88: Chapter 88 Infrasound Sweeps Across, Biochip Protects the Body

Texas, Boca Chica, Starship Base, Flight Control Center.

This was a sunken, circular hall, surrounded on three sides by giant, curved data screens stretching from the floor to the ceiling.

Each screen scrolled in real-time with orbital parameters, thruster temperature curves, and shear force feedback data from the edge of the atmosphere.

In the dead center of the control center stood a circular holographic tactical table.

At this moment, Marcus Lin was standing before the tactical table, his hands pressed against the edge, staring at the waveform chart on the holographic screen labeled "liquid zero Injectee Biological Signs."

Victor Strauss stood to his right, while Irene Zhao sat at the monitoring terminal behind them, her fingers hovering motionless above the keyboard.

Musk's vital signs had suddenly dropped to zero without any warning.

They jumped directly from a normal pulse to a flat, straight dead line.

No one in the control center spoke.

The air felt as if all sound had been drained from it.

Then, Marcus Lin was the first to speak:

"Initiate contingency plan."

"Launch rockets. Target coordinates: 2,400 yards south-southeast of Hoover Dam, ground projection point at the old spillway."

"Deploy thirty-six infrasound arrays, arranged in a preset grid with twelve-degree intervals, covering the full radius."

Strauss's fingers had already tapped out the first line of authorization codes on the auxiliary control panel.

He switched the rocket launch sequence from standby to active, and the flight path automatically generated an orange-red arc on the screen, curving from Boca Chica toward the east-northeast.

At the same time,

Irene Zhao merged all biological sign channels related to the liquid zero injectee on the holographic table into the infrasound array's target coordinate system, confirming it with three short words:

"Synchronized."

On the control center's tracking screen, the first rocket lifted off from the launch pad, its exhaust plume cutting a slender, bright orange pillar of light through the Texas night sky.

Then, at the edge of the atmosphere, it jettisoned the first-stage booster.

The booster section flipped over after detachment, plummeting toward the ground at an extremely steep reentry angle, its descent trajectory pointing precisely at Hoover Dam.

The second, third, and fourth rockets followed in quick succession.

With less than forty seconds between each launch, the sky above Boca Chica was sliced into several burning, pale gold streaks by the series of crisscrossing exhaust plumes.

After the rockets breached the atmosphere, the first-stage debris, nose cones, terminal propulsion adjustment sections, and instrument deployment pods scattered across the horizon into twelve independent separation points.

Then, as if flicked by the same invisible hand, they simultaneously turned toward the old Colorado River channel, descending from the extreme zenith with pale white trails.

The thirty-six infrasound array instruments ejected from the various separation pods, each completing its final attitude adjustment directly above its predetermined coordinates.

Before touching down, they deployed the automatic anchoring cones at their bases.

The moment they struck the ground, the anchoring cones chiseled through the surface sand and embedded themselves into the bedrock below.

Each unit completed the entire sequence—from landing to locking in place, and finally to power self-check—in under three seconds.

The thirty-six cylindrical, matte-black devices formed a precise circular array on the ground surrounding Warehouse 18.

Like a ring of silent metal pillars, dark blue energy indicator stripes began to glow on the surface of their casings.

At the same time,

On the flight control center's holographic table, Musk's vital sign line, which had been flat for several minutes, suddenly jumped, beginning to pulse again from the dead line.

Irene Zhao's fingers, which had been hovering above the keyboard, finally came down.

"Vital signs restored."

"The restored waveform is a perfect match for the standard regeneration curve following a liquid zero injection."

Strauss stared at the recovering waveform chart, lifted his hands from the control panel, and crossed them over his chest, squeezing a cold, short laugh from the corner of his mouth:

"It's like this every time."

"Dying and coming back to life—next time we should install an auto-restart log for him."

Marcus Lin did not respond.

He stared at the increasingly dense orange-red reentry trajectories on the screen, only leaning back into his chair once the final array instrument had locked into place at its target coordinate.

Outside the control center,

the night sky over Boca Chica continued to flicker, illuminated by the lingering traces of exhaust plumes.

...

Southeast of Hoover Dam, Warehouse 18.

Musk switched the remote control from his left hand to his right, placed his thumb on the activation key, and walked unhurriedly toward the last semi-collapsed blast wall in front of the defensive line.

A beam of cold white moonlight leaked through a crack overhead, illuminating the edge of his jacket, torn by shrapnel at the shoulder, and the streaks of grime still unwashed from his face.

He looked at Diana and the others, his tone icy:

"You hicks who only know how to blast everything with artillery!"

"Today, I'll let you see what real high-tech weaponry is!"

Diana's expression changed abruptly.

Sterling and Augustus took a half-step back almost simultaneously.

But it was too late.

Musk pressed his thumb down cleanly and decisively.

On the ground surrounding Warehouse 18, those thirty-six cylindrical devices powered up simultaneously, their dark blue energy indicator stripes turning a blinding, cold white.

Waves of infrasound silently pierced the ground and rock layers from this ring of metal pillars, converging toward the center of Warehouse 18 in concentric circles.

The air itself began to vibrate violently at a low frequency, invisible to the naked eye but clearly perceptible to the internal organs.

Tiny pebbles and shrapnel on the ruin-strewn ground began to bounce in the resonance.

The heavily armed private elites behind Diana were the first to fall.

Their eardrums ruptured the instant the infrasound waves penetrated, blood surging from both ear canals simultaneously, then beginning to seep from their nasal cavities and the corners of their eyes.

Some knelt on the ground on the spot, clutching their heads, their fingers stained with dark red blood;

others lay on the ground, mouths agape and twitching, emitting hoarse, gasping sounds from their throats as if their airways were blocked;

and some were knocked unconscious instantly, their bodies collapsing onto the rubble in unnatural positions.

The fifty-plus giant warriors did not collapse like the ordinary elites, but under the continuous impact of the infrasound, their central nervous systems began to show clear signs of functional disorder.

Some of the giants stumbled around the ruins like blind men, smashing support pillars with their fists and knocking their companions to the ground;

another giant crouched in place, clutching his head, his legs too weak to stand, his massive body shaking incessantly in the resonance.

They could withstand artillery shells and bullets, but the infrasound penetrated their thick bones and muscles, creating indefensible resonance directly inside their cranial cavities.

The instant the infrasound struck, Diana felt a searing, stinging pain on her wrist.

It wasn't a wound; it was a bio-chip implanted inside her wrist bone, automatically activating when it sensed the host was about to suffer a lethal impact.

A translucent, pale blue energy shield, thin as a cicada's wing, expanded from her wrist, enveloping her entire body. The infrasound waves struck the surface of the shield and were scattered into layers of extremely fine ripples.

She was not knocked down, but inside the shield, she could still feel the attenuated, residual low-frequency tremors that had passed through the barrier; deep within her eardrums, there was a dull pain, like being repeatedly scratched by fingernails.

Sterling Remington's blue light lit up from the side of his neck,

and Augustus Knox's light shone from deep within his left eyeball.

Three pale blue shields lit up simultaneously in the center of the ruins, looking like three faint will-o'-the-wisps amidst the armed personnel lying on the ground, bleeding from all seven orifices.

Standing behind the blast wall, the moment Musk saw that the three blue lights were emanating from Diana's wrist, Sterling's neck, and Augustus's eye, he felt neither anger nor fear, only shook his head in extreme disappointment.

His tone carried the cold mockery of an engineer who had just seen through a shoddy component:

"Bio-chips?"

"So you've already developed this kind of thing, just not for the public—only for the internal use of you elites."

Edward stood by his side, remnants of his jacket, shredded by artillery, still hanging from his collar; the gash on his right shoulder, sliced open by shrapnel, had already healed to nothing more than a faint red scar.

He looked at the three pale blue shields flickering continuously in the infrasound, remained silent for a few seconds,

then slowly let out a sigh from his chest.

That sigh was not self-pity, but rather the moment a head of a century-old family—who had operated a political machine in Nevada for decades and considered himself part of the Lighthouse Country's top power circle—finally admitted a truth.

He used his fingertips to gently smooth the edge of the scorched family crest on his jacket and said softly:

"Only today have I truly seen clearly."

"The Warren Family, having deep roots in Nevada for over a hundred years, turns out to be truly nothing."

"This technology, the bio-chip—I've seen it for the first time today; I'd never even heard of it before."

"It goes to show that I was never truly part of the Lighthouse Country's elite."

Moran and Heinlein stood side-by-side behind the wreckage of another blast shelter.

Moran wiped away the bloodstains from the corner of his mouth caused by the explosion with a rag, watching the three pale blue shields flickering on the ruins. The expression on his face was not shock, but a gloomy silence that comes after being completely played.

He cursed under his breath, then turned his head to speak to Heinlein, almost to himself:

"The two of us—one Deputy Director of the FBI, one Director of the CIA—we hold the entire US intelligence system in our hands."

"But this technology, the bio-chip—we've never heard a single word about it."

Heinlein moved his gaze away from the blue light on Diana's wrist, his tone as dry as if he were reading a final investigative report on his own agency's dereliction of duty:

"They've hidden these things in another pipeline outside the intelligence system for who knows how many years."

"The classified files we hold are all just scraps they've doled out for us to see."

Diana braced herself with one hand against a tilted slab of concrete nearby, struggling to stand straight inside the shield.

Her face looked somewhat pale from the continuous impact of the infrasound, but her voice remained cold and hard, trying her best to maintain a condescending posture:

"Musk, your infrasound weapon's energy consumption must have a limit."

"Our bio-chips are the result of decades of military engineering; you can't outlast us."

"Stop now, hand over the Grey Alien's eyeball, and I can guarantee your family—all your direct relatives—will enjoy permanent wealth after you die."