Chapter 283
Chapter 283
Seraphine never showed off her achievements, yet everyone felt the height of her standing.
The closing banquet was held at Skyview City Art Museum.
Guests circulated with champagne flutes, the atmosphere elegant and lively.
Seraphine was discussing axon regeneration signal pathways with a silver-haired Nobel laureate.
Suddenly, the conversation volume dropped.
She turned and saw Lucius walking through the crowd.
He wore a perfectly tailored black tuxedo, no bow tie, standing out among the formal scholars with effortless distinction.
As a waltz played, he extended his hand to Seraphine.
Every gaze in the room instantly focused.
The Nobel laureate smiled and stepped back.
Seraphine looked into Lucius's certain eyes and lightly placed her hand in his palm.
The moment they glided onto the dance floor, the world blurred into the background.
Their steps were precise and synchronized. No lingering gazes, no intimate whispers—every movement perfectly calibrated, every rhythm seamlessly aligned.
He wasn't leading. She wasn't following.
Like two independent, powerful celestial bodies drawn by invisible gravity, orbiting the same axis, dancing their own cosmic duet.
At the edge of the dance floor, John's eyes reddened with emotion as he gripped Barry's arm.
"Are you seeing this?! Dance of the century! My favorite series just had its finale!"
Barry adjusted his glasses, scanning the reporters and scientists holding up their phones.
"Real-time data estimates this one dance created brand value for Nolan & Heidi Medical Research Center equivalent to three Nobel Prizes in Economics."
The music ended.
Lucius's hand remained steady at Seraphine's waist as they nodded slightly amid applause.
He leaned down, murmuring near her ear:
"Your world is quite lively."
The next day, the photo swept the front pages of major global financial media.
In front of Rodin's 'The Thinker,' light outlined two slender, elegant silhouettes. They weren't looking at the camera, but at each other in the final beat of the dance.
One represented science that would rewrite humanity's future.
One represented capital that could shake the world.
The headline was succinct:
[The New Alliance.]
The ink on 'The New Alliance' headline had barely dried when piercing alarms rang through Nolan & Heidi Medical Research Center.
The person who burst through Seraphine's office door was the information security director.
His face was deathly pale.
"Ms. Manners, we have a problem. Core patent data for the second-generation 'neural pathway regeneration drug'—the complete synthesis pathway for the G17 compound... was encrypted and transmitted to an offshore anonymous server fifteen minutes ago."
This data was the soul of Nolan & Heidi Medical Research Center's next generation.
Seraphine closed her clinical follow-up report, voice calm.
"Did you intercept it?"
"They used a quantum encryption channel. Transmission's complete. We can trace the destination but can't decrypt or recall it." The director's voice trembled. "This is like handing our competitors the blueprint for our next-generation product."
John followed in, his legs nearly giving out as he grabbed the doorframe. He'd just recovered from the euphoria of the 'dance of the century' only to have their secrets stolen.
"It's an inside job!" John's voice cracked. "Only five people in the entire company have access to the complete G17 pathway! Besides you, it's just those core experts in pharmacology!"
Seraphine ignored him.
She pulled up the server's highest-level admin backend. Code and logs scrolled like waterfalls.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard without hesitation.
"2:17 AM, abnormal login at Pharmacology Department workstation 7B."
"Login user bypassed three layers of physical isolation using virtual IP relay."
"Data retrieval request used Dr. Terrence Morris's S-level access key."
She extracted information from the data with surgical precision.
"Dr. Morris?" John froze. Terrence was a founding employee, a pharmacology department veteran, one of Seraphine's most trusted technical personnel.
"Access keys can be stolen, but behavioral patterns don't lie." Seraphine's eyes didn't leave the screen. "Pull all surveillance from around workstation 7B for the past three hours."
Minutes later, several video segments appeared on the large screen. The lab corridor at 2 AM was deserted.
"Nothing unusual, Ms. Manners. Dr. Morris went home at ten PM last night—there's a clock-out record." The security director said.
Seraphine said nothing, magnifying one video segment and reviewing it frame by frame.
"Stop."
The image froze.
At the end of the corridor, a nearly invisible speck of dust on the fire extinguisher box shifted slightly at 2:14 AM.
"Infrared scan."
The view switched. In infrared mode, a fading, blurred handprint showed on the metal surface of the fire extinguisher box.
"This person knows our surveillance system inside and out. He knows how to avoid motion capture and control his body's heat signature." Seraphine's tone remained calm, yet the room temperature dropped to freezing. "The only people who can do that are those who designed this system."
The security director's face went white.
Nolan & Heidi Medical Research Center's early security system was built by him and another deputy.
And that deputy had resigned three months ago, citing 'personal career development.'
The mystery was solved.
Just as John was reaching for his phone to call the police, Seraphine's office door was knocked twice—neither soft nor hard.
Barry entered, followed by two men in black suits with solemn expressions.
"Ms. Manners." Barry's tone was characteristically flat. "The individual has been apprehended. At a junkyard on the west side of the city, he was preparing to physically destroy evidence."
John and the security director stood stunned.
They'd just identified the suspect here, and these people had already caught him?
"His equipment's connection to the offshore server was severed ten minutes ago. The data packet is in 'pending receipt' status—we've intercepted and secured it. They received nothing."
Barry placed an encrypted USB drive on Seraphine's desk. "This contains the complete record of that former director's contact with Novarex Pharma, including call recordings and financial transactions."
The office fell deathly silent.
John's mouth hung open as he watched the two black-suited men 'escort' the pale, terrified security director out. The entire process was quiet and efficient.
Only then did he belatedly realize that from the day Ark Base was completed—or even earlier—an invisible security net had already covered every corner of Nolan & Heidi Medical Research Center.
And he, existing within it, had been completely oblivious.
Seraphine picked up the USB drive but didn't immediately check it.
She looked up at Barry. "Lucius's doing?"
"Mr. Talbot says the Ark's firewall needs upgrading." Barry adjusted his glasses. "He's asked you to meet him at 3 PM in Conference Room Three."
3 PM, conference room.
Lucius and Seraphine sat at opposite ends of the long table.
Attending the meeting were top engineers from the Talbot Group's core security division.
"The current defense system is passive-trigger based." Lucius tapped a point on the architecture diagram. "I want active defense. To know their destination while they're still drawing the map."
An engineer immediately responded. "We recommend introducing the 'Hive' intelligent monitoring system. It disperses thousands of fake classified documents embedded with tracking beacons. Any abnormal access triggers maximum alert and locks onto the source."