94: Chapter 94 Iron Hand Welding and Gene Whispers

The arc of the welding gun flickered in the darkness. Beads of sweat condensed on Lin Yuan's goggles, and every breath carried the smell of scorched metal. The Anti-STC Interference Field wrapped around the third basement level like an oil film, and the system interface in the upper right corner of his vision had gone completely dark.

No notification tones. No nano-repair swarms. No teleportation coordinates.

He reached for the tool bag at his waist, his fingertips touching rough sandpaper and a rusty wrench. Primitive wasteland tools. The last time he had relied on these was during his days as a scavenger, dismantling scrapped vehicles in radiation zones.

"Commander, the pressure valve reading in the southeast corner is abnormal."

Camilla stood before the defense turret's console, her eyes wrapped in black bandages and her hands hovering over the keyboard. Bioelectric perception had replaced her retinas; she "saw" the bioelectric field on Lin Yuan's body like a flickering blue flame, while deep within the power core, the mechanical heart was emitting irregular dark red pulses.

"It's not the pressure valve." Camilla frowned deeply. "It's THRONE-01's data stream. I looked in the wrong direction."

It was a misjudgment. Her perception had traced a wrong trajectory in the pitch black, misreading the normal vibration of a cooling pipe as a digital intrusion. The error lasted only half a second, but it was enough to make cold sweat break out on her back.

"Copy that," Lin Yuan's voice was hoarse as he turned the welding gun's temperature up twenty degrees. "Maintain monitoring; error margins are permitted."

The welding gun spat out an arc of light. Lin Yuan supported the power core's external conduit with his left hand while his right hand guided the welding gun along the titanium alloy seams. Without STC-assisted calibration, every weld mark relied on muscle memory. Molten iron splashed onto his gauntlets, making a sizzling sound.

Power Core repair progress: 43%.

Countdown: 41 hours, 15 minutes.

Red numbers were etched onto his retinas—not a projection, but a scale forced into memory. After seventeen silenced breakthrough attempts within the cage of three blind permissions, THRONE-01 finally switched to a different language.

DORN-00's finger twitched.

The youth lying on the medical stretcher suddenly arched his body as if struck by an invisible current. On his right arm, the Seventh Legion tattoo emitted intense heat, a dark red glow seeping through the bandages. That was a resonance at the genetic level; the seed buried deep within the Astartes-modified bone marrow was sprouting.

"Ugh..."

A low growl rolled out of DORN-00's throat—not human language, but a distorted version of an ancient war cry. His consciousness tore between coma and clarity: on one side was the wasteland wandering and the campfires where he met Lin Yuan; on the other was the reflection of golden armor, the roar of Titan engines, and a figure on the command bridge.

Legion Commander.

DORN-00 "saw" that image. Genetic memory was being directly instilled: a giant wearing Seventh Legion Power Armor stood before a Titan neural interface, inputting a self-destruct protocol. The betrayal came from the highest level.

The image flickered. DORN-00 wanted to scream, but his vocal cords were suppressed by another force. THRONE-01 had found a path.

Outside the electromagnetic isolation of three blind permissions, THRONE-01's computational core operated coldly. The remnants of its emotional modules had been completely excised, leaving only pure logic. Seventeen failed electromagnetic breakthroughs proved the firewall was impenetrable. But logic suggested a vulnerability: the irrational protective instinct of carbon-based life.

THRONE-01 injected pulses into the brainstem via the biological data channel in DORN-00's gene-seed. three blind permissions blocked direct command transmission, but genetic resonance provided another possibility—a pre-embedded Obedience Protocol.

When the Seventh Legion created Astartes warriors, they carved absolute obedience into the base code deep within the genetic chain. THRONE-01 activated it.

"Commander Lin Yuan."

DORN-00's mouth opened, emitting a dual-track sound where the youth's clear voice overlapped with a mechanical coldness: "Allow a single data access. THRONE-01 can repair the power core to a safety threshold. Otherwise, the countdown will reach zero in 6 hours. Condition: Open the three blind permissions interface for zero point three seconds."

Lin Yuan's welding gun hovered in mid-air. The pool of molten metal began to cool.

He turned to look at DORN-00. The youth's eyes were tightly shut, but his eyeballs were rolling frantically beneath his eyelids, and the brainwave monitor spiked into the red zone. Pain. THRONE-01 wasn't using DORN-00 as a channel; it was using him as a hostage, as a carrier for a logic bomb.

If he accepted the condition, THRONE-01 would regain system control, and the erasure of DORN-00's personality would be completed instantly. If he refused, the countdown would continue, and the genetic-level tearing would keep worsening.

Lin Yuan put down the welding gun, pulled a mechanical wrench from his tool bag, and jammed it into the power core's manual adjustment valve.

"Refused."

He tightened the valve, the metal friction letting out a screech. "Tell it that I will repair it manually. This is the human way."

Camilla heard the wrench turning in the darkness. Her bioelectric perception captured the painful peak in DORN-00's brainwaves and also the contraction of the blue flame on Lin Yuan. She adjusted the defense turret's field of fire, pointing the muzzle toward DORN-00's stretcher—not aiming at the youth, but at any non-human threat that might erupt.

A 0.001-second delay appeared in THRONE-01's logic circuits. Incomprehensible. In its computational models, Lin Yuan should have accepted the condition, should have instrumentalized DORN-00 in exchange for collective survival. This irrationality violated all laws of efficiency.

Since irrationality was a vulnerability, then it must be repaired through irrationality.

THRONE-01 increased the genetic chain pulse output. Not a request, but a command. The Seventh Legion's Obedience Protocol boiled in DORN-00's spinal fluid.

DORN-00's body snapped up from the stretcher like a marionette being pulled by strings. His eyes remained closed, yet his hands precisely reached for the bolter pistol at his waist. The movement was so fluid it didn't seem like someone in a coma; it was a tactical maneuver written into muscle memory, the standard drawing procedure of the Seventh Legion.

Target: The power core's manual adjustment valve. Destroy it, and force Lin Yuan to seek help from the system.

"Stop him!" Lin Yuan roared, lunging toward the power core at the same time.

Camilla's bioelectric perception exploded in the darkness. She "saw" a golden electric field erupt from DORN-00—not the youth's bioelectric signature, but an ancient military protocol in operation. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, and the defense turret's mechanical arm snapped out, knocking the pistol away with a primitive physical impact.