The room settled into silence, yet Hans could practically feel the coldness coming from the two people in front of him.
This... is colder than Antarctica.
He cleared his throat.
Tyrus pulled his hands away from the table. Kordula returned to her chair, though neither of them stopped glaring at the other.
Hans looked at Tyrus. Then at Kordula.
"So..."
Neither answered.
"You two know each other."
"Unfortunately," Kordula answered.
"Regrettably," Tyrus said at almost the same time.
Hans’s brows rose. Matilda looked away for a moment.
"How?"
"Work," Tyrus answered.
"Bad decisions," Kordula said.
Tyrus immediately turned toward her.
"Excuse me?"
"Should I speak it once more for you to hear?"
Hans raised one hand.
"Stop. You can have your melodrama later. Let’s get back to the topic now, shall we?"
Both of them looked toward him.
"One question at a time."
Hans turned toward Tyrus.
"Perfect. She was questioning your Shearman Network a bit earlier. Perhaps it’s time for you to prove her otherwise."
Tyrus’s attention finally left Kordula.
"That would depend on which part we’re talking about, Commander."
Kordula snorted from the side.
"There. Your great source has already started."
Tyrus glanced at her.
"At least I know enough not to pretend AWP represents the entire project."
"I never said it did."
"That smug look on your face already tells a whole story otherwise."
Hans ignored their banter.
"You called my bluff. He’s here. Ask him."
Kordula stared at Hans for a second.
"Me?"
"You’re the one who doubted him. I am simply providing you the asset."
Tyrus smiled faintly from the side.
"Go ahead, Overseer. Surely you can think of something."
"Oh, I can think of plenty."
"Then stop wasting everyone’s time."
Kordula’s eyes narrowed. Hans remained at the side, watching everything unfold.
"Commander, you cannot expect me to talk engineering with a guy who only understands meat and shit."
"I concur, Commander. A person like her does not understand the beauty and complexity of biological systems. I believe we’d only hit a wall because she can never translate her words into terms I can understand."
"Are you seriously pleading yourself to be guilty of being stupid right now?"
"Don’t put me in the same place as you are. I only worry lowering my level of intelligence to match yours."
Hans interjected. "Tyrus, that laboratory you mentioned was somewhere around the plant, wasn’t it?"
Tyrus pulled back the words he was about to spit out. Kordula looked at him, amused.
"What’s this now? Leveraging abandoned laboratories and proposing you can make progress with your half-ass research? Commander, the plant does indeed have DAEDALUS and HELIX laboratories underground, but I doubt leasing them to this bastard would give you any fruitful results."
Hans’s eyes glinted, intending to fan the flames even more.
"Hmm. Tyrus has already gained considerable results with his HELIX research."
Tyrus’s expression changed slightly as he glanced toward Hans. Hans continued before he could speak.
"One of the people involved in his recent work is already Tier One."
Kordula stared at him. Then she slowly turned toward Tyrus.
"You?!"
Tyrus opened his mouth. "Don’t."
Kordula stood straighter.
"You actually expect me to believe this bastard pushed somebody into Tier One? The last time I’ve heard of this guy, he was fired from his job due to insubordination and incompetence."
"I never said—"
"Oh, shut up. You spent half your career complaining about uncontrolled variables. Guess the only thing you couldn’t control was your eventual termination."
Tyrus’s eyes twitched.
"Because uncontrolled variables are how idiots die!"
"And apparently one of your test subjects survived long enough for you to claim success."
"Well of course, she’s no simple superhuman!"
Hans’s face kept neutral. Matilda looked toward him but he ignored her. As long as the System was here, nobody could carve a meaning out of his face.
Kordula caught a word immediately.
"She?"
Tyrus froze. Hans almost laughed.
"Interesting," Kordula continued. "So there really is someone."
"Of course there is someone! You expect me to experiment with nothing to sample on? That’s not the part I’m objecting to!"
"Then what are you objecting to?"
"The Commander is... downplaying my achievements. Do you really think I’d stop with just a single Tier One?"
Kordula stared at him, then laughed.
"You? Multiple Tier Ones? Impossible."
Tyrus’s smile widened. "Oh, Kordula. You don’t know what’s possible."
"After years of failed experiments, you suddenly come up with this kind of breakthrough? Why don’t you just say it was someone’s effort?"
"Who do you think my backer is now?"
Kordula paused. She looked toward Hans who had remained silent after their prolonged argument. The amount of enhanced military personnel around the compound was the most that she had seen in her entire life.
Tyrus noticed where she was looking. His smile widened.
"Finally coming to your senses now?"
"Yeah. I realized you’ve become more irritating than before. How about you shut the fuck up and let me think?"
Tyrus gave her a shrug. "I am surprised you’re still able to think."
Hans tapped on the table twice, sounding like the court judge during a divorce hearing.
"Are you two finished quarrelling?"
"No," Kordula answered.
"Not even remotely close," Tyrus added.
Kordula stopped looking at him for the moment. Her eyes remained somewhere toward Hans before drifting around the room again.
Tyrus knew that look.
He had seen it enough times years ago when a particular someone mentioned to him about reaching a position that came with a larger office and considerably fewer people capable of telling her no.
The apocalypse apparently did not cure everything.
His eyes moved toward Hans.
The Commander remained seated behind the table as if the entire argument had nothing to do with him.
Tyrus almost scoffed, understanding the game Hans wanted to play.
Hans had brought him here because Kordula doubted his information. That much was obvious. But dangling his research in front of her was something else entirely.
And worse, it would probably work. Tyrus knew Kordula too well.
"So what will it be, Overseer Weissenberg?" Hans finally tugged at her strings. "Do you still think I cannot decipher AWP knowledge without Tyrus’s help?"
"Handling AWP projects is dangerous. The Commander has already seen an example of it recently."
"And?"
"You need an expert on this field, not some wannabe who thinks information is the same as expertise."
Tyrus clicked his tongue. "Information can be harnessed into skill over time. I—"
"I will prepare the laboratories for usage. It will take some time, but I’ll make it operational."
Hans nodded. "You don’t have to hurry. What happened to the laboratories? I just want to understand things before we proceed operationally."
She glanced at Tyrus. "ASS-116 closed it off because it was afraid the contamination might spread into that area. If not for ASS-116, it would have been filled with monsters right now."
"A very worrying scenario indeed. My soldiers and Engineers can assist. You can discuss the details with Fairy."
Kordula nodded. "The Commander can visit the site personally as well. To see is to believe, right?"
"I am quite busy recently." Hans let out a small smile. "Tyrus will be my representative. I hope the two of you will resolve this. Professionally."
The two exchanged glances, then quickly shifted away.
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