The Double Bottom Beneath the Lead Plate, Stolen Card Cores Found in the Cold
The tip of the broken sword is extremely thin and tough.
Lynn lowered his wrist, the blade sliding in flat against the inside of the lock's shank.
There was no impact sound.
The twelve sets of high-hardness alloy blades were displaced one by one under the hard pressure of the Obsidian blade edge, and a series of very slight snapping sounds came from inside.
Clatter
The heavy lock bar sprang outwards half an inch, hanging precariously on the thick chain.
Lynn held the lock up with one hand, preventing it from slamming into the metal door.
Gwen Stacy reached out and grabbed the end of the chain, slowly pulling back the steel cable that had been wrapped around her four times.
The chain links, coated with engine oil, slid silently onto the snow mat.
Lynn sheathed his sword and placed both hands on the cement seal of the lead-steel door.
The frost accumulated inside the door hinges was crushed, producing a fine creaking sound.
The door slid open to both sides, creating a gap just wide enough for one person to pass sideways.
The frigid air, at minus thirty degrees Celsius, seeped out from the cracks in the door, condensing into a thin, flowing white mist at their feet.
Lynn slipped sideways into the doorway.
Gwen Stacy followed closely behind, then closed the lead door slightly, inserting only half a rubber wedge into the lock.
The interior of the Cold Storage is extremely spacious.
More than ten rows of two-story-high angle iron refrigerated shelves were neatly arranged in the dim light.
The shelves were filled with frozen pig containers bearing blue and white quarantine labels.
The box had a dull, cold sheen, and its exterior was covered with a thick layer of granular frost, several inches thick.
In addition to the strong smell of frozen meat, the air was also filled with the sour smell of old Freon evaporation pipes.
The concrete ground beneath my feet froze into smooth, hard ice.
Lynn crouched down, the anti-slip teeth of his tactical boots gliding across the ice.
The flashlight was fitted with a tactical red filter and set to its lowest beam setting.
The ground was covered with a light layer of white frost, and two clear sets of anti-slip rubber shoe footprints stretched straight into the depths of the warehouse.
The stride was heavy, and the heels sank deeper than usual.
"Left from moving heavy objects."
Gwen Stacy followed the footprints forward, her voice extremely low.
"Two people, carrying a heavy box, walked very quickly."
"His pace was around 120 steps per minute. He didn't stop after entering and went straight to the back of the shelves."
Lynn carried the lead box and hurried along the edge of the first row of shelves, following the footprints.
As Lynn passed each refrigerated box, he would tap his knuckles rapidly on the side panel of the box.
A dull thumping sound drifted softly through the utterly silent Cold Storage.
The boxes on the first two rows of shelves sounded solid; they were frozen, rock-hard compressed meat chunks.
As the two walked around the second load-bearing pillar and stopped at the bottom of the third set of refrigerated shelves, their footprints on the ground came to an abrupt end in front of a horizontally placed storage space.
The bottom shelf of this row of refrigerated racks contains four dark green military-grade desiccant boxes.
The box lid was covered with an old food preservation verification seal from the Logistics Office of the Department of Technology. The edges of the seal were yellowed, but a brand-new lead stamp was pressed into the hole in the center.
Gwen Stacy knelt on the ground, her tactical gloved hand pressed against the rightmost lid of the box.
The box has been moved.
Gwen Stacy touched the gaps in the hinges.
"The anti-mold wax on the seal was resealed with a heat gun, and there's a ring of transparent adhesive around the edge."
Lynn didn't touch the dark green box.
His gaze shifted two inches downwards, landing on the heavy-duty steel rail base at the bottom of the shelf.
The base is welded from a single piece of No. 16 channel steel and was originally intended to bear the tens of tons of load pressing down from the refrigerated cabinet above.
However, between the channel steel and the cement ground, there were two half-meter square lead plates, each three centimeters thick, used for radiation protection.
The edges of the lead plate are very smooth, and the oxide layer on the surface has a dull iron-gray color.
Lynn stretched out two fingers and ran them over the gap where the lead plate met the channel steel.
A trace of fine, grayish-black powder fell from her fingertip.
It's not old rust.
Those were cold metal shavings that flew out after a handheld angle grinder cut a lead block at high speed.
"They didn't put the things in the box."
Lynn held the red flashlight in his mouth and pressed his hands against the outer edge of the lead plate.
"The box is just a smokescreen."
"Putting the special card core into a sealed, insulated box won't pass the routine gravity screening at the entrance."
"But by incorporating the lead plate into the base, the weight of the entire refrigeration rack can completely absorb the weight of the extra card core."
Lynn's arm muscles tensed as he slid the Obsidian sword diagonally into the drainage channel beneath the lead plate.
With a flick of his wrist, the broken sword transformed into a crowbar.
The heavy lead plate was pried open, creating a gap about two fingers wide.
There was no dull, solid thud.
A very faint hollow echo came from beneath the lead plate.
Gwen Stacy immediately reached out and grabbed the raised edge, and the two of them worked together to move the solid lead cap, which weighed over 80 pounds, away.
Beneath the heavy lead plate, a hidden cement compartment with mechanically cut grooves was revealed.
The hidden compartment was about thirty centimeters deep, and its four walls were completely covered with fireproof asbestos cloth.
In the center of the asbestos cloth, two flat, black-painted military-style aluminum carrying boxes were neatly stacked.
The self-locking buckles on both sides of the aluminum box remain engaged, and the handle is covered with an anti-static rubber sleeve to prevent electrostatic discharge.
Lynn unlocked the latch on the left side of the aluminum box.
The moment the lid was opened, a dry, protective nitrogen odor wafted out.
Inside the dark gray shock-absorbing foam, six rectangular slots are cut out at equal intervals.
The slot contained translucent polymer crystal cards.
Each card core is covered with a precise multi-layered nano-lithographic grid, with a special anti-counterfeiting logo of the defense zone Liaison Office etched in the center.
Under the faint red light, the SIM card chip refracted a deep, dark blue glow.
Gwen Stacy's gaze settled on the serial number on the bottom of the card.
"Numbers SEC-L-03-01 to 04."
Gwen Stacy's voice was slightly deep.
"The original, discarded documents that were switched in Confidential One."
Lynn opened the aluminum box on the right.
There are also six neatly arranged card slots.
Inside, there are four identical card cores laid horizontally, numbered sequentially up to 08.
There are eight sets in total.
The batch of goods that Old Barry rushed to forge barcodes with an offline engraving machine lay intact in a dark compartment at minus thirty degrees Celsius.
This is enough to provide irrefutable evidence of Monk's connection to the underground smuggling network.
Once these two aluminum boxes are brought back to the ground, no member of the Joint Conference will be able to tear up the framing documents for the defense zone.
Gwen Stacy reached out to lift the handle of the aluminum box.
Lynn reached out and stopped her.
Lynn's gaze did not fall on the eight faintly glowing card cores.
His gaze fell on the two empty slots at the very bottom of the aluminum box on the right.
Not only are two slots in the aluminum box on the right side empty.
On the innermost side of the left aluminum box, there are also two empty spaces of exactly the same size.
Of the twelve stolen special card cores, only eight ordinary control cards are here.
The four most important original master card cores have disappeared without a trace.
The empty sponge slots were clean, with no wear and tear debris left from plugging and unplugging.
But at the bottom of the last empty slot, there was a long, white label.
It's not ordinary label paper.
Those are thermal color-changing stickers used by the Ministry of Department of Technology.
There is no text above the sticker, only a heat-sensitive strip consisting of seven black and red squares.
The sensor bar, which should have been pure black, now had its four frontmost squares faded to a ghastly white.
The fifth square is fading from dark red to light white.
The fading speed is very uniform; every ten seconds, the red at the edge fades by one millimeter.
That was some kind of simple mechanical thermal delay self-destruct device.
Beneath the sticker was a copper-nickel alloy wire thinner than a human hair, the other end of which was deeply embedded in the asbestos interlayer at the bottom of the hidden compartment.
Gwen Stacy held her breath, her fingers hovering in mid-air.
"The parent stock has been taken away."
Gwen Stacy's gaze followed the alloy wire, her eyes narrowing slightly.
"They left control cards as bait; they never intended for anyone to get the boxes out of the Cold Storage alive."
Lynn stared at the thermal paper that was slowly fading.
"Three minutes left."
Lynn's voice remained flat.
"When the thermal paper turns completely white, the heat-fused fuse in the interlayer will burn through the underground biochemical waste gas pipeline."
"It won't be an explosion; it will be the strong acid decontamination solution stored on the sixth underground level overflowing."
"The entire Cold Storage would be melted into a pool of inorganic brine within ten seconds."
Gwen Stacy looked at the four empty card slots.
The person who took the mother sample won't go far.
"The cold chain warehouse only has one main cargo gate, and the troop transport vehicle was only parked outside for nine minutes."
Lynn closed the aluminum box lid again, the click of the latch locking shut was particularly clear in the frigid air.
He didn't leave by car.
Lynn picked up the two aluminum boxes, while simultaneously biting the broken sword between his teeth.
"Monk needs a scavenger on site who can handle dirty work immediately."
"That troop carrier wasn't just driven out to be a target, but also to give the people behind it time for the countdown."
Before he could finish speaking...
A very faint metallic scraping sound suddenly came from outside the crack of the heavy lead-steel door of the Cold Storage.
It was like rubber soles shattering the thin ice outside the threshold.
Immediately following this was the distinctive venting sound of the outer air gate valve releasing air.
laugh.
A faint white beam of flashlight pierced through the half-open door and cut diagonally into the dimly lit corridor of the cold storage area.