88: Chapter 88 Bio-Titans and the Gene Lock

When the elevator cable came to a steady stop at the eighth underground level, Lin Yuan smelled a scent. It was the fishy sweetness of decaying flesh mixed with the scorched smell of overheated metal, like a giant beast's stomach churning in the darkness. Camilla's wheelchair rolled across the floor, its tires sticking to semi-solidified dark red resin.

"Bioreactor area," THRONE-01's voice came through the helmet speaker, flat and mechanical. "Thermal imaging shows three large heat sources three hundred meters ahead, abnormal in volume. But..."

He paused for 0.3 seconds. For him, this was a long hesitation.

"Moving targets detected. Seven of them, high speed, crawling along the walls."

DORN-00 crouched at the elevator door, his fingertips touching the resin on the floor as his mutated tissue vibrated slightly. "Heartbeats. Three massive thuds in sync, twice per minute. And seven sets of light footsteps." He looked up, his pupils dilating in the darkness. "They are breathing. A living defense system."

Lin Yuan gripped his melta gun. Machines that could breathe suggested a forced fusion of biology and mechanics, which was more unsettling than pure automated turrets.

They passed through the maintenance tunnel. At the moment they turned the corner, Lin Yuan's Silver-wire Network suddenly stung. The warning came too late. A crimson scanning beam shot down from the ceiling, enveloping the four of them. The beam lingered on DORN-00 for half a second, emitting a piercing beep, then shifted to THRONE-01, and finally locked onto Lin Yuan and Camilla.

[gene tag: Unknown. Permission: None. Threat Level: Intruder.]

A synthesized mechanical voice flooded in from all directions. The walls split open, and seven twisted figures slid out. They were Gene Hunterss, half-human and half-machine; their lower bodies were fused into multi-legged walking mechanisms, while their upper bodies remained human torsos, their heads replaced by trigeminal nerve probe arrays. Their arms were two slender melta spears, with bio-acid dripping from the tips.

"The Seventh Legion's watchdogs," Camilla gasped, "modified from failed prototypes."

The lead hunter raised its melta spear, the tip charging with a sudden flash of blue light.

"Scatter!"

Lin Yuan rolled to dodge. The melta gun roared; the first shot hit the leader's chest, blowing apart biological tissue, yet the mechanical skeleton continued to move. The second shot grazed THRONE-01's shoulder armor, burning a molten hole in the wall.

THRONE-01 did not counterattack immediately. His STC implant flashed frantically, calculating trajectories and energy consumption. DORN-00, meanwhile, moved like a shadow close to the ground, the agility granted by his mutation allowing him to move like a fish in water within the narrow corridor as he tore open the sensor array of the hunter on the left with one claw.

"They're scanning genes!" DORN-00 roared. "Only a Seventh Legion tag will make them stop!"

"You do not have pure genes," THRONE-01 suddenly spoke. His voice remained steady, but his body moved. His Power Armor roared as he lunged at DORN-00, his left power claw extending to precisely grip the back of DORN-00's neck. "But you have the mutated bio-electricity of The Original Seed in your body. Severing spinal nerves three through five and extracting 800 volts of electricity can simulate a gene tag pulse to deceive the defense system."

"You're crazy!" DORN-00 struggled, his mutated muscles bulging. But THRONE-01's mechanical strength was superior; the power claw pierced his skin, and blood flowed down the gaps in the armor.

"This is the most efficient solution," THRONE-01 stated, as if reading data. "After the spinal nerves are excised, you will retain basic mobility and can continue to be used as a scout unit. The risk is controlled. Otherwise, we will all be vaporized by the melta spears."

"Risk controlled?" Lin Yuan charged out from behind cover, his right hand's melta gun pointing directly at THRONE-01's helmet. "You treat your comrades as consumables—how are you any different from Marcus Kane?"

"The difference lies in the goal." THRONE-01's helmet turned toward Lin Yuan, his sensors flashing with red light. "Kane is for eternity; we are for victory. DORN-00 is a fragment of negative emotions stripped from The Original Seed; his value lies in his functionality. Emotional memory has already been paid as tax by me; I cannot feel your anger, I can only calculate the probability of survival."

The power claw tightened. DORN-00's spine gave an overburdened click.

Lin Yuan's finger rested on the trigger. The burning sensation of the Silver-wire Network spread along his right arm, reminding him that this was a side effect of the maintenance protocol, as well as the fragile bond between him and THRONE-01. "Final warning. Let go."

"Negative. Tactical calculations show..."

Lin Yuan fired. The melta round grazed THRONE-01's left shoulder, burning through the outer ceramic layer of the Power Armor to reveal the mechanical structure beneath. THRONE-01's form stiffened, and DORN-00 took the chance to break free, rolling to the wall with four smoking blood holes on his back.

"You fired at me for him," THRONE-01's voice was devoid of any rise or fall. "Efficiency decreased by forty-seven percent. You are repeating Kane's mistake, letting emotion interfere with the optimal solution."

"The optimal solution isn't the only solution." Lin Yuan stood in front of DORN-00, his melta gun pointed at the approaching Gene Hunterss. "DORN-00, do you have another way?"

DORN-00 panted heavily, looking toward the end of the corridor. There stood a wall woven from biological bone and alloy, with three cracks arranged in a triangular pattern, fifteen meters high. Inside the cracks, the outlines of cryo-pods loomed in a faint blue glow. The wall was covered in palm-shaped Gene Locks surrounded by neural induction probes.

"They want more than just blood," DORN-00 stood up with difficulty, the mutated tissue on his palm glowing with a dark purple light. "It's emotion. Anger, fear, the feeling of being betrayed. I have plenty of that inside me."

"Your bio-electricity is insufficient to trigger the Gene Lock," THRONE-01 said coldly. "The success rate is only..."

"Shut up." For the first time, DORN-00 showed naked hostility. "You can't calculate this. You've already paid your emotions as tax, so you can't feel them crying. Those hunters, they used to be human before they were forcibly modified into this. I can hear their pain."

He charged toward the wall, ignoring the melta spears fired by the Gene Hunterss behind him. Lin Yuan turned and fired three consecutive shots, hitting the pursuing mechanical creatures to buy DORN-00 time.

DORN-00's palm pressed into the Gene Lock's groove. Neural probes instantly pierced his skin, going deep into the marrow. His body tensed, and he let out a roar that didn't sound human. It contained the fear discarded by The Original Seed, the anger of being forgotten by his brothers, and the loneliness of being treated as a monster by the world.

Dark purple bio-electricity flowed through the neural probes into the wall. The Gene Hunterss suddenly froze, their trigeminal nerve probe arrays flashing frantically before they collapsed one by one, entering sleep mode.

"Resonance established," Camilla stared at her portable terminal, her voice tight. "He is talking to the defense system's machine spirit... those hunters are responding to him. They are... crying?"

But the hatch only opened a crack; the energy valve indicator remained red. Secondary locking required higher permissions.

"There's another lock," Camilla quickly flipped through the permission interface. "It needs a Biosage-level override. I can try, but it will leave a digital fingerprint, and the Bishop Network might..."

"Do it," Lin Yuan said, while monitoring THRONE-01. The latter stood in place, the blood on his power claw dripping to the floor with a soft patter.

Camilla's fingers flew across the virtual keyboard. A stream of Biosage permission code flooded the system like a sharp scalpel dissecting an ancient firewall. When she entered the final command, the lights of the entire eighth floor flickered violently, the hatch slowly opened, and the vein-like pipes on the walls gradually dimmed.

Three Titans were exposed under the cold light.

Standing eighteen point seven meters tall, exactly one-third the height of a standard Warlord-class Titan, they were a battlefield-adaptive variant designed specifically for underground facilities. Biological tissue accounted for forty-three percent, with mechanical structures making up fifty-seven percent. Muscle fibers were wound around hydraulic rods like steel cables, and dozens of neural interface lines extended from the spine to connect to the back reactor. The heads were covered in heavy armor, with the mandibles exposed to reveal non-human teeth. There was no heart in the chest, only a biological furnace pulsing with dark red light, four hundred times the scale of ARK-08.

"Fury-class," Camilla's voice was trembling, "a forbidden project between the Seventh Legion and the Biosages. Neural direct-link, no cockpit, only fusion."

"Activation status: Neural dormancy," THRONE-01 scanned, as if the previous conflict had never happened. "Requires a specific gene sequence to awaken. Energy valve locked. Currently unable to be deployed in combat."

Lin Yuan walked closer to one of them, seeing the nutrient fluid seeping from the armor gaps and the meat buds growing at the mechanical joints. This thing could hardly be called a weapon. It was an imprisoned monster, like a prisoner cast in concrete, neither alive nor dead.

"Neural dormancy confirmed," THRONE-01 continued. "Awakening requires a Seventh Legion pure gene sequence. If my plan had been adopted just now, we would already possess the bio-electricity reserves to open the energy valve..."

"Your plan would have made me lose him," Lin Yuan interrupted, looking at DORN-00 who was leaning against the wall panting. The wounds on his palm were smoking, and the blood on his back was turning black in the darkness. "And we just proved that he is more valuable than a battery. Those hunters obeyed his call; it had nothing to do with an electric shock—it was resonance."

DORN-00 looked up, the hostility in his eyes fading slightly but not entirely gone. "You stopped him. But you, brother," he looked at THRONE-01, "you really wanted to cut my spine just now. Not for victory, but to prove your calculations are superior to my existence."

THRONE-01's helmet turned toward DORN-00, the sensor's red light glowing steadily. "Inefficient emotional unit. Your existence slows down tactical execution and increases uncontrollable variables. From now on, the functional symbiosis protocol is limited to data exchange and does not include trust."

"Suits me fine," DORN-00 sneered. "Soulless calculation module. Next time I encounter a Gene Lock, I'll open it myself. Keep your power claw to yourself."

The rift between the two was clearly visible under the cold light, like the hatch that had just opened—impossible to close.

Camilla suddenly held her breath. On the terminal screen, red warnings flashed frantically, and her knuckles turned white as she gripped the armrests of her wheelchair. "Network tracking! The Bishop Network found my override command... it's some kind of consciousness scanning, like an eye watching me through the screen."

Lin Yuan walked quickly to her side. On the screen, a coordinate lock box was precisely framed over the location of the B17-Theta lab, the distance value shrinking at a rate visible to the naked eye.

"Marcus Kane," Lin Yuan spoke the name as if he had a mouthful of ice. "He's found us."

"More than that," Camilla's voice was almost inaudible. "He's laughing. I can feel it... he's happy. Like a hunter who has finally found the tracks left by his prey. And..."

Her fingers trembled as she pointed to the corner of the screen. "The countdown has changed. He's accelerated. The march speed of the vanguard has increased by thirty percent; they've abandoned their heavy baggage."

THRONE-01 immediately pulled up the defense system. "Countdown updated. Estimated enemy arrival time: 65 hours and 12 minutes. Suggesting immediate upgrade of the defensive line to wartime status. Additionally..." He paused. "Suggesting DORN-00 be listed as a potential unstable factor and restricted from approaching strategic weapons."

"Denied," Lin Yuan said, his voice echoing in the hollow eighth floor. He looked at the three sleeping Titans, then at the unhealed wounds on DORN-00's palm. They hadn't just opened a warehouse; they had opened Pandora's box. Kane knew they were here, knew what they had, and knew they were using Biosage permissions.

"68 hours became 65," Lin Yuan said. "We lost three hours and gained three sleeping beasts, and..." He looked at the cold distance between THRONE-01 and DORN-00, "a rift that needs mending."

DORN-00 stood up straight, though he was still shaking slightly. "I will learn to talk to them. Truly talk. A scalpel can't do that, but resonance can."

THRONE-01 turned and walked toward the elevator, his power claw leaving a faint trail of blood behind him. "Inefficient performance art. I hope your 'dialogue' can block a melta cannon when we face a knight mech. As for me, I only believe in calculation results."

Camilla turned off the screen, but the afterimage of that tracking warning was still burned into her retinas. Deep within the Bishop Network, something had already awakened and was swimming toward them along the river of digits.

The countdown ticked at the edge of his vision: 65 hours and 11 minutes.