Replaying the Troop Carrier's Blind Spots, One More in the Cold-Chain Warehouse
The freight passageway on the seventh basement level was filled with a strong smell of engine oil and ammonia.
The heavy-duty refrigeration compressor rumbled low behind the concrete partition wall, causing the white frost that had condensed at the pipe joints to fall down in a flurry.
Lynn walked ahead, carrying the black lead box.
Gwen Stacy lagged half a step behind, her gaze sweeping over the tightly closed Cold Storage iron doors on both sides of the freight aisle.
The white paint that was originally sprayed on the top of the doors has long since yellowed and peeled off, and most of the warehouse entrances have hard plastic warning signs that read "Out of Service and Sealed".
Two dark, heavy tire tracks stretched all the way to the dispatch post at the end of the main road.
The guard booth was welded from thick steel plates, and the observation windows on the side were sealed off with layers of wire mesh.
The lights were off inside.
The offline monitoring terminal on the control panel glowed with a dim green light, and the picture tube emitted a slight buzzing sound.
Lynn pushed open the slightly ajar metal door.
The guard chair was empty, except for a half-eaten can of frozen luncheon meat, covered with a layer of hardened lard.
Gwen Stacy fastened the door latch behind her back and took a flat, black data cable from her waist.
"The offline recorders here use old-fashioned coaxial cables."
Gwen Stacy pushed the plug into the redundant port on the side of the terminal.
"Without access to the zone's main server, if Monk's people want to tamper with the data, someone must be sent to the site to manually overwrite it."
The green line on the screen jerked violently a few times, and then lines of flashing batch command lines appeared.
Lynn leaned over the screen, his fingers typing out two backtracking commands on the greasy mechanical keyboard.
"Retrieve the trajectory of vehicle Xian-094 after it entered the seventh floor."
"Compare the Data Stream from the axle load sensor."
A rudimentary dot matrix image quickly appeared on the screen.
The route of the troop carrier No. 094 was marked as a discontinuous green line.
The vehicle came down the ramp from the repair shop and entered Main Road No. 7 at 11:14 PM.
The ship exited the seventh freight gate at 11:38 PM.
The straight road is 1.2 kilometers long, and even if a heavy troop carrier is in low gear and moving slowly, it will not take more than five minutes.
Gwen Stacy's fingertip swept across three blind spots on the screen.
"Turntable No. 2, Exhaust Gas Outlet No. 4, and Biochemical Cold Chain Warehouse No. 7."
"These three points lack fixed sensors and are considered blind spots in the project."
Lynn retrieved the original log of the road surface gravity sensor.
Groups of four-digit numbers scrolled across the green screen.
At 11:19 PM, the sensor panel at emission port number four showed the vehicle's weight as 16.8 tons.
"When it reappeared at the sensor panel of gate number seven at 11:28 PM, the vehicle's weight had dropped to 15.3 tons."
Gwen Stacy glanced at Lynn.
"A full ton and a half less."
"He stopped for nine minutes in a blind spot of the seventh cold chain warehouse."
Nine minutes is enough time for several well-trained soldiers to empty dozens of boxes of special card cores from the rear compartment.
Lynn straightened up, placing his hand on the cold handle of the lead box.
"Monk had the troop carriers drive out of the gate just to give the dispatch center the illusion that they were empty."
"That vehicle is just a moving decoy; the real cargo is still on this floor."
Gwen Stacy unplugged the data cable and put it into the inner pocket of her tactical vest.
"The seventh biochemical Cold Storage was decommissioned three years ago."
"At that time, a culture medium leak occurred in the Third Experimental Group of the Department of Technology, and the entire area was permanently sealed off by the Management Committee."
Even the district patrol teams usually avoid going near there.
"The less people dare to go to a place, the more suitable it is to hide things that cannot be brought to light."
Lynn walked out of the guard booth and followed the deep tire tracks on the ground toward the west corner of the main road.
The temperature in the air dropped sharply.
The white breath I exhaled dispersed before my eyes, and a fine layer of ice crystals quickly formed on my eyelashes.
The walls on both sides of the corridor were covered with a thick layer of grayish-white frost, which made a crisp crunching sound when stepped on the cement floor.
At the end of the passage stood two heavy-duty biohazard isolation doors, each over five meters high.
The door panel is made of double-layered leaded steel plate, with a striking black clover biohazard warning sign sprayed in the center.
The two iron doors were tightly sealed, and the paper seals that were originally pasted at the door seams had long since weathered and broken, hanging in mid-air and swaying in the cold wind.
Gwen Stacy strode forward, her boots stopping beside the drain in front of the sealed door.
Her gaze lingered on the mechanical lock on the right side of the door frame.
The original combination lock and fingerprint scanner had long been smashed by the hammer, revealing a tangled mess of charred copper wire.
But beneath that pile of discarded wires lay a Special Alloy chain as thick as a child's arm.
The chains were tightly wrapped around the handles of the two doors, four times in total.
A dark gray military-grade heavy machinery padlock hangs in the very center.
The padlock was about the size of a lunchbox, with a matte anti-rust paint coating on the surface. It had no serial number or production batch number.
Gwen Stacy reached out and touched the lock ring.
"New."
She rubbed her index finger along the edge of the keyhole, and a sticky, dark brown liquid clung to her fingertip.
I brought it close to my nose and smelled it; a pungent odor of synthetic hydrocarbons filled my nasal cavity.
"Special polar-grade No. 2 low-pour-point antifreeze engine oil."
Gwen Stacy looked up at Lynn, her tone resolute.
"Regular engine oil will freeze and crack bullets at minus 30 degrees Celsius; only heavy armored vehicles used by frontline armored troops in the defense zone are equipped with this type of oil."
"The engine oil hasn't completely evaporated yet, and the lock was just put on half an hour ago."
Lynn placed the radiation shielding lead box in his hand on the ice at his feet.
He took off his right tactical glove, extended two fingers, and placed them on the heavy mechanical lock.
A very faint metallic rebound can be felt inside the lock cylinder.
The mechanical pins inside are neatly arranged, without any scratches indicating that they have been pried open or forcibly damaged.
Lynn looked down at the extremely fine concentric threads on the inner wall of the keyhole.
"This is a twelve-blade reverse-insertion lock specifically designed for special operations units in the defense zone."
"Throughout the entire Third Defense Zone, only the confidential staff officer directly under Monk's Command is equipped with this master control key."
Gwen Stacy exhaled a puff of white mist, her hands resting on the edge of the tactical holster at her waist.
"It seems those suicide soldiers on the troop transport vehicle really did manage to move the stuff inside."
"The Watchmaker needs more than just the watch movement; he also needs to use this bio- Cold Storage to mask the energy fluctuations emitted by the crystal."
Lynn drew the Obsidian sword from his sleeve.
The blade was as black as ink, without a trace of reflection.
"Since Monk has the key, we don't need to follow the normal procedures."
Lynn turned to the side, and the blade of the broken sword slowly probed into the gap between the lock bars.
Gwen Stacy took a half step back, scanning the empty, dimly lit freight corridor warily.
Deep in the corridor, only the dull, monotonous knocking sound of the refrigeration units echoed in the darkness.
Antifreeze oil seeping from inside the keyhole slowly slid down the spine of the sword, dripping onto the cold ground and leaving a small, dark, circular stain.