Chapter 175: A Poisonous Bone That Cannot Be Pulled Out
Chapter 175: A Poisonous Bone That Cannot Be Pulled Out
Wayne knew this was just a genetic test of his blood—it hadn't detected what happened after he'd been slammed into the structure, hadn't found the bone fragments that had broken off and lodged deep inside.
"Bone marrow." Wayne forced out his last breath. "The code isn't in the blood. It's in the bone marrow."
"Griffin embedded the code into the physical structure of the E-7 chip all those years ago, and that chip is attached to my brainstem. The brainstem connects to the spinal cord, and the spinal cord contains bone marrow."
"Every bone in my body is a carrier."
The fibrous walls stopped crushing him. They'd realized that applying more pressure would only shatter Wayne's bones and scatter the fragments even wider.
"Turn yourself into a bomb."
"No." Wayne's vision had already blurred out. He closed his eyes. "I turned myself into a needle."
"You can't remove something that's already pierced your heart."
The underground space fell silent for five seconds as it ran calculations, searching through thirty-four centuries of history for a solution.
"I could consume you entirely—bones, marrow, and all."
Wayne answered, "You could. But the speed at which you break me down will never match the speed at which the self-destruct code spreads from my marrow through your entire nervous system."
"Griffin spent twelve years designing this code. He knew your neural transmission speed. He knew the exact spacing between your core nodes."
Wayne lifted his broken arm. Even in total darkness, he knew where his fingers were. "The calculations are extremely precise. Forty seconds."
"You've already wasted thirty-one."
"It won't work." For the first time, it spoke aloud, and the entire system began to vibrate.
"Your bones haven't completely fractured yet, so the program can't fully execute."
Wayne's smile was earnest—not the smile of victory, but the smile of someone who'd laid all their cards on the table and was waiting for the other player's move.
"You're right. There's one final step."
He used every ounce of strength left to press his right hand downward, creating a depression in the living tissue beneath his feet.
The broken bone pierced through skin and the organism's surface, penetrating three centimeters deep into its tissue.
Marrow flowed from the fracture, mixing with black blood as it entered the conduction system.
The sound didn't come from its mouth—it was a vibration emanating from the organism itself.
After Wayne pulled his arm free from the tissue, he had no strength left to stand. He could only kneel on the ground.
Its speech came faster than ever before.
"We can make a deal. I'll erase your daughter's name from the seed bank completely. I'll never target her again. In exchange, you can leave alive. Keep your consciousness data."
"Can't get out." Wayne's voice was barely audible. "The marrow's already drilled into your bones. You can't vomit it back up."
"What do you want!"
Wayne didn't make any demands. He said something almost incomprehensible: "Death."
It paused. "Whose death?"
"Yours."
The internal walls changed color from their original grayish-white to a gray mottled with yellow spots—the telltale sign of dead cells.
The self-destruct code had begun its work.
"You're insane" were its last words.
"That's what Griffin said too." Wayne lay on the ground as black blood seeped into the tissue.
"He said no one would ever use a human being as an expendable resource."
"But you did."
He'd wanted to say 'because my daughter's still waiting for me to pick her up,' but extreme weakness had stolen his voice entirely.
The organism began to collapse, folding inward from the outside, like a planet contracting in on itself, all its outer sections folding toward the center.
The Evolved on the ground also stopped all activity. Thousands upon thousands of grayish-white Evolved lost their vitality in an instant, motionless on the ice.
Wayne was at the center of the collapse. His consciousness gradually faded away.
---
Morrison grabbed the radio from behind and pressed the transmit button three times. All he heard was static.
The white-haired doctor observed the data on the signal detector and found that the energy readings for all biological fields in the Northern Hemisphere had dropped to zero fifteen seconds ago.
"The field source no longer exists," he said.
Morrison ignored the field source issue and pressed the comm button again. "Wayne."
No response.
Rivera stood in the corridor, comm device pressed tight against his ear, his other hand braced against the wall.
"Deploy search and rescue," he told his deputy. "Search within a three-hundred-kilometer radius of the crash site. Get all the military icebreakers involved too."
His deputy asked, "Boss, there are no usable airfields in the Arctic interior..."
"Then airdrop them in." Rivera's voice was two octaves higher than usual. "I want to see him within twelve hours."
Isaac's voice came through the terminal, eerily calm. "Nothing found."
Morrison gripped the edge of the terminal. "What did you just say?"
"The aircraft was completely destroyed after entering the biosphere. No black box, no positioning signal. The ice sheet collapsed over an area of forty square kilometers."
"Under more than three thousand meters of ice, there's no trace of him left."
The hospital room door opened inward.
Emily stood in the doorway, holding half a peeled apple she'd been preparing for Jenny.
She stood frozen. The apple slipped from her hand, traced an arc through the air, and rolled heavily across the floor.
Morrison didn't look at her. He didn't know what to say.
Emily's voice trembled. "What happened?"
Morrison didn't answer. The white-haired doctor turned the signal monitor's screen toward everyone. On the display, all the values in Wayne's vital signs tracking section read zero.
Emily didn't collapse. She didn't cry. She turned and entered the hospital room, closing the door behind her.
When the door shut, everyone in the corridor heard a dull thud from inside. Had she broken something?
Then came only Jenny's voice calling for her mother.
Rivera lowered his fist from the wall. There was already a wound on his hand. He looked down at it for a moment, then raised his fist again.
Search and rescue would continue until they found him. No one was to stop.
Morrison leaned against the corridor wall, pressed the comm device to his face, and closed his eyes.
After seventeen seconds, he asked, "Isaac, is the patch still on Jenny?"
"Yes."
"The patch draws power from Wayne's nervous system. So why is it still functioning?"
The comm device went silent for three seconds.
Isaac's voice changed—from numb to suppressed.
"The genetic lock maintenance waveform the patch is emitting remains stable."
The white-haired doctor immediately looked up. "That's impossible."
"If the signal source has died, the patch can't operate independently. It has no independent power module."
"But it is functioning."
Morrison took the comm device from his forehead and stared at it for five seconds.
"Which means—"
The white-haired doctor completed his unfinished sentence. For the first time in twenty years, the doctor's voice trembled.
"As long as the signal source keeps transmitting, that brain remains active."