An unexpected gain from a late-night visit, the Liaison Office Chief's miniature probe
The page lingered between Lynn's fingers for a moment.
He held it up to the residual heat of the gold-melting furnace, but didn't burn it. He just looked at it again by the dim red light. The handwriting was delicate, the strokes were restrained, and it was a deliberately suppressed style of writing. He couldn't recognize its origin.
The forty-second time.
The agreement execution record only goes up to the forty-first instance. The forty-second instance either hasn't happened yet, or it happened but wasn't archived—if it wasn't archived, there's only one possibility: that execution escaped TVA's control.
He folded the paper back to its original shape, put it into his inner pocket, and just as he sat back down at his desk, there were three more knocks on the door.
This time, the knocking was done according to protocol, starting lightly and then increasing the intensity—a coded signal from the Liaison Office.
"Enter."
The door opened, Gwen Stacy stepped in, closing the door behind her. She wasn't wearing the uniform she'd worn during the day; she was wearing a dark coat and carrying a thin file folder sealed with the Liaison Office's classified stamp.
"The Director hasn't rested yet." She placed the file folder on the corner of the desk, glanced at the metal smelting furnace, and didn't ask any questions.
Steam was still rising from the stove. She could smell what had been burned in the room, and she knew she shouldn't ask.
"Get to the point," Lynn said.
"Two things." Gwen Stacy pulled out a chair and sat down, pushing the folder towards her. "The first is the daytime security check case. After the powder analysis results came back for the memory chip Natasha crushed, I had the lab retest it."
What did the retest reveal?
"That thing is empty," Gwen Stacy said. "The memory crystal is correct, and the early batches purchased by the Management Committee are correct, but the writing layer inside the crystal is raw. Not a single piece of data has been recorded."
Lynn looked up.
"She crushed a decoy," Gwen Stacy said, lowering her voice. "An empty shell, deliberately made me see her crush it, deliberately got the lab to detect the batch, and shifted suspicion to the Liaison Office. I followed this lead for three days, investigating a path she had laid out."
"So you came here tonight because you found something else."
"Yes." Gwen Stacy pulled a piece of paper from the folder. On it was an enlarged diagram of the bottom structure of the Archive Cabinet in Zero Storage Room. "I reviewed all the files from the Vanguard's return trip, frame by frame. When Natasha inspected the cabinet, her right hand lingered at the seam at the bottom for four seconds. At the time, I thought she had hidden something inside."
"And now?"
"Now I know, she didn't hide it." Gwen Stacy's fingertip touched a thin slit in the diagram. "She pasted it on. A miniature Probe, the Red Room's craftsmanship, thin enough to be embedded in the folds of the sealing film."
Lynn stared at the narrow crack without saying a word.
"The key is the timing," Gwen Stacy paused. "The moment she applied it, Wanda was adding the final seal to the cabinet. The energy of Chaos Magic swept across the cabinet, Probe, taking advantage of that energy fluctuation, seeped into the seal layer, becoming parasitic between the seal and the cabinet wall."
"Within the sealed layer."
"Inside the sealed layer." Gwen Stacy nodded. "The external scans can't find it because they stop scanning at the seal. It's hidden behind the seal, against the cabinet wall, which means it's right under our noses."
There was a moment of silence in the office.
The last bit of heat in the gold-melting furnace dissipated, and the furnace chamber went dark.
"This wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision," Lynn said slowly. "She planned it all out before she boarded the ship. She calculated that Wanda would add a seal, calculated the energy frequency of the seal, and calculated that all your eyes would be fixed on the cabinet door, and no one would look at the bottom."
"There's another layer," Gwen Stacy said. "The Probe lives within the seal layer. As long as the seal remains unbroken, it will stay alive. It listens to whoever enters or leaves the Zero Storage Room, whoever examines it, and what anyone says—"
"It remembers everything," Lynn added.
Gwen Stacy took the second page from the folder; it was a draft of a review report, with the signature area blank.
"I've come tonight for two reasons: first, to report this matter; second, to ask for instructions." She pushed the draft towards her. "Should we take out the Probe? If we do, we'll disturb the seal; if we disturb the seal, we'll disturb Wanda. If we don't, it will just keep listening inside."
Lynn did not answer immediately.
He leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers lightly twice on the table.
Bringing it out would be like stirring up a hornet's nest. The moment the Probe leaves the cabinet, Natasha will know she's been exposed. She'll cut off all her trails and retreat back to the Inspection Office, never to be caught again.
No, they've left an ear in Zero Storage Room. But whose ear is this, and where did what they heard go? There's still a long way to go.
"No," Lynn said. "Not only will we not accept it, but starting tomorrow, the routine inspections of Zero Storage Room will be doubled."
Gwen Stacy was taken aback, then realized what was happening.
Doubling the number of people checking means doubling the number of people coming and going, and doubling the amount of talking. The more the Probe listens, the more selectively it can be fed.
"I understand." She took back the draft. "I wrote the report truthfully, but I didn't write the word ' Probe ' on the paper. I only wrote 'The cabinet's sealing layer is questionable; it is recommended to strengthen security.'"
"Okay." Lynn nodded. "Don't reveal a word about Natasha. Since she dared to leave the Probe there, she's just waiting for us to retrieve it. We won't."
Gwen Stacy agreed, got up to leave, but stopped at the door.
"Director, there's one more thing I'm not sure about." She turned around. "The Probe is alive, I can confirm that. But I've found its signal transmission frequency band—"
She paused.
"The frequency band is open. That means that from the day the cabinet entered Zero Storage Room, what it heard has already been transmitted."
"Where to send it?"
"I don't know." Gwen Stacy's voice was even lower. "The receiver isn't on the Management Committee's intranet, not on any registered line. I followed the frequency band, but halfway there, the signal cut off by itself. It cut off cleanly; someone cut it off on the other end."
Lynn's fingers stopped on the table.
The Probe was planted by Natasha, but the person who cut off the signal at the receiving end didn't do it like her. If Natasha wanted to cut it off, she would do it silently, without Gwen Stacy only realizing it halfway through touching it.
It broke halfway through her touch, intentionally letting her touch that half.
"Director," Gwen Stacy looked at him, "This Probe... I'm afraid Natasha isn't the only one listening."
Lynn did not answer.
He remembered the piece of paper under the door. The delicate handwriting, the pressed ink, and the sentence, "The record of the Forty-Second Execution is with me."
Natasha planted Probe to listen to the cabinets. But someone used her Probe to hear something else—heard him enter the Zero Storage Room late at night, heard what the gold furnace had burned, and even heard things from long ago.
"Gwen Stacy," he began, "This matter ends here tonight. Go back, write the review report as we instructed, file it, and don't touch that frequency again."
"The receiving end--"
"I'll check."
Gwen Stacy glanced at him, asked no further questions, bowed, and left, the door closing gently behind her.
Lynn was left alone in the office again.
He took the page from his inner pocket and unfolded it again under the light. With the back of the paper facing away from the light, a very faint indentation was visible, left from the previous page when he was writing.
He turned the paper to the side and looked at it against the light.
The indentations are shallow and intermittent, piecing together half a line of text—content scrapped from the previous page:
"... Above B-15, there is another person who signed the agreement."
Lynn held the paper tightly, remaining motionless for a long time.
Above B-15. In TVA, it's a level that even Ravonna can't reach.
One by one, the lights in the corridor outside went out as the night Enforcement Team shut them off. Darkness crept in, enveloping the office.
The Probe was still stuck to the bottom of the cabinet in Zero Storage Room, listening quietly.
The person behind it had already slipped the forty-second trump card under the door.