Micro-decoding in the sealed chamber, the Forty-Second Execution's
The double-layered lead Alloy Door slid into the bottom groove, the hydraulic lock tongue engaged, and a muffled sound was heard.
The ventilation fan that originally connected the single-person isolation cabin to the Landing Pad stopped working.
The circular spray nozzle at the top of the bulkhead lit up with a red light, and a pungent descaling mist sprayed downwards through the fine pores, the white mist quickly reaching above the knees.
The observation window on the outside of the hatch is made of one-way high-density lead glass.
Lynn stood directly below the showerhead, not moving immediately, but glancing out the window by the reflection of the stainless steel mirror on the inner wall.
Ke'er remained standing on the Landing Pad.
The Black Crow Guard commander did not leave. Instead, he beckoned to the young clerk behind him who was holding the energy detector and fiddled with the frequency knob on the side of the device.
"Commander, the lead plate is over twelve centimeters thick; it can't penetrate with conventional frequencies, and all the signals inside are cut off."
The young clerk leaned closer to the screen, glanced at it, and replied in a low voice.
"It's best if it's not see-through."
Ke'er slipped the black leather glove back onto his right hand, slowly closing his fingers and tightening the buckle at the wrist.
"According to the disinfection procedures of the ' Starport Level-One Combat Readiness Martial Law Order,' crew members returning from high-radiation areas must stay in the heavily isolated chamber for a full twenty minutes. Go and turn down the external exhaust valve by half a notch so he can inhale more refrigerant, so that when he goes to see Director Hela later, he won't still be so quick-witted."
"Clear."
Another clerk holding the seizure warrant hesitated for a moment, then stepped forward and asked in a low voice for instructions.
"Commander, regarding the attendance record from the 17th of last month that Director mentioned earlier, shouldn't we go back to the guard's Archives Department to check it first? What if the Deputy Commander left something unresolved, and the Internal Affairs Inspection Office traced it back to us..."
Ke'er turned his head and gave the document a cold look.
"On the 17th, the Deputy Commander went to the Department of Technology and Technology to assist in the defense inspection on the grounds on the verbal order of Director Hela. Even if the Internal Affairs Inspection Office found the records, it was still an official investigation. Now you're going back to dig up old dirt. Are you trying to find evidence for Lynn, or do you think your life in the Black Crow Guard is too comfortable?"
The clerk shrank back, immediately lowered his head, and even hugged the folder in his hands tighter.
"Your subordinate dares not, your subordinate will go and guard the main control valve immediately."
The conversations outside the hatch were completely blocked by the heavy lead plates.
Lynn couldn't hear what was happening outside, but he clearly saw the downward gesture Ke'er made to his men, and he also saw the angle at which the air vent blades above his head were closing.
The intake air volume has been reduced by one-third.
The concentration of inert gases, originally intended to neutralize Cosmic Rays, began to rise, and inhaling them brought a rusty, astringent taste to the lungs.
Ke'er didn't dare to openly violate the General Logistics Bureau's Confidentiality Regulations by forcibly searching him, so he tampered with the compliant disinfection procedure during those twenty minutes, trying to exhaust him with oxygen deprivation and cooling agents.
But this was precisely the place Lynn herself chose.
Of all the quarantine channels in the entire area, only this single-person sealed cabin, specifically designed for handling high-risk radioactive materials from outside the region, has two layers of military-grade lead mesh laid in the cabin wall to prevent radiation leakage and electronic signal interference.
The lead net blocked Lynn's channels of communication with the outside world, but it also shielded him from the ubiquitous remote frequency monitoring and pinhole probes of the Stability Maintenance Office.
Twenty minutes.
This was the only period of time before he stepped into the main administrative building of the Management Committee and faced that group of women, a time when he was not being watched by any eyes.
Lynn raised his left hand and glanced at the countdown timer on the inside of his wristwatch.
Nineteen minutes and forty seconds.
He turned his back, completely blocking any blind spots that might exist in the one-way observation window, then unbuttoned the collar of his dark gray logistics uniform and took out the folded "Confession" and the tiny Scarlet leather fragment the size of a fingernail from his left breast pocket.
The disinfectant mist contains a slightly acidic substance that specifically corrodes foreign microorganisms that adhere to the surface of clothing.
Lynn didn't let the aerosol contaminate the two pieces of evidence. Instead, he unscrewed the spare miniature Magnetic Field sampling tube at his waist, emptied the metal core, rolled the confession and leather scraps into a thin tube, stuffed it tightly into the corrosion-resistant Titanium Alloy tube, tightened the cap again, and put it back in his pocket.
Fifty seconds passed after I finished this small task.
Lynn exhaled a breath of stale air, slowly raised his left wrist, and pressed the physical button on the side of his Personal Terminal three times with his fingertips.
Instead of emitting a glaring White Light, the terminal screen projected a small, dark green retina-like light, about the size of a palm, with its brightness set to the lowest setting.
[Current environment monitoring: External electromagnetic signal shielding rate 99.8%, no external channel access.]
[Read local cache file: Forty-Second Execution - complete video recording?]
Lynn tapped "Confirm" with her fingertip.
This was the toll he forced the Clockmaker to pay in the XN-734 Ruins, using the Black Privilege Token as leverage.
The Clockmaker handed over this Data Stream rather decisively, which was somewhat unusual.
That TVA executive with the monocle was no ordinary person who would be easily intimidated by a few threats. The fact that he dared to put this Top Secret file directly into Lynn's terminal showed that the file itself was a trap that could drag Lynn into the Abyss.
The progress bar on the dim screen flickered.
There was no sound.
To prevent sound vibrations from being transmitted through the metal of the cabin, Lynn turned off the audio output in advance, keeping only the visuals and automatically generated subtitles.
The image stabilized after a burst of dense snow-like noise.
What comes into view is an extremely spacious circular hall.
The walls of the hall were not decorated with the warm yellow retro style commonly seen in TVA, but with a cold dome made of countless black metal plates. In the center of the floor stood a dark silver pillar that was ten meters high, with eight thick energy chains extending from the pillar.
Lynn's gaze did not linger on the architectural layout, but instead fell directly on the timestamp and coordinate code that automatically appeared in the lower left corner of the screen.
[Epoch Code: 00-Alpha-Unarchived]
[Location: Lower-Level Tribunal, Management Committee Forbidden Zone Zero]
Lynn paused slightly, his right thumb resting on the edge of the terminal.
Management Committee Forbidden Zone Zero.
This is not the interrogation room of TVA headquarters, but the core and oldest underground base of the Management Committee where he now serves as Director.
It turns out that the so-called "Forty-Second Execution" did not happen in a branch universe of the Sacred Timeline at all, but deep underground beneath this Starport.
The scene begins to move forward.
The perspective comes from a fixed Surveillance Camera directly above the lobby, with slight wide-angle distortion at the edges of the image.
Eight dark silver energy chains suddenly tightened. At the end of the chains, several figures enveloped in intense light could be vaguely seen. Due to the energy overload, the Surveillance Camera could not capture the specific faces of those figures. They could only see an extremely dazzling Scarlet, a ghostly green Death Energy, and a Dark Gold flame that was constantly expanding and then forcibly suppressed.
Wanda, Hela, Qin.
Even without seeing their faces clearly, Lynn could recognize who was chained to the pillar at a glance, based on his understanding of the women's strength and characteristics.
Beneath that dark silver pillar stood two rows of armed personnel in black uniforms. The insignia they wore on their chests were neither the scales of TVA nor the giant sword of the current Stability Maintenance Office, but a double-headed eagle badge that had long been erased from the Management Committee's historical archives.
The subtitles scrolled silently at the bottom of the screen.
[Recorder: Terminal Zero]
[Reason: 42nd scheduled cleaning procedure for a high-risk, out-of-control entity.]
[Status: All Anchor are locked, the memory stripping array is fully charged, awaiting the final annihilation order from the Supreme Judge.]
The camera slowly pans down, passing through the cooling white mist that permeates the hall, and focuses on the Obsidian platform at the very front of the tribunal.
Behind the platform, with his back to the Surveillance Camera, stood a man.
The man was wearing an exquisitely tailored long black trench coat with straight shoulders, and his hands were behind his back.
Lynn watched the retreating figure, her breathing steady, but the pupils in her eyes gradually constricted.
In the scene, the judge on the high platform, while waiting for the array to recharge, gently taps his right index finger on his left wrist bone at a fixed frequency of three times every two seconds.
That was a subconscious action that Lynn would take when he was thinking about complex documents or preparing to issue an unalterable administrative order.
Not only that.
As the recorder walked up to the platform with an electronic signature board in his hands, the figure turned slightly to the side and extended his right hand to take the pen.
He held the pen slightly lower than the average person, and before putting pen to paper, he would lightly touch the pen tip in mid-air, then exert force with his wrist to draw a neat signature in the lower right corner of the signature board.
The last stroke of the signature flicks slightly upwards to the right, ending with restraint and understated elegance.
There is not a trace of the craftsmanship of an imitator.
That was Lynn's own handwriting.
It was even more fluent than what he writes now, carrying an indifference that comes from years of holding the power of life and death.
Lynn stared silently at the figure on the dim screen who was handing the approval board back to the recorder. All the deductive models in his mind about "TVA framing" and "internal ambitious people planting evidence" were overturned and started over in that one second.
No wonder the Clockmaker showed that strange admiration when he heard in the ruins that he was going to destroy the Black Privilege Token.
No wonder the forged confession on the interrogation table could perfectly mimic his penchant for abbreviated official documents.
Because he himself was the one who developed this Management Committee document system.
And the so-called "supreme judge" who stood in this courtroom back then, signing execution orders forty-two times in a row, stripping and erasing these women's memories, was himself.
[WARNING: Quarantine and disinfection countdown ends in three minutes. Door pressure equalization procedure is about to begin.]
A synthesized voice announced something over the loudspeaker overhead.
The white mist inside the cabin began to be drawn away by the vents at the bottom, and visibility became clear again.
Lynn expressionlessly turned off the dim screen on his wrist, completely locking the background cache of his Personal Terminal and restoring it to the standby interface of an ordinary logistics dispatcher.
Less than half of the footage has been read; the second half, detailing the execution process, hasn't been shown yet, but the existing information is enough to piece together just the tip of the iceberg.
The Clockmaker gave him this video not to help him catch the mole, but to plant a deadly seed between him and those women in the Management Committee.
If Wanda or Hela finds out that Lynn was the one who repeatedly purged them in Forbidden Zone Zero, the entire Management Committee will be reduced to cosmic dust by their own hands tomorrow, without even the TVA taking action.
Click.
The hydraulic latch inside the double-layered lead Alloy Door slowly retracted.
On the Landing Pad outside, Ke'er stood at the bottom of the steps with two clerks. His gaze pierced through the observation window, which had just cleared of white mist, and stared intently at Lynn's face, as if trying to discern the dishevelment caused by oxygen deprivation.
Lynn straightened his collar and calmly stepped out of the isolation pod.
The very second his boots touched the steel plate of the Landing Pad again, a fleeting frame from the terminal's display suddenly froze in his mind—
The recorder who had handed the execution decree to "Judge Lynn" on the high platform of the courthouse that year revealed half of his profile as he bowed and stepped down the stairs.
That's Xiao Li, the Liaison Office clerk who's currently working alongside Gwen Stacy, running errands and checking accounts for her.