The Watchmaker Pressured Natasha Again, Leaving a Patch Behind with a Fake Code

T-03 Defense Zone has three underground levels, with single-person Containment Room.

Dry, cold air blew out of the ventilation duct grille, carrying the acrid smell of unburnt diesel from the generator.

The fluorescent tubes overhead emitted a very faint hum and flickered weakly every half minute.

Inside the hidden groove on the inside of the bed board, the palm-sized portable terminal once again lit up with a dark red glow.

The cursor on the screen didn't stop, and a line of green prompts forcibly took over the original system desktop.

[External channel handshake successful]

[Access Provider Identifier: Watchmaker]

Natasha leaned against the cold concrete wall, her right index finger knuckle pressed against her chin, her gaze fixed on a screen less than four inches in size.

The rhythmic sound of changing guard boots echoed from the corridor outside the door.

Two pairs of heavy, hard-soled rubber boots stepped onto the concrete ground, approaching from a distance. They paused for two seconds in front of the iron fence outside the gate before retracing their original route.

There are four minutes and forty seconds remaining in the patrol interval.

The text on the screen began to appear line by line.

"The tactile paving in the underground pipe network is quite interesting, Agent Romanoff."

"But the gates of the Defense Zone Dispatch Center can't be opened with just two sketches."

"The blueprints you provided are missing a core transcoding step."

Natasha didn't touch the keyboard; her eyelids were slightly lowered, and her breathing was so steady it was almost imperceptible.

The dim light on the terminal screen flickered, reflecting her pale jawline.

"The escape permit has been generated in the cache pool of Relay Station Seven."

"To get the pickup code, hand over the second emergency code that Lynn left with you."

"Two hours later, the gravity patrol aircraft on the perimeter of the defense zone will be relieved; that will be your only window of opportunity to depart."

The text stopped, and a 16-bit hexadecimal slot popped up in the center of the screen.

The countdown timer ticked silently, the red numbers decreasing in milliseconds.

Below the empty slot, there is also a miniature high-resolution snapshot.

It was half of a special pass with the Defense Zone Command's electronic watermark, with the heading "Technical Inspection Standby Shuttle" written at the top. The release barcode in the lower right corner had been mostly generated, but it was missing the final encryption verification.

Once the corresponding verification code is entered, the shuttle will dock at the sewage inspection port behind the Containment Room forty minutes later.

It was extremely tempting and also fit all the technical logic of escaping.

Natasha's fingertips landed on the cold, hard plastic frame.

She didn't look at the red countdown number; her gaze went past the text on the pass and landed on the Data Stream verification rules in the lower right corner.

The underlying protocol of the verification rules contains an extremely hidden series of reverse backtracking statements.

If someone enters Lynn's real password, this protocol will not directly decrypt the pass, but will instead follow the password's permission tree to retrieve the terminal's internal local call logs.

The other party had no intention of letting her leave.

This so-called road permit was, from the very beginning, a fishing rod for gathering evidence.

As long as Lynn's private key is sent out from this terminal, the Watchmaker can legally record a fact at the system's bottom layer: Natasha Romanoff, while under quarantine and investigation, misused the Director's Office's highest-level password, attempted to escape, and privately mobilized field forces.

At that time, no matter how much control Lynn has over the Management Committee, this system record submitted by the fugitive himself will become the most solid stone to smash into the Director's Office.

Natasha looked away and tapped the Virtual Keyboard lightly with her fingertips.

She typed out a short string of code.

"Lynn never gives anyone a second code."

The cursor on the screen jumped wildly, and the reply from the other end came extremely quickly.

Don't waste your time.

"Of the three Covert Operatives uncovered after the Zero Storage Room -Forty-Second Execution, you have at least one in your possession."

"Without a code, this pass will expire in three minutes."

"Commander Monk's military police have obtained a search warrant. In two hours, the Internal Affairs Inspection Office will take over this room. At that point, you won't even have any bargaining chips left."

The intent to coerce is no longer concealed.

The exhaust fan outside the door emitted a dull scraping sound from the ventilation vent.

Natasha's eyes were calm, without a trace of the embarrassment of being exposed. Instead, they carried the indifference of someone reviewing death row files in the Red Room.

The Watchmaker was getting anxious.

Hela sealed the files at the Stability Maintenance Office, Gwen Stacy confiscated the records at the Liaison Office. This ghost hidden behind the fiber optic cable urgently needs a closed loop of evidence to completely smear the filth.

The other party didn't want the truth; they just wanted a system log entry with the words "Lynn authorized" in it.

Even if the log itself contains an error message.

Natasha raised her right hand, her slender fingers moving rapidly across the screen.

She didn't access the keys in her mind that could truly activate the Covert Operatives.

My fingertip landed, typing a string of seemingly random characters: [HEX-42-RED-NULL-009].

This is an old piece of code that has been obsolete for six years.

The Red Room was used to mark the inventory numbers of Remnant by fallen agents when it was decommissioned and incorporated into the S.H.I.E.L.D.. logistics archives.

The characters are filled with sixteen spaces.

Without hesitation, Natasha pressed the confirmation button with her right thumb.

The Motherboard inside the terminal emitted a very faint crackling sound.

The screen suddenly flickered, and a large, glaring red warning pop-up window covered the original interface.

[Key format conflict!]

[Permission tree verification failed: No corresponding authorization trunk found]

[System forcibly terminated the current session, error code: ERR-701]

A series of error messages scrolled across the screen like a waterfall.

In the event of such a forced error, a typical terminal would usually cut off the data link and lock the Chip.

But the terminal did not lose power.

Deep within the underlying error log of ERR-701, the fake code was not directly discarded, but was forcibly stuffed into a system buffer stack by a pre-set protocol.

Immediately afterwards, a line of small gray text flashed across the bottom of the screen for only half a second.

[Due to formatting issues, the system has automatically applied a redundancy compatibility Patch.]

[Patch Serial Number: PTCH-992-SEC]

[Current session log has been persisted and written to target certificate: SEC-L-03]

The handwriting flashed by in an instant, and then the terminal went completely black.

A faint, burnt plastic smell emanated from the Motherboard's heat dissipation vents.

Natasha withdrew her hand, pulled the micro-terminal out of the recess, and inserted it into the deepest moisture-proof layer of the floor tiles through the gap along the edge of the bed board.

She closed the thin metal plate used for camouflage and gently stomped the mud and ash with her toes.

The footsteps stopped again outside the door.

The guard pushed open the small viewing window above the iron gate and glanced inside; the beam of his flashlight shone on Natasha.

Natasha remained in a semi-reclining position, her hands folded in front of her chest, her expression blank, like a wax figure abandoned in an air-raid shelter.

"Behave yourself and don't make a sound." The guard coldly tossed out the words and slammed the iron bars shut.

Darkness returned to the view outside the window.

Natasha opened her eyes in the shadows, her pupils shrinking to very small diameters.

The fake code failed the verification, the travel permit was ruined, and the Watchmaker couldn't get Lynn's real code either.

But the Patch they requested has already been installed.

That string of error data, through the input of fake codes, completed an illegal yet legitimate binding.

The automatically generated Patch was neither registered under Natasha's employee number nor under the Director's Office name.

It was bound to the root certificate that Gwen Stacy had been guarding so closely at the Liaison Office —SEC-L-03.

The Watchmaker knew from the beginning that she wouldn't reveal the real code.

All the other party wanted was to use her terminal's physical IP address to broadcast a handshake signal with the L-03 certificate to the entire network.

Regardless of what is input, once the data interaction is completed, irrefutable evidence will be left on the monitoring dashboard in the central control center:

The L-03 special certificate issued by the Liaison Office once served as a liaison springboard for former agent Natasha Romanoff, who was in the T-03 Defense Zone's Containment Room late at night, during standard time.

Even if Gwen Stacy burned the paper copy to ashes, she couldn't erase this electronic Patch that had taken root and sprouted at the system's core.

The wind howled through the ventilation ducts, causing a sharp hissing sound to emanate from the cracks in the iron window.

Natasha rolled over, facing the cold concrete wall.

She raised her left hand, her fingertips slowly tracing a series of numbers on her palm.

L-03.

The gears in the clock are already engaged; how long can the wrench in Lynn's hand hold it in place?