11: Chapter 11 Circuit Breakers and Ceramic Steel Armor

The moment the isolation door closed behind them, the hydraulic locks emitted a teeth-gritting metallic snap.

Lin Yuan did not turn back; the Biological Armor on his left shoulder was slowly writhing beneath his skin, like a parasite awakened from slumber, creeping along his collarbone toward the side of his neck.

He raised his right hand; the grip of his Mark IV laser pistol was soaked with sweat, and the energy indicator displayed a glaring red: one percent.

"My lord, that light..." Rat Eye's voice caught in his throat, as if something were strangling his windpipe.

At the end of the corridor, the blast door of the B-2 level armory stood open; inside, it was not dark, but filled with a disturbing, dim crimson glow.

Pressure-sensitive plates covered the floor, and every thirty-centimeter square metal plate was etched with fine cooling grooves, resembling a chessboard waiting for a sacrifice.

On the ceiling, six plasma conduits hung like inverted vipers, with pale blue arcs of electricity gathering at their nozzles.

Scarface crouched down, his fingers hovering three centimeters above the sensor plate.

T-001's bodily fluids were still embedded under his fingernails, shimmering with an eerie iridescence in the dim red light.

"Weight threshold, seventy kilograms per plate." Scarface's voice was extremely low, as if afraid of disturbing a sleeping Machine God. "But there's a trap here. Walking across will trigger a meltdown, and flying over will trigger the air pressure sensors. The only way to survive..." He looked up, his single eye flashing with a hint of calculation, "is to use enough weight to press down on all the plates simultaneously, causing the system to misidentify it as a 'static load'."

Lin Yuan stared at the floor. The sensor plates were arranged in a grid, twenty-four of them in total. To press down all the plates at once would require at least two people to lie on them, or...

"Or one person lies on them, and the other walks across his bones." Scarface grinned, revealing gums blackened by radiation erosion. "The things in the armory are worth the price. MK-II Power Armor, Plasteel chest armor, a prototype Bolter pistol. Any single item could trade for three years' worth of clean water quota in Anvil City."

Rat Eye's breathing became rapid, his fingers unconsciously reaching for the power sword switch at his waist. The hilt emitted a low, charging hum, sounding like a beast awakening in the confined space.

"That is the wrath of God..." Rat Eye muttered, his pupils dilating. "The fires of judgment are about to descend..."

Lin Yuan ignored his religious hysteria. The system interface unfolded on his retina, and the STC logic core was parsing the structure of the trap before him. There were no instructions to jump left or right, only a line of cold probability assessment: [Biological Armor resistance protocol: Survival rate 62%, probability of functional damage to left arm 89%, meltdown termination success rate 41%].

Sixty-two. In the wasteland, this number meant hitting the jackpot; it meant still being able to breathe.

"How many more secrets have you not handed over?" Lin Yuan asked Scarface, his fingers already pressing against the hardening nodes of the Biological Armor. The skin on his left arm began to keratinize, and bone plates pierced through the muscle fibers, forming a layer of ghastly white bioceramic armor.

Scarface's single eye narrowed into a slit. He was evaluating, calculating the odds of this deal. Lin Yuan knew what he was thinking; speculators in the wasteland were always weighing when to hold their cards and when to go all in.

"If I said there was one last trump card," Scarface said slowly, "would you kill me right now?"

"Fifteen seconds remaining." Lin Yuan looked at the timer inside the blast door; the red digits were ticking down. That wasn't the countdown for the meltdown protocol, but the estimated time for the Scavengers to breach the B-1 level isolation door. A faint scratching sound came from the ventilation duct; T-001 was battling something, and the rhythm of scales scraping against metal became frantic and rapid.

There was no time left.

Lin Yuan took a step forward, pressing his left arm directly onto the first pressure-sensitive plate. The moment the bioceramic touched the metal, the cooling grooves spewed scorching steam, and the temperature reading instantly soared to eighty degrees Celsius. Pain shot up his spine like an electric current, but he did not pull back, instead pressing the weight of his entire body onto it.

"You're crazy!" Scarface roared. "That's a plasma preheating coil!"

The second plate, the third. Lin Yuan's left arm began to smoke, and the Biological Armor emitted a crackling sound in the high heat; the keratinized layer carbonized and flaked off, revealing the pink, newly formed tissue beneath. The system prompts flickered frantically: [Warning: Genetic resonance fluctuation, left arm nerve damage 12%... 23%...].

Rat Eye knelt on the ground, chanting a prayer that blended wasteland dialect and the doctrines of the Ecclesiarchy. His gaze wandered between Lin Yuan's left arm and the depths of the armory, where something in the darkness seemed to be responding to the agony of the Biological Armor, emitting a low-frequency resonant tremor.

The fourth plate. Cold sweat seeped from Lin Yuan's temples; his left arm had lost all sensation, leaving only the burning pain transmitted by his nerve endings. The red indicator lights on the pressure-sensitive plates were extinguishing one by one, but the plasma conduits on the ceiling lit up, the arcs at their nozzles turning from blue to incandescent white.

The meltdown protocol was about to initiate.

"Five seconds left!" Scarface suddenly pulled a grease-stained chip from his inner pocket; it was contraband wrapped in layers of electrical tape. "Circuit breaker! Hold it down, don't move!"

He lunged for the control panel in the corner, his fingers flying over the rusted keys. The click of the chip inserting into the slot was exceptionally clear in the dead silence. Lin Yuan felt the pressure plate beneath his left arm suddenly lose its heat, replaced by an eerie chill.

"Did you think I would really watch you burn to ash?" Scarface panted, his single eye bloodshot. "Then how would I be your armorer?"

The incandescent white light of the plasma conduits extinguished the moment it reached the critical point, like a snuffed-out candle flame. The pressure-sensitive plates all turned green, and the locking mechanism inside the blast door emitted a dull unlocking sound.

Lin Yuan pulled out his left arm; the Biological Armor was charred black, and beneath the carbonized layer, writhing granulation tissue could be seen repairing the wounds at a speed visible to the naked eye. The price had been paid.

The scene inside the armory unfolded under the dim red emergency lights.

This was not the neat shelving of a modern armory, but a display room resembling a slaughterhouse. Damaged pre-war flags hung on the walls, and on the central platform, the wreckage of a MK-II Power Armor stood silently. The Plasteel chest armor was riddled with bullet holes, the servo-motor on the left arm was completely rusted, and the power pack had been torn apart by some immense force, exposing the tangled cables inside. But this was indeed Warhammer 40K grimdark-style tactical equipment, a terrifying crystallization of the military-industrial complex from humanity's Golden Age.

[STC-compatible template detected: Astartes MK-II Power Armor (damage level 67%)], [Repair requirements: 12 hours / 200 units of biomass], [Currently parsable components: Plasteel chest armor (Defense +3), servo-joints (strength enhancement failed)].

Lin Yuan's fingers brushed over the bullet holes on the surface of the chest armor; the cold touch of the metal penetrated the residual heat of the Biological Armor. Beneath the base of the Power Armor, a military-grade encrypted box was half-buried in the dust, with the Lin family's biometric lock engraved on its casing.

"That is..." Scarface's voice suddenly became unusually dry. "Don't touch the thing in that corner. It's not meant for humans."

His single eye stared fixedly at the shadows in the deepest part of the armory, where there was a stand covered by a black cloth; its silhouette resembled some kind of humanoid figure, but it was too tall, too twisted. Rat Eye suddenly let out a short cry of alarm; his gaze fell on Lin Yuan's left arm, then shifted to the black-cloth-covered stand, and his face instantly turned pale.

"Resonance..." Rat Eye trembled. "My lord, your arm... is singing with that thing..."

Lin Yuan did not move. The system interface suddenly popped up a new warning, not about the equipment, but about himself: [Genetic sample scanning... Tagging complete: Templar Knights - Alpha-class priority recovery object. Upload terminal: ARK-07 main database. Status: Locked].

His biological data, the complete genetic sequence uploaded during that transaction with the AI, had already been tagged by a faction called the "Templar Knights." The hidden danger was no longer just a potential threat, but a literal guillotine hanging over his head.

"The Scavengers have breached B-1." Scarface said suddenly; he had somehow hacked into the armory's surveillance terminal, and the screen displayed the scene in the B-1 level corridor. Five Tyranid-modified entities were tearing apart the wreckage of the isolation door, their carapaces covered in T-001's bodily fluids, but more Scavengers were pouring in from the ventilation ducts.

Lin Yuan walked to the console, and the permission interface for the B-3 level unfolded on his retina. Borrowing a knife to kill was just the beginning; now it was time to collect interest. He reverse-hacked the B-1 level's automated defense system, seizing control of the turrets that had originally been aimed at him.

"Level 2 clearance." Lin Yuan said to Scarface, tossing him a biometric key removed from the console. "The armory is yours to manage. If you can't fix that Power Armor, you can lie under the pressure plates and be a stepping stone."

Scarface caught the key, a glimmer of relieved cunning flashing in his single eye. He had finally completely bound himself to this long-term meal ticket, at the cost of all his secrets.

The laser pistol was inserted into the armory's emergency charging slot, and the energy indicator began to climb slowly: ten percent, twenty percent, thirty-five percent. Enough to fire three more shots, or detonate one of the support pillars on the B-1 level.

A vibration suddenly came from the floor, not the charge of the Scavengers, but a low-frequency pulse from deeper down. B-4 level, the thermal isolation chamber beneath the armory; some kind of life signal was reviving during the scan. On the surveillance screen, the label for the B-4 level flashed blood red: [Cryo-chamber anomaly: Astartes modification test subject... data corrupted...].

"Fifteen minutes." Scarface stared at the main force of Scavengers gathering in the B-1 level surveillance feed. "They've found the stairs."

Lin Yuan raised the laser pistol, now charged to thirty-five percent, aiming at the area in the surveillance feed where the Scavengers were most concentrated. The automated turrets on the B-1 level slowly rotated under his control, and the hum of the barrels charging came through the monitor's speakers, sounding like the death knell of the Grim Reaper.

He did not fire, but simply let the turrets hover a millimeter away from the firing threshold.

In the dim red light, the charred Biological Armor was flaking off, revealing the newly formed, ghastly white bone plates beneath. The wreckage of the MK-II Power Armor stood silent on the platform, like a steel corpse waiting to be resurrected. And the life signal coming from the B-4 level was slamming against the thermal isolation chamber door at a frequency of three times per minute.

The corners of Lin Yuan's mouth pulled into a temperatureless arc, his finger hovering over the fire button.

The turret's crosshairs locked onto the captain of the Scavenger vanguard, the Tyranid-modified entity with the thickest carapace.

In the surveillance feed, the modified entity raised its head, its compound eyes staring directly at the camera, as if it had sensed something.

Lin Yuan's index finger slowly pressed down.