Chapter 166: Reaching the Critical Point

Chapter 166: Reaching the Critical Point

Wayne walked back to the screen. Bell still stood there, his hand withdrawing from beneath the desk.

"Right now, one hundred seventy-three countries have their guns pointed at your head," Wayne said.

"Tell me—who's the real enemy of humanity?"

Bell's jaw twitched for two seconds before settling back to normal.

"Wayne, you've already handled everything outside."

"But your daughter has three minutes left."

In Emily's arms, Jenny's body temperature had dropped below ninety-five degrees.

The white-haired doctor pressed his fingers against Jenny's carotid artery again. This time he held them there for five seconds before shaking his head.

"Pulse is thirty-two beats per minute, and still slowing."

Bell spoke calmly, not at all like someone facing death.

"The hardware self-destruct module is soldered directly onto the motherboard. It has never exchanged information with any external system."

"Even if every army in the world mobilized, it wouldn't matter. That chip only obeys the command I just gave."

"The chip has already begun its work. It cannot be stopped."

Morrison rushed to the white-haired doctor. "Can we surgically remove it?"

"The chip is implanted at the intersection of the fourth spinal segment and the immune center."

The doctor's words no longer sounded like a physician's—they sounded like a judge pronouncing a death sentence.

"Forcible removal would cause spinal shock. Jenny would die instantly."

"Then what if we leave it in?"

"In two minutes and forty seconds, her immune system will collapse. Her organs will begin to liquefy."

Bell's mocking laughter crackled through the remaining communication channel.

"What good is winning the world? You'll still have to watch your daughter turn into a cold lump of protein."

Wayne stood still for one second.

Emily could no longer feel any warmth from Jenny's palm.

Veronica slid from her chair and collapsed on the floor without making a sound.

The white-haired doctor withdrew the needle from Jenny's arm. Injections were useless now.

The medication in her bloodstream couldn't stop a machine on the verge of total shutdown.

Bell activated his final move from an underground facility in Switzerland—the backup EMP source in the basement level of Bright Horizon Pediatric Therapy came online.

An invisible electromagnetic pulse erupted beneath four stories of concrete.

The last emergency light in the hospital room went dark.

The ventilator stopped.

The heart monitor's black screen flickered one final time, the last trace of life's waveform vanishing into nothing.

Jenny's heart had stopped beating.

The white-haired doctor pressed his fingers to Jenny's carotid artery and held them there for three seconds, then three more.

"No heartbeat."

Emily didn't cry. She held Jenny in her arms, bowing her head to kiss the child's forehead, completely motionless.

Veronica dropped to her knees, covering her eyes with her hands.

Morrison slammed his fist into the wall. The sound of cracking bone mingled with crumbling plaster.

Bell's laughter came through the backup communication channel. Though the signal cut in and out, every word came through clearly.

"Why so quiet? Where are your missiles? Your satellites?"

"What are they worth when you've lost your child?"

Wayne approached the hospital bed.

Everyone waited to see his reaction—to watch him break down, to see him rage, to witness any behavior associated with 'a father losing his daughter.'

But Wayne's expression didn't change.

He reached back and touched the patch on his lower back.

The white-haired doctor's first reaction was to sit up and say, "You can't—"

Wayne peeled the patch from his skin.

A brief, sharp sound erupted between metal and flesh. Beneath it, a patch of dark red skin showed burns from high heat.

In the center was a small crater for a fiber optic port, white smoke rising from it.

The white-haired doctor grabbed Wayne's arm.

"That's the only thing preventing your condition from progressing. Once you remove it, within thirty minutes your neural signals will exceed critical threshold. You'll—"

"I know." Wayne placed the patch on Jenny's chest.

Not randomly—precisely over the surface projection of her heart, centered on the sternum.

The white-haired doctor didn't let go. Not because he'd given up trying to stop him, but because he understood what Wayne was doing.

"You're completely insane."

His tone held no anger—only the hollow emptiness of someone whose understanding of reality had just been overturned.

Morrison didn't understand what was happening.

The white-haired doctor stepped back. His tablet computer was already dead.

The EMP had turned every electronic device into scrap metal. He could only rely on memory and experience now.

"The patch's primary function is to emit a special neural suppression signal."

"That signal is identical to the one maintaining Jenny's gene lock."

Morrison still didn't get it.

The white-haired doctor spoke bluntly.

"He's using the neurons in his own body as a generator. Through the patch he's installed, he's providing Jenny with the information needed to sustain life."

"Replacing the hardware chip that self-destructed."

Emily looked up. "Will it work?"

The white-haired doctor didn't answer whether it would work. Instead, he said something else.

"After removing the patch, the E-7 chip in Wayne's body will no longer be under any restriction. Within thirty seconds, his neural signals will reach critical threshold."

"But he's not passively receiving signals now. He's actively transmitting them from his brainstem."

"Manually encoding and outputting a waveform that perfectly matches the gene lock maintenance signal."

"This requires the human brain to perform millions of neural calculations within a tenth of a second, then convert those calculations into precise bioelectric signals."

Morrison finally understood. "The blood vessels in his brain are going to rupture."

The white-haired doctor didn't say yes or no. No medical literature had ever documented anything like this.

Wayne knelt beside the hospital bed. His right hand pressed the heart patch against Jenny's chest. His left hand rested on Jenny's wrist.

His left eye didn't glow blue.

Once the patch was removed, the system interface had closed. All visual enhancement and neural assistance functions were offline.

What he was using now wasn't the system's method. It was himself.

Ten seconds later, the patch on Jenny's chest began to glow.

Not blue—a faint white light, barely visible in the pitch-black hospital room.

The white-haired doctor crouched down again, pressing his fingers to Jenny's carotid artery once more.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

One beat. Then he waited two more seconds.

The white-haired doctor's hand was trembling now. Her heart rate had dropped to fifteen beats per minute.

Emily placed both hands on Jenny's forehead. Her temperature had stopped falling.

Bell's laughter had vanished from the communication channel.

In its place came static, then a single sentence.

"The self-destruct chip has already activated. External information cannot replace the signal from the hardware."

Wayne didn't speak. At this point, he couldn't.

The white-haired doctor noticed high-frequency tremors in Wayne's right index finger. Subtle, but perceptible.

His brain's processing speed had far exceeded safe limits. The side effects were manifesting in his peripheral nerves.