#### **Chapter 41: The Director's Ire**
The Director stood on a temporary command platform erected on the now-stable mountain pass, the wreckage of her elite convoy a testament to her failure. The air was frigid, but her rage was a furnace.
"Report," she snapped, her voice cutting through the wind.
An aide, trembling slightly, approached. "The seismic charges were successful, Director. The primary structure is buried under an estimated two hundred thousand tons of rock. Nothing could have survived."
"Unacceptable," she hissed. "I don't want 'estimated' survival odds. I want confirmation. I want their bodies. And more importantly, I want that data." She knew Kuro would have secured the "unsent letter" before the broadcast. The kill switch had been deployed, but the core research—the key to rebuilding and perfecting her Chimera project—was still intact, buried with them in that mountain.
"Sir," the aide stammered, "The instability of the rock makes a digging operation… hazardous. It could take weeks, even months."
The Director turned, her eyes fixing him with a gaze so cold it seemed to freeze the air around them. "Then start. Use sonic drills, plasma cutters, I don't care. I want that mountain taken apart, piece by piece. And I want every operative we have left in a five-hundred-mile radius forming a quarantine perimeter. Nothing gets in. And if by some miracle anything crawls out of that hole… you kill it on sight."
She turned her back on the broken mountain, her mind already working. She had lost her army of prototypes. She had lost face with W.A.O.'s unseen benefactors. But she was not defeated. She was a scavenger. And she would pick the bones of this disaster clean until she had what she wanted. This wasn't an extermination anymore. It was a salvage operation.