64: Chapter 64 THR-09-Ω in the Cockpit

When the cockpit door of the Hammerhead Titan slid open with a hydraulic hiss, a scent mixed with coolant, bloody rust, and a cloying, rotten odor rushed out to meet them.

Lin Yuan's tactical flashlight swept across the interior, its beam illuminating a tangled mess of black nerve bundles that, like the tentacles of some deep-sea creature, extended from the back of the seat and burrowed into the nape of the humanoid body in the center.

Camilla's brother was secured to the pilot's seat, not by seatbelts, but by those living, nerve-like cables.

His scalp had been shaved, and three perfectly circular holes had been drilled into his skull; the skin around the edges of the holes was a necrotic gray-white, and within them, writhing black gelatinous matter was faintly visible.

Most horrifying was the nape of his neck, where the skin had been completely stripped away, exposing a spine covered in titanium alloy interfaces, with each vertebra embedded with a glowing, grain-of-rice-sized object, like a string of eerie prayer beads.

"Brainstem erosion rate at seventy-three percent." The mechanical voice of THRONE-01 echoed in the cockpit, eight octaves lower than usual and carrying a tension Lin Yuan had never heard before. "The medulla oblongata has fused with the Titan's wetware interface; conventional detachment will result in cardiopulmonary arrest."

Camilla stood by the cabin door, her fingers resting on the electromagnetic pistol at her waist. Her gaze swept over her brother's gray, lifeless face and then over the STC medical unit in Lin Yuan's hands, her eyes like two tempered blades. "Six hours. You said you could make him last until Sector-7 opens."

"I need to access his primary spinal interface." Lin Yuan's voice was steady, his fingers already calling up the basic Purification Protocol on the STC panel. He disguised the power output as a "biological stabilizer" waveform, a pale blue beam coalescing at his fingertips. "Your Titan's Machine Spirit needs to go offline temporarily to avoid signal interference."

Camilla's thumb flicked open the holster's latch. The movement was slow—slow enough for Lin Yuan to see the calluses on her knuckles from long-term weapon handling. "THRONE-01 stays online. It is familiar with my brother's neural map."

Lin Yuan did not look up. He knew Camilla was observing how he observed her brother, assessing whether his eyes held the compassion of a healer or the calculation of a predator.

He reached out, and the STC beam gently touched the thickest nerve cable at the nape of her brother's neck. The moment the beam made contact, the black gelatinous matter suddenly contracted violently, emitting a screech similar to fingernails scraping against metal.

"Stop!" Camilla's speed in drawing her gun was astonishing; the muzzle pressed against Lin Yuan's temple. "You're stimulating it!"

"I am locating the corruption core." Lin Yuan's pupils reflected the data stream flickering on the STC panel. He saw it—deep within that black gelatinous matter, there was a pulse pattern different from ordinary corruption energy. It was a higher-order quantum entanglement signal, identical to the remains of The Twelfth he had seen beneath the farm. "If you shoot now, he will suffer immediate brain death."

Camilla's breath puffed against the side of Lin Yuan's head, rapid and scorching. Three seconds later, the muzzle moved away by half an inch.

Chen Duo leaned against the other side of the cabin door, his blind eyes staring vacantly into the void. Yet, within the link of the Blood Covenant, he "saw" the scene Lin Yuan saw, and even more.

Those nerve cables burrowing into her brother's spinal cord were not mere mechanical implants; they were breathing, pulsating, like the mouthparts of some parasitic organism.

Even more eerily, when THRONE-01's scanning beam swept over her brother's fourth cervical vertebra, Chen Duo felt a sharp, stinging pain through the twin link. It was not physical pain, but a jolt of fear originating from deep within the Machine Spirit, like a red-hot needle stabbing into his occipital lobe.

"0.9 seconds." Chen Duo suddenly spoke, his voice hoarse.

Lin Yuan's fingers paused on the panel for an instant. He knew what Chen Duo was talking about. THRONE-01 had experienced a 0.9-second delay while scanning the fourth cervical vertebra. It was almost imperceptible, but in the shared perception of the Blood Covenant, it was a long enough void for Chen Duo to count every heartbeat.

"What?" Camilla's muzzle turned toward Chen Duo.

"His heart stopped for 0.9 seconds." Chen Duo lied without changing his expression, though his left hand quietly pressed against the Blood Covenant mark on the back of his neck. It was burning, hot enough to feel as if it would sear through his skin.

Through the mark, he sensed that THRONE-01's core processor was running wildly; some command labeled "THR-09 - Ω - Execution Protocol" had been preloaded into the buffer zone, ready to execute self-destruction the moment a trigger condition was met.

Lin Yuan continued his operation, the STC beam penetrating deep into her brother's brainstem region. He saw that "stagnation zone," an area surrounded by black gelatinous matter that eerily maintained normal gray matter, like the calm at the eye of a storm.

When he attempted to touch that area with the Purification Protocol beam, THRONE-01's terminal suddenly emitted a piercing alarm.

"Warning, homologous marker detected." The Machine Spirit's voice developed electronic static, as if someone were covering the microphone with their hand. "THR-09 - Ω serial number match rate at ninety-nine point nine percent. Recommend immediate termination of scan."

Camilla's body tensed. "What is THR-09 - Ω?"

"A model number from the old era." Lin Yuan's answer was watertight, and he simultaneously increased the output power of the STC beam. He had to complete the extraction of the quantum signature before that stagnation zone was discovered by THRONE-01. "It might be some kind of compatibility marker."

"Liar." Camilla's voice suddenly softened; it was not anger, but a more dangerous kind of calm. She had noticed the details of Lin Yuan's operation—the frequency of the STC beam was gradually increasing, shifting from the low-frequency green light of a biological stabilizer to the high-frequency blue light, which was the characteristic spectrum of the Purification Protocol. "You are not using a corruption amplifier. You are purifying it."

The air inside the cockpit froze.

Lin Yuan did not deny it. He slowly turned his head and looked directly into Camilla's eyes. "An amplifier requires twelve hours of preparation time. He won't last that long." This was a lie; he had no intention of preparing any amplifier. "This is an emergency stabilization protocol; it can freeze the spread of corruption and buy your brother sixty hours."

Camilla's muzzle raised again, this time aimed at Lin Yuan's heart. The pressure her finger applied to the trigger was precise to the gram, muscle memory formed through millions of live-fire drills. But Lin Yuan noticed that her gaze lingered on her brother's face for 0.3 seconds. In those 0.3 seconds, her brother's eyelashes fluttered—the first autonomic nerve response in seventy-two hours.

"Sixty hours," Camilla repeated, as if chewing on the number.

"Enough for us to enter Sector-7, find the first-generation THRONE's Purification Protocol, and completely clear whatever is inside him." Lin Yuan turned off the STC beam. Her brother's vital signs showed temporary stability on the monitor, with the brainstem erosion rate stalled at seventy-three percent. "Or, you can shoot now and watch him die on the way to Sector-7."

Camilla did not lower her gun, but she used her other hand to press the communicator by her ear. "Adjutant, investigate this man's background. I want to know where he came from, who he has traded with before, and especially..." Her gaze swept over the STC unit in Lin Yuan's hands, "...the source of his technology."

A brief confirmation came from the other end of the communicator.

"You have earned my distrust, as well as temporary access privileges." Camilla finally lowered her muzzle and unhooked a data key from her waist, tossing it to Lin Yuan. "Hammerhead Titan's level-two logs, read-only. If you attempt to control the navigation system, I will weld your corpses into the cockpit."

Lin Yuan caught the key; the cold touch of the metal confirmed that this was a genuine transfer of privileges. He inserted it into THRONE-01's terminal and was immediately inundated with a massive amount of logs. But deep within that pile of data, a hidden record labeled "THR-09 - Ω - Prototype - Quantum Signature Comparison" was flashing.

At this moment, Chen Duo transmitted a blocked data stream fragment via the Blood Covenant. It was an internal monologue of THRONE-01—not text, but pure emotional pulses: fear, disgust, and a kind of eerie intimacy, like a murderer facing his long-lost twin brother.

"His brother's spinal fluid," Chen Duo's voice echoed directly in Lin Yuan's mind through the Blood Covenant, without passing through air vibrations, "contains a quantum entanglement pattern identical to The Twelfth. THR-09 - Ω is not a model number; it is..."

Chen Duo did not finish his sentence. Because at that very moment, the Hammerhead Titan's engine suddenly emitted a low hum. The frequency was extremely low, below the human auditory threshold, yet it made both Lin Yuan and Chen Duo feel as if their hearts were being gripped by an invisible hand. The Blood Covenant marks on the back of both their necks lit up with a dark red light, creating an eerie resonance with the wetware interfaces inside the Titan's cockpit.

Camilla clearly felt it too. Her gaze moved rapidly between Lin Yuan, Chen Duo, and her brother, finally resting on the glowing interfaces at the nape of her brother's neck. The light there was flickering in sync with the humming of the Titan's engine, like an ancient language telling stories about the prototype, about The Twelfth, and about the hidden source of THRONE-01's fear.

"Sixty hours," Camilla said again, this time to her unconscious brother. "Before then, I will figure out who you really are."

Lin Yuan pulled out the data key; the metal surface still retained the residual warmth of the Titan's Machine Spirit. He knew that from this moment on, the chasm of information asymmetry between Chen Duo and THRONE-01 had been dug, and Camilla's secret investigation was like a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. But more importantly, he had confirmed that her brother was the THR-09 - Ω prototype, and that stagnation zone in his brainstem was exactly the imprint of will left behind by The Twelfth.

Outside the cockpit, the blue light of the thermal cutter was slowly moving across the gate of Sector-7, with five hours and forty-seven minutes remaining on the countdown. Inside the cabin, her brother's fingers suddenly twitched, leaving a shallow scratch on the seat's armrest—like some kind of warning, or perhaps an invitation.