A silent contest in the Director's Office, Lynn dismantles Number Seven
The blinds were mostly closed, and the dim sunlight streaming in diagonally drew several distinct gray-white lines on the long black wooden table.
The humidifier on the corner of the table sprayed out a very fine mist of water, and the heat dissipation vents on the casing emitted a low hum.
Xiao Zhou pushed open the door and came in; his soft-soled leather shoes made no sound on the anti-static carpet.
He carried a specially made radiation-proof lead box in both hands, walking very slowly, and stopped two steps away from the table.
"Director, a special document just arrived from the Department of Technology's mailroom."
Lynn's pen didn't stop; the nib swept across the bottom of the review sheet, leaving a clean ink mark.
"The one Thomas went to chase up?"
"Yes, but it wasn't someone from the Inspection Office who delivered it; it was Secretary Claire who personally delivered it to the Confidential Office."
Xiao Zhou gently placed the lead box on the edge of the table and used his fingers to unlock the physical safety lock on the side.
The lid popped open a crack, releasing not the usual smell of ink from official documents, but a very faint smell of burning.
The bottom of the box is lined with double layers of energy-absorbing cotton, and a piece of stiff cardboard lies quietly in the center.
That was a standard self-inspection receipt from the Management Committee, number seven.
Lynn put down her pen and pulled out a piece of cardboard from the box.
There was no printed text or handwritten statement on the paper; the main text was a clean, pristine white.
In the lower right corner, in the signature section for the person in charge, there is a dark red personal seal imprint.
That was Wanda's personal mark; the inkpad contained special anti-counterfeiting minerals, giving it a matte finish in dim light.
In the very center of this personal seal is a grayish-black fragment.
The fragments are only the size of rice grains, with an uneven surface and edges that show signs of Carbonization and crystallization after high-temperature calcination.
Xiao Zhou stood to the side, his gaze lingering on the blank document for a second, his expression somewhat tense.
"Is the Department of Technology... openly refusing to report this?"
Lynn did not answer immediately.
He reached into the drawer beside him and took out a pair of medical tweezers with a ruler attached.
The metal tweezers steadily picked up the Carbonization crystal and suspended it under the cool light of the desk lamp.
The debris faintly reveals extremely fine hexagonal crystal patterns, and the fracture surface retains a network of melt residue.
Lynn lowered his eyelids slightly, and the vast memory map deep in his mind was reorganized in a very short time.
The Clockmaker transmitted the Forty-Second Execution video from the ruins, and he quickly disassembled and compared each frame.
The execution site, captured in the video footage, is located in the Forbidden Zone Zero, the deepest part of the Management Committee's underground area.
The Obsidian platform that stood in the very center back then was not made of pure natural stone, but rather a shock-resistant composite base mixed with 70% high-purity artificial quartz.
This type of foundation stone was only used during that great purge to support the base of the oversized energy reactor.
In the last three minutes of the video recording, the platform's self-destruct command was activated, and the foundation stone was completely charred into a coke by the intense pulse.
The intercrystalline gaps, Carbonization depth, and thermal stress cracks of the quartz microparticle in front of us perfectly match the debris that flew out of the base in the image.
Wanda has fragments of the original foundation stone.
More precisely, she went to the perimeter of Zero Storage Room and even dug out relics left behind at the execution site from some unknown cracks in the ground.
Lynn placed the tweezers back on the tray and tapped his fingertips lightly on the table twice in a rhythmic motion.
This is not a self-inspection report at all.
This is an exam paper.
Wanda is questioning the gaps in her memory.
The three shutdowns of the main reactor were not due to equipment aging, but rather because she was using Chaos Magic to forcibly resonate the foundation of Zero Storage Room.
She found the stone, but she couldn't be sure whether the fragmented nightmare was a real past event or an illusion caused by a backlash of magic.
So she placed the charred stone on the blank receipt and delivered it to the Director's Office.
If Lynn acts strictly by the book and rejects the receipt on the grounds of "incomplete official documents or improper submission for review," or investigates the Department of Technology for dereliction of duty, then it proves that Lynn does not understand this stone and is unaware of the secrets of the execution back then.
If Lynn behaves strangely, or even secretly accesses the files in Zero Storage Room, it would be tantamount to admitting guilt and confirming that the person in the Director's position was the one who orchestrated the elimination plan back then.
Regardless of whether we advance or retreat, the slightest misstep could detonate this time bomb buried beneath the Department of Technology.
Seeing that Lynn remained silent for a long time, Xiao Zhou asked in a low voice.
"Director, should we return the data to the mailroom and have the Department of Technology resubmit it according to the regulations?"
"Need not."
Lynn picked up the red ink pen on the table.
"Going back is a way of telling her that the office understood her probing."
Xiao Zhou was slightly taken aback, but did not reply. He bowed even lower.
In the logic of the Management Committee's operation, blank documents are not a mistake, but a covert probe to test the stance.
If a subordinate hands a blank piece of paper to a superior, and the superior is quick to convict them, it means they have something to hide; if they turn a blind eye, it means they are weak and easily bullied.
Lynn unscrewed the pen cap, leaving the nib hovering in the blank space of the reply slip.
He didn't write anything; he simply followed the standard approval process for official documents and neatly drew a horizontal line at a 45-degree angle in the "Review Comments" column.
In standard official document format, a slash indicates "no further comments, all accepted."
Immediately afterwards, he stamped the Director's Office's routine administrative seal on the right side of the approval area.
The blue ink fell, standing side by side with Wanda's dark red personal seal on the edge of the paper.
"Include this in the Department of Technology's routine consumption inventory for this month."
Lynn put the cardstock back into the lead box and pushed it to the edge of the table.
"Follow the standard filing process; no special approval is needed, and there's no need to send a copy of the receipt number to the Inspection Office."
Xiao Zhou tucked his fingers together and carefully closed the lid of the box.
"If Thomas comes back demanding results..."
"Tell him that the Seventh Laboratory has submitted its self-inspection materials on time, and the Director's Office has reviewed them and found them to be in compliance with internal control procedures."
Lynn picked up her coffee cup again.
The liquid in the glass had cooled completely, and a thin layer of grease had formed on the surface.
"If Thomas wants to see the original, he should exchange it for a joint request signed by all the Standing Committee Member of the Joint Conference."
Xiao Zhou nodded in agreement, picked up the lead box with both hands, and quickly retreated towards the door.
The heavy Solid Wood Door closed, the lock making a crisp click.
The room fell silent again.
Lynn leaned back in his chair, his gaze falling on the small tray containing quartz particles.
When the particles are still under cold light, the charred marks on their surface resemble a dead shell.
However, just as Lynn picked up the terminal to check the zone dispatch chain, the gray-black debris in the tray vibrated very slightly.
It was not a mechanical vibration, nor did it trigger any air convection.
Inside that seemingly completely inactive Carbonization quartz grain, a faint red glow, hidden deep within the hexagonal lattice, suddenly illuminated.
It was a wisp of Chaos Magic, extremely compressed and disguised as ashes.
The red light did not spread outwards, but instead slid rapidly down the conductive edge of the metal tray and silently climbed up the high-frequency data cables laid inside the desk.
The screen on Lynn's Personal Terminal wrist suddenly began to shake.
The edges of the originally dark blue system interface were now tinged with an eerie Scarlet halo.
The underlying firewall didn't even trigger any external intrusion alerts.
That wisp of magic precisely bypassed the conventional data verification layer, and like mercury spilling onto the ground, it plunged directly into the main control circuit inside the terminal.