“Furthermore, this is The Panacea's first recorded presence aboard Project Zero- Transit."
"Therefore, you are free to accuse her of sabotaging the auction network, and you can claim she orchestrated Fourteen's dramatic appearance on stage."
"But, I need you to explain exactly how she managed to upload Specimen Fourteen into Project Zero-Transit's secure cargo hold before she even set foot on my vessel?"
The Raven's fingers gave an imperceptible, microscopic twitch.
He stared blankly at the two sequential timestamps glaring at him from the screen.
It was undeniably true. This was The Panacea's virgin voyage.
There were zero historical logs of her ever bypassing Project Zero-Transit's security before tonight.
The Raven's flawlessly constructed narrative could certainly pin the systemic chaos of the night on her, but it completely disintegrated when trying to pin the physical existence of Specimen Fourteen on her.
He remained dead silent.
The Commodore pressed the advantage. "Or were you about to suggest she had a ghost on the inside arranging the logistics on her behalf?"
The Raven's jaw tightened. Just as he parted his lips to scramble for a counter.
The Commodore ruthlessly cut him off. "You are more than welcome to harbor that suspicion. However, you will need to drag that ghost into the light and hand the irrefutable proof directly to me."
“Rather than pointing to the fact that she understands Specimen Seven and Fourteen as absolute proof that she smuggled it onboard."
"Whether The Panacea touched my auction network is an investigation I will conduct personally. But that is an entirely separate matter.”
"Right now, the question I am asking is..."
The Commodore's voice plummeted to an arctic, bone-chilling frequency, and The Raven could physically feel the weight of an invisible, predatory stare locking onto him from the pitch-black abyss.
"Who exactly used my internal transit clearance to upload that monstrosity onto my ship before she even arrived?"
The Raven's pupils dilated in raw terror. For a long, agonizing moment, he couldn't formulate a single defensive syllable.
The timestamp proved Fourteen was bleeding into Zero-Transit's veins before The Panacea was even in the picture.
Any further attempt to scapegoat her would fall completely flat.
Worse... it would only infinitely multiply The Commodore's lethal hostility toward Obsidian Sun.
The Raven's eyes darkened as his mind raced frantically for an out.
But before he could even structure a lie, The Commodore's androgynous voice struck again. "There is one more thing."
"During her preliminary diagnostic of Specimen Fourteen, The Panacea explicitly confirmed that Specimen Seven and Fourteen share identical biological frameworks.
"And Specimen Seven is the registered cargo Obsidian Sun officially surrendered to Project Zero-Transit via legitimate channels.”
"To facilitate the asset transfer and manage its life-support parameters, the ship
explicitly granted Obsidian Sun specialized medical override clearance."
"You should be far more intimately aware of these facts than I am."
The Commodore's cadence was utterly unhurried. Even modulated through the
voice scrambler, it possessed a hypnotic, terrifying calm.
It was spoken strictly as undeniable, empirical fact, utterly devoid of emotional rage.
Then, the massive central monitor in The Nexus flashed aggressively. Cascading down the screen was a highly classified string of override commands. They were the external access pings logged by The Apex Bio-Transfer Pod the exact second Fourteen's biological matrix started destabilizing.
[Command Override Authorized.]
[Life Support Termination Protocol Initiated.]
[Executing Remote Biological Purge.]
A damning, undeniable list of execution orders populated the screen.
Several of the digital authorization fingerprints were circled in glaring, blood-red ink.
"These specific access nodes were registered the moment Specimen Seven was handed over to my The Commodore stated
custo neutrality The
with chilling
execution ping requests left behind on The Apex Bio-Transfer Pod are perfectly preserved."
The Commodore stopped right there, simply raising a gaze from the suffocating
darkness to stare directly through The Raven's soul.
He didn't explicitly state that Obsidian Sun was the only entity on the planet wielding
the specialized medical clearance capable of hacking Fourteen's pod.
Nor did he demand an explanation
as to why an asset completely
unaffiliated with Obsidian Sun-
suddenly triggered an onslaught of
execution codes originating directly from Obsidian Sun's servers.
But it was exactly this flawlessly executed, unspoken checkmate that caused the
last remaining shreds of color to drain entirely from The Raven's face.