A dead man's signature in the requisition ledger, Gwen Stacy secretly investigates internal access
The temperature-controlled Archive Cabinet emitted a faint chill.
Gwen Stacy's fingertip remained below the signature, without moving an inch.
Barton Clint.
Six months ago, during a district-wide purge, this person was dismissed and investigated for leaking classified information during Liaison Office. The transfer order was issued by the liaison office. According to the Management Committee's personnel regulations, the access control privileges and material application qualifications of dismissed personnel will be completely revoked within 24 hours.
Moreover, just three days ago, the outer outpost had submitted a claim for compensation to the Personnel Department for Barton's death in the line of duty.
It is absolutely impossible for someone who had their access revoked six months ago and who was already dead three days ago to have walked into the third basement level of Building B of the Department of Technology on the 17th of last month and personally signed for fifty sheets of Top Secret special official documents.
This ledger is forged.
Or perhaps, someone deliberately used a dead person's name to offset this batch of papers, tainted with Chaos Magic, from the accounts.
Gwen Stacy showed no unusual expression.
She didn't even glance at the name, casually turning the page and continuing to check the monthly routine consumables records.
The pages turned, making a regular rustling sound.
Morris, the lab supervisor standing to the side, breathed a sigh of relief, his tense shoulders slumped slightly, and he raised his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
He took half a step forward, his voice tinged with a hint of probing.
"Director Gwen Stacy, our Seventh Laboratory's records are always settled daily, and all inventory inflows and outflows are verified by designated personnel, so there will never be the slightest error."
Gwen Stacy didn't look up, her gaze sweeping over the next few pages of insignificant requisition forms, and gave a casual reply.
"Supervisor Mo is strict and disciplined, and his accounts are indeed very well done."
She closed the hard-cover ledger, tucked it back into the slot of the third-row temperature-controlled cabinet, and dusted off her hands.
"Since it was a normal application from the Minister's Office, then it can be reimbursed. It seems that the summary table from the General Logistics Bureau missed an item, causing Supervisor Mo a wasted trip."
Morris smiled and quickly stepped aside to make way.
"Director, you're too kind. Assisting the Director's Office in inventorying assets is simply my duty. Now that the accounts are cleared, I won't keep you for tea. Zero Storage Room is waiting for me to oversee the parameters."
This is a polite way of asking people to leave.
Gwen Stacy nodded and stepped out of the Archives Department.
The clerk, Xiao Li, who was standing guard outside the door, immediately came forward, his eyes questioning.
Gwen Stacy put the blue folded document back into the inside pocket of her trench coat and walked steadily toward the elevator.
"Let's go to the Property Security Section."
Morris followed behind, taking two steps, but stopped abruptly upon hearing this, his smile freezing on his face.
"What is the section chief doing at the security office? But is there a problem with our lab's access control?"
Gwen Stacy stopped and turned to look at him.
"Manager Mo is overthinking it. The Liaison Office is taking inventory of all the building's assets this time. The papers from Seventh Laboratory match up, but the backup power supplies for the upstairs computer rooms haven't been checked yet. What, Manager Mo, are you also doing the Property Security Section's job?"
Morris chuckled twice and waved his hands repeatedly.
"This humble official would not dare, please proceed, Director."
The elevator doors closed, shutting out Morris's probing gaze.
The elevator car slowly ascended, and the red characters on the digital display screen jumped one by one.
Xiao Li stood to the side and slightly behind Gwen Stacy and spoke in a low voice.
"Director, is there a problem with the records?"
"The recipient of the K-7-Chaos-M batch signed Barton's name."
Gwen Stacy stared at the constantly changing floor numbers, her voice calm.
Xiao Li's breathing quickened, and he suddenly looked up.
"Barton? He was stripped of his internal guard privileges six months ago, and news of his death was just reported three days ago. How could he possibly be here at the Department of Technology to collect something? Morris is lying. I'll take men back immediately to seal the original documents and bring him to justice!"
"Sealed original receipt?"
Gwen Stacy glanced at him sideways.
"If you turn back now, that ledger will burn to ashes in three minutes due to a short circuit in the lab. The fact that Morris dared to show us the ledger shows that he's not afraid of us calling Barton at all."
Xiao Li was stunned.
"Why?"
"Because Barton is dead."
Gwen Stacy stepped out of the elevator, her high heels clicking crisply on the marble floor of the lobby on the first floor of Building B.
"There's no way to prove it when the dead are dead. If it really escalates to the Internal Affairs Inspection Office, Morris can simply shift the blame to the warehouse clerk on duty that day, saying that the clerk failed to verify the transfer list and that Barton exploited the loophole with old documents. At most, it'll be an administrative penalty for oversight, a three-month salary deduction, and that won't affect the Seventh Laboratory in the slightest. Instead, it'll alert the people behind the scenes who actually use the paper."
A bead of sweat appeared on Xiao Li's forehead as he quickly caught up.
"What does the section chief mean?"
"Paper is a real object; it can't grow wings."
Gwen Stacy walked straight to the property security monitoring center of the Department of Technology building on the west side of the lobby.
"Signatures can be done by the dead, but to take fifty specially made metal sheets out of the double-layered lead Alloy Door on the third basement level, one must pass through the physical access control of the outer corridor. The Department of Technology building uses an independent closed-circuit iris scanner and magnetic card dual-track recording system; the data is stored directly on the physical hard drive of the first-floor property management and is not connected to the internal network of the laboratories."
She pushed open the door to the security center.
The deputy head of the security department on duty was looking at reports with his legs crossed when he saw Gwen Stacy display the silver badge of the Director's Office Direct Liaison Office and immediately stood up and saluted.
"Director Gwen Stacy, what brings you here?"
"Routine inspection."
Gwen Stacy walked to the Control Console and pointed to the access control server rack on the left.
"Check the entry and exit records for the outer passage on the third basement level of Building B, including card swipes and iris scans for the entire day of the 17th of last month. Xiao Li, did you bring a blank memory card?"
"I brought it."
Xiao Li immediately took out an encrypted storage Chip from his briefcase and handed it to the deputy head of security.
The deputy section chief held the Chip, looking troubled, and glanced towards the high-level office area of Department of Technology.
"Director Gwen Stacy, this... According to the building's management regulations, accessing the entry and exit records of the classified underground floor requires a countersignature slip from the Department of Technology General Office or the Internal Affairs Inspection Office. You're doing this all by yourself; I really can't explain this to you."
"Who told you I wanted to access classified information?"
Gwen Stacy pulled out the swivel chair in front of the Control Console and sat down, casually picking up a copy of the "Monthly Inspection Record of Fire Exit in Building B" from the table.
"I need to check the wear and tear on the fire access control system in the public corridor on the third basement level. On the 17th of last month, the Logistics Department department reported a problem with the magnetic lock on the east side of the third basement level. I'm here to check the number of times the door was opened and closed that day and the peak current to see if the property management has overstated the maintenance budget. If you're worried, please hide the names of the people entering and exiting, and only show me their employee ID, department, and card swipe timestamp."
The deputy section chief was stunned.
By concealing names and only looking at employee ID codes and timestamps, this does not constitute accessing the whereabouts of personnel with classified information; it falls entirely within the authority of logistics asset write-offs.
"If you're not exporting names, then it's compliant with regulations."
The deputy section chief breathed a sigh of relief, bent down to insert the Chip into the Mainframe interface, and tapped a few keys on the keyboard.
"The access control records for the entire day of the 17th are here, a total of forty-seven records. Please review them, Director."
A densely packed table of data popped up on the screen.
Gwen Stacy leaned forward, her gaze sweeping down the timeline.
Although the inventory records in the Seventh Laboratory do not show the exact time of shipment down to the minute, the paper records are arranged in chronological order.
The entry before Barton's record was at 10:15 a. m., when Laboratory Three requested coolant; the entry after that was at 11:00 a. m., when the Equipment Section entered to inspect the ventilation valve.
In other words, that batch of K-7-Chaos-M specialty paper was taken out of the Seventh Laboratory within the forty-five minutes between 10:15 and 11:00.
Gwen Stacy's gaze was immediately fixed on this 45-minute period.
At 10:20, an employee with the internal employee number T-409 from the Department of Technology swiped his card to enter; this was Morris's own employee number.
At 10:28, employee number T-882 swiped his card and left; he was a regular Technician in the laboratory.
At 10:35, a cross-departmental access record highlighted in red caught my eye.
Gwen Stacy's pupils contracted almost imperceptibly.
The employee ID prefix on that record wasn't "T" for the Department of Technology, nor "O" for the Director's Office, but rather "S" for the Stability Maintenance Office.
[Passage Time: 10:35:12]
[Pass Number: S-004 (Deputy Commander of the Black Crow Guard, Stability Maintenance Office)]
[Reason for travel: Assisting in the inspection of underground pipeline network security]
[Duration of stay: 16 minutes]
Gwen Stacy stared at the string of characters "S-004," her fingers tapping lightly on the armrest of her seat.
Deputy Commander of the Black Crow Guard under the Stability Maintenance Office, and a capable subordinate of Hela.
At the same time that the Department of Technology lost its Top Secret consumables, a high-ranking official in the Stability Maintenance Office, who was in charge of interrogation and armed suppression in the defense zone, brazenly opened the lead alloy door outside the Seventh Laboratory under the absurd pretext of "cooperating in the investigation of pipeline defense".
Seven minutes after he left, a new record appeared in the ledger, signed by a deceased person.
"Director, is there anything wrong with this peak current?"
The deputy head of security leaned over, looked at the dry code on the screen, and asked a question.
"Poor contact does exist."
Gwen Stacy stood up calmly, removed the memory Chip that had already been backed up, and casually put it into her trench coat pocket.
"Pack up and seal all the access control logs for the ten days around the 17th, affix the liaison Liaison Office's seal, and keep them for the annual logistics audit. I'm here today to check on the fire safety access control; there's no need to report to the Department of Technology General Office, so as not to affect their experiments."
The deputy section chief quickly agreed.
Gwen Stacy led Xiao Li out of Building B, and the cold wind blew in their faces.
She stood on the steps, looked up at the towering black tower of the Stability Maintenance Office in the distance, her eyes filled with coldness.
The Department of Technology's paper, the deceased former Liaison Office officer, and the Black Crow Deputy Commander of the Stability Maintenance Office.
The water in this pool was even muddier than the Director had anticipated.