Chapter2

"Ten. Nine. Eight..."

The cold male voice from the loudspeaker echoed between the thick concrete walls like a death knell striking a coffin lid. I shoved Mia into the narrow gap under the blast-proof control panel, turned around, and snapped the safety off my Remington shotgun.

"Three. Two..."

The countdown didn't end. Instead, a chilling sound of flesh being torn apart filled the air, followed by the desperate screams of a dying human.

I jerked my head up to the monitor screen. In the black-and-white footage from the external infrared camera, a fully armed federal commando team was being unilaterally slaughtered. Three mutated mercenaries, their bodies grotesquely enlarged and their limbs twisted grotesquely, tore through the bulletproof formation like butter. The muzzle flashes of assault rifles flickered wildly in the torrential rain, but they could only scrape sparks off the monsters' bony, spiky skin.

In just half a minute, the area outside the door fell into dead silence.

A pair of feet clad in custom-made high-heeled leather boots stepped over the scattered limbs and into the blind spot of the surveillance camera. Then, Elena's exquisite face filled the screen. She brushed aside her blood-stained, wet hair, stared directly into my eyes through the lens, and curled her lips into a smile that I knew all too well—a smile full of malice.

Immediately afterwards, the temperature in the control room plummeted to freezing. The air I exhaled instantly turned into white mist.

The meter-thick, high-density blast-proof steel door in front of them, strong enough to withstand a C4 explosion, suddenly developed a layer of eerie blue frost on its surface. The next second, a distorted human face protruded from within the solid steel plate, forcibly "squeezing" into the main control room.

It's Marcus. The man who slept in the same bed with my wife in a past life.

He could no longer be called human. His flesh had dissolved into some kind of translucent, ghostly blue spirit, slowly penetrating the bulletproof wall. His grayish-white eyes darted around the room, finally locking onto the area beneath the control panel—Mia instinctively covered her eyes with her hands, but a pure white glimmer still leaked uncontrollably through her fingers.

Marcus let out a superhuman roar and transformed into a blur as he lunged at Mia.

There was no time to think. I let the newly awakened, chilling power within me take over my senses and suddenly spread my five fingers wide.

"Get out of my way!"

The shadows in the corner of the control room came alive like boiling asphalt. They shot into the sky, transforming into countless black tentacles that tightly wrapped around Marcus's neck and limbs just before his spirit touched Mia.

At that very moment, my consciousness was forcibly dragged into an absolutely dark, boundless "Shadow Realm." Marcus's spirit struggled violently within this space, emitting piercing screams.

"Bang!"

A dull thud suddenly echoed through the quiet area. A man, charred black and with skin cracked like lava, crashed down in front of us. His throat was completely burned, and each breath he took was accompanied by blood and sparks.

He stared at me with those bloodied, eyelidless holes, then suddenly unleashed a soul-rending, piercing roar: "She's not a reborn one! She's a parasite—!"

Before he could finish speaking, the man's chest swelled violently, as if a miniature bomb had exploded inside him. With a "bang," it turned into a thick cloud of blood mist and dissipated into the darkness.

The balance of the realm was shattered by the violent energy fluctuations, and my consciousness was instantly thrown back to reality. Marcus's spirit was also thrown back, screaming as it dissolved into the cracks in the wall, temporarily retreating outside.

I knew the outer defenses had completely collapsed. I scooped up Mia, who was still trembling, kicked open the hidden door leading to the underground safe house, and ran frantically down the spiral staircase to the bottom.

As the final twelve-inch-thick titanium alloy door slammed shut with three hydraulic bolts, before I could even catch my breath, the six monitoring screens hanging on the wall simultaneously emitted a piercing shriek, and the images turned into uniform static.

Two seconds later, the snowflakes disappeared, and Elena's face appeared on all the screens simultaneously. This was a high-dimensional cyber hijacking livestream specifically targeting me.

“You’ve got a good escape plan, darling.” Elena’s voice on the screen was languid and condescending. “But you seem to have forgotten who reviewed the blueprints when you hired a security company to renovate this clunky bunker. I know your fortress better than you do.”

I clenched my fists tightly, ignoring her provocation. The safe house was an independent, closed-loop system; even if she controlled the outer perimeter, she absolutely couldn't open this door.

Just then, I noticed a reflective object stuck in the louvers of the exhaust fan above my head.

I stepped onto a chair and used my dagger to pry open the blinds. Along with a small speck of dust fell a twenty-five-cent coin with three deep dents.

My heart skipped a beat.

I flipped the coin over. The eagle emblem on the back had been scraped off with a sharp object, and a line of small English letters was engraved on it: [ There is a mole among Elena's people, and the outer C4 has been switched by me].

Someone is helping me. The person who left this coin in the exhaust duct beforehand anticipated that I would be forced into this corner.

"Buzz—"

A sudden, sharp system alarm shattered the silence of the safe house. The life support panel on the wall began flashing a blinding red light: Warning: Oxygen levels are decreasing (19%...18%...).

I looked up in astonishment. The giant exhaust fan, which had been emitting a low hum, was now screeching as its metal blades scraped together, before finally jamming completely with a tooth-grinding cracking sound of hinges snapping.

"You think I don't know that safe house is made of titanium alloy?" Elena laughed heartily on the screen, but her eyes were as cold as poisoned knives. "I don't need to go in at all. I just need to seal all the ventilation ducts from the outside with physical building sealant."

"dad……"

A faint tug came from my trouser leg. I looked down and saw Mia slumped helplessly on the cold steel floor. Her little face was flushed red from lack of oxygen, her small hands were clutching her chest tightly, and her lips were turning a horribly bluish-purple.

"Dad...I...can't breathe..."

On the screen, Elena leaned close to the camera, her red lips parting as if announcing a final judgment:

“Watch her die. This is the price you pay for taking my money. I’ll be in there in five minutes to collect your body.”