Chapter 182 The Berserk Experimental Subject
Chapter 182 The Berserk Experimental Subject
The instant the first test subject tore through the flames and lunged out, Zack moved.
His body became a silver streak tearing through the darkness. The folding knife traced smooth, deadly arcs through the air—slicing windpipes, piercing nerves, severing tendons. The test subject's roar never even made it out of its throat before it came crashing down.
From the side, behind, overhead—more mutated variants leaped at him in succession, but Zack twisted and dodged through the narrow passage. Each strike avoided the hardest bone, stabbing precisely into the lethal brainstem and heart.
But his genes were breaking down at a visible rate.
Bright red beads of blood seeped from the pores of his skin, soaking his tactical suit black. His breathing was rapid and sharp, each gasp accompanied by the searing pain of lung fibers hardening. His heart raced like an engine about to overload, pounding with unbearable strain. The genetic fragments forcibly spliced together were breaking apart irreversibly.
He vaguely heard Jack's roar from the opening, the sound torn apart and distant in the wind and flames.
Zack didn't look back.
He just kept swinging his knife wildly, each strike using the last bit of strength from his marrow, as if carving into this cold ruin the mark of himself as a "human being."
"Come on!" His hoarse roar echoed through the flames. "You bunch of soulless bastards... let me teach you today... what it means... to be human!"
When the fiftieth test subject crashed heavily at his feet, Zack finally couldn't hold on. One knee slammed into the scorched metal floor.
The agony of total genetic collapse exploded from deep within his marrow, as if tens of thousands of steel needles were simultaneously stabbing every nerve. He drove the folding knife hard into the steel plate, gripping the handle with both hands, forcing himself not to fall completely.
He struggled to lift his head, looking toward the exit to survival.
At the edge of that white snowy border stood Jack, his entire body flowing with a suffocating pale gold light. Critical state at full power, making him look like a golden-armored statue from myth. Jack hadn't left.
Zack's cracked lips curled up slightly.
He wanted to shout "go," but his throat could only produce weak bloody foam. He just nodded very lightly, then slowly closed his eyes.
The scorching wave of fire roared from deep in the passage, completely swallowing his figure.
"Get out of my way!!"
Jack's voice was no longer a roar but a world-destroying psychic shockwave.
The amber-gold light inside him exploded suddenly, the critical state burning wildly through his blood vessels! He slapped away Akira's reaching hand and like lightning, plunged back into the towering sea of fire!
"Akira! Get Zack out! I'll slaughter these beasts!"
Jack's senses in this moment reached a peak beyond human capability.
In his perception, the trajectory of every mutant's bite, the stress point of every collapsing concrete block, even the violent airflow was clearly visible. His knees, elbows, knife-hands, palm strikes... every part of his body became a weapon of destruction!
The sounds of shattering bones and blood instantly merged into the scorching sea of fire, turning the passage into a desperate hellscape.
Jack pushed forward, forcibly carving a bloody path through the raging tide of monsters, reaching where Zack had fallen.
Akira followed close behind, gritting his teeth as he hoisted Zack's thin body onto his shoulder and sprinted toward the exit. Jack fought while retreating, his fists smashing through several heavy mutants that lunged at him, blocking the path of the beast tide.
The opening grew closer. The wind and heat waves tore wildly at Jack's tactical suit, his skin burned over large areas, but he felt no pain.
The moment he reached the edge of the opening, Jack punched through the chest of the last test subject, used the momentum to flip backward, and tumbled heavily out of the ruins.
The storm howled!
The minus-forty-degree polar storm instantly enveloped him. The pale gold light on his skin flickered violently in the cold wind, then slowly faded like dying embers.
Jack collapsed onto the hard ice, gasping heavily, the hot breath instantly freezing into frost on his beard and hair.
Zack lay beside him, bleeding all over, his breathing so faint it was barely detectable.
Victor had already rushed over like a madman, dropping to his knees on the ice, his massive iron hands pressing hard on the wound in Zack's chest, trying to use his own body heat to stop the blood that kept seeping out:
"Hold on... Zack! Hold on for me!"
"Stay alive..." Jack knelt on the ground, his voice rough as sandpaper scraping rust. "You promised me..."
Zack's eyelashes trembled almost imperceptibly, his eyes opening the thinnest crack.
His lips struggled to move, as if trying to give one last teasing smile, but his vocal cords had long since died. His blood-stained hand slowly lifted, paused for half a second in the cold air, then gently landed on Jack's wrist.
The cold fingers traced across Jack's skin, as if trying to leave an indelible mark.
Then that hand dropped heavily, hitting the frozen ground.
Jack bent down, clutching Zack's gradually cooling body tightly, raising his head to look at the gray-white chaotic sky in the blizzard. A low, suppressed wail emerged from his throat.
Victor's forehead pressed against the hard ice, his massive body trembling violently in the blizzard. Akira stood three steps away, letting the bitter wind and snow hit his face, his eyes numb and hollow.
The moment before the hatch closed, a tiny droplet slid from the corner of Akira's eye, instantly scattered by the freezing wind, becoming a speck of dust on the ice field.
Forty minutes later, a massive roar pierced the snow curtain.
General Mac had used every military connection in the Arctic Circle to send a heavy-duty helicopter capable of penetrating a severe blizzard. The retired pilot in his fifties, relying on radar and raw instinct, steadied the aircraft on the ice field.
The cabin door slid open and medical personnel rushed down with stretchers into the wind, but Jack remained locked in his embrace, his whole body rigid as a statue.
Sophia trudged through knee-deep snow to his side, slowly crouched down, and placed her warm palm over his purple-cold hand.
"Jack..."
Her voice was torn apart by the wind and snow, but Jack heard it. Those locked arms finally loosened, bit by bit.
The medics carefully lifted Zack onto the stretcher and pulled up the white cloth.
Victor lunged forward to grab the cloth but was held back tightly by Leah from behind. The girl buried her face in Victor's broad back, sobbing uncontrollably: "Victor... let him go... let him go..."
Victor's hand hung in mid-air, his fingertips only centimeters from the white cloth, then finally fell limply. He turned and pulled Leah tight into his arms, burying his head in her hair, his shoulders shaking violently.
In the distance, Nolan and the surviving Blade Squad members formed a line.
All of them wounded, tactical suits torn, but standing straight as pines in the blizzard. At Nolan's command, everyone clenched their jaws and raised a standard, heavy salute toward the direction the stretcher passed.
Jack was the last to board the helicopter.
He refused all medical checks, sitting alone in the coldest spot at the tail of the cabin, back against the dark bulkhead, palm gripping tightly the folding knife that still held a trace of warmth.
Sophia walked over, draped a heavy thermal blanket over his shoulders, then sat beside him, covering his cold fist gripping the knife with both hands, continuously transferring her warmth to him.
The helicopter roared to life and lifted off.
Through the porthole, the distant Arctic base had completely collapsed in billowing smoke and towering flames, sinking with a roar into the icy depths of the Arctic Ocean. No earth-shattering explosion, only the tearing sound of steel being crushed and twisted, and the hissing sound of seawater swallowing all the flames.
That steel behemoth symbolizing Cain Corporation's supreme ambition and nightmare was finally buried completely by the eternal cold.
Jack leaned against the cold bulkhead, gazing at the sky outside the window stained red by firelight and snow waves, and spoke in a voice only he could hear, extremely soft:
"We're going home."
The cabin was dead silent, only the low rumble of the engine and the sound of wind flying toward the distant horizon.