rose as they entered, buttoning his jacket, and offered a polite nod.
"Gentlemen," the man said in a calm, steady voice. "It appears your task ran into a bit of trouble, judging by your timing?"
"Technical difficulties," Chen replied evenly, his face betraying nothing as he took a seat.
The man's eyes flicked toward the duffel bag Lin carried. "You have the payment?" he asked, as courteously as if inquiring about the weather.
"Of course." Chen gestured. Lin set the bag on the table and unzipped it, revealing stacks of Singapore dollar notes bundled neatly inside.
The man's gaze lingered on the money for a moment. Satisfied, he snapped his fingers. One of the black-suited guards stepped forward from the corner, producing a slim briefcase. The guard set it down and clicked it open, turning it toward Chen and Lin. Inside lay a secure digital ledger device and a small pile of documents.
The exchange was completed with few words. Chen inspected the contents of the briefcase briefly, then nodded. The suited man did not count the cash, not in front of them—here, trust was enforced by the ever-present threat of the armed guards. Within minutes, the deal was done. The man in the suit gave a thin smile and departed with the duffel, leaving Chen and Lin to be escorted out.
Lin hadn't spoken a single word throughout the transaction. He'd been too focused on observing everything: the placement of cameras, the number of exits, the positions of the guards, the subtle protocols of this hidden market. This place is lethal, he thought. If anything went wrong, he and Chen might not make it out alive, or their bodies might never be found.
"Time to go," Chen murmured, patting Lin on the shoulder once the briefcase was securely in hand.
They retraced their steps through the club, back to the waiting elevator. Only when the doors slid shut and they began to ascend did Lin release the breath he'd been holding. His heart was still thumping, but outwardly he kept his cool.
He glanced at Chen, who looked as nonchalant as ever. In a hushed voice, Lin asked, "How can you be so calm in there?"
Chen met his eyes with a faint, almost pitying smile. "Because we're in the world of money," he answered quietly. "Everyone in that room, no matter what they look like, is a businessperson. And businesspeople only care about one thing: maximizing profit. As long as we bring them value, they have no reason to harm us."
Chen's words were delivered with such steady confidence that Lin found himself believing them—or at least hoping they were true. He nodded slowly. In this underworld of money, value was the only law that mattered. And for now, at least, they had something of value to offer.
Part IV: Ghosts in the Network
High above Marina Bay, in a high-rise office overlooking the glittering skyline, the late-night shift at Singapore's financial surveillance center was in full swing. Inside the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) monitoring room, dozens of transaction feeds glowed across an array of screens. Gu Zhenyan stood before a wall-sized display, arms folded, her sharp eyes tracking a web of rapidly updating data points.
"They've made their move," she said softly, breaking the silence. MAS's monitoring system had just flagged a cluster of unusual ATM withdrawals across the city. On the main screen, a map of Singapore sparkled with red indicators. Gu tapped a command on her console, and the display zoomed in on one blinking alert. A line of text popped up: Remote Malicious Command Detected.
"They tried to use a data hook to bypass our firewall, but it didn't work," Gu reported calmly, eyes scanning the log details. Even as she spoke, fresh data scrolled under her fingertips. She recognized the signature of a coordinated ATM attack. After a brief pause, she lowered her voice and, almost to herself, quoted an old verse: "The bright moon illuminates the great river, its light reaching to the horizon." She exhaled a faint sigh. "Just like this money trail—it was never truly hidden."
One of her junior analysts nearly choked on his coffee. He spun his chair to look at her, eyebrows raised. "Boss… what was that from? We were in the middle of a tense trace, and you start quoting poetry?"
Gu glanced over, a hint of a smile on her lips. "That, my dear, is what you young folks are missing," she chided gently. Then she added in the same reflective tone, "Great rivers eastward flow, washing away a thousand ages of heroes…." She gave a slight nod toward the screen. "It's a line by Su Shi, a Tang Dynasty poet. Very famous. And it seems apt—because it's time for this money flow to see where it truly leads."
Her team exchanged amused, bewildered looks. A tech at the back murmured, "Since when did Su Shi help fight money laundering?"
Another analyst, half smiling, half pleading, said, "Director Gu, could we maybe focus? The trace is getting interesting—"
Gu's smile sharpened as she turned back to the data. She waved a hand at the screen, where the ATM withdrawals were being connected by the system's AI into a probable network. "I am focused. In the end, technology is the most concrete tool we have," she said. With a few keystrokes, she brought up an overlay highlighting nodes of activity. "Their operation didn't escape our eyes. Their so-called hidden transactions are nothing but a castle in the air. If something can be traced, it can't stay invisible."
"We're not writing poetry now," one of the senior analysts chuckled as he resumed typing, "but you're not wrong. The transaction trail is clear as day—one link after another. Forget 'castle in the air'; this thing is lit up like a billboard."
Gu allowed herself a brief, satisfied grin. She stayed silent for a moment, listening to the soft clacks of keyboards as her team worked. New streams of data were coming in—financial transfers, digital wallet addresses, routing information from various banks. Each piece was being slotted into the MAS system's model, revealing the shape of an illicit network.
"They're scrambling to cover their tracks, intensifying their reverse transactions," Gu observed, eyes narrowing at a spiking graph. "Next, they'll likely try to funnel the funds through an underground exchanger—a black-market cash-out center."
One of her younger techs couldn't resist a playful jab. "Boss, when you talk like that, you sound like you're 指点江山,激扬文字—pointing at mountains and stirring up prose."
A ripple of quiet laughter passed through the room. Even Gu chuckled under her breath. "Alright, I'll save the literature for later," she conceded. Then, with a purposeful glint in her eye, she quoted one more line, her voice clear: "The road ahead is long and the journey vast; I will search high and low." She looked around at her team. "The black-market exchange is in motion. Let's be ready to follow every step. The real challenge starts now."
Her analysts grinned and returned their attention to the screens with renewed energy. "Yes ma'am!" came a chorus of spirited replies, punctuated by a few good-natured groans about Chu Ci verses being flung at them.
Minutes later, an alert pinged on the primary screen. One of the analysts straightened in his seat. "Director Gu—" he called, "we have a hit on the underground exchange."
Gu stepped closer as new lines of data unfurled in front of her. The MAS AI had zeroed in on a fresh transaction path. There, a thick red arrow traced a route from a cluster of digital wallets into what looked like an anonymous currency exchange. The transaction size was large—very large.
"They've moved," the analyst reported briskly. "Just now, a big chunk of funds flowed into a known black-market exchange center. The flow pattern matches the ATM network anomaly we've been tracking."
Gu's eyes flashed with satisfaction. She tapped a command, and the details magnified. Account aliases, time stamps, amounts—everything was lining up. A faint smile tugged at her lips, one that didn't reach her eyes.
"They think that by going through the underground they can evade us?" she said coolly. She raised her gaze from the screen and looked out through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the MAS office. The waters of Marina Bay were dark, a mirror to the night sky, and the distant city lights danced on the surface. Gu Zhenyan's reflection looked back at her, resolute and unblinking.
"They're sorely mistaken," she whispered, as if addressing the criminals directly. "Their next move will be the real key."
Behind her, the surveillance team was already locking down the data, tracing the tentacles of the transaction to whatever endpoints they could find. The game was accelerating. On one side, Lin Shen and his crew were making their play in the shadows of the underground economy. On the other, Gu Zhenyan and the MAS task force stood vigilant under the neon sky.
The storm had not yet passed; in fact, it was still gathering force. But here in its eye, Gu Zhenyan remained calm. The chase was on, and the outcome was far from decided. Only one thing was certain: the real battle had only just begun.