Chapter 174 Gene Resonance
Chapter 174 Gene Resonance
Two in the morning. Three levels underground at Mojave Base, the low-frequency hum of condensation pipes was amplified endlessly in the dead silence.
The lighting inside the "Babel Tower" test chamber had been compressed to its limit, leaving only a ring of ghostly blue light running faintly in the darkness, pushing cold halos in circles toward the chamber walls, only to be silently swallowed by the frigid metal.
Jack stood barefoot in the center of the chamber. His dark gray training suit was thin as a cicada's wing, clinging to his highly tensed torso. Every muscle group, torn and rebuilt through long-term overload, showed sharp lines like forged cold steel.
Behind the control console, Grant's fingers hovering over the keyboard were trembling slightly. The collar of his white coat was grimy, and a dark oil stain on the right side had long dried—the mark of seventy-two straight hours without sleep. Through the thick blast-proof glass, his gaze pierced like a needle into the wildly jumping data stream on the main screen.
In the corner, Aaron sat rigid on a folding chair, hands clasped against his chin, his spine taut as a drawn bow.
"Twenty-first attempt." Grant's voice came through the speaker, mixed with faint electronic noise, dry as sandpaper rubbing, "Target: force the 'critical state' to stabilize. Prepare to break through the last threshold."
Jack closed his eyes, and the world fell into complete darkness.
He didn't follow any command, just pulled his attention back deep into his chest. His heartbeat pounded dully in his chest cavity: sixty-two, sixty-five, seventy... The moment the number locked at seventy-five, violent pressure suddenly descended.
This time it wasn't a dull crushing force from all sides, but a strange pulsing wave with a specific frequency.
As if an invisible hand reached deep into his flesh, kneading his bone marrow with almost cruel rhythm, tearing at his muscle fibers, squeezing every blood vessel flowing with hot blood.
The tremor erupted from the deepest part of the cell nucleus.
At first just a very faint resonance, like countless needle points plucking at the gene chain; then that force spread violently, pushing his skeleton to the edge of collapse and reconstruction. Under his taut skin, a layer of extremely pale amber glow began to seep through his pores, like ancient golden embers sleeping in amber being reignited.
Grant's hands suddenly gripped the edge of the control console, fingernails digging into the plastic shell, making a piercing sound of hard material under extreme pressure.
"Data surging! Fusion rate... 99.97%... 99.98%... wait! Just one more step!"
Aaron shot to his feet, the paper cup beside him knocked over, ice-cold leftover coffee splashing down his pants, but he didn't even blink. His body leaned sharply forward, veins bulging on his forehead, eyes locked like a hawk's on the blue curve oscillating violently at an extreme high.
"He's self-coordinating..." Aaron's voice was pressed very low, carrying a trace of disbelief and tremor, "No external energy input... his genes are self-tearing, self-consuming, then rebuilding a stable framework!"
Inside the chamber, Jack's entire body convulsed violently. Beads of sweat slid from his pale temples, falling into that layer of pale golden amber glow, refracted into dazzling spots like liquid gold. His jawbone clenched tight, jaw muscles bulging high, a breath tinged with blood seeping through his teeth.
Hum—!
That golden halo suddenly surged, lighting up the entire dark chamber, then contracted like a tide and fell completely silent.
Stabilized.
Jack slowly opened his eyes.
In that instant, an extremely cold, extremely faint golden gleam flashed through the depths of his pupils, then vanished.
The world had completely changed in his eyes.
No glass barrier, no machine noise. He heard Grant's heart pumping violently at ninety-eight beats per minute in his chest; he heard Aaron's knuckles cracking from excessive tension; he even sensed the bitter night wind sweeping past the cracks of cold, hard ventilation ducts two hundred meters above on the surface, making a faint howl like an ancient whisper.
At the control console, Grant stared at the flat-as-a-mirror curve on the screen. He slowly removed his glasses, using fingers trembling so much they could barely grip the frames, and roughly rubbed the corners of his eyes.
He looked up, through the glass at the figure standing calmly inside the chamber, and the corner of his mouth pulled up in an extremely rare motion.
"You did it..." Grant spoke, his voice hoarse as if torn by a sandstorm, "Critical state... stabilized. We've touched the threshold of god."
The chamber door slowly slid open, air carrying the smell of condensation water rushed in. Jack stepped barefoot onto the cold metal floor, toes curling slightly.
Each step was steady as a mountain. Inside his body, a tingling sensation of microcurrent still lingered, but it was no longer a warning of collapse, but the final micron-level calibration of a newly constructed precision machine.
Aaron walked toward him step by step. This top scholar known for his rigor and coldness stopped in his tracks, staring at this "miracle" before him.
After a full three seconds, a smile of extreme complexity appeared at the corner of Aaron's mouth. That smile contained the ultimate release after long torture, wild passion for the unknown, and a trace of awe from the depths of his soul for this being before him.
"We've forged a blade that can sever fate." Aaron whispered.
Jack didn't respond.
He simply slowly raised his right hand and opened his palm. The old wound that had accompanied him for decades, long since leaving an ugly white scar, was now being filled and smoothed by new cells at a visible rate, until it completely disappeared without a trace.
He pulled his hand back and, with a click, clenched it tight into a fist.
"Twenty-second attempt," Jack's voice was cold and hard as ice, "when?"
Grant and Aaron exchanged glances. Grant shook his head, pulled out a report still warm from printing from under the console, and handed it over: "You just completed genetic reconstruction, your body needs time to self-solidify. At least three days. And... see for yourself."
Jack took the report.
The first page was a complex gene chromosome topology map, with the FOXP4 fragment on the long arm of chromosome 27 circled in bright red highlighter.
Below was a densely packed data comparison table: the left side was the human standard sequence, the middle was his original sequence that had been on the verge of collapse, and the right side was the latest data just collected.
The right side data had advanced a full 40% from the last test, almost completely realigning with the perfect standard sequence.
"Your FOXP4 fragment is undergoing spontaneous reversal repair." Grant's voice returned to that cold rationality, "This isn't the activator's effect. The activator only gave it a direction, but walking this last step was your own genetic boundary."
Jack's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly: "So, one more time, and it's completely over?"
"Maybe, maybe it'll never end." Grant put away the instruments, "Genes aren't straight lines on a plain, you can't predict their endpoint. But according to computational predictions, at most two to three more times, the critical state will completely solidify. By then... you'll have completely left the category of 'human'."
Jack held that report, standing in the dim corridor light for a long time. The paper was creased slightly in his hand.
He carefully folded the report, placed it in the inner pocket of his training suit, then without hesitation turned and walked toward the darkness at the end of the long corridor.
"Three days from now, call Zack." His voice echoed through the empty corridor, carrying a razor-sharp finality. "I need him to enter the auxiliary chamber."
The chamber door closed behind him with a boom.
Aaron collapsed back into the folding chair, turned to look at Grant: "He wants to forcibly pull Zack's chaotic genes into his 'stable field'?"
Grant had already turned around and begun clearing the settled data graphs, without looking up.
"No. He wants to use his own critical state to forcibly compensate for the gene chain collapsing inside Zack's body. He wants to save Zack..."
Grant's tone paused for half a second, his voice so faint it was almost inaudible:
"...just like back then when he gave everything he had, trying to save those five clones."
In the pitch-black corridor, Jack's steps were extremely heavy, yet made no sound.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out that specially made encrypted terminal, his fingertip quickly swiping across the cold screen, sending a brief message:
[Three days from now, morning, Babel Tower. Come with me.]
Almost the instant it sent successfully, the screen lit faintly, jumping back with a single word:
[OK.]