The pile on Hans’s desk had slowly grown into a small mountain.
His reflexes were faster. His movements were faster. Even his thoughts had become considerably faster than when he first received the System.
Unfortunately, none of those helped against paperwork.
Hans finished another page and placed it beside the others.
"This isn’t good. I need to think of a way."
If every report, request, and approval eventually found its way onto his desk, he would probably die of exhaustion before the infected managed to reach him.
He looked toward the remaining stack. There were still more than twenty folders.
Goodness me. Is this why bosses are grumpy for the most part?
Hans opened his System interface instead.
The current Company Leader interface already summarized the military information well enough.
Personnel, ammunition status, formation strength, construction queues, and the rest of his System-controlled assets were considerably easier to handle than before.
The problem was everything surrounding them.
Hans scrolled farther down the structure list until one grayed-out entry appeared.
------
[ Command Center ]
[ Status: LOCKED ]
[ Requirement: Battalion Commander ]
------
He still did not know exactly what the structure would give him once it became available. The name alone felt increasingly insulting.
"Yes. Very great. Let’s lock something extremely convenient behind a paywall."
The Saicine operation suddenly had another reason to hurry up.
A knock came from the doorway. Callum stepped inside.
"Commander."
Hans closed the interface. "If that’s another report, burn it."
Callum looked at the folder in his hand.
Hans stared at him. "I’m joking."
Callum remained silent and placed it on the corner of the desk. Whether by precision or unnatural coincidence, the folder remained stable despite leaving half of it hanging in the air.
Hans reached for it. The document carried the Nuclear Power Station designation.
The contents were considerably shorter than everything else he had suffered through that morning. One underground section had passed Engineering inspection.
------
Temporary station-service power has been restored to the opened underground section; the Nuclear Power Station itself has not resumed normal generation or connected to the Commander’s power network. Biological screenings confirmed no active contamination inside opened areas.
Overseer Weissenberg had authorized limited entry while the remaining sections stay sealed.
P.S. Dr. Shearman and Overseer Weissenberg continue to argue intermittently. Work progress remains unaffected. Their coordination during technical procedures is considerably better than their conversations would suggest.
------
Hans read the additional note twice, then looked at Callum.
"Who wrote this?"
Callum glanced at the report. "The Engineering Team assigned to the underground section, Commander."
"All of them?"
"The report did not specify."
Hans remembered how he emphasized resolving the laboratory problems professionally. The professionalism did survive, though other personal issues remained.
Medics could fix broken bodies. Whatever happened between those two was outside their specialization.
Hans closed the folder and looked toward the remaining mountain on his desk. After a moment of silence, he stood up from his chair.
"Commander?"
"I’m inspecting the laboratory."
"The reports?"
"Designate them accordingly. Anything that doesn’t require my direct approval can wait or go back to the relevant section."
Callum looked toward the mountain.
Hans followed his gaze.
"We have enough veteran personnel sitting in permanent positions now. Assign a small detail to sort the rest by urgency before I come back."
"Understood, Commander."
Hans internally chuckled.
Security duty had apparently become boring enough for some of them. He was about to introduce something worse.
...
The Nuclear Power Station looked considerably less hostile after ASS-116’s security authority went offline.
Hans arrived before noon.
Several Army Soldiers now occupied the outer checkpoints previously watched by ASS-116, while Engineers and surviving plant personnel moved through the secured sections under their own temporary access procedures.
Callum followed him through the first checkpoint.
The inactive security units remained where Kordula wanted them. Some had already been moved aside for inspection, while others sat exactly where they stopped after the emergency termination.
Hans ignored them and followed an Engineer toward the underground access.
"How much did they open?"
"One laboratory section, Commander. Six adjoining rooms passed the initial inspection. The rest remain isolated."
"Why is it taking so long?"
The Engineer scratched his chin. Hans scanned his expression, then shook his head.
"Any other problems aside from that?"
"Nothing considered biological so far. Electrical restoration is incomplete."
The elevator descended below the ordinary plant levels.
Hans remembered part of the route from the operation several days earlier, though this section branched away long before the Security Administration areas.
The change became more obvious the deeper they went.
Ordinary maintenance markings disappeared. Painted utility labels gave way to identification strips, biological warnings, and access classifications that had little to do with operating a nuclear power station.
Several intersections were sealed by doors thick enough that Hans doubted they had been installed merely to keep unauthorized employees away.
Eventually, the elevator stopped.
The doors opened toward a short corridor lit by temporary lamps.
Several Engineers worked around an exposed panel near the far wall. Another stood beside a larger sealed door carrying two faded markings.
------
AUTOMATED WEAPONRY PROGRAM
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
------
A second plate sat underneath it.
------
HELIX BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH ACCESS
------
Hans looked between them.
"Quite an assortment of confidential research we have here."
The Engineer beside the door nodded.
"According to Overseer Weissenberg, this corridor served shared support sections before splitting into separate research areas."
That matched what Kordula told him earlier.
The Engineer entered another sequence. Several locks released inside the wall.
Hans stepped through.
For several seconds, he forgot about Tyrus and Kordula entirely.
Calling it a laboratory felt somewhat inadequate.
The Colony laboratory Tyrus had been using was recognizable. Tables, instruments, sample containers, storage units, whatever equipment they managed to gather and keep working.
This place had been built around the research itself.
The first room alone was divided into multiple sealed working areas, each separated behind thick transparent barriers and its own access point. Instrumentation occupied entire walls rather than individual tables.
Diagnostic displays sat beside enclosed work areas large enough for several people to operate inside, while monitoring stations faced them from the other side.
Sections of the ceiling carried rails, bundled connections, and equipment mounts that disappeared behind sealed panels. Storage was integrated directly into the walls, with separate compartments carrying old biological classifications and warning indicators that remained dark until Engineering restored them.
Another section resembled less of a laboratory bench and more of a controlled isolation room.
Hans slowed down.
This was not where somebody tested a new medicine and wrote down whether the patient developed a fever.
HELIX had been trying to change what a human being was.
The facility looked like it had been designed with the assumption that whatever happened inside one section might suddenly need to remain there.
Temporary Engineering tags broke up the otherwise sterile surfaces.
------
SAFE.
POWER ISOLATED.
DIAGNOSTIC ONLY.
DO NOT OPEN.
------
Several areas carried no tag at all because nobody had reached them yet.
Much of the laboratory remained offline, but what was active made the difference even more obvious. Environmental readings were divided between separate rooms rather than the entire laboratory.
Containment status appeared beside biological monitoring. Another workstation displayed several layers of physiological information Hans barely understood before the Engineer accompanying him moved toward the next section.
And in the middle of all of it stood Tyrus and Kordula.
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