Team Rocket’s Second-in-Command! [447]

Clack. Clack.

The moment Luo Yuan pressed the button, the sound of mechanical gears grinding into motion echoed through the air.

Along with that sound, Malva noticed metal panels suddenly descending over the windows near the wall, sealing them off completely.

The same thing was happening all over the building.

Most notably, in the first-floor lobby—where the League trainers were battling Team Galactic—everyone suddenly realized that the exits were being sealed shut one by one. The entire lobby was now airtight.

"What's going on?!"

"What happened?!"

The League trainers were all looking around in confusion.

At the forefront, Cynthia frowned. This move from Team Galactic caught her completely off guard.

Up to this point, under her lead, the League forces had gradually seized the upper hand in the battle. The Galactic grunts were clearly being pushed back by their assault.

They're the ones at a disadvantage... so why would they cut off all connection between the building and the outside? Cynthia couldn't make sense of it.

But she wasn't the only one bewildered.

Across the battlefield, the Galactic officers were also looking puzzled.

This step hadn't been mentioned at all in the battle plans.

Their mission wasn't to defend the building to the death—Team Galactic had already evacuated all critical equipment and data. The current headquarters was nothing more than an empty shell.

Just like the Galactic Building in Jubilife City, the Veilstone HQ was considered expendable.

Their job was merely to delay the League's advance and buy time for Cyrus's plan to succeed.

Forcing the League into a corner like this, cutting off all escape routes, was completely against their interests.

Could Lord Pluto have received a new order from the boss?

That was the only explanation the Galactic officers could come up with as they struggled to hold back the League's increasingly fierce assault.

The person they were speculating about—Pluto—was just as confused.

When he'd left the control room moments ago, he'd clearly instructed his subordinates to monitor the battlefield and only provide necessary intel, nothing more.

So how had the emergency lockdown of HQ been triggered the moment he stepped away?

"Control room, report your status!" Pluto tapped his earpiece and spoke sharply.

Only static and interference answered him.

A sense of dread began to creep over him. His footsteps toward the lower floors came to a halt.

Just as he was about to turn around and head back to the control room, a young, unfamiliar voice came through his headset.

"Hello there, Lord Pluto."

The voice was completely unfamiliar. Pluto was certain none of his men in the control room had such a voice.

His expression darkened.

"Who are you?! What's your purpose?! Do you have any idea who you're messing with?!"

A stranger had appeared in the control room—odds were, it had already been taken. The only thing Pluto hadn't figured out yet was who it was and how they'd gotten in.

Was it the Sinnoh League? Or... someone else?

"Instead of worrying about me," Luo Yuan said with a smile, "you might want to worry about your men. Judging by the surveillance footage I'm looking at... things aren't going so well for them."

Pluto fell silent, troubled.

He didn't doubt the man's words—after all, he had left the control room precisely because he'd seen on the monitors that his forces were beginning to falter and needed reinforcement.

All Luo Yuan had done was confirm that.

Now Pluto faced a choice between two bad options...

One was to ignore the intruder in the control room and go assist his subordinates on the lower floors. But there were still some classified documents left behind in the control room.

The other was to turn back and deal with the intruder, leaving the grunts on the lower levels trapped inside the now-locked-down building, likely to be completely overrun by the League.

Losing that many trainers in one go—no matter how large Team Galactic was—would be a blow they couldn't afford.

Pluto stood frozen, torn between the two.

Meanwhile, in the control room, Luo Yuan watched Pluto's hesitation on the monitors, while silently deploying Porygon-Z.

Following the surveillance network like a trail of breadcrumbs, Porygon-Z broke into the core systems of Team Galactic's servers.

Massive amounts of data were extracted from the Galactic mainframe, streamed through the network to Luo Yuan's personal terminal, and then uplinked via satellite back to Team Rocket HQ.

The moment the intel arrived, Matori—who had been on leave but was still stationed with Rocket's strategic planning team—immediately assembled her analysts to begin decrypting, filtering, and organizing the flood of data.

Before long, Luo Yuan received Archer's response. And with it, the answer to what Cyrus had been up to.

"Uxie and Mesprit... they've already been captured quietly? So only Azelf is left?"

Team Galactic had already secured two of the lake guardians. With just one more, they could begin extracting their powers to forge the Red Chain—the tool needed to summon Dialga and Palkia.

Or worse... if Cyrus had been missing this long, it was very possible they'd already captured Azelf too.

That thought left Luo Yuan with a gnawing sense of urgency.

He glanced back at the monitors.

Pluto had disappeared.

A quick check of the battlefield confirmed it—Pluto had returned, flanked by a squad of elite grunts, throwing himself into the fray.

He'd made his decision.

Clearly, to him, the more immediate threat wasn't the intruder in the control room—it was the Sinnoh League continuing to press their advantage below.

Which worked perfectly for Luo Yuan.

He wanted them to keep fighting.

Archer still needed more time to finish sifting through the Galactic data and pinpoint the location of their new headquarters after abandoning the Veilstone base.

And while he waited, Luo Yuan had business to take care of.

First, he used the control room systems to cut off all internal communications between Team Galactic's members.

Then he turned to the Rocket grunts behind him and issued a new set of orders.

"Split into ten squads—five per group. Sweep the upper floors from the third level and eliminate all hostiles."

As for Luo Yuan and Malva, they were headed downstairs.

Thud. Thud.

Luo Yuan tossed out two Poké Balls, releasing Individual Two and Mewtwo.

With three legendary Pokémon in hand, Luo Yuan led Petrel down the stairs.

Time was running out.

Now that he knew Cyrus might already have all three lake guardians, Luo Yuan could no longer afford to wait for Team Galactic and the Sinnoh League to exhaust each other and maximize his gains.

The original plan would need some adjustments...

And at that very same moment, a chill ran down Cynthia's spine.

A sudden, ominous premonition gripped her heart.