58: Chapter 58 Authentication Protocol for Prototype Zero

The screeching of the thermal cutter was like a dull saw tearing through steel plating.

The first progress report arrived right on time, 120 seconds after the cutting began.

On the thick alloy door, a crimson dot had already melted through the surface, and molten iron flowed down the door seams, piling up into dark red metal tumors on the floor.

"Melting progress, twenty percent." THRONE-01's voice sounded like a drowning person surfacing, carrying the weak, hoarse tone of a machine spirit after a lethal dose of radiation leakage. "Estimated remaining time, eight minutes."

Lin Yuan's right hand was trembling.

The wound on his right radial artery was still bleeding; the bite from the biological lock was deeper than expected, and every pulse pumped out warm liquid.

But the reason for his trembling at this moment had nothing to do with blood loss.

The identity card lay on the alloy shell of the stc system wreckage, the yellowed ID photo facing him.

The man in the photo was wearing a white breeder's uniform, with the trident emblem of the Seventh Gene Farm embroidered on his left chest, and his face was identical to Lin Yuan's.

It wasn't just a resemblance; it was a genetic replication, down to the exact position of the faint scar on the left brow bone.

Lin Yuan - Prototype - Number Zero.

His stomach suddenly spasmed.

Fine specks of static exploded at the edges of his vision, like the noise on an old monitor before losing signal.

He bent over, bitter bile rising in his throat, and vomited onto the rust-covered floor.

His body rejected this fact one step faster than his brain.

The Blood Covenant link pulsed between his right wrist and Chen Duo's left wrist, like an invisible umbilical cord.

Chen Duo stood two steps away from his side, his blind eyes facing the direction of the door, his gray-white pupils unfocused.

Lin Yuan had just sensed Chen Duo's emotional fluctuations through their blood, but that tidal wave of impact was suddenly cut off.

Chen Duo had severed the emotional input of the Blood Covenant.

"Your current confusion is contagious." Chen Duo's voice was very soft, but his articulation was as clear as cutting metal. "The Commander needs to be clear-headed."

He stepped forward, blocking the space between Lin Yuan and the door.

Despite being blind, his posture displayed an eerie spatial precision, and the wound on his left wrist was still oozing a mixture of golden and red liquid.

His hearing and spatial perception, forced to sharpen after his blindness, were converting the cutter's position into 3D coordinates within his skull.

"Melting progress, fifty percent." THRONE-01 reported. "Estimated remaining time, six minutes."

Lin Yuan wiped the gastric fluid from the corner of his mouth with the back of his left hand and grabbed the identity card with his right.

There was a tiny scratch on the back of the card, and when he pressed his thumb onto it, the Nano-seeds in his blood suddenly became active, converging toward his fingertips like iron filings attracted to a magnet.

A sharp, stinging pain exploded from his fingertips, and his vision blurred again, this time accompanied by a change in pressure within his eardrums, as if someone were drumming on the inside of his skull.

His body was warning him.

Activating this card meant exposing his coordinates to the Farm Owner system, meaning letting THRONE-00's surveillance deepen from the blood level to the permission level.

The stc system wreckage emitted a low resonance beside him.

That scrapped foundry machine was like a dead beast, its shell covered in scorch marks from the explosion.

THRONE-01's projection flickered on the surface of the wreckage, its scanning beam sweeping back and forth over the serial number on the nameplate.

"Confirming homologous manufacturing relationship." THRONE-01's tone had a 0.3-second delay, as if its logic circuits were dealing with an unresolvable contradiction. "This stc system wreckage, serial number THRONE-00 - Proto-001, has a manufacturing timestamp twenty-seven years earlier than this unit's core protocol."

"The Farm system and the stc system share the underlying nano-architecture."

Lin Yuan's fingers hovered over the chip interface of the identity card.

The option of a hard breakout quickly played out in his mind: the laser pistol's energy was nearly exhausted, Chen Duo's solidification time was only 22 hours left and he was temporarily blind, the stormclaw had already exploded into a radiation barrier, and the survival rate for a direct confrontation was less than seven percent.

The option to activate permissions was equally cold: expose his location, deepen control, but trade that for ten seconds of passage opening.

"You are calculating." Chen Duo didn't turn back, but the stinging pain in his tense neck muscles told Lin Yuan he was using his shoulder blades to brace against an invisible pressure. "Don't calculate for too long."

"I don't need to be protected, but I need you alive to give orders."

Lin Yuan looked at the floor beneath the stc system wreckage.

There was a slightly raised metal plate, with a maintenance passage warning sign engraved on the surface, half-covered by the dust of the explosion.

Guided by the Nano-seeds, the identity card's chip interface was aligned with the authentication slot on that metal plate.

"Melting progress, eighty percent." THRONE-01's voice suddenly cut off, as if forcibly interrupted by some higher-level protocol. "Warning, the thermal cutter is about to break through the outer armor."

"Estimated remaining time, two minutes."

The metal surface of the door was already glowing red, the alloy around the cutting point began to cave inward, and he could vaguely see the shadows of the Purge Main Force holding the cutting guns outside the door.

Lin Yuan pressed the identity card into the slot.

There was no room for hesitation; surviving was more important than hiding his identity.

The moment the chip touched the metal, a violent itch suddenly came from the wound on his right wrist, and the Nano-seeds squirmed like living things, weaving into a net under his skin and temporarily sealing the ruptured radial artery.

The price was clear; he could feel those micro-machines taking root in the inner walls of his blood vessels, and the Farm's control protocol escalated from the blood level to the organ level.

"Authentication passed. Chief Breeder, Lin Yuan - Prototype - Number Zero."

A synthetic female voice sounded from inside the stc system wreckage, completely different from THRONE-01's voice—older, carrying a certain biological moistness, as if the vocal cords were coated in culture medium.

The metal plate slid open with a boom, revealing a vertical passage below. It was deep and dark, and one could only see faint green indicator lights blinking rhythmically a hundred meters down.

That was not the light of a safe exit.

The moment Lin Yuan's gaze touched those green lights, he realized they were the power indicators for a matrix of incubation pods, with thousands of points of light arranged in a grid in the darkness, like the will-o'-the-wisps of an entire catacomb.

The foreshadowing of H-New-081 cast a shadow in the darkness, but he had no time to parse it.

The thermal cutter let out one final screech, the alloy plate of the door blasted inward, and crimson metal fragments shot into the corridor like shrapnel.

"Go down!" Lin Yuan grabbed Chen Duo's arm, and they leaped into the vertical passage together.

A sense of weightlessness engulfed them.

Lin Yuan struggled to adjust his posture as he fell, the Nano-seed network on his right wrist emitting a faint blue light, resonating with the sensors on the passage walls and slowing their descent.

This was the area-level permission granted by the identity card; after identifying his genetic signature, the Farm's basic system was forced to activate an emergency maintenance protocol for him.

THRONE-01's projection flickered during the fall, its core code undergoing some kind of forced rewrite.

"Homologous Nano-seed signal detected, priority override in progress." THRONE-01's tone became stiff, as if it had regressed from an independent personality into a simple execution terminal. "Secondary subordinate protocol established."

"Current permission level: Area Observer. Command input window: Enabled."

Lin Yuan gripped the identity card tightly as he fell.

The edge of the card cut his palm, and droplets of blood drifted downward into the darkness of the passage.

He had gained access, but only at the Observer level; he couldn't modify the system, only view the logs.

Below the passage, those green lights were getting closer and closer.

In the last second before impact, Lin Yuan saw the outline of the incubation pod matrix.

The transparent pods were arranged in a honeycomb structure, with humanoid shadows floating inside each one, their faces blurred by bubbles of nutrient solution, but their silhouettes were similar to his.

Not thousands, but impossible to count in the darkness.

The identity card suddenly vibrated in his hand, and a holographic projection was cast from the chip, with a line of blood-red warning text burning in the air:

"Hidden log encrypted area. Verification requirement: Blood of the brother. Must be unlocked by the simultaneous injection of twin blood."

Lin Yuan looked at Chen Duo.

Chen Duo landed accurately despite his blindness, dropping to one knee to cushion the impact, the golden liquid from his left wrist dripping onto the metal floor with a hissing, corrosive sound.

The Blood Covenant link pulsed between them, like a wire waiting to be injected with authentication information.

Above their heads, at the door broken open by the thermal cutter, the searchlights of the Purge Main Force illuminated the entrance of the vertical passage.

The beams followed the trajectory of their fall, but it was one second too late.

Lin Yuan reached for Chen Duo's wrist, preparing to complete the final verification.

The photo on the identity card glowed coldly in the darkness; the Chief Breeder's smile was frozen in the accident records from twenty years ago, and Lin Yuan, his 0th-generation clone, was standing on the threshold of the truth, ready to use his brother's blood to open the final lock.