Chapter Summaries

Natasha used coded taps to alert Horn that Bloodfang was a private force and gave Commander Monk a lead against Gwen Stacy in exchange for a surveillance blind spot. During network maintenance, she developed a hidden blueprint pointing to a secret laboratory, swallowed it, and saw her supposedly locked reading terminal receive an external-access code.

• Natasha handed Horn her self-criticism and tapped a coded message revealing that Bloodfang was a private force.
• Natasha warned Horn that Gwen Stacy had brought the Bloodfang Fleet into Starport Three and suggested Monk investigate its off-the-books funding.
• Horn agreed to pass Natasha’s self-criticism to Monk and arranged for network maintenance to interrupt surveillance uploads.
• Natasha used developing solution to reveal a hidden blueprint marking a backup exhaust shaft at the Department of Technology’s Seventh Laboratory.
• Natasha swallowed the blueprint, and her locked reading terminal displayed a red external-access code.

Wanda refused Special Envoy Thomas’s inspection of the Zero Storage Room by warning that the reactor chamber was lethally radioactive and that cutting its power could release what was sealed below. After Thomas withdrew, Wanda examined a torn spot on her dragon-hide glove and looked toward the sixth basement level.

• Thomas arrived with two inspection officers and demanded access to the Zero Storage Room, accusing the Department of Technology of causing three reactor shutdowns while probing its seal.
• Claire tried to keep the inspectors out, but Thomas threatened to report her and demanded that Wanda open the airtight door.
• Wanda said the laboratory was in a dangerous pressure-release phase and offered entry only if the inspectors signed a casualty waiver.
• Wanda warned that cutting the reactor’s power could let Chaos Energy breach the barrier and release the things sealed in the Zero Storage Room.
• Thomas abandoned the inspection and left with his officers, while Claire secured the service passage.
• Wanda noticed that a piece of her insulating glove had been torn away and looked toward the sixth basement level.

Lynn resisted Hela’s attempt to summon him and began investigating the Zero Storage Room and Seventh Laboratory’s ventilation shaft. The Department of Technology found that the shaft’s last maintenance record had been signed by a nonexistent person who had been dead for over two years.

• Ke'er delivered Hela’s notice requiring Lynn to report to the Stability Maintenance Office, but Lynn rejected it and challenged the procedure.
• Lynn told Xiao Zhou to check the Stability Maintenance Office’s access to patrol records, have Gwen Stacy review Black Crow Guard record requests, and leave the Seventh Laboratory self-inspection report untouched.
• Lynn set aside Hela’s proposal to inspect the Zero Storage Room’s lead seals and ordered a routine safety inquiry into the Seventh Laboratory’s backup ventilation shaft.
• Ke'er relayed Hela’s offer to postpone Lynn’s report until the next morning if he sent the ventilation shaft maintenance records before midnight, and Lynn demanded a statement specifying their intended use.
• Xiao Zhou reported that the shaft’s last maintenance entry was from three months earlier and bore the signature of a nonexistent person who had been dead for over two years.

Lynn managed the dispute over inspecting the Zero Storage Room by postponing the inspection and directing the Seventh Laboratory to submit a self-inspection acknowledgment. After receiving an encrypted message, he indicated that Gwen Stacy was moving from checking accounts to investigating people.

• Thomas told Lynn that Minister Maximoff had blocked his inspection of the Zero Storage Room and tried to get him to sign a casualty disclaimer.
• Lynn instructed Thomas to report the obstruction truthfully and issued a vague directive postponing the inspection during the Department of Technology's magic-zeroing tests.
• Lynn gave Thomas a slip requiring the Seventh Laboratory to submit a self-inspection report and acknowledgment before further inspections could be coordinated.
• Lynn told Xiao Zhou to monitor the slip's delivery, relay a verbal deadline to Wanda's office, and record the response.
• Lynn set aside the Seventh Laboratory's acknowledgment for himself while sending other documents through normal channels, then received and deleted an encrypted message from G.
• Lynn told Xiao Zhou that Gwen Stacy had finished checking the Administration Section's accounts and was about to investigate people.

Monk lowered Satellite Seven’s orbit to watch Gwen Stacy’s flagship, hoping to catch evidence of its secret supply movements. Gwen countered with data-sharing rules and a records inquiry that could delay Monk, while she prepared to compare the satellite imagery with the K-7 ledger once Lynn returned.

• Monk reviewed Horn’s report about Bloodfang’s secret supply accounts and S-004’s visit to the Seventh Laboratory, then ordered Satellite Seven’s orbit lowered to observe berth C-9.
• Gwen Stacy recognized that Monk was watching her ship and requested Satellite Seven’s raw image frames under the interdepartmental data-sharing rules, copying the Stability Maintenance Office.
• Gwen Stacy sent Xiao Li to ask the Asset Registration Agency for the filing reference number of Satellite Seven’s orbital adjustment, expecting the inquiry to force Monk to complete his paperwork.
• Gwen Stacy arranged for her official note to reach the Seventh Laboratory and locked the K-7 ledger, leaving the image comparison and further investigation for Lynn’s return.

Thomas tried to register an Inspection Office dispatch at the Department of Technology mailroom, but Claire and Wanda refused it after Claire spotted obsolete Satellite No. 7 control code in the diplomatic note’s attachment. As Thomas left, Claire concealed the code, while Xiao Li’s record of Satellite No. 7 triggered a crisis at the Defense Zone Registration Office.

• Thomas and Gwen Stacy both presented documents at the mailroom, and Gwen cited rules requiring the diplomatic note to take priority.
• Claire examined the note’s attachment, found obsolete Satellite No. 7 orbital control code, and refused to archive the documents without the required verification.
• Thomas tried to force the registration, but Gwen Stacy challenged his authority and Wanda ordered him to take the document back.
• Thomas left with the rejected folder, and Claire concealed the code while Gwen Stacy suspected it was only half of Lynn’s bait.
• Xiao Li wrote Satellite No. 7 on a memo slip at the Defense Zone Registration Office, then withdrew it and disappeared when the clerk recognized the record.

Xiao Li exposed an unfiled orbit change by Satellite No. 7 during a routine asset inquiry, triggering alarm at the Asset Registration Agency. After Xiao Li left, Supervisor Xu hid the query and secretly warned the Black Crow Guard that Monk’s operation had been exposed.

• Xiao Li gave Clerk 1042 a note asking for the filing number for Satellite No. 7’s orbit change at Berth C-9.
• Clerk 1042 found a red deviation value of minus zero point three degrees with no approval or filing documents.
• Clerk 1042 went to fetch his supervisor, and Xiao Li left the service hall before the supervisor could question them.
• Supervisor Xu ordered the agency to seal its query logs and discovered that the command had gone through an encrypted link that bypassed the official-document network.
• Supervisor Xu used a high-security frequency to warn the Black Crow Guard that Gwen Stacy’s person had exposed Monk’s private orbit-lowering operation.

Ke'er intercepted the Asset Registration Agency messenger and replaced the original Satellite No. 7 report with a forged version to conceal S-004's involvement. Lynn responded by demanding the original navigation logs, but Ke'er's search of the messenger uncovered a hidden approval page bearing the codename Watchmaker.

• Ke'er stopped the messenger, seized the original Satellite No. 7 verification form, and replaced it with a forged report blaming sensor calibration.
• Lynn watched the interception through private sensors and learned from Xiao Zhou that Gwen Stacy had filed a formal note and Thomas had been turned away.
• Lynn ordered a twenty-four-hour demand for the defense zone's original navigation logs, with copies sent to Monk and the Asset Registration Agency.
• A Black Crow guard searching the messenger found a concealed pink approval page for Natasha Romanoff's containment room, signed by Watchmaker.
• Ke'er read the newly uncovered approval page and recognized that its contents had not been part of the dispatch he intercepted.

Natasha decoded Watchmaker’s offer and sent him altered underground pipe-network plans while secretly tracing his signal. She discovered that Watchmaker’s real target was the Zero Storage Room beneath the Department of Technology, where Wanda was stationed.

• Natasha decoded Watchmaker’s message offering the network plans in exchange for travel permits and a Shuttlecraft route out of the T-03 Defense Zone.
• Natasha sent Watchmaker detailed plans with a deliberately falsified pipeline junction and Lynn’s hidden signature to trigger a high-level search and traceback.
• Natasha’s terminal revealed a thermal map locating the Zero Storage Room beneath Ventilation Shaft Nine, and she realized Watchmaker’s group was targeting the room Wanda defended.
• Natasha hid the burned-out terminal and returned to bed as the patrol guards approached.

Lynn recognized Wanda’s blank self-inspection receipt and scorched quartz fragment as a test about the erased execution at Forbidden Zone Zero, then quietly approved and filed it as routine paperwork. After Xiao Zhou left, the fragment’s concealed Chaos Magic infiltrated Lynn’s Personal Terminal.

• Xiao Zhou delivered a blank Management Committee No. 7 self-inspection receipt bearing Wanda’s seal and a charred crystal fragment to Lynn.
• Lynn matched the fragment to the composite foundation destroyed during the Forty-Second Execution and realized Wanda was testing whether he knew about the erased past.
• Lynn approved the receipt with a routine slash and seal, then ordered Xiao Zhou to file it as ordinary wastage without involving the Inspection Office.
• Lynn told Xiao Zhou that Thomas would need an order signed by every Standing Committee Member to see the original receipt.
• After Xiao Zhou left, the fragment’s hidden Chaos Magic lit up, traveled through the desk’s data cables, and entered Lynn’s Personal Terminal.

Lynn countered Wanda’s magical probe by sending her a falsified execution record that implicated the Internal Affairs Inspection Office while preserving a private tell she recognized. Wanda traced the data back to Lynn, realized he had concealed the truth to protect someone, and prepared to escalate the conflict by sending Satellite No. 7’s orbital-control backup access to Gwen Stacy.

• Wanda’s Chaos Magic probe reached Lynn through the acknowledgment document, but his system barrier blocked it while he secretly altered the execution footage and sent it back through the connection.
• Wanda received the doctored memory fragments implicating the Internal Affairs Inspection Office and Hela’s Black Crow Guard, and began to lose control of the reactor’s surrounding magic.
• Wanda noticed the executioner’s three-tenths-of-a-second finger pause and defensive stance, recognizing them as habits of the agent who had protected her beneath Sokovia’s ruins.
• Wanda traced the returning data to Lynn’s office and realized he had altered the record to protect someone while keeping her away from the danger.
• Wanda ordered Claire to accept the Director’s Office acknowledgment and send Gwen Stacy a top-secret appendix containing Satellite No. 7’s orbital-control backup access.

Gwen Stacy investigated a forged SEC-L-03 certificate tied to the Department of Technology’s satellite appendix and uncovered evidence linking its issuance to the Director’s Office and Confidential Affairs Group One. The chapter ended with Xiao Li surrendering a torn register stub bearing Confidential Affairs Group One’s name, while the person who forged the certificate remained inside the building.

• Gwen Stacy questioned Xiao Li about a torn register page and an altered entry bearing his old REC-092 code, which had been used to issue a special passage certificate forty-seven days earlier.
• Xiao Li said he had kept the half-page after finding it among records being destroyed at Zero Storage Room, and he claimed someone with archive access had used his canceled code to frame him.
• Gwen Stacy withheld the Department of Technology appendix, citing a failed verification machine, and discovered that its SEC-L-03 root certificate had been issued under the Liaison Office’s authority while she was away.
• Gwen Stacy found a scraped entry in the Special Credential Stock Movement Register linking certificate L-03 to a broken-sword seal belonging to the Black Crow Guard Direct Secret Archives Office.
• Gwen Stacy confronted Xiao Li about his document-restoration skills and the altered register; he admitted concealing the original stub and handed it to her.
• Gwen Stacy read the stub’s receiving-unit annotation, which named Director’s Office · Confidential Affairs Group One.

Lynn found a forged third page in emergency authorization files bearing Hela’s seal and halted their routine sign-off. He arranged to seal the evidence and confront Hela, while suspecting that her classified operation had been compromised.

• Lynn began checking seventy-four emergency authorization file copies with Xiao Zhou and noticed an L-03 activation order attached as a third page to a two-page document.
• Lynn identified the page-number error and enlarged binding holes as evidence that someone had inserted the page after the original file was bound.
• Lynn told Xiao Zhou to delay Commander Ke’er’s receipt collection and arrange a three-party review and fresh count without issuing an investigation notice.
• Lynn ordered the forged page clipped to the file and the entire set sealed in front of receiving-office clerks so he could take it to Hela for inspection.
• Lynn compared the document paper with a fragment of a confession and wondered whether the page had been inserted before the files reached Hela or during the recent days under Black Crow Guard watch.

Lynn confronted Hela over an added page in a classified file and proved it had been inserted after the file was archived. They sealed the page without changing Starport’s military authority, while Hela linked the tampering technique to someone from Lynn’s past; afterward, Lynn received an encrypted alert from the Third Confinement Zone.

• Lynn brought the suspicious third page to Hela and asked to verify it against the original file.
• Lynn showed that the page’s oversized binding holes, clamp mark, and retied thread proved it had been added inside the classified archive.
• Hela ordered Ke'er to investigate who had accessed document cabinet three, and Ke'er reported that Special Envoy Thomas had entered the outer reading room under surveillance.
• Lynn proposed sealing the page jointly with the Director's Office, the Stability Maintenance Office, and the Internal Affairs Inspection Office, and he and Hela sealed the basket.
• Hela said the technique matched that of a records officer who had worked with Lynn seven years earlier, but Lynn left without identifying the person.
• Lynn retrieved his portable terminal and received an encrypted alert relayed from the Third Confinement Zone to an offline terminal labeled "Watchmaker."

Natasha Romanoff rejected the Watchmaker’s fake escape pass and used an obsolete code instead of Lynn’s real emergency code. The failed verification installed a patch bound to Gwen Stacy’s L-03 certificate, leaving electronic evidence that the Liaison Office had relayed an external connection to Natasha.

• The Watchmaker pressured Natasha for Lynn’s second emergency code and offered an escape pass that would have exposed her terminal logs.
• Natasha recognized the pass as a trap designed to create evidence against Lynn and the Director’s Office.
• Natasha entered the obsolete code HEX-42-RED-NULL-009, causing a verification failure and a forced compatibility patch.
• Natasha hid the terminal beneath the floor tiles before a guard inspected her cell.
• Natasha realized the patch had bound to Gwen Stacy’s SEC-L-03 root certificate and left proof of an external relay connection.

Ke'er obtained a system-image copy of Satellite No. 7’s log from Monk, but Lynn found a matching seventeen-second gap that concealed a covert command tied to the L-03 certificate. Lynn approved the copy while ordering three-party seals on related records, then learned that someone had already tampered with a sealed cabinet in the Department of Technology’s basement.

• Ke'er confronted Monk for Satellite No. 7’s original log and duty records, but Monk gave him a system-image copy and claimed the signature ledger was unavailable.
• Monk destroyed a hidden duty log after Ke'er left the dispatch center.
• Lynn spotted a seventeen-second gap in the copy that coincided with Natasha’s terminal error and the L-03 certificate evidence, indicating a covert command had altered the Liaison Office’s ledger.
• Lynn approved the copy and ordered three-party physical seals on L-03-related materials across three offices, while warning Ke'er that seizing the dispatch center could leave the defense zone vulnerable to the Bloodfang Fleet.
• Lynn’s monitoring probe alerted him that the lead seal on a Department of Technology basement cabinet had been removed and inspected without authorization before the joint sealing.

Lynn investigated a breach at the Seventh Laboratory’s consumables cabinet on basement level five and confronted Claire over evidence of a deliberate break-in. He found a damaged scrapping form bearing the agent code NR-074, the only code Natasha had used while attached to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Operations Division and Logistics Department.

• Lynn found cabinet number nine’s lead seal melted and recovered fire-retardant solvent and an acid-damaged materials form from beneath it.
• Claire arrived and claimed the seal had been damaged during routine maintenance, but Lynn cited a security power outage and the cabinet’s alarm failure to challenge her account.
• Lynn demanded the distribution box key and threatened to call the Black Crow Honor Guard, so Claire handed over her brass keys and disclosed that the cabinet had held twelve L-03 blank card cores awaiting approval for scrapping.
• Lynn opened the cabinet and examined the damaged form, finding the handwritten handling-agent code NR-074.
• Lynn recognized NR-074 as Natasha’s only agent code during her attachment to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Operations Division and Logistics Department.

Lynn found the fifth-basement card cores destroyed and bargained with Wanda for access to the Department of Technology’s troubleshooting records. Wanda signed the receipt and secretly gave him an old chip bearing his own warning, while a new message from Gwen revealed that Confidential Cabinet One had been sealed and redirected to a firearms repair shop.

• Lynn found the card cores burned away and collected a scorched ceramic retaining pin marked by a high-energy pulse.
• Wanda confronted Lynn over the destroyed evidence, and he pressured her to sign an emergency self-inspection receipt by warning that Thomas could force the reactor open.
• Lynn demanded copies of fifth-basement troubleshooting work orders, and Wanda agreed to provide them in exchange for keeping Thomas outside the security checkpoint.
• Wanda slipped Lynn an old microcontroller chip engraved with his own warning: “Backup channel cut off. Do not return.”
• Claire gave Lynn a file of discarded work orders, and Lynn left for the elevator.
• Gwen sent Lynn a confidential message saying Confidential Cabinet One had been sealed and its barcode reprinted for delivery to the firearms repair shop.

Gwen Stacy uncovered falsified disposal records and a hidden compartment in Confidential Cabinet No. 1, then traced the stolen card cores to a Black Crow Guard repair shop. She left the records room sealed and the staff in custody as the investigation pointed toward the Stability Maintenance Office’s armed force.

• Gwen Stacy used spider silk to bypass the cabinet’s hidden mechanism and exposed a compartment concealed behind its steel lining.
• Gwen Stacy matched a falsified write-off form to Xiao Li’s handover stub, revealing that twelve sets of L-03-exclusive blank card cores had been diverted instead of destroyed.
• Gwen Stacy identified Supervisor Zhou Jian’s role through the lead seals and maintenance-supply records, then ordered him and the other records-room staff detained.
• Gwen Stacy sealed the confidential records room and examined seventeen records bearing signs of barcode alterations.
• Gwen Stacy and the adjutant traced the altered card cores to destination code REP-W-04, the underground firearms repair shop beneath the Black Crow Guard.

Gwen Stacy exposed Xiao Li as a covert beacon operator after stopping him from destroying a wax-sealed microfilm. The decoded evidence implicated the Military Police Direct Unit and suggested that Monk’s space-based cannon array was meant to prevent evidence from leaving the defense zone.

• Gwen Stacy confronted Xiao Li with records linking him to seventeen code changes and demanded his remaining offline seals.
• Xiao Li tried to swallow a wax pellet, but Gwen restrained him and recovered it before internal security guards took him away.
• Gwen and the adjutant decoded the microfilm and discovered parameters that would let Reconnaissance Satellite No. 7 transmit the defense zone’s underground beacons during a blind window.
• Gwen identified the recipient code as the Military Police Direct Unit’s First Duty Group and ordered the evidence sent directly to Lynn through a red dedicated line.
• Gwen concluded that Monk’s space-based cannon array was intended to prevent people inside the defense zone from sending out real evidence.