Chapter 248: Safety Net and Trump Card

The air on the second basement level was heavier than in the stairwell. Dampness laced with machine oil clung to the skin, and every breath met a slight resistance in the lungs. Lin Chen placed the kraft paper file folder on the passenger seat, pulled the door open, and got in. Su Man slid into the driver’s seat, turned the key, and the engine growled to life. The car rolled out of the garage and merged into the evening rush hour. Taillights stretched into a sluggish river of dark red, crawling forward in fits and starts. Lin Chen leaned back, his left hand unconsciously kneading the area just below his left knee. The numbness had faded, replaced by a deep, aching soreness from overstretched muscle fibers, like a rubber band pulled taut and ready to snap. He closed his eyes. There was no lingering warmth from the successful demo in his mind, only the thirty-seven-page compliance checklist inside the folder. Behind every bolded item lay manpower, time, and real money.

The car stopped at an aging creative park just outside the East Fourth Ring Road. The rolling shutter door was pulled up, revealing a thirty-square-meter office crammed with server chassis, cases of mineral water, and scattered topology diagrams. Outside the window, the AC condenser unit hummed, blowing hot air that made the dust on the sill tremble. Lin Chen dumped the folder onto the conference table, papers fanning out. Su Man poured a glass of warm water, set it beside his hand, and pulled up a chair. “Passing Classified Protection Level 3 isn’t just about buying a firewall,” she said, flipping through the checklist, her fingertips tracing the paper. “Physical environment, network architecture, host security, application security, data security, management protocols. We don’t even have a dedicated security ops person yet. Log auditing is only stored locally. The hospital requires integration with a unified identity authentication system, plus full-scale data masking. Draft due Monday. We don’t have enough time.”

Lin Chen didn’t answer. He pulled out a red pen and drew lines through the checklist item by item. Physical environment: server room is on hospital premises, managed by them. Crossed out. Network architecture: dedicated line access, perimeter firewall policies configured. Crossed out. Host security: OS hardening, close unnecessary ports. Executable. Application security: permission management needs upgrading from basic RBAC to ABAC, adding fine-grained operation logging. Data security: masking algorithm needs rewriting; static masking isn’t enough. Must support dynamic masking and field-level encryption. Management protocols: need to complete emergency response plans, data access approval workflows, and staff NDAs. He set the red pen down and grabbed the keyboard. “It’s too late to refactor the application layer. We can compromise on the masking solution.” He pulled up the code repository and created a new branch. “The hospital wants a draft, not a final delivery. We’ll clearly define the interfaces for static and dynamic masking first. For the algorithm, we’ll use the existing national cryptographic standard SM4 for symmetric encryption, and simulate key management via a hardware security module. Log auditing will start with local storage plus scheduled sync. We’ll integrate the unified auth SDK next week. The draft’s focus is ‘feasible solution’ and ‘controllable risk,’ not ‘perfect from day one.’”

Su Man stared at the architecture diagram on the screen, her fingers tapping lightly on the desk. “A compromise means rework later. If the audit stalls, the pilot integration gets delayed. Delay equals breach of contract.” “The cost of a breach is losing the pilot. The cost of not compromising is failing to submit the draft.” Lin Chen’s voice was flat, rough from lack of sleep. “Get the ticket first, pay the fare later. Capital and the hospital care about the progress bar, not perfectionism. You draft the masking interface documentation. I’ll write the middleware for the permission upgrade. We’ll finish the skeleton tonight.”

The clatter of keyboards echoed in the empty office. Lin Chen adjusted his posture, propping his left foot completely on a nearby cardboard box. His right leg bore the weight, his lumbar spine slightly arched forward, his cervical spine straining under the screen’s glare. The cold light washed over his face, making the dark circles under his eyes stark. He coded slowly, but every line was deliberate. Exception handling, boundary conditions, log levels. He had a habit of hardcoding potential failure points first, then gradually opening them up. It was a habit forged from years of manually cleaning dirty data. Fault tolerance always mattered more than efficiency. 2:00 AM. The first version of the masking solution ran successfully. Lin Chen saved, committed, and closed the laptop. He stood up, staggered slightly as his left foot hit the floor, and caught himself on the desk edge. Su Man was already asleep on the table, her breathing even. Lin Chen picked up the jacket draped over his chair and gently laid it across her shoulders. He walked to the window and lit a cigarette. He didn’t smoke it, just held it between his fingers. The smoke rose slowly in the cold air, dissipating. His phone screen lit up. A text from his mother: Xiao Man didn’t have an episode today. Medicine is running low. Focus on your work. We can manage at home. Lin Chen stared at the line. His thumb hovered over the screen for a long time before he finally typed a single character: Good. He placed the phone face-down on the windowsill. Ash fell onto the concrete floor, crumbling into powder.

Tuesday, 3:00 PM, Guomao. Zhao Qiming’s text wasn’t an invitation; it was an ultimatum. Lin Chen knew Qiming Capital’s style well: fast in, fast out, bet-on agreements, data assets first. They needed money now, but they couldn’t hand over their lifeline. Lin Chen returned to his desk and opened a new document. Title: Core Demands and Bottom Lines for Series A Funding. He listed three points: First, funds strictly allocated to R&D and compliance, not for marketing burn. Second, retain board seats, with veto power over major technical decisions. Third, patient data ownership remains with the hospital; the company only holds usage rights for training models on masked data. After writing it, he deleted the second point and revised it to: One board seat may be opened, but the technical committee will be led by our side. Compromise was unavoidable. Capital wanted returns, not control. As long as the technical moat held, control could be reclaimed gradually. He encrypted the document and saved it to a portable hard drive. The metal casing was ice-cold against his palm.

4:00 AM. A knock came at the office door. Light, but urgent. Lin Chen opened it. It was a young engineer from the hospital’s IT department, wearing a wrinkled shirt, clutching a portable hard drive, sweat beading on his forehead. “Engineer Lin, sorry to bother you so late,” the engineer panted, speaking rapidly. “Director Li just finished a meeting. The outpatient system needs to go live with real traffic next Wednesday, ahead of schedule. The Level 3 draft can wait, but the data masking must pass stress testing by tomorrow noon. The hospital will send a third-party security firm for penetration testing. If it can’t hold up, the pilot qualification gets revoked immediately.” Lin Chen took the drive. The metal casing was cold. Inside were one hundred thousand real outpatient logs, pre-masking. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall. Eight hours until tomorrow noon. Su Man, startled awake in the inner room, rubbed her eyes and walked out. Seeing the drive, her gaze instantly sharpened. “What’s going on?” Lin Chen placed the drive on the desk, plugged it in, and a data reading progress bar popped up on the screen. “Time to work,” he said, his voice devoid of inflection. “The penetration testing scripts need to be rewritten.”