Zero Storage Room's Sham Inspections, the Liaison Office Chief's Truth and Illusion
The next morning, an Red-Headed Document signed and approved by the Director's Office was distributed to the desks of all departments of the Management Committee.
The document is titled "Supplementary Notice on Strengthening Daily Security Inspections of S-rank Sealed Assets".
Gwen Stacy's draft was meticulously worded and full of references. She extracted clauses from the "High-Risk Entity Isolation Management Measures" and the "Internal Safety Operations Code," breaking them down in detail to demonstrate the necessity and urgency of strengthening inspections.
The core content of the notice was a work schedule attached to the last page.
Effective immediately, routine inspections of Zero Storage Room will be increased from once a day to twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. The inspection team will be led by the Liaison Office, with one technical specialist each from the Stability Maintenance Office and the Department of Technology accompanying them, and personnel from the Internal Affairs Inspection Office will supervise the entire process.
The work schedule was filled out until the end of next month, densely packed with names, times, and handover procedures, with not a single flaw.
The document was sent out without causing the slightest disturbance.
When the people from the Stability Maintenance Office and the Ministry of Science Department of Technology looked at the table, they felt that the Director was trying to maintain a balance again, keeping the people on both sides in the same place and watching each other to prevent either side from having any ulterior motives.
When Natasha, the Director of the Internal Affairs Inspection Office, received the document, her fingertips lightly traced the words "full-process supervision," and a faint smile appeared on her lips.
She thought Lynn was offering her a way out.
He discovered the Probe, but instead of making a fuss, he used an official document to put the power of surveillance into the open, allowing her people to openly enter and exit Zero Storage Room. This was both tacit approval and a warning.
She immediately signed the document, approving it as "approved," and then personally selected the most inconspicuous Inspector and added him to the schedule.
The first joint inspection began at 9:00 AM sharp.
In the Internal Affairs Inspection Office, in a secluded single office, Natasha put on a specially made listening headset.
The other end of the earphone was connected to a miniature Probe attached to the bottom of the Archive Cabinet.
She heard the sound of the heavy lead door of the warehouse opening, and the footsteps of the four-person inspection team.
"Liaison Office, Grayson, ordered to lead the inspection team." A businesslike voice.
"Holt the Stability Maintenance Office is in charge of mechanical energy surveying."
"Department of Technology, Ava, in charge of energy spectrum analysis."
"Inspection Office, Russell, record the entire process."
The procedure is proceeding correctly.
Natasha leaned back in her chair, adjusted the volume of her headphones, and prepared to listen carefully.
What she wanted to hear wasn't these official words. What she wanted to hear were the probing questions in their words, the Silk they inadvertently revealed about the cabinet.
However, she was soon disappointed.
"Commissioner Holt, your mechanical energy detector is too close to the cabinet," Grayson from the Liaison Office said in a flat voice. "According to Chapter 7, Section 3 of the Inspection Code, the safe distance for scanning S-rank sealed assets must not be less than five meters."
Holt from the Stability Maintenance Office snorted, "That's standard procedure. The Department of Technology's newly updated ' High-Risk Energy Entity Emergency Plan ' clearly states that if the energy fluctuation of the sealing layer is below the threshold of 0.01, the scanning distance can be reduced to three meters. Commissioner Ava, what is the reading of your Ministry of Science Department of Technology's energy spectrum analyzer?"
Ava from the Department of Technology slowly recited a series of numbers. "Currently it's 0.007, within the safe range."
"Look," Holt said with a hint of smugness in his voice.
"The emergency Contingency Plan applies only to 'emergency situations'," Grayson's voice remained flat. "Routine inspections are not emergency situations. Please step back."
That's bureaucracy!
"I'm just following the rules."
Through the earphones, the three people, maintaining a safe distance of one meter, talked back and forth for a full ten minutes, quoting classical texts.
Natasha frowned slightly.
This dialogue is so clean. So clean it's like reading from a script.
She listened patiently.
After discussing the distance, let's start discussing the equipment.
"Commissioner Ava, your spectrum analyzer needs calibration," Holt started a new conversation. "Its readings are updating once per second. The Stability Maintenance Office submitted a technical improvement proposal last week, requesting you increase the frequency to twice every three seconds. Why haven't you changed it yet?"
"The suggestion is still in the approval process," Ava replied. "The Stability Maintenance Office Office's application report is missing three attachments: an energy consumption assessment, a data redundancy analysis, and a cross-departmental compatibility test. The Liaison Office returned the documents last week; Director Gwen Stacy signed them herself."
"That was deliberately blocked by the Liaison Office!"
"Watch your words, Commissioner Holt," Grayson interjected. "All procedures are in compliance."
Another argument ensued.
From 9:00 AM to 9:30 AM.
During her half-hour inspection, Natasha heard nothing but this kind of thing.
Bastion between departments, conflicts between regulations, and disputes over procedures.
Not a single word mentioned the Archive Cabinet itself, not a single word mentioned Lynn, and not a single word mentioned the forty-one executions.
All the conversations were like oil floating on the surface of water—sparkling and shiny, but empty inside.
Natasha took off her headphones and rubbed her throbbing temples.
She had a vague feeling that something was wrong.
This didn't seem like an inspection; it was more like a scripted performance, a show for her Probe.
Lynn was pouring water into her ears with the most tedious, cumbersome, and compliant bureaucratic procedures.
He intends to overwhelm any truly valuable information the Probe might capture with a massive amount of junk data.
He turned her undercover investigation into a futile effort.
Natasha tapped her fingertips lightly on the table.
She lost a move.
But she wasn't in a hurry. The Probe was still there, and as long as it was there, the initiative was still in her hands. She didn't believe Lynn could keep playing this charade forever.
The second inspection took place at 4 PM.
The content in the headphones was exactly the same as in the morning.
The only difference is that the source of the argument has changed from safety distance and equipment frequency to the format of the inspection log and the security classification of the archive.
Natasha listened for five minutes and then turned off the device.
She got up, poured herself a glass of water, stood by the window, and looked at the silhouette of the Nibelung in the distance.
She is reviewing the situation.
Lynn's response was impeccable. He didn't choose to remove the Probe, which would have been a poor choice and would have directly led to a complete breakdown in relations. He chose to accept it and then "nurture" it using the rules of the system, feeding it meaningless "official rhetoric."
That was a brilliant move.
But where is the flaw?
Natasha's gaze fell on a patrol boat slowly passing by outside the window.
The flaw lies in the fact that this performance was too perfect.
It's too perfect to be real.
She sat back down at the table and put her headphones back on.
The inspection was over, the lead door of the warehouse slowly closed, and the footsteps of the inspector faded into the distance.
Silence returned to the headphones.
Natasha didn't turn it off. She listened quietly.
Listening to that false, deathly silence created by lead doors and seals.
Time passed second by second.
Ten minutes.
Twenty minutes.
Just as Natasha's patience was about to run out and she was about to take off her headphones...
A very faint sound of footsteps, not belonging to any inspection personnel, suddenly appeared in the monitoring frequency.
The sound was very soft and slow, like someone wearing soft-soled shoes walking close to the wall.
Dude.
Dude.
Dude.
The sound came from deep within the warehouse, slowly and deliberately approaching the Archive Cabinet.