Disbelief washed over Director Kaelen as he gulped nervously. "Your Excellency, you cannot make such baseless accusations."
"Baseless?" Serena lifted her gaze to meet his. "Do I look like I'm joking?"
The director immediately turned to his technician.
The man was sweating profusely, his fingers dancing across the keyboard before his face turned completely ashen. "I-it definitely doesn't match the neural prompt we just entered..."
Kaelen's breath hitched. "What did you just say?"
The technician trembled in fear. "But it was buried so deep. If The Panacea hadn't isolated it, our systems never would have detected it."
Serena arched an eyebrow. "It wasn't undetectable. You're all just incompetent."
The technician fell silent. Fine, in the presence of someone like her, he had to admit his skills were painfully inadequate.
The director stared at his staff.
The technician's grim expression confirmed they were entirely out of their depth.
With no other options, Kaelen slowly turned back to Serena.
Serena threw her hands up in mock exasperation. "Specimen Seven isn't experiencing standard biological rejection. Someone has hacked into its command interface. Yet, with the clearance level you've provided, I can't even access the complete command logs."
"Without that clearance, how am I supposed to figure out what they did? How am I supposed to trace who did it? And most importantly, how do you expect me to fix it?" Director Kaelen's expression grew darker by the second. "But Core-Data Clearance involves highly classified organizational secrets. You can't put me in this position." "You're the one putting me in a position," Serena countered smoothly.
*Beep! Beep! Beep!*
The alarms shrieked with renewed urgency.
"Director!" the technician yelled, his face ghastly pale. "Command overlaps are forming in Specimen Seven's neural control sector! It's actively trying to break through the suppression protocols! If this continues, it won't hold for another two minutes!"
Kaelen's fists clenched tight.
Then, a second technician chimed in, "It's getting worse! Muscle reflexes are spiking! The restraint system is already at forty-seven percent capacity!"
Inside The Observation Theater, the muscles on Specimen Seven's arms bulged visibly.
Dark, bulging veins pulsed beneath its grayish skin like twisted vines, throbbing in time with its increasingly heavy, ragged breaths.
"Huff... Huff..."
The terrifying, beast-like wheezing echoed clearly through the thick, blast-proof glass.
A cold sweat soaked through the back of Director Kaelen's shirt.
Serena shot him a tranquil look. "Still think I'm asking for too much?"
be
He squeezed his hands so tightly his knuckles turned white. "If I grant Core-Data Clearance, everything regarding Specimen Seven will. exposed to you. Your Excellency, youshould know better than anyone that outsiders are strictly forbidden from viewing the living assets' raw data."
Serena laughed softly. "I'm not negotiating with you. The reality is, someone is forcibly waking
het
Specimen Seven. It hasn't fully regained consciousness yet, but once it does, I can't guarantee what will happen."
"Without clearance, my hands are tied."
Meanwhile, the technicians
continued to shout updates in a
panic, confirming that the asse
biometric changes had fully O surpassed their control capabilities.
Veins bulged on Kaelen's forehead.
He felt as though he were being roasted over an open fire.
Deny the clearance, and Specimen Seven breaks loose.
Grant the clearance, and the data breach would cost him his life when the higher- ups found out.
Instinctively, he glanced up at the security cameras, praying for a direct order from the top.
But the earpiece remained dead silent.
Catching his reaction, Serena narrowed her eyes slightly.
Interesting. Just as she suspected, this director was nothing more than a front-
facing puppet.
The real decision-makers were watching from behind the cameras.
Yet, they had remained completely silent.
Were they setting Kaelen up to take the fall, or were they simply testing to see how
far she could go?