N-A-A Chapter 707 Disparity!
Chapter 707 Disparity!
"What about him?"
“We’ve arrived, the handover is complete, and you seem to be in good condition.” Lynn approached and handed her a simplified settling-in instructions printed out by the college. “The dorms are all arranged. The initial assessment is scheduled for tomorrow morning, and we’ll familiarize ourselves with the environment tonight. Mira—the assessment supervisor over there—said he’s more reliable than he appears on the paper.”
Carmela took the page and studied it intently, as if she wanted to memorize every single word. As she read, she asked, "Did he... seem flustered?"
“A little,” Lynn said, “but mostly I’m excited.”
Carmela's lips twitched slightly, as if she immediately thought of Matteo's manner, where his eyes were clearly shining but he still had to pretend to be calm.
“He almost missed a step when he saw the training area,” Lynn added.
Carmela couldn't help but laugh out loud, but after laughing, her eyes welled up with tears: "I knew it."
“He asked me to tell you that he’ll contact you later.” Lynn looked at her. “It’s not a perfunctory response; he said it himself.”
Carmela's fingers, which were gripping the paper, loosened slightly, as if she were finally releasing some of the tension that had been building up since last night. She looked down at the instructions, which weren't very detailed, but were enough to make it clear that Matteo hadn't been thrown into some strange black box, but had actually been placed in a place with an assessment, dormitories, a person in charge, and a schedule.
"How are the people over there?" she asked softly.
“It’s more normal than you think,” Lynn said. “At least the person who picked him up joked around and reminded him that the cafeteria food was better than he expected.”
Carmela paused for a moment, then smiled.
“That’s actually quite important,” she said.
A few seconds of silence fell between them. Outside the window, the sky was slowly darkening, casting a cool, dusky hue on the building's glass. Carmela carefully placed the page into the folder, then looked up at Lynn.
"Thank you for actually getting him there."
"I promised."
“I know,” Carmela paused, “but promising and doing are not quite the same.”
Lynn looked at her, ignoring the almost tender gratitude, and asked only, "Will you get some sleep tonight?"
Carmela sighed. "I'll try. As long as he doesn't send me a bunch of random messages at 2 a.m.
“It’s hard to say,” Lynn said calmly. “I have a feeling he’ll first question every strange thing he sees in the academy.”
“That does sound a lot like him.” Carmela held the folder, her expression softening slightly. “But at least this time, I know he’s asking about something important.”
Lynn nodded and didn't linger. The case was still progressing, and Jason had probably already given the analysts a couple of dressing down. As he got up to leave, Carmela suddenly called his name again.
"Lynn."
"Ok?"
Carmela looked at him, as if hesitating whether to say something, but finally whispered, "You said before that the worst thing was that no one would catch him. Well... this time you caught him."
Lynn paused for a moment, without turning around to say anything nice, only leaving a faint sentence at the door: "Let him try to move forward on his own first."
He left the temporary accommodation floor and went straight back to the analysis area.
Upon entering, one is immediately struck by the mingled smells of paper, coffee, and electronic screens—the typical smell of work. The branch office has completely shifted from a "surprise raid last night" to a "continuous in-depth investigation" of the East River warehouse case. Whiteboards are covered with node diagrams, and several new locations are circled with different colored pens. Someone is on the phone, their voice hushed, checking batch numbers and flow with the New Jersey liaison team; another is retrieving a batch of historically archived interstate communication records; long rolls of paper from the printer are piled up next to the trash can.
Jason spotted him across two tables: "You're finally back. Any later and I'd suspect you were kept on as a counselor at the academy."
“There are people over there who have a much better temper than me.” Lynn draped his coat over the back of his chair. “What’s the situation here?”
Jason pushed a stack of new documents over, his expression noticeably more somber than before: "We've compiled a batch of high-frequency words from the communication records between the server at the Donghe warehouse and the targets. Batch numbers, nodes, and retrieval passwords were all expected, but the real problem is that a certain name keeps appearing."
"Who?"
Jason turned the top page over and pointed it out to him.
A name is circled on a piece of paper, appearing in different communication snippets, signature notes, and half-finished scheduling documents with an unusually high frequency, yet it has never been assigned a clear identity.
Raphael.
Lynn's gaze fell down, and he didn't move for a few seconds.
"How many times has this happened?" he asked.
“Of the valid documents we’ve compiled so far, it’s mentioned twenty-three times,” Jason said. “And it’s not just ordinary mentions. Look at these few—”
He assigned several of the selected texts to Lynn.
"The transfer will resume once Raphael confirms."
“'A sample that doesn’t pass through Raphael’s eye cannot penetrate the depths.'”
"Wei's office has forwarded their opinion to Raphael."
“There’s an even shorter one: ‘Raphael doesn’t like making the same mistake twice.’”
The analysis area was bustling with people, the lights casting a chilling glow on the weariness on everyone's faces. Lynn stared at the few lines of text, his finger lightly tapping the edge of the paper.
“He’s not an ordinary contact person,” he said.
“Yes.” Jason crossed his arms. “Judging from his tone, he doesn’t seem like a lower-level executive, nor does he seem like a simple technical consultant. He seems more like someone who spans multiple nodes.”
“Even more substantial than Wei,” Lynn said.
“I think so too.” Jason nodded. “Wei’s office is more like a shell, a unified command center for external communication. But Raphael… is like the person inside who actually makes the decisions, reviews the samples, and decides whether to go deeper into the field.”
Lynn flipped through the pages of materials one by one. Raphael's name appeared in scattered places, sometimes at the end of the transfer plan, sometimes next to the failure report, and sometimes buried among a long string of abbreviations and node codes. It was not particularly conspicuous, but as long as you pulled out all the fragments, you would immediately see a very clear line - many key actions would eventually pass through this person.
"Have you investigated all known suspects, old case consultants, outsourced technicians, and black market brokers?" Lynn asked. "We're investigating," Jason said. "That's the problem. 'Raphael' is too common. New York, New Jersey, Boston, Miami—you could spend two days searching for someone with that name. Not to mention he might not even be using his real name."
Lynn hummed in agreement and continued scrolling down.
“Charlie?” Lynn looked up.
Jason frowned as well: "We guessed it was an internal code. Like 'the one with eyes,' it's a literal word with a hidden meaning. The question is, why the choir?"
“It might not be a choir,” an analyst interjected. “It could also be their standard term for a certain type of batch, such as simultaneous delivery across multiple media.”
“Or a particular group of subjects,” another analyst added, “which is still cross-referencing.”
Lynn put the page down: "Run 'Raphael' and 'Charlie' together once, don't search them separately. Then go through all the documents related to sample review, deep point activation, and failure recovery, and see if this name always appears before or after the most sensitive actions."
“It’s already running.” The analyst nodded quickly.
Jason leaned against his desk: "There's something even more interesting. The man with the severed finger we caught loosened his story this morning, saying he'd never seen Raphael in person, but he'd heard a saying—'The doctor sees the medicine, Raphael sees the man.'"
Lynn looked up: "The exact words?"
“His exact words,” Jason said. “He also said that this statement carried a warning tone in their circle, meaning that it wasn’t enough for the drug to pass the technical hurdles; whether it could be further promoted depended on how Raphael assessed the ‘people’.”
A chill ran through Lynn's eyes.
“Then it’s not just about being a technical director,” he said.
“Yes, more like a screener,” Jason said. “It might even be some kind of core observer, picking out who is worth continuing to push forward, who should be recycled, who can be sold, and who should be buried.”
The analysis section fell silent for a few seconds. Everyone knows that this kind of person is often not on the surface, but is the most troublesome. Because they may not do the dirty work themselves, but they can determine the fate of the most people.
"Does the branch manager know?" Lynn asked.
“I just found out.” Jason slapped a new internal transfer order on his hand. “So the order has been issued.”
Lynn took it and glanced at it.
The order was clear: Raphael was the primary, temporary target; a comprehensive investigation into his true identity was to be conducted, consolidating cross-state leads and retrieving all communications archives, financial records, lists of outsourced consultants, records of collaborations with underground clinics, and evidence of shell company employment from the past three years related to prohibited gene-editing agents, crystal sample matching, deep-point transportation, illegal recycling, and screening of unusual individuals. The Manhattan branch was to lead the investigation, with field teams in New Jersey, Queens, and Boston assisting.
Jason looked at him: "Congratulations, another sleepless night."
“I don’t need you to remind me of that.” Lynn put the transfer order back on the table. “First, run the ‘Raphael’ program along two lines simultaneously, using both his real name and pseudonym. On the real name side, screen all consultants, researchers, underground doctors, and former examiners related to medicine, genetics, behavioral assessment, and screening mechanisms. On the pseudonym side, see if it’s some kind of inherited code name or a job title granted by the organization.”
“And then there’s the territory,” Jason continued. “If he were to ‘meet people,’ he couldn’t remain completely still. We can deduce from the points where his name appears which region he most frequently intervenes in.”
“Yes.” Lynn picked up his pen and walked to the whiteboard. “Circle the East River warehouse, the old clinic in Queens, the New Jersey freight line, and those anonymous deep points. Mark the date Raphael first appeared next to each point.”
Several people quickly gathered around the whiteboard. Different colored pens were picked up one after another, and nodes were placed one by one on the map and timeline. The name Raphael was like a small stone originally buried in the mud; once pulled out, it quickly led to more and more paths.
The East River warehouse in New York was mentioned four times in three months.
The exterior of the Queens clinic first appeared nine months ago.
The New Jersey freight interface, which had a vague abbreviation R a year and a half ago, was used to confirm the batch.
“This isn’t a temporary figure,” an analyst said quietly, staring at the whiteboard. “This person has been active for at least a year and has been delving deeper into the system.”
“Or it was deep inside from the beginning,” another person said.
Lynn redrawn a thicker timeline on the left side of the whiteboard, marking all of Raphael's first appearances, key moments, and major turning points. Several points in time were strikingly similar to the unresolved case of the mutated drug distribution three years ago, the disappearance of a batch of failed aptamers two years ago, and the curve of increased activity in deep points over the past six months.
“He appears both before and after the expansion,” Lynn said.
Jason stood beside him, looking at the line: "Like the eye of a storm."
“They’re like inspectors too.” Lynn capped his pen. “Every time they’re about to take a step forward, they let this person take a look first.”
“Then we’re missing one thing now,” Jason said, “getting this guy out of the words and into the person.”
“We’ll find it,” Lynn said.
These four words weren't spoken with much emphasis, but several people in the branch subconsciously looked up. No one asked him why he was so certain. After that incident at the East River warehouse, Lynn's statement "we'll find it" at this moment carried an air of unquestionable certainty.
Meanwhile, at a college several hours away by car, another person was feeling dizzy from the "gap".
On his first day at the academy, Matteo thought he would at least have some breathing room.
For example, one could first familiarize oneself with the dormitory, get to know the way, check the class schedule, and listen to others explain the rules, before gradually starting to interact with the training grounds and other trainees the next day. However, reality quickly taught him that the "buffer zone" here was not the same as that of a regular school.
That evening, after Mira led him through the basic training area, gave him an access card and an incredibly thin academy rulebook, she casually asked, "Would you like to watch the evening basic coordination training?"
Matteo, who was studying the sensor panel at the dormitory entrance that subtly changed color based on access permissions, immediately looked up upon hearing this: "It can see?"
“Yes,” Mira said. “I can’t guarantee you’ll understand everything, but you’ll be able to get the gist.”
"Of course I'll watch."
So half an hour later, he stood at the edge of the open training field on the south side of the academy.
The training ground was much larger than he had imagined. The ground resembled some kind of dark gray composite material, with a discreet energy boundary around it, almost invisible under normal circumstances, only faintly illuminating when the energy fluctuations within the ground were too intense. The surrounding platforms and observation area were not crowded, clearly indicating that this was not the kind of public show that required a crowd to cheer, but rather a very ordinary evening class.
But for Matteo, those four words were completely unnecessary.
There are already five students in the room.
A black-haired girl stood at the front. With a flick of her wrist, a small patch of gravel on the ground seemed to be neatly lifted by the wind, suspending in a semi-circle around her. On the other side, a tall boy's arms slowly developed a metallic sheen, looking less like armor and more like his skin had grown some kind of hard outer layer. A younger boy stood behind, an unstable blue-white arc of electricity glowing between his hands, the current crackling softly but always kept within a controllable range. The remaining two were quite different; one seemed adept at high-speed movement, flashing through the air, while the other stood in the most inconspicuous position, appearing to do nothing, yet whenever someone was about to bump into something, an unseen force would always push it aside slightly. (End of Chapter)