27: Chapter 27 The Gray Wolf Enters the Cage

The hydraulic door of the containment chamber rose completely, and a wave of heat mixed with the scent of metal and sweat rushed out to meet them.

The Tyrant took its first step out of the chamber, and the concrete floor let out a dull thud.

The process of it straightening its body was slow and oppressive; its joints clicked and popped, and the muscles beneath its restraint suit tightened and relaxed in layers, like some kind of large animal just waking from hibernation.

Chen Feng stepped back twice, his finger resting on the control terminal in his pocket.

The Tyrant's dark red pupils swept across the entire B2 laboratory, finally fixing on Chen Feng.

Its breathing was heavy, and the airflow expelled from its nostrils carried an abnormal heat.

"Look at me," Chen Feng said.

The Tyrant tilted its head.

"Advance."

The two-hundred-plus kilogram body took a step forward, and the floor vibrated again.

It did not walk quickly, but every step carried an irresistible sense of oppression.

Walking to within three meters of Chen Feng, it stopped on its own.

It was not because of an order, but because it "chose" to stop.

A line of data popped up on the system panel: Autonomous judgment capability fluctuating, obedience maintained at C+.

Chen Feng stared into those dark red eyes for two seconds.

"Stop."

The Tyrant did not move. Because it wasn't moving to begin with.

But its gaze shifted away from Chen Feng, turning toward the direction of the ceiling above.

It had heard something.

Chen Feng heard it too—an extremely faint, rhythmic vibration coming from above.

It was not the structural noise of the building itself; it was man-made.

People were moving quickly, and there was more than one.

He pressed his communicator.

"Marcus, where are they?"

"Just broke the roof door lock, four people, moving fast," Marcus's voice was very low. "Professional cutting tools, the lock was melted from the inside, the whole process took no more than twenty seconds. They are entering the top-floor stairwell."

"What about their speed?"

"Very fast. They aren't searching floor by floor; they're heading straight down."

Chen Feng frowned. "Straight down?"

"They skipped the second and first floors, didn't even look. They know the target is underground."

That made sense. Drone reconnaissance, camera testing, frequency monitoring—these people had spent nearly a week on intelligence gathering, and they had long since figured out the structure of this building.

They knew everything above ground was just ordinary office areas and production lines; the real valuable things were all underground.

"What's the situation with Big Black?"

"Standing by on the first floor. I have it guarding the stairwell exit. It's easy for them to go down, but if they want to return the way they came, they'll have to pass by its jaws."

"Good. What about your men?"

"On both sides of the B1 corridor, the path has been cleared. The electromagnetic door leading to B2 is open, just as you instructed."

Chen Feng looked down at the Tyrant.

This guy's breathing rate had quickened again, its muscles were starting to show subtle spasms, and the seams of the restraint suit were emitting sounds of being overwhelmed.

It felt the threat approaching; some kind of primitive instinct had been activated.

"Marcus, turn off the lights in the B1 corridor."

"...All of them?"

"Leave the emergency lights. I want them to be able to see the path, but not see clearly."

"Received."

Chen Feng looked at the system panel again.

The Tyrant's adrenaline levels were skyrocketing, and its heart rate had jumped from 38 beats per minute to 62—for a body modified by the T-Virus, this was already approaching the threshold for a combat state.

He pulled the control terminal out of his pocket, his thumb hovering over the "Attack" button.

Then he did something that Samantha would absolutely scream to stop if she were awake—he walked behind the Tyrant and reached out to undo the three metal buckles on the back of the restraint suit.

The restraint suit slid to the floor.

The Tyrant's upper body was completely exposed.

The muscle tissue reshaped by the T-Virus presented an abnormal texture under the dim blue light; every muscle fiber was more than three times thicker than a normal person's, and the vascular network on the skin's surface was clearly visible, like a living map.

Its height seemed to stretch a few more centimeters after losing the suppression of the restraint suit, and its head was almost touching the 2.8-meter ceiling of the B2 level.

Chen Feng retreated behind the laboratory bench and pushed Samantha's swivel chair into the corner—she was still sleeping face down, completely unaware that a bio-weapon capable of going berserk at any moment was standing three meters away.

"Turn off the B2 lights too," he said into the communicator, "leave only the emergency lighting in the containment chamber area."

"Boss, are you serious?"

"Marcus, when have I ever not been serious?"

A barely audible sigh came through the communicator.

Three seconds later, the main lighting on the B2 level was completely extinguished.

Only the emergency light above the containment chamber remained on, casting a pale circle of light in the darkness.

The Tyrant stood at the edge of the circle of light, half its body hidden in the shadows, with only those dark red eyes emitting a faint glow in the darkness.

Chen Feng leaned against the laboratory bench and adjusted the screen brightness of the control terminal to the lowest setting.

Wait.

—

Four black figures moved silently downward in the stairwell.

Jason, who was leading, used hand signals to direct the formation.

He was forty-two years old and had spent fourteen years working for private military contractors in the Middle East and Africa. He had led teams ranging from eight to eighty people, but "Gray Wolf" had always been his most comfortable configuration—four men, light equipment, fast advance, precision strikes.

Behind him was "Hammer" Karl, the team's heavy gunner, carrying an HK416 short-barreled assault rifle and four flashbangs.

Further behind was "Shadow" Nadim, the electronic warfare expert responsible for communication suppression and data extraction, with a military-grade portable hard drive cloner hanging at his waist.

Bringing up the rear was "Doctor" Patel, the team medic and sniper, but tonight's indoor operation didn't require a sniper rifle, so he had switched to an MP7 submachine gun.

After entering from the roof, they had passed through the top floor in less than forty seconds.

Jason's pre-battle intelligence was very thorough—the building structure diagram provided by Blake was precise down to the location of every load-bearing column.

There were no valuable targets above ground; the core area was on the B2 level, and the entrance was behind the electromagnetic door at the end of the B1 corridor.

The electromagnetic door was a problem. Blake said that door required an iris scan to open, but Jason had brought a thermal cutter, and he could breach the door in ninety seconds.

As they passed the first-floor stairwell, Jason noticed something moving deep in the corridor.

He raised his night-vision goggles to take a look—a huge black silhouette was crouching in the center of the hall, like an abnormally large dog.

Blake had mentioned this thing in the intelligence report. "Modified Dog," fast speed, amazing bite force, but essentially still a dog.

Jason ignored it—their route was downward, not outward. As long as they didn't trigger its territorial defense instinct, it wouldn't actively attack targets in the stairwell.

He used hand signals to indicate for the team to continue downward.

B1 level.

The moment Jason pushed open the fire door, he noticed the lights in the corridor were wrong—only emergency lighting remained, and the dim red light stained the entire corridor with an unsettling color.

He paused for two seconds and scanned the corridor with his night-vision goggles.

Empty.

No people, no infrared indicator lights from cameras, nothing at all.

At the end of the corridor, that electromagnetic door that should have required an iris scan to open—

Was open.

Jason's hand hovered in mid-air.

Fourteen years of battlefield experience made the back of his neck start to tingle.

A security door that required biometric identification to open, wide open at two in the morning.

This wasn't right.

He looked back at Karl. Karl had noticed it too and shook his head slightly.

But Jason remembered Blake's words—three hundred thousand US dollars, to be completed within forty-eight hours. The hard drive data and drug samples, neither could be missing.

He also remembered another sentence: "The target company's security chief is Marcus Turner, former Marine. You should know him."

Jason did indeed know him. In 2014, in Afghanistan, they had stayed at the same forward operating base for three months.

Marcus was a good soldier, but too upright—upright in the way that the military would use him as a test subject and then discard him.

But that was ten years ago.

Jason made a decision. He raised his left fist, then extended two fingers forward—advance.

The four men crossed the B1 corridor, passed through the open electromagnetic door, and entered the stairs leading to B2.

The stairs were narrow, only wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. Jason was in front, Karl in the back, with Nadim and Patel in the middle.

Their boots had been specially treated, making almost no sound as they stepped on the metal steps.

Reaching the last step, Jason saw the B2 fire door.

It was also open.

The back of his neck tingled even more intensely.

In the night-vision goggles, the B2 corridor was darker than B1.

There was almost no light source, only a bit of pale light shining from an area in the distance.

There was a strange smell in the air—not chemical reagents, but more like the scent of a large predator's cage at a zoo, a strong mixture of hormones and sweat.

Jason took a deep breath, pushed open the fire door, and led the team into B2.

The four men advanced quickly along the corridor.

The image in the night-vision goggles was a standard laboratory layout—glass compartments on both sides, containing various instruments and equipment, with no people.

At the end of the corridor was a larger open area, and that pale light was shining from there.

Jason stopped at the end of the corridor.

He saw the emergency light.

He saw an empty glass chamber below the emergency light, the chamber door raised, with nothing inside.

Then he saw a pile of things on the floor next to the chamber—metal buckles, torn fabric, broken restraint straps.

His brain completed the deduction in 0.5 seconds: this was some kind of restraint device, and it had been broken free from the inside.

Jason turned around abruptly.

In the night-vision display, in the darkness deep in the corridor, there were two points of light.

Dark red.

At a height of about 2.4 meters.

Those two points of light moved.

A low, deep sound of breathing squeezed from the depths of a chest cavity echoed throughout the B2 level, like some kind of large engine just starting up.

Then, heavy footsteps sounded.

One step.

The floor vibrated.

Another step.

Jason's night-vision goggles finally captured the complete outline—

A humanoid thing walked out of the darkness.

Its shoulder width exceeded one meter, its head almost grazed the ceiling, and its exposed upper body was covered with abnormally bulging muscle tissue, with every muscle fiber squirming beneath the skin.

Its arms hung at its sides, its fingers as thick as forearms, and fragments of the restraint strap that hadn't completely fallen off were still wrapped around its knuckles.

Those dark red eyes stared fixedly at the four people in the corridor.

Karl was the first to react. "What the fuck—"

He raised the HK416, aiming the muzzle at the outline.

Jason wanted to shout "Don't shoot," but it was already too late.

In some corner deep in the darkness, an invisible finger pressed the button on the control terminal.

"Attack."

The Tyrant moved.