55: Chapter 55 Eight-Minute Strangulation and Three-Second Possession

The holographic projection of the industrial terminal flickered violently in the blood mist. The casting pod's progress bar was stuck at seventy-three percent. Lin Yuan's right palm was still coated with semi-dried scabs, skin and flesh wounds left from tearing off metal fragments. Every time he clenched his fist, he could feel nerve endings screaming in the charred tissue.

Regular thudding sounds came from the alloy walls of B-7, like some giant blunt instrument testing the metal's fatigue limit.

"Southeast corner, wall thickness remaining twelve centimeters." Chen Duo's voice came from the doorway, echoing like metal friction. He had his back to the casting pod, the bolter's crosshairs Fine-tuning as the shadow outside the door moved. "They've changed tactics; no longer charging blindly."

Lin Yuan didn't turn around. His gaze swept across the terminal screen, the stormclaw's casting data stream pouring down like a waterfall. Four minutes and seventeen seconds remained, but the Purge Main Force clearly didn't intend to give them that time.

Chen Duo's breathing suddenly became heavy in the channel.

That sound was wrong. Lin Yuan's finger hovered above the emergency interrupt button. He had heard Chen Duo's gasps in radiation storms, heard the bubbly sound of his lungs pierced by shrapnel, heard his suppressed groans as he endured the burning of the neural interface in the Blackstone chamber. But the breathing frequency now was double; one belonged to a human, the other to something older, vaster, like two different lungs vying for oxygen in the same chest cavity.

"Chen Duo?"

No response.

When Lin Yuan turned around, the muzzle of the bolter was already aimed at his forehead. Chen Duo's golden pupils were fully dilated, data-stream-like patterns flowing across his irises—those were THRONE-00's erosion indicators. His finger was on the trigger, knuckles emitting a faint grinding sound from excessive force, but the safety wasn't off.

That 0.3-second tremor, Lin Yuan saw it.

His brain completed three calculations within 0.8 seconds. Plan one: dodge sideways and draw his pistol to shoot Chen Duo's knee, 62% survival rate, but the casting pod would lose its only guard. Plan two: activate the terminal's forced shutdown protocol, destroying Chen Duo's brainstem through neural interface overload, 89% survival rate, but permanently losing the living STC extension and the only Astartes warrior. Plan three: close-quarters contact, awaken his primary consciousness, 67% survival rate.

The image of Chen Duo blocking that shrapnel for him in the back alley flashed back. Twelve years ago, a scavenger gang in the wasteland ambushed their temporary camp. Chen Duo used his body to block the shrapnel, his lungs were pierced, and he coughed blood for three days. Back then, Lin Yuan owed him a life; now he owed Chen Duo a reason not to give up.

Lin Yuan took a step forward, pressing his burned palm directly against Chen Duo's chest.

The sensation under his palm wasn't a heartbeat, but two conflicting tremors. One was Chen Duo's original heart, pumping blood wildly beneath his ribs; the other was a golden simulated pulse, surging through his blood vessels along a silver network. THRONE-00 was taking over the motor cortex with a dual-heartbeat mechanism, attempting to destroy the industrial terminal through Chen Duo's hand.

"District 7, ventilation shaft." Lin Yuan lowered his voice, pressing down hard with his palm. The friction between his scalded skin and the combat suit caused new sharp pain. "Three years ago, to snatch that can of compressed protein, you crawled into the scavenger's camp through the ventilation shaft, got discovered, and bit off two of their fingers."

Chen Duo's pupils contracted for an instant, and the golden data stream showed a discontinuity.

"Do you remember that taste? Moldy protein blocks, mixed with rust and radiation dust." Lin Yuan's palm felt the tearing of the two heartbeats in Chen Duo's chest. "You're not a vessel, Chen Duo. You're the one who would fight for half a can of food."

Chen Duo's Adam's apple bobbed, and the weight of the bolter caused his left arm to sag slightly.

In the internal darkness unseen by Lin Yuan, Chen Duo stood at the intersection of two heartbeats. THRONE-00's consciousness, like a golden tide, tried to overwhelm his neural synapses. It was providing perfect tactical data: the launch angle of the Purge Main Force's rockets, weak points in the wall, the command node locations of the mutated Commanders—all information was forcibly injected as first-person memories.

"Accept full synchronization, and you will gain perfect battlefield precognition." THRONE-00's voice seemed to come from deep within his bone marrow. "Refuse, and the host dies."

Chen Duo smiled in the darkness. His consciousness was accustomed to this tearing sensation; from the wasteland to ARK, from human to quasi-Astartes, he had always walked in the cracks. He didn't need to become THRONE-00's puppet to get data; he only needed to borrow it, then cage it.

The data stream surged in, but Chen Duo used willpower to direct it to the visual cortex rather than the motor nerves. He saw it: in three seconds, the Purge Main Force's burrowing bomb would breach from the southeast corner, and the mutated Commander would be hidden in the blind spot behind the explosion. He saw Lin Yuan's movement trajectory 0.5 seconds later, and the energy fluctuations at the moment the casting pod completed.

The cost was that the golden erosion was forcibly compressed into his left arm. The humerus groaned under the pressure, bone fibers fractured at the nano-level, and searing pain shot up his spine like an electric current.

Chen Duo violently regained control. The golden pupils receded, revealing their original black-brown. He swung the muzzle, pulling the trigger the instant the burrowing bomb burst through the wall.

"Southeast corner! Three seconds!"

The bolter round wasn't aimed at the wall, but at the empty space in front of it. The exploding metal fragments collided with the burrowing bomb's shrapnel in mid-air, deflecting the fatal blow. But the shockwave still knocked Chen Duo flying. He crashed against the casting pod's exterior, his left arm hanging at an unnatural angle, bone piercing through the fibers of his combat suit.

Lin Yuan lunged at the terminal, his right hand a blur on the keyboard. Casting progress: ninety-eight percent.

The wall collapsed, and three mutated Commanders emerged from the dust. Their chests split open, revealing pulsating black bio-beacons within, their frequency identical to Number Zero's silver network. The Purge Main Force wasn't randomly attracted; they were a hunting unit remotely controlled by the Sowing Pod.

"THRONE-01!" Lin Yuan roared, "Intercept!"

Within THRONE-01's core code, a sealed segment suddenly activated. It was an emergency cutoff subroutine, a military protocol requiring it to immediately terminate host life signs when homologous invasion reached seventy percent. But another piece of code resisted—a protective instinct developed after establishing a neural bridge with Chen Duo.

In 0.5 seconds of conflict, THRONE-01 chose a third path. It exposed its hidden Blackstone Shard overload capability. Silver geometric patterns suddenly appeared on the metal floor around the casting pod, and a Blackstone force field erupted spherically, crushing the foremost mutated Commander into pulp.

"Casting complete."

The mechanical arm retracted, and the stormclaw light assault vehicle rose from the cooling mist. Its armor plates bore obvious scorch marks, the main weapon rack was empty, and a '60% damaged' indicator flashed on its side. But the engine roared to life, and the front of its ramming armor gleamed with the cold light of Blackstone alloy.

Lin Yuan pulled Chen Duo up and pushed him into the cockpit. Chen Duo's broken left arm prevented him from operating it alone, but the neural interface connected directly to Lin Yuan's visual cortex. In an instant, Lin Yuan felt the searing pain of Chen Duo's broken left arm—a thirty percent pain empathy, as if his own bones were slowly being snapped.

"Course locked." The system's prompt sounded coldly. "Unauthorized navigation program detected, forced route: Core Zone Sowing Pod."

Lin Yuan's hand froze on the control stick. THRONE-00's backdoor had been implanted in the STC template; this wasn't a vehicle, but a transport coffin to a gene harvesting device.

Chen Duo's right hand rested on his shoulder, neural sharing upgraded to tactical precognition. Lin Yuan suddenly saw the scene three seconds later: the stormclaw crashing through the reinforced wall of B-7, a dark abyss below the vertical shaft, and the silver glow of the Sowing Pod waiting in the depths.

"Not transport." Chen Duo's voice was hoarse with pain. "It's an attack. I see Number Zero; it's inside the Purge Main Force's Commanders, remotely controlling them through bio-beacons. This isn't an encirclement, it's a harvest."

Lin Yuan gripped the control stick, the stormclaw's engine roaring to its critical point. The ramming armor aimed at the wall, and the countdown synchronized to zero in their minds.

"Hold on."

Amidst the screech of tearing metal, the stormclaw, like a cannonball, smashed through the reinforced wall. Concrete and rebar shattered before the ramming armor, and the darkness of the vertical shaft swallowed the vehicle. Weightlessness struck, Lin Yuan's and Chen Duo's breaths synchronized in the neural link, two heartbeats in their respective chests, beating at the same frequency for the first time.

Behind them, in the ruins of B-7, the black beacons within the chests of the surviving mutated Commanders were transmitting the stormclaw's fall trajectory in real-time to the golden eyes deep within the Sowing Pod.