The next morning kicked off on a rough note. It wasn't an alarm that woke us, or even a gate malfunction. It was just... silence. Lin Lan was usually the first one to get anything up on the wall screen – mission updates, route changes, schedules. But when Mu Chen walked into the ready room, the big screen was totally black. No info, no clock, no rotating notices. Just a dark surface reflecting the room back at them. Zhou Xiao noticed it too. "That's kinda creepy," he mumbled.
Lin Lan was already hunched over the table, her tablet a blur of activity as she dug into backup systems. Her face looked calm, but her fingers were definitely moving faster than usual. "Main unit feed is down," she announced. Ye Fan came in a moment later, his eyes immediately fixing on the blank screen. "Just ours?" he asked. Lin Lan checked quickly. "For now."
Mu Chen stood rooted to the spot. That black screen felt wrong, like that unsettling quiet from a gate that shouldn't be silent. It was too empty, too intentional. Colonel Luo Wei emerged from her office. "Status?" Lin Lan answered without missing a beat. "Unit feed failure. It's just internal. No full base outage yet." Luo Wei's eyes narrowed. "Manual lock?" "Maybe," Lin Lan replied. Zhou Xiao muttered, "So someone wants this whole floor in the dark." Nobody told him he was being dramatic, because he probably wasn't.
Mu Chen moved closer to the table. "Can they cut room cameras too?" Lin Lan's eyes darted to him. "If they have the right access." Ye Fan's face went ice-cold. "Who signed off on systems access overnight?" Lin Lan was already digging. "Checking." The room stayed tense and unnervingly still. Without the wall screen, the ready room felt stripped bare, smaller, exposed. Like whatever usually made it seem like things were under control had been yanked away.
Lin Lan looked up after a moment. "Access was routed through institute operations." Of course. Zhou Xiao let out a humorless chuckle. "Shocking." Luo Wei's mouth tightened. "Reason?" Lin Lan's face went that dangerous kind of blank. "Scheduled observation recalibration." Mu Chen's stomach did a flip. New words, same old threat. Ye Fan stated flatly, "Meaning?" Lin Lan looked at him. "They're adjusting what this floor records."
A beat of silence, then Zhou Xiao voiced what everyone was thinking. "That sounds illegal." Luo Wei countered, "Not if they write the right reason." Mu Chen glanced back at the black screen. A dark surface. No data. Now, only vague shapes reflected back. He had this sudden, awful feeling that the institute wasn't just blinding them; they were deciding where the eyes would look next.
Ye Fan turned to Luo Wei. "I want him with the team all day." Nobody had to ask who he meant. Luo Wei's gaze flickered to Mu Chen, then back to Ye Fan. "He already is." "Not enough," Ye Fan insisted. The room tensed. That felt too fast, too personal, too obvious. Mu Chen felt a flush creep up his neck, even as he kept his face neutral. Luo Wei said, cool as ever, "Watch your tone, Major." Ye Fan's jaw clenched. "Watch the institute." Luo Wei held his stare for a long moment. Then she said, "Lin Lan, route every system alert through your tablet until the wall feed returns. Zhou Xiao, nobody from outside this unit floor walks in without being announced." Zhou Xiao straightened up. "Got it." "Mu Chen," Luo Wei said. He met her eyes. "Yes, ma'am." "Stay where I can find you." Mu Chen nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
Ye Fan didn't say anything after that, but Mu Chen could still feel his attention, heavier now that the room itself felt half-blind. The morning dragged on in that same strained quiet. Lin Lan managed to rebuild partial feeds manually. Zhou Xiao patrolled the entrance, his suspicion bordering on comical on any other day. Luo Wei took two command calls, her expression growing more severe with each one. Mu Chen sat at the table, sorting recovery logs because it gave his hands something to do. Ye Fan remained on the far side of the room, meticulously cleaning a weapon that didn't need cleaning. Every few minutes, Mu Chen found himself looking up, and every time, Ye Fan was already looking back.
Around noon, the wall screen flickered. Everyone in the room snapped their heads up. The black surface lit up, then died, then flickered again – not with the usual unit feed, but with a single line of white text: "PAIRING OBSERVATION SYSTEM UPDATED." Then it went black again. Zhou Xiao swore out loud. "That's gotta be on purpose." Lin Lan's fingers flew over her tablet. "It is." Mu Chen's chest tightened. That message wasn't for the entire floor. It was for them. A reminder. A warning. A claim.
Ye Fan stood so abruptly his chair scraped loudly across the floor. Luo Wei's office door swung open. "What happened?" she asked. Lin Lan answered without looking up. "Injected message. Direct display. No feed restoration." Luo Wei went still. "Can you trace it?" "Trying." Ye Fan's voice was low and dangerous. "They want us unsettled." Mu Chen thought, *No. They want us aware.* Aware that any room could become a testing ground. Aware that blank screens and missing data didn't mean privacy. Aware that they were still being manipulated. The screen remained dark. Nobody in the room relaxed after that. And when Mu Chen looked across the ready room again, Ye Fan was still watching him, as if any further lapse in security might make him stop pretending to keep his distance.