The dark red resonance from Lynn's chest, defused with official procedure
A cold wind, carrying the acrid smell of gunpowder, howled past along the torn blast-proof floor.
Wanda's pale finger hovered in mid-air, the faint red light dancing at its tip perfectly matching the rhythm of the pocket close to Lynn's chest.
It was an extremely subtle pulse.
Every 1.5 seconds, a faint blood-red halo appeared under Lynn's inner lining fabric.
Hela lightly pressed her hand against the long, slender sword at her waist, while the rubble beneath her feet froze into grayish-white powder by the invisible, spreading Death Energy.
Monk lay prone beside the muddy ditch below the command vehicle, not even daring to wipe the bloodstains from his face, staring intently at the center of the slope.
Gwen Stacy's right arm sank almost imperceptibly, and the spring catch of the Silk- launching plug had reached the critical position.
Lynn remained calm, his left hand hanging at his side neither touching the gun nor attempting to conceal the unusual sight on his chest.
He slowly raised his hand and reached inside his coat, which was stained with engine oil.
The blood vessels around Wanda's eyes widened slightly, and the Chaos Magic at her fingertips suddenly solidified into sharp needle tips.
Hela raised an eyebrow slightly, and the three Black Crow Honor Guard beside her simultaneously lowered the angle of Gauss's Long Halberd thrust.
Lynn moved slowly, pulling a transparent military-grade radiation-proof package from a hidden pocket inside his body.
Two white-background, red-letter sealing strips were tightly affixed to the surface of the bag, and the seal was stamped with a blue ink seal from the Confidential Office of the Defense Zone across the seam.
In the center of the package lay the microcrystalline card that had just been removed from the pump room on the sixth basement level.
The dark red circuit on the card was still pulsating faintly, but it was completely blocked inside the bag by the wire mesh.
Lynn pinched the corner of the bag with two fingers and held it horizontally in the center of the three people's line of sight.
"Minister Maximoff."
Lynn's voice was completely still, and his enunciation was so clear it sounded like he was reading a morning meeting report.
"This is the ninth relay card core intercepted in an abandoned pumping station on the sixth basement level."
Wanda's gaze remained fixed on the seal, her hand still on it, her tone somber:
"What you hold in your pocket is my primordial erosion."
"It bears my mark."
"You secretly removed it from the underground."
"I am the deputy head of the Joint Investigation Team from the Management Committee."
Lynn met her reddened eyes and calmly interrupted her.
"In accordance with Article 17 the 'Regulations on Internal Control Supervision and Management of High-Risk Confidential Assets by the Management Committee '."
"The first person to discover any unregistered assets found at an accident site that contain high-energy radiation, neurotoxins, or substances attached to specific individuals has the right to take emergency physical sealing measures."
"The sealing procedure was fully compliant, and the entire process was recorded by the zone's offline black box."
Lynn turned the package over, revealing a tiny line of mechanical code on the back.
"As for why you have these etching marks, the minister should know better than I do."
"A bypass cable illegally connected to the underground pump room leads directly to the third cooling valve of the main reactor in the Department of Technology area."
"This chip isn't for storing energy; it's the frequency modulator for a reverse energy pumping device."
"Someone is using your magic as a drill, relentlessly wearing down the chassis of the main furnace."
Wanda's wrist paused slightly, and a tiny disturbance appeared in the Scarlet light in her palm.
Hela sneered from the side, the tip of her short sword picking up a piece of frozen, charred iron from the ground.
"Director Lynn is really adept at using that bureaucratic language."
"You can recite the articles fluently, but who can prove that you didn't secretly keep this as a backup plan?"
Hela took a step forward, her boots sinking into the cracks in the concrete. A deathly green Death Energy crept along the ground, creeping closer to Lynn's feet, within three inches of him.
"The Stability Maintenance Office is responsible for wartime obstacle clearing. This card is for me to take back to the internal control room for energy stripping."
Hela extended her hand, clad in black armor, and reached for the edge of the sealed bag.
"Director Hela, please be mindful of your authority."
Lynn pulled his wrist, which was holding the package, back slightly by half an inch to avoid the sharp edge of the armor plate, his expression serious.
"According to Article 4 of the Trilateral Joint Defense Emergency Avoidance Rules."
"When physical evidence involves the leakage of core technologies of the Department of Technology and overlaps with the handover of defense zones of the internal security forces of the Stability Maintenance Office, the direct superiors of both parties are interested parties and must avoid direct contact with the original documents."
"Handing this piece of evidence with the directional circuit to either party now would trigger impeachment proceedings for procedural violations at the Joint Conference."
"I am part of the logistics and administrative staff, and I have no affiliation with any faction. It is perfectly reasonable for me to temporarily keep the sealed evidence and submit it to the central government for archiving."
Hela's hand hung suspended in the cold wind, a chilling glint flashing deep in her eyes.
For a full three seconds, no one spoke.
Two Heavenly Skyfather-level combatants faced off on the open ramp of the gate, their oppressive air currents even pushing back all the dust within a ten-meter radius.
Lynn flicked his wrist, aligning the side of the package with the faint light in front of Wanda.
"Take a close look at the orientation stitches."
Lynn's voice was low, yet it carried a sharp, razor-sharp precision.
"Before the circuit was cut off, it was sending continuous pulses in one direction to the outside."
"When I pried open the card slot, the band hadn't completely gone out yet."
"The 30% of the energy extracted from the Department of Technology's reactor did not remain underground, nor was it loaded into the military police's troop transport vehicles, which were reduced to metal frames by the bombing."
At that moment, Gwen Stacy stepped forward tacitly, pulled a portable spectrum analyzer from her briefcase, and extended the copper antenna.
"The frequency band matches."
Gwen Stacy turned the screen toward Wanda, where a jagged, extremely high-frequency sine wave was flashing.
"The beam scattering angle is 67 degrees upwards."
"The physical coordinates are locked to the microwave relay antenna on the top floor of the Central Broadcast Tower."
"The troop transport vehicle was just a smokescreen; the real four sets of master card cores were transported to the top of the tower an hour ago."
The ferocity in Wanda's eyes suddenly shifted, her gaze piercing the dark gray steel tower that stood behind the clouds.
The vein on the back of her hand throbbed, and her chest heaved violently.
"You mean, someone stole my things right in front of me and used them to power the broadcasting tower?"
"They want to use your master card core to forcibly pry open the third outer layer of defense Force Field at Starport."
Lynn withdrew his arm, naturally stuffed the sealed bag back into the deepest explosion-proof layer of his coat, and zipped it up.
Staying on the ground and getting bogged down in official documents with me will only give those at the top of the tower time to retreat.
"Commander Monk was merely a last resort, a desperate measure to cut his losses."
The mastermind is still upstairs.
Upon hearing this, Monk, who was lying in the mud, felt his back teeth chatter and froze on the spot.
Hela withdrew her hand, slowly straightened her back, and a cold smile appeared on her lips.
"The Watchmaker's movements were even more efficient than I expected."
Hela turned her head and gave a cold look at the Black Crow Honor Guard Commander behind her.
"Seal off all elevator shafts and emergency slides around the broadcast tower."
"If a fly gets out, I'll use your bones to fill the sewage outlet."
The commander of the guards knelt on one knee, his alloy Long Halberd slamming heavily onto the ground with a crisp clang.
At the same moment, the hundreds of solid metal spheres that were floating around Wanda lost their levitation and crashed down into the ruins, sending up clouds of dust over the broken frozen ground.
Her feet slowly lifted off the ground, Scarlet magic gathered around her skirt armor like a tide, filling the air with a pungent smell of high-temperature Ozone.
"Whoever touches my things shall die."
Wanda's voice was so soft it was almost infuriating, and she transformed into a streak of dark red light that tore through the retina, shooting straight into the sky.
Lynn let out a soft breath, his shirt soaked with cold sweat.
However, before Hela's guards could launch a pincer movement to encircle and surround her...
A kilometer away, the top of the Central Broadcast Tower, which pierced through the low-hanging leaden clouds, suddenly lit up with a dazzling Scarlet warning halo.
The piercing offline self-destruct beeping tore through the air across the entire plain.
The louvered ventilation windows on the exterior of the broadcast tower popped open in an instant, spewing out thick, orange-yellow high-pressure steam.
The heavy explosion-proof armor plates at the base of the tower are falling irreversibly, completely sealing off all access routes.