89: Some doors, once closed, should never be opened again.

The Deep Palace was far larger than C-19 had imagined.

The main passage extending inward from the entrance hall had an elliptical cross-section, approximately six meters high and four meters wide, with walls on both sides covered in the same luminescent material as the hall's dome.

A cold blue light evenly coated every inch of the surface, leaving no shadows, no blind spots.

C-19 walked at the front of the formation, his Bolter held at his chest, muzzle pointed toward the end of the passage.

Behind him were thirty Thunder Warriors, divided into three squads of ten, advancing in an alternating cover formation.

Their boots struck the metal floor with a uniform, dull thud.

The enclosed passage amplified the sound; the vibration of thirty pairs of iron boots hitting the floor simultaneously transmitted through the floor, causing even the luminescent material on the walls to tremble faintly.

There was no dust in the passage.

No rust.

No trace of time's erosion. This structure, submerged ten thousand meters beneath the sea, had dry, clean air inside, a constant temperature, and the luster on the metal surfaces was indistinguishable from when they were first cast.

The craftsmanship of the Dark Age.

"First branch passage on the left," TW-156 reported softly from behind him.

C-19 glanced over.

It was a narrower passage, branching off from the left side of the main passage and sloping downward, disappearing into the blue light deeper within. Above the entrance was a metal plaque engraved with a line of text.

It was not Terra's Common Language.

It was some older script, with complex strokes.

C-19 couldn't decipher it, but he noticed a red marking around the edge of the plaque.

Hand-painted, the pigment had dried and cracked, but the color remained vivid.

Red.

"Mark it," C-19 said. "Continue forward."

They proceeded along the main passage for about three hundred meters.

Every fifty meters or so, a branch passage would appear—some to the left, some to the right, some ascending, some descending.

The entire Deep Palace extended in all directions through the seabed's rock layers, with the main passage branching into dozens of lines, which in turn branched into even more.

Some branch passage entrances were open, empty inside.

Some were sealed by heavy metal doors, also bearing red markings.

C-19 counted.

There were seven sealed doors in total.

Seven doors, seven red markings. Painted by Nathan Doom himself.

C-19 could tell because the brushstrokes of the red markings on each door differed—some hurried, some slow, some with one layer, some with three.

But the message they conveyed was the same.

Do not enter.

"Commander," TW-156 spoke again. "There's a large space ahead."

C-19 raised his hand, and the formation halted.

Thirty Thunder Warriors stopped simultaneously.

The hydraulic systems of their power armor emitted a brief hiss before falling silent.

In the passage, only the faint hum of the luminescent material and the low-frequency vibration of equipment operating somewhere in the distance remained.

C-19 walked to the end of the passage and saw the space.

It was a room larger than the entrance hall.

Rectangular, about one hundred meters long, fifty meters wide, and ten meters high. Rows of metal racks were arranged in the center of the room, filled with various devices.

Some were operational, their surface indicator lights flashing green, emitting faint heat.

Some were silent, a thin layer of dust accumulated on their casings.

A database.

The Dark Age Database Nathan Doom had mentioned.

C-19 entered the room. The air carried a faint ozone smell, produced by the long-term operation of numerous electronic devices.

The metal racks were neatly arranged, spaced just enough for a person to squeeze through sideways.

The racks were over three meters tall, their tops almost touching the ventilation ducts on the ceiling.

Some devices had labels on their casings, marked with the same ancient script indicating their contents.

The label colors varied.

Most were white.

Some were yellow.

A few were red.

The devices with red labels were placed separately in the deepest part of the room, enclosed by a circle of metal railings.

The railings were about 1.2 meters high, with sharp metal spikes welded to the top.

It wasn't to stop Thunder Warriors—a 1.2-meter railing couldn't hold back any genetically enhanced transhuman.

It was to stop ordinary people. To stop Nathan Doom's own scientists and technicians.

A sign hung on the railing, with a line written in common language:

"No Contact. Violators Will Be Executed. —N.D."

N.D.

Nathan Doom.

C-19 stared at the sign for a few seconds.

The words "Violators Will Be Executed" were written in red pigment, the same as the markings on the doors.

The handwriting was heavy; the writer had pressed down hard, the pigment seeping into the texture of the metal surface.

"Commander," Hector stepped forward from behind, his data slate rapidly recording something. "The scale of this room far exceeds expectations. Preliminary estimates suggest the data storage here is equivalent to..."

He paused, glanced down at the numbers on his data slate, then looked up again.

"Equivalent to what?"

"Equivalent to approximately forty times the total sum of knowledge we currently possess."

C-19 fell silent for a few seconds.

Forty times.

Throughout the entire Unification War so far, all the data seized by the Emperor's armies from various conquered tech overlords combined amounted to less than one-fortieth of this room.

"Continue the search," he said. "Find the control center for the Self-Destruct System."

"Yes."

They passed through the database into another passage.

This passage was narrower and darker than before; the luminescent material on the walls weakened here, the blue light thinning.

The air had changed too.

Previously, the air was dry, with a metallic taste and ozone smell. Now, something else was in the air.

C-19's nose twitched.

Incense.

Not ordinary incense.

Cloyingly sweet and thick, with a certain pungency.

He had never smelled this scent before.

As the cloying sweetness entered his nostrils, his stomach contracted slightly.

"Does anyone smell that?" he asked.

"I smell it," TW-156 said, his voice tight. "Something used in rituals."

TW-156 had been operational for only a week.

He shouldn't know what ritual incense smells like.

But he did. It was in the implanted memories.

C-1 Doom's chanting in the hall.

That low, distorted voice. That human bone ring.

"Be careful," he said.

At the end of the passage was a door.

Unlike the previously sealed doors, this one was half-open.

A faint orange light seeped through the crack. Not cold blue, but warm, flickering orange.

Firelight.

C-19 raised his gun and pushed the door open with the muzzle. The metal door was heavy, emitting a low grinding sound as the muzzle pressed against it. The hinges weren't rusted; they turned smoothly.

Behind the door was a small room.

About ten square meters, with a low ceiling only a little over two meters high.

C-19 had to duck slightly as he entered; his power armor helmet almost scraped the ceiling.

In the center of the room was a stone altar.

Not metal.

Real stone, gray-black, rough-surfaced, with chisel marks along the edges.

In this entirely metal Deep Palace, this stone stood out starkly.

It didn't belong here. Someone had specifically brought it in.

Several items were placed on the altar.

A bronze incense burner, with unburned ashes inside, emitting that cloying incense scent.

A few candles had burned down to their bases, wax solidified on the altar's surface, flowing along the stone's grain and hardening into irregular white trails.

A book.

The book was thick, its cover made of dark brown leather, edges worn.

C-19 reached out and opened the first page.

He couldn't understand the text inside.

It wasn't Dark Age standard script, nor any language he recognized.

The characters were twisted and deformed, with no discernible pattern between strokes.

Some characters had unnaturally curved lines, arcs beyond the normal range of human wrist movement.

His eyes began to ache.

Not from the light.

From the text itself.

Looking at them, his brain produced a strange sense of resistance, his temples throbbed faintly, and blurred shadows appeared at the edges of his vision.

C-19 closed the book.

His fingers lingered on the cover for a second.

The leather's texture felt strange—not cowhide, not sheepskin.

The grain was too fine, the pore distribution too uniform. He didn't want to guess what skin it was.

"Hector."

"Here."

Hector stood at the doorway without entering.

His data slate was held at his chest, but the screen was dark. He wasn't recording.

"Seal this room. Don't touch anything."

"Yes," Hector's voice was half a tone lighter than usual.

C-19 exited the room and took a deep breath.

The air in the passage, though still carrying the incense scent, was much fainter than in the room.

He noticed his palms were sweating.

The power armor's inner lining absorbed most of the moisture, but the friction between his palms and the gun stock had changed.

Nathan Doom had said, "Some knowledge humanity should not possess."

C-19 didn't know what was written in that book.

But he knew it wasn't something he should touch.

They searched for nearly another hour.

The Deep Palace's structure was more complex than anyone had anticipated.

Some passages led to laboratories, some to living quarters, some to storage areas.

Most of the rooms were empty. Nathan Doom said he had ordered the evacuation three days ago, and it didn't seem like a lie.

The beds in the living quarters were neatly made, the cooking utensils in the kitchen were cleaned, and even the trash bins had been emptied.

C-19 paused in one of the dorm rooms.

There was a photo frame on the nightstand.

The frame was empty; the photo had been removed.

But fingerprints remained on the glass of the frame. Very small fingerprints.

Not an adult's.

Whoever lived here had a child.

He placed the frame back and continued onward.

"Commander."

TW-156's voice came through the communicator.

He was leading a five-man squad searching the lower levels of the Deep Palace.

"Speak."

"We've found something... you'd better come see for yourself."

Following TW-156's locator signal, C-19 passed through two corridors, descended a spiral staircase, and arrived at the lowest level of the Deep Palace.

The air here was colder.

A chill that seeped into the bones.

The luminescent material on the walls had almost completely vanished here, leaving only sporadic points of blue light.

C-19 turned on the headlamp of his power armor, the white beam cutting through the darkness.

TW-156 stood before a massive metal door.

The door was closed. But there was no red mark on it.

Instead, there was a control panel. On the panel was a screen displaying several lines of text:

[Self-Destruct System Control Center]

[Status: Standby]

[Trigger Condition: 24 hours after the Master Controller's heartbeat stops]

[Current Master Controller Heart Rate]

[Warning: Unauthorized access will trigger immediate self-destruct]

C-19 stared at those words for a long time.

.

Nathan Doom's heartbeat.

At this very moment, hundreds of meters above them in the entrance hall, that gray-haired man sat in a chair, his heart beating sixty-two times per minute.

This number was transmitted in real-time to this screen via the Deep Palace's internal sensor network.

If that number became zero, the countdown would begin.

"Can you crack it?" he asked.

Hector stepped forward, crouched before the control panel, and carefully examined the externally displayed information on the screen.

He didn't touch any input areas, only read the status data automatically displayed by the panel.

His fingers hovered two centimeters above the screen, never making contact.

"The encryption level is extremely high," he said. "This isn't an ordinary password lock. It's bound to Nathan Doom's biometrics—heartbeat, body temperature, brainwaves, triple verification."

"Can we bypass it?"

"Theoretically, yes. But it would take time. A lot of time."

"How much?"

Hector was silent for a few seconds.

"With full tools and equipment, probably three to five days."

"We don't have full tools and equipment."

"Then longer."

C-19 closed his eyes.

Three to five days.

They didn't have three to five days.

If Nathan Doom died during that time, whether executed, by suicide, or by accident, the Self-Destruct System would activate.

Twenty-four hours later, the entire Deep Palace and all the data within would be destroyed.

Including that database worth forty times all their knowledge combined.

"There's another way," Hector said.

"Speak."

"Have Nathan Doom turn it off himself."

C-19 opened his eyes.

"He won't."

"Maybe he will," Hector said. "If we give him a good enough reason."

C-19 looked at the pulsing number on the control panel.

.

"Let's go," he said. "Back."

When C-19 returned to the entrance hall, Corvin was still standing in the same position, his gun aimed at Nathan Doom.

But something had changed.

Corvin's posture hadn't changed, the angle of his gun hadn't changed, the position of his feet hadn't changed.

But the way he held his gun had changed.

Before, his fingers were relaxed when holding the gun, his index finger resting outside the trigger guard, ready to pull but not eager to do so.

That was a veteran's standard gun-holding posture.

Now his fingers were stiff.

Not the stiffness of tension, but the stiffness of deliberately controlling something.

C-19 had known Corvin for a year.

He had never seen Corvin hold a gun this way.

"Corvin," C-19 called to him.

Corvin turned his head. His left hand was trembling again.

"Commander."

"What did he say?"

Corvin was silent for a second.

"Nothing important."

C-19 glanced at him.

Corvin's answer came too quickly.

Someone who truly thought "nothing important" wouldn't give an answer in just one second.

They'd need time to recall, to filter, to judge what was important and what wasn't.

One second.

This meant Corvin had already thought about how to answer this question before C-19 returned.

C-19 didn't press further.

Not because he didn't want to know, but because now wasn't the time.

He walked toward Nathan Doom.

The man was still sitting in the chair.

His gray eyes were open, appearing especially hollow in the blue light.

Seeing C-19 approach, the corner of his mouth curved slightly.

"Found it?"

"Found it," C-19 said.

"But you can't open it."

"Can't open it."

Nathan Doom nodded.

"So you came back."

"I came back."

"You want me to turn it off."

C-19 didn't answer.

Nathan Doom looked at him, something flickering in those gray eyes.

Not triumph, not mockery, closer to a kind of confirmation.

"I can turn it off," Nathan Doom said. "But I have conditions."

"You already said. You want to see the Emperor."

"No," Nathan Doom shook his head. "That condition is void."

He paused.

"In the hour you were gone, that soldier of yours talked to me a bit," he glanced at Corvin. "He told me your Emperor personally goes into battle, kills with his own hands."

C-19 said nothing.

"That was unexpected," Nathan Doom said. "A ruler willing to get his hands bloody. Not common."

He stood up and walked to C-19.

The two stood face to face.

C-19 was a head taller, but when Nathan Doom looked up at him, that imposing aura didn't diminish at all.

"But that changes nothing," Nathan Doom said. "He kills with his own hands, but that doesn't mean he knows what he's killing. He stands on piles of corpses declaring victory, but that doesn't mean he knows what those corpses once built."

His fingers unconsciously turned the human bone ring.

"My new condition is just one."

"Speak."

"Don't open the data sealed with red marks."

C-19 frowned.

"Why?"

Nathan Doom's expression changed.

That expression that switched between rage and calm at will disappeared.

Replaced by a pure, undisguised fear.

His hands were trembling.

Not his left hand.

Both hands.

"Because those things aren't knowledge," he said, his voice low. "Those things are a curse."

The speed at which his fingers turned the human bone ring increased.

"The ancestors of the Pan-Pacific once fought a sect called the Singularity Brotherhood. Those people tried to combine technology with... something else. Our ancestors destroyed them, but the research materials they left behind were preserved."

He looked at C-19.

"I spent ten years studying those materials. Ten years, then I sealed them all away. Because I discovered the things described in those materials, they're real."

His voice trembled.

"They're out there. In places we can't see, they've been watching us, and those materials are the key to opening the door."

C-19 was silent.

He remembered the altar room.

The stone altar, the bronze incense burner, the candles, that book that gave a headache when opened.

He remembered the stabbing pain in his temples and the shadows at the edge of his vision when he opened that book.

Remembered the leather texture on the book's cover that didn't belong to any known animal.

Nathan Doom's hands were trembling.

This man who ruled the Pacific Ocean for thirty years, who built a fortress ten thousand meters deep in the ocean, he was afraid.

Truly afraid.

"I agree," C-19 said.

Nathan Doom looked at him, a flicker of surprise in his gray eyes.

"You agree?"

"I agree, the data with red marks won't be opened."

"Can you make that decision?"

C-19 knew he might not be able to keep this promise.

The Emperor's orders were above all else; if the Emperor demanded the data be opened, he had no power to refuse.

But now he needed Nathan Doom to turn off the Self-Destruct System.

"In this Deep Palace, I can make that decision," he said.

Nathan Doom stared at him for a long time.

Those gray eyes were motionless in the blue light, pupils slightly contracting and expanding, contracting and expanding.

Then he smiled.

Not the sharp, mad smile from before, but a tired, relieved smile.

"Good."

"Come with me."