Chapter 1541

[ 590 words ]

“It’s an emergency life-suspension pill, incredibly rare. It took me years to track down all the botanical ingredients just to refine three of them.”

In truth, she had made more, but publicly claiming she only had three was safer.

Flouting such a miraculous medicine would paint a massive target on her back.

She actually had five. Three were meant for high-stakes auctions, while she kept two carefully preserved for her grandmother and grandfather.

Years ago, upon perfecting the formula, she had also given one to Mary.

So, in total, she had successfully crafted six.

“Within the next forty-eight hours, paired with my acupuncture, this will keep his heart beating.”

“After that, it’s up to fate.”

Leaving severe trauma ‘up to fate’ sounded horribly unprofessional.

But coming from Claire, Elias knew better than to question it.

Claire then meticulously sutured the soldier’s catastrophic wound.

Because of his massive blood loss, his vitals remained critically unstable despite the closure.

Still, watching her execute the flawless, high-pressure operation left Elias staring at her in absolute awe.

While Silas’s team hunted the fugitives, Officer Miller led the remaining conscious men in a rapid sweep of the cavern.

The syndicate had hollowed out the rock to build a highly sophisticated biological laboratory. When Kael and Dr. Aris fled, they had triggered an automated lockdown.

The heavy blast doors to the inner lab were completely sealed. Miller’s men tried to pry them open, but they wouldn’t budge.

Rory and Jace, both trained in advanced infiltration and security bypass, examined the locking mechanism. Their expressions darkened.

“These Sundarans didn’t cut any corners. The lock is wired directly into a high- explosive self-destruct sequence.”

“If we attempt a hard breach, this entire lab—and everything inside it—is going up in flames.”

“Our only play is waiting for Captain Carl to drag the passcode out of the doctor.”

A passcode?

Claire stared intently at the glowing digital keypad on the blast door.

“Let me take a look.”

She dropped her tactical pack and swiftly assembled a military-grade micro- computer.

“I’m going to hack the mainframe.”

No one had expected a medical prodigy to possess elite cyber-warfare skills.

“Can she actually do this?” Miller asked, at a complete loss.

He couldn’t fathom how a girl this young could master so many disciplines.

Her medical skills were already legendary; if she was a master hacker too, was she even human?

Vel

“She won gold at the International Math Olympiad,” Dane stated casually, shutting down any doubts about Claire’s intellect. Her bram operates like a supercomputer.”

Her brilliance was an undeniable fact.

Dane had absolute faith in her ability to crack the system.

Whether the others believed in her or not was irrelevant.

“Then we leave it in your hands, Miss Claire,” Miller conceded. If Dane was vouching for her, he wasn’t going to argue.

“Any idea how long a brute-force decryption will take?”

Claire heard the question over the hum of her processor.

She glanced at the digital timer on her screen. “Fifteen minutes.”

Barring any catastrophic firewalls, she would break it within the quarter-hour.

Standard encryption wouldn’t take

her more than a minute, but this

mainframe was layered with

complex dynamically shifting

algorithms protecting deeply

classified Sundaran biological data.

The syndicate architects had designed this failsafe assuming it was utterly unbreakable.

They had utilized the most bleeding-edge encryption available.

Cracking it was a monumental challenge.

Fortunately, Claire’s cognitive

processing speed was terrifying, and she had spent years diving into the deepest, darkest corners of cyber-security architecture,

Fifteen minutes was a miracle, and they could afford to wait.

Miller let out a heavy sigh of relief.

But a terrifying thought suddenly struck him. “What happens if the code isn’t cracked

in time? Will the door just permanently lock?”

“No, the self-destruct sequence will detonate,” Claire answered calmly, not even

looking up from her screen.

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