The team continued forward and entered an office area.
More personal belongings and documents were scattered across the cubicles.
Most of the computer screens were dark.
Michonne moved along the edge of the area, her gaze drawn to a separate office.
The nameplate on the door read: "Chief Researcher, Dr. De La Rosa."
The door was ajar.
Michonne pushed it open and walked inside.
The office was neater than the area outside, but it was just as covered in dust.
An overturned photo frame sat on the desk.
Michonne set it upright and brushed away the dust.
It was a group photo, but half of it had been deliberately torn away, leaving only the left side.
In the picture was a stern-looking middle-aged woman in glasses, standing beside a young girl with a bright smile.
The background was blurry, but Michonne's sharp eyes immediately caught the unmistakable hollow steel structure.
It was the top of the Eiffel Tower.
She picked up the frame, walked to the doorway, and showed it to Calista and Leah, who were keeping watch outside.
"Calista, look at this," Michonne said, her voice as flat as ever.
Calista took the frame. The moment her eyes landed on the tower in the background, her gray-blue pupils tightened.
Leah leaned in as well, her brow furrowing.
"France..." Calista murmured, her fingertips brushing lightly over the cold glass.
France. France again.
Was this just a private photo, or did it mean Sentinel Station's reach had extended across the Atlantic long ago?
Who had been standing in the half of the photo that was torn away?
The main server room was located one level below the circular hall, on B4. It could only be reached through a security gate that normally required clearance, though Lorenzo's earlier hack had bypassed it along the way.
Behind the door, huge black server racks stood in neat rows, stretching to the edge of sight. Most of the densely packed indicator lights had gone out, with only a few still stubbornly blinking red or yellow.
"Split up and check the surrounding area," Calista ordered. Her voice sounded slightly distorted in the maze of server racks. "Bossie, Danny, find the main console or any data node that still works. Leah, you and I keep an eye on him."
Her gaze finally landed on Lorenzo, whose back was pressed by Leah's gun.
"Copy." Bossie and Danny soon found the main control terminal area on a slightly raised platform.
Several huge screens were pitch-black, and the console was covered in dust.
Danny set down his pack, took out his military laptop and various connector cables, and got to work.
"The independent backup power system here is still barely running, but most of the core database is damaged or encrypted."
Danny reported while typing rapidly, sweat quickly forming on his forehead. "I need access to the root directory, but I don't have enough clearance..."
Calista looked at Lorenzo, her eyes cold. "Your turn. No tricks."
Lorenzo shrugged and let Leah shove him up to the console.
He looked over the complicated interfaces and dark screens, his eyes focused. "Old architecture, but the basic protocols are universal. Let me see..."
Lorenzo's fingers flew across Danny's keyboard so fast it was almost dizzying.
"Bypass the damaged authentication module, inject commands through a buffer error in the system logs..."
He muttered to himself, sounding half possessed.
"Yes, that's it. Forge a system administrator session..."
Everyone held their breath.
Daryl and Michonne guarded the server room entrance, watching for any movement outside.
Shane stood a short distance away, his eyes moving back and forth between Lorenzo and Calista.
Mike, Carver, and Turner patrolled between the server racks.
Suddenly, the largest screen on the main console flickered several times and lit up.
Though the display was filled with static, they could faintly make out an extremely crude command-line interface.
"It worked!" Danny whispered, admiration in his voice.
"We've only gotten minimal access," Lorenzo said calmly, though the faint smugness at the corner of his mouth was hard to hide. "The data is badly corrupted. I can only try to recover some fragmented logs and cached files."
Broken streams of data began scrolling rapidly across the screen.
Most of it was incomprehensible technical parameters, experiment numbers, and date codes.
[//Log fragment: Project No. ..., Sample 734, abnormal stability.]
[//Communication record: Encrypted channel, coordinates: 48.8584°N, 2.2945°E, receipt confirmed.]
[//Report summary: Project Wildfire, Phase Three, synchronized with Île-de-France site, completed...]
The broken information was extracted and displayed at high speed like pieces of a puzzle, then vanished just as quickly.
Calista's heart gave a sudden jolt.
"Stop!" she snapped. "Go back! Those coordinates and Project Wildfire!"
Lorenzo worked the controls and pulled out the relevant fragments. They were still incomplete, but the key information gradually became clear.
The codename "Project Wildfire" appeared again and again, tied to large amounts of biomarker and neural response data.
Danny quickly located the coordinates on his tablet map, disbelief in his voice. "That's Paris, France. Île-de-France, to be exact. Near the Eiffel Tower?"
[Sample exchange protocol active. Cryogenic transport of active tissue.]
[Phase results synchronized. Main site confirmed.]
France.
It was not a guess. It was hard proof.
This underground laboratory buried deep in the mountains near Tybee Island, in the United States, had maintained close contact with some "main site" all the way in Paris, carrying out Project Wildfire and even exchanging live samples.
Just as everyone was shaken by the discovery, Leah, who had been watching Lorenzo the whole time, caught a tiny movement.
The fingers of his left hand were trying to insert a small USB-like device into an inconspicuous expansion port on the control console.
"What are you doing?!" Leah snapped, jamming the muzzle of her gun hard against the back of Lorenzo's head.
Lorenzo froze. He slowly raised both hands, but there was little panic on his face. Instead, he showed a faint, regretful sneer. "Just trying to back up a few interesting little things. After all, knowledge is priceless, isn't it?"
He looked at Calista, his eyes full of provocation.
Calista's gaze met Leah's.
Leah's eyes were ice-cold. She gave the slightest nod, and the meaning could not have been clearer. This man could not be kept.
How could Calista not know that?
They had only needed his technical skills before.
Now that the key data was in their hands, his value had dropped sharply, though they could still squeeze a little more out of him.
Her face gave nothing away. She only said coldly to Lorenzo, "Put away your little tricks. Your job isn't done yet."
Calista turned to the screen. "Keep searching. Focus on anything related to 'cryogenic sample bank' and 'special active preservation.' We need to know exactly what's frozen down there."
...
If you'd like to support my work and unlock advanced chapters, you can follow me on p-@-treon.
p-@-treon/GhostParser (50 Chapters Ahead)
You can also follow as a free member to read a few advanced chapters.