The entire room quickly fell silent.
It was so silent Kelsie felt she could heard the sound of a pin dropping to the floor.
Serbian Howard's eyes instantly shot towards the inspector, trying so hard to suppress his surprise.
Laura sat up, brows furrowed into a tight frown as she fell deep in thought.
Everyone else, both the audience and the contestants, turned to each other in disbelief.
"Was it just me or did you also hear that?"
"If we heard the same thing, then they must be something wrong with our ears."
"Or we could be imagining things or even day-dreaming. I just wonder why it's about something so unbelievable."
"Everyone, calm down. We can't base the task assessment on one inspector when they are three of them."
"True. The reason three were hired is so one can see the flaw the others failed to see."
"You're right. We shouldn't conclude just yet. Let the other inspectors take a look at the code. It can't possibly be true that they passed."
"I agree with you."
Even the remaining two inspectors were taken aback hearing their colleague before the one standing directly behind him walked to his side and took the computer from him.
He grabbed onto the mouse and scrolled through the program sprawled across the screen.
Soon enough, a look of disbelief flashed past his eyes and he straightened up, eyes darting across the room, face ashen like he had just seen a ghost.
He thinned his lips and scoffed slightly, "Impossible! This is just impossible!"
The first inspector turned to him and gently massaged the back of his neck looking dazed, "It's possible now."
"Not only was it reverse engineered in such a short time, but it was also done in such a simple and straightforward way. It's really an eye opener. I never thought a method like this existed."
The second inspector lowered his eyes to look at the program again and was even more impressed.
"I-I've attempted it so many times in the past. Trying to figure out a way around it, but all to no avail." He spoke again but all that came out was an agitated, shaky voice with words which were barely coherent.
"If this gets out, the thousands, no, millions of people will be queuing to learn it." The first inspector said the obvious, pressing his lips into a thin line, a hopeful gleam in his eyes
There was a moment of silence between the inspectors before they turned to each other and began whispering in low voices, entirely forgetting where they were.
The third inspector watched them for more than a minute, finding their actions strange before he began closing the distance between them.
However, he was just about to grab hold of the computer when Laura suddenly shot up from her seat.
"Wait!"
Including the inspector, everyone turned their heads to look at her.
She clenched her jaw tightly and pointed an accusing finger at Kelsie and her teammates.
"I found it odd that they were being so carefree earlier when their team leader swore to me that she would go home with the prize."
"Could there be a back door? Could it be she already knew there would be such a task and thoroughly prepared for it in advance?"
Her jealousy and extreme doubt of Kelsie's capability led her to blindly ask such a question.
Kelsie almost sneered.
How amusing.
How could she know of the task and prepared for it beforehand when she didn't even know there was such a contest being held until Laura called to tell her.
This sister of hers was getting dumber by the day.
However, the other teams found her words worth looking into.
"Laura is right. They were too arrogant just now and played with their phones instead of attempting to do the task."
"I think you should make sure there was no backdoor installed in their computers which enabled them to cheat."
Kelsie placed a hand on the desk and supported her head with her palm, feeling the need to retort.
"What? Are you all stupid? How could a backdoor have been installed beforehand when all the computers being used were all delivered from the company directly?"
"They even made sure to drop the wrappings around to assure you there would be no malpractice."
The people who had agreed with Laura felt their face stiffen in embarrassment as a quick glance around the room made them see Kelsie was saying the truth.
Truthfully, some CEO of a technology company heard of the contest and the number of wealthy people interested in it and decided to boost his company's presence by sending them free computers.
Most of those in the audience knew of it as the man had made sure to leak the news to blogs and media outlets.
However, since just a little amount of news had been leaked to the public, not many people knew of it as releasing it might interfere with the contest itself.
Just like what Laura was suggesting, a contestant would definitely have attempted to install a backdoor in one of the computers in preparation.
While Kelsie's refute was good enough to dispel Laura's absurd accusation, Laura's teammates snorted loudly, clearly refusing to believe Kelsie didn't use an underhanded method.
"What is she trying to say, that she didn't cheat?"
"That's very unlikely."
"How then did she pass the task? Could she have been wrong?"
"Maybe her sister is just as much of a genius as her and she didn't know it."
"Didn't they spend seven years apart? What if her sister honed her skills abroad?"
"No, that isn't possible. Even if you used twenty years to hone your skills, it's still impossible to finish the code in such a short amount of time."
It was at this moment that a bold thought occurred to Laura and she spoke without thinking.
"Inspector, I'm sure there's a hypnotizing video playing on that computer right now. She must've given these two inspectors hypnotic suggestions to say that she passed the task!"