21: Chapter 21 Time Anchor of Site Zero

The cold white light made the bloodstains on the console look sickly blue. The hiss of air leaking from the ventilation ducts circled overhead, stirring the stench of rust and ozone. Lin Yuan stared at the countdown in the lower right corner of the holographic screen: seventy-one hours and twenty-eight minutes. The Genetic Lock time was slipping away, and with every tick of the numbers, a sharp pain shot through the neural interface at the back of his neck, like ice shards sliding down his spine.

"Are you sure you want to activate the deep communication array?"

LY-001 stood three meters away, her fingers picking at the raised memory implant scar on the side of her neck. "THRONE-02 will immediately sense an external system intrusion; it will think you're trying to seize control of the facility. The AI here..." She paused, her throat bobbing. "It's not like your STC. It's hungry, and it's learned to hate."

Lin Yuan's fingertips swiped through the air, inputting decoding commands, his knuckles turning white from the pressure.

"Then let it think that."

The data stream on the screen poured down. Su Wanqing's access records, from three years before the Doomsday Calendar, a time when Station 17 had not yet broken ground. An impossible timestamp lay before his eyes. Lin Yuan called up the STC deep scanning protocol, raising the God-Emperor's Gaze level to 1.5%. Blood-red hues bloomed at the edges of his vision, and a needle-like burning sensation pricked his retinas.

A sharp screech of metal friction came from the corner. Rat Eye leaned against the wall, his right leg's mechanical joint twitching as rust-scented white steam vented from the cooling ports. He hunched his back, fingers digging hard into the base of his thigh, nails clawing into the seam between machine and flesh, where pale yellow cooling fluid seeped out.

"Ringing again?"

Scarface scanned his single eye between Rat Eye and the alloy door, his palm resting on the hilt of the Chainsword at his waist.

"It's not ringing," Rat Eye's voice was coarse. "It's the sound crawling out of my bones, boring upward from deep within the marrow. The Emergency Control Protocol... highest priority. If I betray the project or violate Anvil's core directives, the protocol will take over my body. It'll drive me like one would a corpse."

LY-001 took half a step back, her heel clicking sharply against the metal floor. She didn't look into Rat Eye's eyes.

"Monitor the neural synchronization rate."

Lin Yuan's gaze returned to the screen, his voice flat. "If it exceeds ninety-five percent, I will cut off your right leg. No hesitation, no apologies."

Rat Eye grinned, revealing blood-stained teeth. "Understood, Boss. Better a cripple than a puppet."

Lin Yuan tapped in the final set of commands. Su Wanqing's access records were nested within twelve layers of quantum algorithms. His temples throbbed as the STC's computing power collided with THRONE-02's defense protocols on the data layer. At the fourth layer, golden code tore through the black barrier, and a line of ancient code emerged:

[Station Zero: Latitude ██.██, Longitude ██.██]

[Time Anchor set]

[Recipient: Lin Yuan (47th Generation)]

[Message: The Anvil is cast; the hammer is in your hands]

Lin Yuan's fingertips trembled slightly. His mother had sent a message from the future to the past, planting a stake before the apocalypse ever arrived. His vision suddenly tilted, and the smell of rust filled his nostrils. He braced himself against the console, his knuckles turning white.

"The communication array is ready."

Lin Yuan walked toward the black metal pillar in the center of the main control room. Its surface was covered in bio-circuitry patterns, like exposed nerve bundles. It would penetrate the radiation interference layer on the surface to contact the Ashen Council, at the cost of lighting up Station 17's location and attracting predators within a hundred-mile radius.

"Sixty seconds."

Lin Yuan set the limit, his finger hovering over the start button, his knuckles pale. "Cut it off immediately sixty seconds after activation. THRONE-02 needs ninety seconds to complete triangulation. We have a chance."

"It only needs forty-five seconds," LY-001 said, standing by the backup circuit breaker, her finger resting on the red lever. "If it uses its backup computing units."

"Then pray Victor talks fast and doesn't lie."

Lin Yuan pressed the start button.

The lights in the main control room suddenly dimmed as power was instantly diverted to the communication array. The metal pillar emitted a low hum, and the runes on its surface glowed with a dark red light. It was a protocol language completely different from THRONE-01—primitive and bloody. The air temperature plummeted, and his breath condensed into white mist before him.

[Establishing communication...]

The data stream on the screen suddenly distorted. Golden warning code flashed at the edge of Lin Yuan's vision, followed immediately by a dark red data stream surging from the edges of the screen. THRONE-02 was forcibly accessing his system interface.

A sharp pain shot from his temples into his brain. Lin Yuan clenched his teeth, the taste of blood seeping between them. The dark red data stream flooded the communication channel, colliding with THRONE-01's golden code. The two forces tore at each other inside his skull, as if trying to turn his brain into mush.

[Warning: Alien STC protocol intrusion]

[Neural Sync Rate: 12%... 15%... 18%...]

"It's reading your memories!" LY-001 gripped the circuit breaker, her knuckles white. "It's searching for clues about Su Wanqing! Should I cut it?"

"Wait!"

Cold sweat broke out on Lin Yuan's forehead. Cold probes roamed the edges of his mind, searching for information regarding Su Wanqing and Station Zero. Stomach acid surged up his throat, a sensation more nauseating than a gunshot wound.

The connection progress bar reached its end, trembling on the brink of collapse.

[Communication established]

[Time remaining: 60 seconds]

A static-filled hologram unfolded. Victor's face was covered in blood, his mechanical prosthetic eye flickering with unstable red light, and a fresh crack ran across the lens. The roar of explosions echoed in the background, shaking the image and causing dust to fall from the ceiling.

"Lin Yuan?" Victor's voice was fragmented, carrying a sense of unbelievable ecstasy. "Where the hell did you get this channel? This frequency has been dead for ten years! The Scavengers' jammer towers have been scanning this band constantly!"

"Make it quick."

Lin Yuan stared at the countdown: fifty-eight seconds. "What's the situation? Why is the signal so poor?"

"Scavengers. That madman Martin upgraded the Hunt Order to a Purge Order. Their heavy artillery groups have wiped out three Ashen Council outposts in seventy-two hours. We need evacuation, we need vehicles, we need heavy weapons—"

Victor's image shook violently as the loud crash of a collapsing building came through.

"Intelligence."

Lin Yuan interrupted him: fifty-five seconds. "Su Wanqing, project ark—what do you know? Don't waste time asking for help; give me the facts first."

Victor's expression twisted, anger and fear tangled together. "Now is not the time for this! We are being slaughtered! If you still have that damned Anvil, rescue in exchange for intelligence—that's the deal! No rescue, no intelligence!"

"Fifty-two seconds."

Lin Yuan's voice was ice-cold. "Tell me about Su Wanqing, then I'll consider a rescue plan. You think I'm bluffing? Look to your left, Victor. Look at how much longer the walls of your East District can hold."

"You cold-blooded bastard!" Victor slammed his fist, making the image shake, but a calculating glint flashed in his eyes. "She appeared twenty years ago! In the tenth year of the Doomsday Calendar! She gave us the first batch of purification technology, then vanished. She mentioned Station 17, mentioned the 'Anvil,' and said someone would contact the surface from deep underground, bringing the true fire of the forge! That's you, right? You're the one she was waiting for?"

A violent explosion drowned out the latter half of his sentence. The image tore into static.

"Victor!"

"The East District wall has collapsed!"

Victor roared in despair, the roar of machine guns deafening in the background. "Listen, if you're the one she was waiting for, go to Station Zero! The original samples of the project ark are hidden there, along with the reason why all of this happened! The Scavengers aren't just trying to kill us; they're looking for that sample, for the technology that can resurrect the dead! That's—"

Blinding static flashed across the communication interface. THRONE-02's dark red data stream surged in, attempting to override the channel and cut off the final word. Lin Yuan's head felt like it was splitting open. Amidst the dark red visual afterimages, a massive mechanical throne slowly turned within the data abyss.

"It's seizing control! It's trying to triangulate the signal source!" LY-001 slammed down the circuit breaker.

The hum of the metal pillar stopped abruptly, and the hologram shattered into points of light. The main control room plunged into darkness, leaving only the faint red glow of the emergency lights to stretch everyone's shadows.

Lin Yuan leaned against the console, gasping for air. The smell of rust filled his nose, and a nosebleed ran down his upper lip. In his vision, golden and dark red afterimages were still consuming each other, the marks of a war between two systems seared onto his retinas.

"Communication duration?"

"Forty-seven seconds."

LY-001's fingers were shaking as she leaned her back against the wall. "We cut it early. THRONE-02 didn't finish the precise triangulation, but it knows... it knows THRONE-01 is in your head, Lin Yuan. It knows two systems are fighting a war."

Scarface rushed over, holding a portable radar, the cold light of the screen illuminating his terrified single eye. "Boss, look at this. My God..."

On the radar screen, a dense cluster of light points was moving toward Station 17 from three directions, forming an encircling arc. Every point was labeled with the same code: Scavenger scout drone swarms. There were over thirty of them, with even more signals joining the formation from beyond the horizon.

"Signal residue." Lin Yuan wiped the blood from under his nose and stood up, looking at the points of light representing death on the screen. "THRONE-02 is killing with a borrowed knife. It cannot touch us directly, so it lit up our location and let the Scavengers act as its executioners."

Rat Eye walked over, dragging his mechanical right leg. Every step was accompanied by the hiss of a leaking hydraulic system, with pale yellow cooling fluid mixed with streaks of blood seeping from the joint. "Seventy-two hours," he said, his voice carrying a mechanical tremor.

Lin Yuan looked at the approaching points of light on the radar, then at the remaining Genetic Lock time on the STC interface: seventy-one hours and fourteen minutes. "Victor has seventy-two hours. We have seventy-two hours as well."

"You're going to save them?"

LY-001 asked tentatively, her voice filled with uncertainty.

"I'm going to Station Zero."

Lin Yuan turned off the radar and walked toward the exit, his voice echoing in the empty main control room. "If what Victor said is true, the original samples of the project ark are hidden there, along with what Su Wanqing truly wanted me to know. If the Ashen Council can hold out until we arrive, then they aren't meant to die. If not..."

He didn't finish, but his meaning was clear.