Mr. Xian sighs, rubbing his temples like this entire situation personally offended him.
"I know," he says, voice heavy. "That's exactly why Mr. Wei Zhen is assisting us. Zhonghai DeepWave Group is deploying high-level SONAR, advanced tech, resources—everything. We need to find what went wrong and what caused this. This isn't something we can just ignore like—"
"No."
I cut him off.
The word comes out sharper than I expect.
Both of them freeze.
Mr. Xian blinks at me. Wei Zhen's eyes lift fully to my face now—slow, deliberate, calculating. Like a chess player noticing an unexpected move.
I straighten my back, hands curling slightly at my sides.
"First," I say, steady, professional, definitely not panicking,
"stop all SONAR operations being used for this reason. Right now."
Silence crashes down harder than the waves outside.
Mr. Xian turns to me, startled. "Why?"
