Marcus's finger was still hanging a centimeter above his wristband screen.
Blood-red text flooded the display:
[Supervisor Temporary Re-Verification: Assistant identity pending][Re-verification countdown: 00:30][If failed: assistant reassigned / window voided]
Thirty seconds.
The line underneath—"Subprocess 11 window: OPEN (00:90)"—was almost crushed invisible under the red overlay.
"Fuck," Marcus muttered. This was pure leadership bullshit: wait online for you to slip, then replace you with their own guy in one click. Corporate slang called it "optimization." Here, it was "reassignment." You want to lie flat? Fine—then you get replaced for real.
He lifted his head and glanced toward the monitoring center. Brian's face was definitely sitting behind some screen.
Countdown: 29.
Inside the Silent Pod
Li's left leg took another needle-stab of pain. The ceiling light flashed red.
Right on time, the electronic voice rang inside his head:
"Deviation detected. Recite calibration fragment: Mother-anchor emotional peak triggers child-anchor location update. Confirm."
Li inhaled and recited: "Mother-anchor emotional peak triggers child-anchor location update. Confirm."
The pain vanished. Green blinked.
"Reward: supplemental fragment."
The voice paused, like flipping through a course schedule:
"Subprocess 11 opening condition: assistant confirmation, plus, mother-anchor stability threshold met."
Li didn't move.
Assistant confirmation—Marcus.Mother-anchor stability—he had to be "stable," meaning… he had to want his daughter hard enough, spike high enough, so the system could follow the scent straight to her.
This wasn't saving anyone.
This was using him as bait, to reel in his little girl.
Red flashed again—this time his right shoulder.
"Deviation detected. Recite calibration fragment: Category A-47, Subprocess 11, window period short."
Li opened his mouth. In his head, he swapped the order and dragged the ending just a touch:
"Subprocess… 11. Category A-47. Window… short."
The pain stopped. Green blinked.
"Recitation error tolerated. Reward: clarified rule."
This time the voice handed him a knife:
"Trace priority: effective immediately after mother-anchor emotional peak trigger. Assistant confirmation will be written simultaneously into the trace chain."
Cold slid down Li's back.
He got it. If Marcus pressed YES, the window would open—but the net would snap shut at the same time. If Marcus didn't, the window would never open.
He had to get that meaning out.
Using "legal micro-deviation."
Gate Hall
Daniel stared at a new pop-up on his terminal like his eyes were about to pop out.
"Holy shit! Add-on clause!" he barked.
Marcus snapped his head around. "What now?"
"Audit system says the reproduction test must match the evidence-chain contact record—every part of it!" Daniel hammered the screen with his finger. "Contact ID, extraction path, debris number… it wants a closed loop!"
His brain sprinted. Sophia's "maintenance fault" act earlier—wasn't that a perfect legal chain? Maintenance opened the hatch, maintenance touched the "debris," the system auto-logged the contact person's wristband ID…
"We've got a door!" Daniel yanked up the logs and aligned the timeline. Debris number (from the clean shell), exact location (trench line seven), extraction path (fault-triggered maintenance protocol), contact ID (auto-captured from that maintenance tech)…
He bundled it and submitted.
"Done!" Daniel exhaled. "Now in the system, the current 'assistant' bound to this evidence chain is you, Marcus. Brian wants to swap you out midstream? Then the chain breaks, the reproduction test rolls back, responsibility spills outward—audits hate that. It's like KPI failure that drags leadership into the blast radius."
Countdown: 15.
In the Corridor
Aileen was still walking between two soldiers. Brian followed beside her, face tight.
"Dr. Aileen, the holding room is just ahead," Brian said. "You can cooperate… comfortably."
Aileen didn't respond. Her wristband still had a sliver of network access. Her fingers moved fast.
"You again?" Brian frowned. "What are you doing?"
"Submitting audit supplemental material," Aileen said, voice flat as a manual. "Per procedure, detained personnel retain one supplemental submission right. I'm adding this: if the assistant is temporarily reassigned, the already-generated reproduction-test window becomes invalid due to responsibility-party change, triggering an audit rollback. Any rollback-caused workflow rupture and time loss will spill responsibility to the party initiating reassignment."
She hit send.
Brian's wristband buzzed. He looked down.
A cold, blue-framed receipt appeared:
[Supplement received. Ruling: closed-loop workflow priority exceeds temporary personnel intervention.][Review may continue, but evidence/reproduction chain rupture is prohibited.]
Brian stared at it for a few seconds, then smiled—thin and icy.
"Fine, Aileen. You win the procedure." He pressed his earpiece, muttered a few quick words, then looked toward Marcus's direction. "But people… I can play a different game."
Countdown: 05.
Marcus's wristband buzzed again.
Not red warning text—this time a clean, formal receipt:
[Supervisor directive: after review, assistant identity retained.]
Marcus blinked.
More text followed:
[Special notice: executing 'Subprocess 11 confirmation' will simultaneously trigger:][1. Trace chain activation (mother-anchor → child-anchor)][2. Responsibility chain write-in: assistant as primary liable party (Brown Group collective liability)][Confirmation key updated to dual function: process opening / evidence signature.]
Marcus stared at the line and felt his mouth go dry.
Brian wasn't stealing the key anymore.
He was coating the key in poison and telling you: you can open the door—sure—but the moment you do, you drink the poison yourself, and you drag the whole team down with you.
Dirty as hell.
The advanced form of leadership PUA: you do the work, you carry the blame. If it succeeds, leadership "directed brilliantly." If it fails, it's "operator error."
Countdown: 03…02…
Marcus glanced once toward the monitoring center, then toward the silent pod—roughly where Li was.
Li was inside, waiting for the window.Daniel had patched the evidence chain.Aileen had jammed Brian's procedural knife with rules.Sophia… no idea where she was, but she'd definitely kept a back pocket move.
This team had already ground through the whole spectrum—grind harder, lie flatter—and still got skewered on a rack.
Countdown: 01…00.
[Re-verification countdown ended.][Assistant identity: confirmed retained.][Subprocess 11 confirmation window: reactivated.]
Marcus didn't hesitate anymore.
He pressed his thumb down.
Pressed hard—like he meant to punch through the screen.
"BEEEEEP—"
A long tone.
Then two system receipts slammed into everyone's perception, almost back-to-back.
The first was the cold electronic voice, broadcasting from inside the gate and every wristband at once:
[Subprocess 11: verification window OPEN (short window).]
The second was blood-red text, splashing across Marcus's display, Daniel's display, and every Brown Group–linked wristband:
[Trace chain: ACTIVATED.][Responsibility chain write complete: assistant primary liability (Brown Group collective liability).]
Inside the gate, beyond that blinding white, a low mechanical rumble rolled out—like something truly, physically opened.
But at the same time, Marcus felt his wristband cinch tight—like an invisible shackle snapping into place. In the corner of the screen, one line kept flashing:
[Collective-liability status: ACTIVE]
Out on the perimeter, Sophia leaned against a wall in the shadows, palm wrapped around the warm, real resonance clip.
She watched the gate, then looked down at her other wrist—empty. No military wristband.
She whispered, so softly only she could hear:
"The net's closing."
And she squeezed that real clip until it bit into her skin.