The technician leaned heavily against his desk, staring wildly at the incoming data, his voice pitching into a hysterical scream. "S-she's using our outbound signal to hijack total control of Specimen Fourteen!"
By his final word, he was practically sobbing.
The color drained from the faces of everyone in the command center.
No one dared to breathe, let alone speak.
The Omega Purge Protocol was their ultimate insurance policy against their highest- tier assets.
Because it was the final failsafe, the command carried absolute clearance, capable of bypassing almost every internal defense mechanism!
And now... The Panacea was using their ultimate failsafe as a master key.
A key to waltz right in and crack all their deepest secrets wide open.
What did this mean?
It meant... they could no longer keep their operations aboard Project Zero-Transit a secret.
Standing before the massive screens, The Raven stared at the feeds, his expression darkening into a terrifying storm.
The aura radiating off him was suffocatingly lethal.
He braced his hands against the console, his knuckles white, gripping the metal so hard his fingers looked deformed.
Suddenly, he let out a laugh.
It was an abrupt, jagged sound. It was freezing cold.
It was a laugh that sent a violent shudder through every single person in the room.
How could he not see it now?
From the moment the asset's life-support systems glitched.
From the moment the rumors spread like wildfire across Project Zero-Transit.
From the moment the buyers, the hunters, and the ship's security barricaded every conceivable escape route.
From the moment he was forced to route the asset through The Logistics Spine... All these seemingly random accidents weren't coincidences at all.
They were breadcrumbs left by The Panacea.
She used Specimen Fourteen as bait, agonizingly cornering him step by step, until he had no choice but to hand-deliver their highest clearance protocol directly into her lap!
He was The Raven...
He had dominated the global experimental underworld for years, puppeteering countless so-called prodigies and elite scientists.
But today, he had been effortlessly outplayed by a girl barely in her twenties!
He had personally gift-wrapped the keys to his empire and handed them over to her.
An unparalleled wave of humiliation and fury erupted in his chest, impossible to suppress. Watching her beautifulsunbothered face on the monitors only stoked the murderous inferno raging in his eyes.
In all his years running this empire, when had he ever suffered a loss this catastrophic?
And yet...
The sheer magnitude of her talent forced him to reevaluate her worth.
To identify the Primal Catalyst in
such a short window, sever their et
rain heirer of
and completely
weaponize highest security...
More importantly, her understanding of the Obsidian Augments was terrifyingly profound.
It was far too deep for someone supposedly encountering them for the first time.
This level of brilliance... went far beyond the scope of a mere pharmacist.
Watching her flawlessly execute that sequence...
Forced a name into his mind. A name that had haunted and infuriated their organization for decades.
Aria Wynn.
His cold, venomous eyes narrowed into slits.
Could there be a connection between The Panacea and Aria Wynn?
If there was, then the final hurdle their research had been stuck on for years...
The dream of engineering a truly perfect Obsidian Augment... Might actually be achievable with The Panacea in their ranks.
At that thought, The Raven forced down his boiling bloodlust.
It was rapidly replaced by a ravenous, possessive greed.
Based purely on the god-tier talent she had displayed today, he was willing to spare her life.
He could even overlook the fact that she had brazenly stolen Specimen Fourteen right out from under his nose.
He would graciously offer her one chance to willingly submit and join them.
But today. she had inflicted
catastrophic losses upon his
organization and humiliated him on
a scale he had never known.
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He could not pretend this hadn't happened.
This woman had to pay the price.
She had to learn exactly what kind of hell awaited those who dared to play games
with him.