The anomalous terminal in the containment room, Natasha watching from the sidelines
T-03 Defense Zone has four underground floors, with the seventh specially equipped Containment Room.
The metal grille of the vent emits a slight hum every ten seconds, sending circulating cool air, mixed with the smell of rust, into the room.
Natasha sat at a cast-iron square table fixed to the ground, holding a metal-free soft-tipped pen issued by the Management Committee in her right hand, writing on a piece of paper bearing the red header of the Internal Affairs Inspection Office.
The electronic gate at the end of the corridor slid open, and two pairs of military boots stepped onto the concrete floor, one heavy and one light.
Commander Horn, the district guard, stopped outside the one-way electric fence. Behind him, a young clerk was holding a sealed file box with a lead seal on the lid that read "Top Secret - Directly to Defense Zone Command".
Horn raised his hand and swiped his magnetic card in the access control sensor area. The electric fence stopped beeping, and the inner iron door slid open halfway to the side.
"Commissioner Romanoff, it's exactly 7 PM."
Horn stood outside the threshold, not stepping inside. His gaze passed over Natasha's shoulder and landed on the stack of documents on the table, which was already five pages long.
"Commander Monk is holding a defense and security meeting at 8 PM tonight. If your third performance review is not finished by then, I will have to report it as disobedience."
Natasha continued writing, signing her name and employee number at the bottom of the page. Then she put down the pen, gathered the five pages together, and tapped them gently on the table.
"Commander Horn arrived at just the right time because he was afraid I would write something I shouldn't have in my written apology, which would implicate your detention center in a disciplinary action for negligence."
Natasha stood up, holding the edge of the paper in both hands, and walked to the yellow warning line inside the iron gate.
Horn frowned slightly, did not reply, but simply tilted his head towards the young clerk behind him.
The young clerk stepped forward, picked up the file box with both hands, and prepared to receive the document across the yellow line.
Instead of putting the paper in the box, Natasha handed it directly to Horn's right hand.
"The first two self-criticisms went through the Internal Affairs Inspection Office's document circulation system and disappeared without a trace. Today's one concerns a loophole in the outer Defense Line of the T-03 Defense Zone, so I trouble you, sir, to personally deliver it to Commander Monk's desk."
Horn looked at the paper handed to him, hesitated for two seconds, and then extended his right hand, which was covered by a tactical glove, to take the document.
"Those under house arrest have no right to interfere in the defense of their assigned area; the commissioner should worry more about when his own lockdown will be lifted."
As Horn pulled the pages away, Natasha, whose right index and middle fingers were still extended, rhythmically tapped five times on the hard plastic shell of the file box.
Two long, three short, half-second intervals, followed by another extremely fast combo.
The young clerk standing to the side and behind was completely unaware as he lowered his head and closed the box.
Horn's thumb, which was resting on the document, suddenly stopped, his movement of turning around halting halfway.
He was a veteran intelligence officer transferred from the T-03 Defense Zone and could understand this outdated, blind-tapping code.
Those few short syllables, pieced together, only amount to eight characters: Bloodfang is not outsourced, but a private army.
Horn lifted his eyelids and stared into Natasha's eyes.
The incandescent light tubes on the corridor ceiling cast a glow between the two people, and the sound of orderly footsteps of the changing guards could be heard in the distance.
Two hours ago, Liaison Office Chief Gwen Stacy, under the guise of Director Hela of the Stability Maintenance Office, led the infamous Bloodfang Pirate Fleet to force its way into the T-03 Defense Zone Defense Line, and even forced Commander Monk to publicly withdraw the Sky Dome air defense matrix.
The entire high command in the defense zone was speculating whether the Stability Maintenance Office and the Liaison Office had secretly formed some kind of alliance. Commander Monk Thunder about this in the command post, fearing that he would become the target of a joint purge by the two core departments.
At this moment, the former field supervisor, who had been personally ordered by Director Lynn to be imprisoned in the T-03 Defense Zone, actually typed out such a sentence.
Horn lowered his voice, turned to the first page of the document in his hand, and pretended to check the handwriting.
"The commissioner is locked up in this airtight fourth basement level, yet his ears are sharper than those of us who are glued to the radar screens every day."
Horn closed the document, stuffed it into the file box in the young clerk's arms, and personally fastened the lead seal.
"Some words, once spoken, can be fatal. The commissioner's handwriting in the written self-criticism was neat and he followed the rules perfectly, so how could his actions be so unruly?"
Natasha withdrew her hand, adjusted the wide sleeves of her prison uniform, and returned to the cast-iron table to sit down again.
"I've spent so many years in the Red Room and the Field Operations Group, I don't know anything else, I only know how to treat people differently based on their status."
Natasha picked up the plastic water glass on the table and took a sip of the water, which had long since gone cold.
"What kind of temper does Director Hela have? Even if Commander Horn has never been to headquarters, he should have heard of the Black Crow Guard's modus operandi. If she wants to use a pirate ship, she'll just kill everyone on board and replace them with Black Raven guards to sail it. She'll never leave that bandit leader named Hark pointing fingers on the Bridge."
Upon hearing the words "Black Crow Guard," the young clerk visibly tightened his grip on the file box and instinctively took a half-step back into the corridor.
Horn's expression darkened slightly as he glanced at the few remaining blank self-criticism papers on the table.
"So, according to the Commissioner, Director Gwen Stacy, who wielded the Highest Access Privileges under the Wartime Prevention Act this afternoon, was issuing false orders?"
"The official document is genuine, the seal is genuine, but does it matter whose ship it is?"
Natasha put down her water glass, the bottom of the plastic cup tapping softly on the iron table.
"The important thing is that those pirates are currently stationed at Starport No. 3, deep within your T-03 Defense Zone. If these bandits cause any trouble in the defense zone, and the Internal Affairs Inspection Office investigates, Commander Monk will be the one who signed off on their release, and the Stability Maintenance Office will absolutely not take the blame for providing false official documents as guarantees."
Natasha looked up, meeting Horn's scrutinizing gaze.
"Commander Monk's current attempt to investigate the Stability Maintenance Office is like throwing an egg against a rock. But if he were to send someone to investigate which department's slush funds were used when the Bloodfang Fleet resupplyed on the Orion Arm half a month ago, perhaps the Commander could sleep soundly at tonight's defense meeting."
Horn stood in the doorway for a full five seconds without saying a word.
He knew perfectly well that the woman in front of him was being held captive here because she must have a deep factional conflict with the newly appointed head of the Liaison Office Director Gwen Stacy.
Natasha brought up this clue not to help Commander Monk, but to use the T-03 Defense Zone garrison to expose Gwen Stacy's unauthorized recruitment of space pirates.
Even knowing it was a case of using someone else to do the dirty work, Commander Monk had no choice but to accept the knife.
The humiliation on the command Bridge that afternoon had already stripped Commander Monk of his prestige among the district commanders. If he couldn't find something to use against Gwen Stacy and turn the tables on him, the T-03 Defense Zone would become nothing more than the headquarters Liaison Office's backyard.
Horn straightened his military uniform collar, resuming his cold, businesslike demeanor.
"The commissioner's self-criticism is very insightful; I will forward it to Commander Monk verbatim."
Horn stepped back and reached out to pull the iron gate over.
"The floor is damp, so please keep warm tonight. Also, the detention center is going to inspect the internal network tonight, so your reading terminal may be offline for a few hours. Don't panic."
"Thank you for your consideration, sir."
Natasha nodded slightly, watching the iron gate slam shut with a bang.
The one-way electric grid lit up with a faint blue light again, completely isolating the Containment Room from the outside corridor.
The sound of boots faded into the distance until the electronic gate at the end of the corridor locked itself again.
Natasha remained seated, her posture upright, her gaze calmly fixed on the slowly rotating Surveillance Camera in the corner.
She understood that Horn's last words, "inspect the internal network lines," were Monk's Command to return the favor to her.
She handed a knife that could pierce Gwen Stacy's back to the higher-ups in the defense zone. In exchange, Horn would cut off the data transmission link to the Containment Room tonight, giving her a period of privacy from the headquarters' Internal Affairs Inspection Office.
In this quagmire where everyone is tearing each other apart, even if you're in a cage, as long as you have the information that others want, you can still sit at the poker table and get a share of the pie.
Lynn locked her up in the T-03 Defense Zone, ostensibly to appease Hela and Wanda's anger, but in reality, to place her in this important border town far from the core Starport, to guard his escape route on the periphery.
Lynn probably didn't expect that Gwen Stacy would be so bold as to directly stuff an Class A pirate Fleet into the belly of the T-03 Defense Zone.
If Gwen Stacy is allowed to establish herself in the T-03 Defense Zone, then Natasha, as a pawn, will truly become a useless piece that can be discarded at any time.
The indicator light on the Surveillance Camera in the corner suddenly changed from a solid green to a flashing yellow.
Line maintenance has begun.
Natasha didn't get up, or even look up at the camera.
She simply reached out her left hand, pulled the remaining stack of blank self-criticism papers on the table in front of her, picked up a soft-lead pen, and pretended to continue working on the fourth self-criticism.
Using the wide sleeves of her prison uniform as cover, she unscrewed the base of the plastic water bottle, took out a transparent capsule no bigger than a grain of rice, and gently crushed it with her fingernail.
Colorless and odorless developing solution seeped out from my fingertip.
Natasha pressed her damp fingertip against the back of the blank sheet at the bottom of the stack of apologies, and slowly ran it along the binding line in the lower right corner of the paper.
On the originally clean and flat paper, as the medicine seeped in, more than a dozen thin, light blue lines, as fine as hair, gradually appeared.
That wasn't writing, nor was it Star Map.
Instead, it is an extremely accurate cross-sectional drawing of the building's internal structure.
In the upper left corner of the drawing, a line of small text is marked with the unique miniature code of the Red Room: Department of Technology, underground third floor, Seventh Laboratory, independent ventilation duct network and spare exhaust shaft for Zero Storage Room.
At the location of the third ventilation valve in the exhaust shaft, there is a very conspicuous cross Starbrand.
This piece of paper was brought in this morning during the detention center's routine distribution of stationery; it was slipped under the bottom of a whole package of new paper.
In the death row of the T-03 Defense Zone, the only person in the entire Management Committee who could bypass Horn's inspection and accurately deliver the self-criticism paper containing the core secret blueprints of the Department of Technology to her was Lynn herself, and that mole who was still hiding in the shadows and dared to steal even Wanda's anti-counterfeiting paper.
The other party sent her this picture as an invitation to join the game.
Natasha looked at the cross Starbrand, gently folded the developed negative, put it in her mouth, and swallowed it with a mouthful of cold water.
The paper slid down my esophagus, carrying a slightly bitter taste of medicine.
She picked up her pen again and wrote the first line on the new self-criticism paper. Suddenly, without warning, a line of red external access code lit up the screen of the reading terminal that should have been completely locked in the hidden compartment on the side of her wrist.