Kaelen was officially in full-blown panic mode.
His heart simply couldn't handle this level of psychological torture.
The relentless spikes and drops were tearing his nerves to shreds.
He felt like he was hovering on the edge of a massive coronary.
Then, cutting through his hysterics, a cold, profoundly irritated voice echoed through the comms.
"Shut up."
Kaelen choked on his next breath, his face flushing a furious, humiliated red as he opened his mouth to argue.
Before he could speak, a lean, aristocratic hand reached past him and firmly slammed down on the mute button.
Long, elegant fingers pressed against the console.
The connection was instantly severed.
Kaelen froze. He turned his head and found himself staring straight into Nicholas's bottomless, dangerous eyes.
The man stood there, radiating an aura of untouchable, chilling dominance.
The harsh light of the monitors caught the sharp lines of his jaw and the unbuttoned collar of his black dress shirt, making him look devastatingly cold and wildly intimidating.
"M-Mr. Blackwood..." Kaelen croaked.
Nicholas stared down at him, his voice dangerously soft. "Do not interrupt her."
Kaelen's throat bobbed. "But Asset 07..."
"She is saving my life." Nicholas kept his hand planted firmly over the comms button, his lips curling into a cruel sneer. "It is not your place to question her methods. Do you understand?"
A fresh wave of cold sweat poured down Kaelen's face. He sna too terrified to utter another syllable.
his mouth shut,
Dismissing the director entirely, Nicholas turned his piercing gaze back to Serena on the other side of the glass.
His eyes darkened.
Dark as a starless midnight.
Serena was crouching beside the massive creature, her dark lashes completely still as she focused.
With one hand anchoring the microchip needle, her other hand moved in a blur, sinking fresh needles around the surgical site.
Her movements were as brutally precise and composed as ever. Not a hint of panic touched her features.
She remained completely, lazily detached.
But Nicholas could read the
battlefield perfectly. He knew Serena wasn't just suppressing a physical outburst or cutting a basic target loek. Content Belgfigs
She was exploiting the brutal clash between the ship's internal network and the rogue external back fighting to extract the digital breadcrumbs the assassin hadn't managed to scrub clean.
She needed time.
Which meant it was his job to carve out that time for her.
He was the only one who could silence the hysterical noise in the control room.
Inside the theater, Serena was indeed racing against the external hacker.
Her physical access window to the Observation Theater was locked at fifteen minutes.
She had to maximize every single second.
Asset 07's sudden violent convulsion was exactly the opening she needed.
The hacker had realized she was tracing them and was desperately trying to force
the Augment into a berserker state to break her hold.
They wanted to blow the room wide open and kill both her and Nicholas in the crossfire.
With Kaelen silenced, her focus was absolute.
Now was the perfect moment to drag whoever was hiding behind AWS-05 out into the light.
The seconds ticked by mercilessly.
Kaelen stared at the countdown timer for the theater access, his stomach tying itself into agonizing knots.
So much time had passed, and The Panacea still hadn't neutralized the threat.
Asset 07 was visibly fighting against its paralysis, growing more erratic by the second.
If this dragged on any longer...
If the creature snapped those chains...
It wouldn't just be the Sterling Sovereign who got slaughtered. The entire
Observation Theater would become a bloodbath.
If Asset 07 broke out of quarantine...
It would be an apocalyptic disaster for Project Zero-Transit!
"Director, should we sever the local exhibition network?"
A technician stared at the rapidly climbing red spikes, his face deathly pale, his
voice tight with panic.
"The creature's base-level overrides
are surging! The external hack is using the exhibition network to
brute forcents way in. If we don't
sever the connection now, it's going
to hit critical mass!"
Kaelen's temple throbbed violently at the suggestion.