Chapter 180: The Only Key
Chapter 180: The Only Key
The blast-proof door slammed shut behind them with a heavy thud, and the light that poured out was a thick, icy, ghostly blue.
It wasn't a warm glow, but rather the frozen silence of ancient polar ice forcibly split open and solidified in the air. The light came from a massive computing array standing in the center of the core server room, piercing upward like a spear. Hundreds of pitch-black server cabinets stretched from the metal floor all the way up into the cold dome above. Ghostly blue data streams surged through the tangled mess of cables, like some ancient monster lurking deep in the permafrost, breathing with immense, heavy breaths.
The air was thick with the sharp smell of ozone after high-voltage discharge, mixed with the bone-chilling scent of Freon coolant, creating a suffocating metallic tang. The low-frequency hum of machinery running at high speeds hit the eardrums like the heavy pulse of death itself.
Akira stepped in first, his cold pupils scanning the three-dimensional space of the server room in half a second, precisely carving every piece of cover, every blind spot, and every firing position into his mind.
Lawrence pressed the M249 machine gun tight against his shoulder, the black muzzle cutting through every shadowy corner like a blade.
Seraphina quickly set up the "Judgment" system on the maintenance platform above the entrance, her cold scope view locking down the entire server room. Nolan pressed his back firmly against the outside of the blast-proof door, chambering a round, vigilantly blocking the only way out.
Zack walked at the rear. His steps lagged by half a beat as he stood at the edge of that ghostly blue light, letting the cold glow fall into his emotionless pupils. His lips twitched slightly, as if he wanted to call out to someone ahead, but in the end, he just clenched his jaw tight.
Jack headed straight for the control console. Each of his steps landed heavily on the metal grate floor, producing sharp metallic clangs.
Ten steps left to the main control console.
Crackle—!
All the fluorescent lights and ghostly blue data streams in the server room suddenly flickered violently. All the light spots shifted in an instant from flowing to frozen stillness, and then those billions of stalled data codes suddenly reorganized and refracted in midair, gathering into a tall, cold holographic human figure.
Adam Kane.
His projection hovered in the air, wearing an immaculate white military uniform, his face bearing a condescending calm, even a trace of the mercy of a god looking down on ants.
"Zero." Adam's voice echoed through the omnidirectional speakers in the empty server room, gentle in a way that made your skin crawl. "You've finally made it to me."
Jack stopped, his right hand hanging at his side, his index finger less than three inches from the grip of the silver Desert Eagle at his waist.
Adam's projection tilted slightly, his cold gaze sweeping like a viper across Akira, Lawrence, Seraphina, before finally settling heavily back on Jack.
"You brought your 'family.' Good." Adam smiled, his eyes flashing with a light that was both mad and rational. "I've always believed that a gene subject's final destination depends on what he's willing to die protecting."
Jack's voice had no inflection: "And what are you protecting?"
Adam's smile deepened, the corners of his eyes reflecting the faint glow of code: "Order. Absolute, flawless order. This species called humanity is too weak, too stupid, forever hijacked by inferior emotions and desires. I gave them a perfect answer—a utopia without war, without hunger, without sorrow. And you, you and your band of rejects, smashed it with your own hands."
He slowly raised his right hand, fingers spreading in the void.
Behind him, the blue data streams on hundreds of massive cabinets suddenly surged to a violent peak, the cooling pipes emitting sharp, strained screams!
"Since you destroyed order with your own hands," Adam said, word by word, his voice low as thunder, "then you can witness with your own eyes the ultimate destruction after order collapses. The nuclear self-destruct program of this base has been irreversibly activated. In fifteen minutes, all the ice, metal, and living people here will be reduced to ash in temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees."
Lawrence's knuckles turned pale white from gripping too hard, producing a cracking sound.
Through the scope on the platform, Seraphina's fingertip was already pressing the trigger of "Judgment."
Akira gripped the EMP high-explosive grenade at his waist, his gaze hawk-like.
Jack remained motionless, his black pupils locked dead on the other: "What about those four thousand seven hundred 'super soldiers'?"
Adam's smile gradually faded, replaced by an extreme cruelty: "They are the ultimate legacy I'm leaving to this filthy world. No order, then let destruction fall equally on everyone. Before self-destruction completes, they'll be forcibly awakened—no safety valves, no behavioral control commands, no pain limits. They'll become death gods ravaging the surface."
He stared hard into Jack's eyes, the corner of his mouth pulling into a vicious arc: "You can't stop it."
Snap!
The hologram shattered like a burst bubble, turning into countless fluttering specks of empty light.
But the violent data streams didn't stop. The infrared alarm at the top of the server room burst out with blinding blood-red light, interweaving with the cold blue glow, dyeing the entire space a brutal purple like a hell on earth.
Eli's urgent, almost distorted call exploded from the earpiece: "Zero! I see it! Four thousand seven hundred sleep pods are synchronously defrosting, activation progress at 12%! Damn it! Adam physically disconnected the external links at the last moment! My remote port is completely locked! I can't get in from the outside!"
"If remote doesn't work, then we force it locally." Jack's voice was chillingly calm. His gaze pierced through the violent purple light, locking onto an isolated control console in the deepest part of the server room, surrounded by four thick pipes.
It was an isolated terminal disconnected from the entire network. Four arm-thick copper energy conduits were exposed, violent ghostly blue high-voltage arcs crackling like snakes across their surfaces.
"There!" Akira's face changed drastically. "That's the only physical forced access point! But those conduits have no insulation protection, the high-voltage arcs exceed ten thousand volts! Any flesh that touches them will be burned to charcoal in one second!"
"I'm not ordinary flesh." Jack lifted his foot to charge forward.
However, one figure was faster and more decisive than him!
Marcus Kane stepped forward from the rear of the group. His pace was neither hurried nor slow, yet carried a heaviness that had completely abandoned life and death.
He blocked Jack's path, facing that death terminal dancing with electric arcs with determination.
Jack's steps stopped hard on the ground: "Marcus! Stand back!"
"You just said," Marcus turned his head, his pale face actually showing an unprecedented sense of release, "only the Kane family genes are the only key to opening this terminal."
Lawrence charged up furiously, his big hand grabbing for Marcus's arm: "You get your ass over here!"
Akira's figure moved like lightning, his palm directly gripping Marcus's shoulder joint!
Zack was even more like a black bolt of lightning cutting across, using his thin but steel-hard body to block firmly between Marcus and the high-voltage conduits!
"Move aside."
Marcus's voice was light, but the weight contained in that voice instantly froze everyone's movements in midair.
"All my life, I've been running without end." Marcus looked at these people who would die protecting each other, his eyes slightly moist. "Running from that cold lab to the streets like mud, from the streets into a pitch-black prison... Every time, I thought things would get better once I escaped to the next place. But every time, I just jumped from one small cage into a bigger one."
He reached out that hand covered in scars, pushing Zack's shoulder aside with extreme gentleness. Zack's body trembled violently, actually pushed back a step by this force.
"This time, I'm not running." Marcus smiled, a transparent tear sliding down the corner of his eye. "To die once for the family I truly care about... is the best ending of my life."
Marcus turned around abruptly and threw himself without hesitation toward that violent arc vortex!
"Marcus—!!" A shattered roar exploded from Jack's throat, his whole body charging forward like a madman!
But it was too late.
Marcus roared, bare-handed, gripping tight that exposed high-voltage energy conduit!
BOOM—!
Tens of thousands of volts of extreme high-voltage arcs instantly climbed like furious beasts along his arms! Blinding blue-white light forcibly illuminated his entire body, the surface of his skin erupting with the sharp smell and crackling sound of burning flesh, muscles violently spasming, convulsing, rupturing under the high-voltage shock!
"Ahhhhhhh—!"
Marcus let out an earth-shattering, agonized scream! His flesh was carbonizing, his blood boiling, but that palm burned pitch-black by the high voltage, even exposing white bone, still with unimaginable terrifying will, heavily pressed the red confirmation button on the terminal!
Beep—!
Eli's hoarse, tearful roar crashed out from the earpiece: "Backdoor forcibly activated! Four thousand seven hundred targets... genetic locks all dead-locked! Offline successful!!"
The violent roar of the current gradually died down.
Marcus's eyes, already blind, slowly turned toward Jack's direction. His fingers slid powerlessly from the control console, his body swaying precariously.
His lips moved with difficulty, sketching out an extremely weak yet supremely proud smile.
"Tell that old man..."
Marcus's voice was as weak as a wisp of wind about to scatter, yet each word weighed a thousand pounds:
"I... am not a failure."
BOOM—!
The energy conduit completely overloaded and exploded, roaring flames instantly swallowing his last shadow in the sea of fire.