Micron-Scale Reprinting Beneath the Torn Barcode, Gwen Stacy Seals Off the Confidential Office
In the Liaison Office room of the Management Committee's Liaison Office, the air was filled with the sour smell of anti-mildew powder and old pulp.
The high-pressure sodium lamp overhead hummed, casting a long, slanted shadow of the metal cabinet.
The supervisory order, broadcast across the entire network, had just finished airing, and the static from the loudspeaker hadn't completely dissipated.
Gwen Stacy stood in front of safe number one, her gloves pressed tightly against the cold alloy handles.
Behind him stood the Liaison Office officer and four field guards wearing inspector armbands.
Two senior clerks from the confidential office huddled behind their desks, pens clutched in their hands, neither daring to look up.
"Director Gwen Stacy, according to regulations, a filing form must be filled out before sealing internal files."
The adjutant handed over a blue folder containing carbon paper.
"The Confidential One document cabinet stores offline records that are over three years old. Accessing them requires endorsement from both the administrative department and the Inspection Office, and the cabinet is sealed directly. This procedure makes it easy for them to find fault with it."
"The supervisory order was personally signed by Director Lynn, and it was reported across the entire frequency band."
Gwen Stacy didn't take the folder; her fingers were still on the case of the keypad.
"Wartime special laws take precedence over regular secrecy rules, adjutant. Do I need to recite the regulations to you?"
The adjutant's expression froze, and he silently tucked the folder back under his arm.
The old clerk sitting in the corner cleared his throat, picked up his enamel mug, and stood up.
"Chief, the locker number one was just fumigated last month. The lock cylinder got stuck once, and the gears inside are tightly meshed. Forcing it might trigger the internal self-destruct fuse."
Gwen Stacy turned and glanced at him.
He was an elderly clerk with gray hair; his name tag read "Confidential Documents Supervisor: Zhou Jian".
Zhou Jian held the teacup with an extremely steady hand, and not even a ripple appeared on the surface of the tea.
"Supervisor Zhou remembers it very clearly."
Gwen Stacy reached out and touched the metal wheel of the mechanical cipher.
She didn't immediately apply pressure with her fingertips, but instead gently placed them on the side edge of the dial.
A thin, almost invisible, transparent Silk stretched from her sleeve and silently disappeared into the seam between the combination lock and the cabinet door.
A faint tremor traveled back up the Silk to the nerves in the finger joints.
The stress state of the internal mechanical structure rapidly formed in my mind.
A normal 36-tooth double-linkage damping lock should produce a solid blunt impact as the pins fall into the slot when rotated three notches clockwise.
But at this moment, the tactile feedback from my fingertips has a hollow, slight rebound.
There's an extra transmission gear inside, only two millimeters thick.
"The self-destruct fuse requires 120 volts of direct current to activate."
Gwen Stacy spoke in a low voice as she turned the dial.
"But the grounding wire of this cabinet was cut a year ago, and the outer casing is carrying a static charge."
Zhou Jian's facial muscles twitched slightly, and his fingers tightened around the teacup.
"That's due to aging wiring..."
Click.
A very faint, crisp sound came from inside the lock.
The cabinet door remained untouched.
Zhou Jian secretly breathed a sigh of relief and took two steps forward.
"Director, look, the locking tongue is stuck. Should we wait for the technical team to bring hydraulic shears...?"
Gwen Stacy did not stop.
She yanked her index finger three inches directly below the lock, and the Silk suddenly tightened and contracted.
A vibration, as if a mechanism had disengaged, came from inside the metal casing.
The heavy-duty alloy cabinet door, which is five centimeters thick, did not spring open outwards. Instead, the steel plate lining on the side dented in half an inch, revealing a hidden groove under the fireproof cotton.
"Internal interlayer."
The adjutant's eyes flickered slightly, and he blurted out.
The confidential room was deathly silent, with only the sound of the ceiling exhaust fan blades scraping against the casing.
The enamel mug in Zhou Jian's hand wobbled, spilling lukewarm strong tea onto the cement floor, creating a small water stain.
Gwen Stacy reached out and pulled open the hidden slot.
The hidden compartment didn't contain neatly bound hardcover file folders; instead, it was haphazardly stuffed with two stacks of discarded receipts wrapped in kraft paper.
The top kraft paper cover had been torn, revealing a stack of barcode stickers underneath.
Gwen Stacy pulled out a receipt and laid it flat on top of the metal cabinet.
This is a standard-sized "War Preparedness Material Loss Cancellation Form," with the old official seal of the Management Committee's Liaison Office printed at the top.
The material name section of the form had been repeatedly stuck and torn with strong adhesive tape, and the paper was frayed and damaged, but the words "high-frequency pulse emission card core" could still be vaguely made out.
In the lower right corner, where the barcode was originally, a very thin new label has been affixed.
Gwen Stacy used her fingernail to lift the edge of the new label and gently peeled it off.
On the old paper that was covered at the bottom, there was a micron-sized laser reprint indentation that had not been completely scraped off.
The machine-printed numbers under the barcode have been altered.
The original serial number was forcibly altered by one digit using laser dot matrix, changing it from "03" to "08".
"Bring over the half-page of the booklet that Xiao Li handed over."
Gwen Stacy gave the order without turning her head.
The guard behind her quickly took a transparent folder from the sealed box and handed it to Gwen Stacy.
That was the original handover stub that Xiao Li had handed over to save his life.
Gwen Stacy placed the scrap report and the stub side by side.
The two sheets of paper were stacked together under a cool light.
The torn paper fibers interlocked perfectly, even the blue-black ink compass mark along the seam of the form was perfectly sealed.
This is a yin-yang pair of documents forcibly torn apart from the same set of ledgers.
What Xiao Li was holding was an inventory release stub, while hidden in the secret compartment of the Confidential One cabinet was a write-off slip that had been forged to indicate "natural wear and tear."
The twelve sets of L-03 exclusive blank card cores, after completing the scrapping procedures on paper, were never sent to the incinerator.
They were given fake barcodes and reintroduced into the allocation process.
Zhou Jian slowly backed away, his back hitting the metal handle of the desk.
"I didn't sign off on these accounts... Last month, during the major inventory check in the confidential office, it was the administrative staff who personally escorted and sealed the boxes..."
"You received the seal for the box, Supervisor Zhou."
Gwen Stacy turned around and pushed the receipt, which showed signs of being reprinted, onto the edge of the table.
"Your employee number is on the requisition record. The brass slide rails in the hidden compartment inside the cabinet door are coated with special gun oil. You are the only one in the entire Liaison Office building responsible for requisitioning this batch of maintenance supplies."
Zhou Jian's face was ashen, his lips trembled, and he couldn't utter a single word.
The younger clerk was so frightened that he stood up abruptly from his chair, put his hands behind his back, and pressed himself tightly against the wall.
"Director, I've only been here for three months, I really don't know anything!"
Gwen Stacy ignored the young man's shouts.
She looked at her adjutant, her voice devoid of warmth.
"Zhou Jian is stripped of all duties and communication privileges. All personnel present in the confidential office are suspended from their duties and escorted to the solitary confinement area for independent custody."
"This room is completely physically sealed off, both emergency keys have been confiscated, and the Director's Office has been sealed with a Level One seal."
The adjutant straightened his back and gave a military salute.
"Yes!"
Two fully armed guards immediately stepped forward and grabbed Zhou Jian's arms on either side.
Zhou Jian did not struggle; he seemed to have his skeleton removed. His feet left two gray trails on the cement floor as the guards dragged him out of the confidential room.
The remaining young clerk also walked out tremblingly under the guards' escort.
The heavy iron door closed behind them, leaving only Gwen Stacy and his adjutant in the confidential room.
Gwen Stacy put on powder-free latex gloves and took out the remaining documents one by one from the hidden compartment.
There were a total of seventeen discarded mail and receipt records.
Beneath the barcode on each item are micron-sized burn marks, altered by a laser reprinting machine.
The methods were extremely consistent; even the burnt smell produced during reprinting was exactly the same as the smell from the consumables cabinet on the fifth basement floor.
The adjutant stood beside him, holding a miniature barcode scanner, and optically scanned the last page of the stack of documents.
The cursor on the screen spun rapidly, and then an orange-yellow logistics path trace map popped up.
"Found it."
The adjutant stared at the data on the screen, his voice somewhat hoarse.
Gwen Stacy leaned closer for a look.
The screen displayed the whereabouts of these special card cores, whose barcodes had been swapped and which should have been completely scrapped and destroyed, during their last physical transfer within the system two months ago.
The receiving unit's code consists of only four simple letters:
[REP-W-04]
Gwen Stacy's eyes turned cold.
That was an underground gun repair shop under the jurisdiction of the "Black Crow Guard," an armed force directly under the Stability Maintenance Office.