87: Chapter 87 The Rebirth of the Death Squad, High-Tech Weapons

Between them lay several chunks of collapsed concrete and a piece of burning blast shield, but at the same time, they began to move autonomously toward each other.

The collarbone rotated half a turn on its own along the ground, turning its fractured surface toward the piece of flesh, and then, like a magnet attracting another, clicked together with a snap.

More fragments contracted from all directions toward the same convergence point: shredded flesh, bone fragments, severed blood vessel endings, and steaming organ pieces scattered on the ground, all floating and rolling from the cracks in the rubble and the wreckage of blast shelters throughout the ruins under the influence of the same invisible traction, then slamming into the skeletal frame that had already begun to form in the center.

The bones rearranged and reset at a speed visible to the naked eye. Vertebrae pulled themselves up from the pile of debris one by one, automatically connecting into the spinal canal; shoulder blades flew back from the pile of rubble in the corner and clicked into the joint sockets; the skull rolled back from the edge of the crater and reattached itself to the top of the cervical spine. Then, muscle fibers, like taut, wet clay, quickly covered the surface of the bones; the ends of blood vessels met and fused; and skin regenerated and healed from the inside out, with even fingerprints being re-etched into the fingertips.

First was Musk. He sat up from a pile of viscera fragments that were still contracting and resetting, his hair still matted with his own blood and concrete dust, his face covered in ash, but his pupils were clear and his breathing steady.

Then Edward. His body reintegrated and formed from the pile of corpses severed by shrapnel near the wall, remnants of his shredded jacket still hanging on his collar, his expression calm.

Moran stood up from the edge of the crater, and Heinlein sat up straight from behind a tilted support pillar.

Then the Warren Family death squads, Musk's retired special forces soldiers, FBI agents Lewis, Rivera, and Owens, the CIA strike team's Kevin Mosby, and the entire special cleanup team—everyone who had previously been blown apart and scattered now stood up again from the bones and flesh that were still reshaping themselves on the ruins.

Their clothes were completely tattered, the bulletproof vests hanging on them shredded by shrapnel, their exposed arms and faces covered in ash and dried blood, but their bodies were completely intact.

Musk brushed the ash from his hair, looked down at his jacket, which had been blown apart until only one sleeve remained, put back on the watch he had retrieved and reassembled from the ruins, and then looked up at Diana, Sterling, and Augustus, who were standing on the opposite side of the crater, their expressions shifting from smugness to disbelief.

His voice was not loud, but on these ruins, where sporadic flames were still burning, every word was clearly audible.

"Northrop Grumman!"

"General Dynamics!"

"Raytheon Technologies!"

"So it was you three who have been doing the dirty work for the Longevity Faction all along!"

"From Walsh, to the cleanup outside the Hoover Dam, to tonight's shelling, you have harmed me again and again just to earn a few more merits in front of those old men behind the scenes."

He raised his left hand, the hand that he had once severed and regrown himself, clenching it into a fist beneath his tattered cuff. "Unfortunately, although the weapons in your hands have been updated for decades, you still haven't understood one thing."

"Bullets and shells cannot kill us."

Edward picked up a Warren Family emblem brooch that had been blown away, turned it over to look at it, wiped the dust off with his fingertips, and put it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He stood up straight, his gaze crossing the crater and landing on Diana's face, which remained cold and beautiful, but the smile at the corners of her mouth had completely vanished.

"Since that night at the banquet in San Antonio, you should have known that liquid zero cannot only save one person."

"It can save an entire team."

Moran stood on the other side of the crater, wiping a pale red mark on his face with a rag; the blood had just seeped out before being sealed underneath by the newly healed skin. He glared at the armed elites behind Diana, his gravelly voice full of rage: "So it was you who wanted to silence us!"

"From the sniper fire that night in the Los Angeles warehouse district, to you clearing out a hundred-mile radius around Casablanca, to blowing up the entire base just now—it was all you!"

Heinlein stood beside him, shifting his gaze from Diana to Sterling and Augustus, his tone returning to the coldness and precision expected of a CIA Director: "The power controlling the President is you!"

"For a hundred years, you've interfered with procurement budgets, defense contracts, and weapons development programs, infiltrated all federal intelligence systems, and then used the same puppet sitting in Oval Office to sign for you."

"Now I see who was actually signing those orders!"

Diana did not explain. She did not even frown. In her eyes, these people who had stood back up from the ruins were nothing more than dead men who would live a few minutes longer; saying another word to them was a waste.

She raised her right hand and waved it gently. From outside the alloy door behind her, which had been blown apart until only half the frame remained, came heavy, rhythmic footsteps—not the footsteps of ordinary people, but heavy, massive treads that made the rubble on the ground jump slightly with every step.

More than fifty three-meter-tall giant warriors filed in from the dark passage outside the door. Each had been injected with the Behemoth Factor, their bone density over ten times that of a normal person, their muscle fiber strength sufficient to tear apart an armored vehicle with their bare hands. They were also wearing heavy exoskeleton reinforced armor custom-made for them by the three major military industrial giants, with hydraulic assistance modules embedded in the joints and a layer of composite blast-proof ceramic plates covering the chest armor.

More than fifty massive bodies stood in a row on the ruins of the atrium, blocking a beam of cold white moonlight leaking down from the hole in the roof. The battle erupted in full force the very second the giant warriors crossed the edge of the crater.

At Edward's command, the Warren Family death squads charged toward the front row of giants. They did not shout any slogans as they charged, nor did they have any expression of martyrdom on their faces, only a raw instinct trained into them by the family for generations: use their lives to block the first wave of impact for their masters.

The first row of death squad members collided violently with the first three giants. A giant smashed one of the death squad members' chests with a single punch, but the moment the person whose chest was crushed was torn open, the regenerative mechanism activated by the liquid zero in his body began to re-fuse the broken bones and severed blood vessels.

Within seconds of falling to the ground, he crawled back up using half a severed arm, continuing to hold onto the giant's ankle tightly to prevent him from rushing forward. Another death squad member was grabbed by the waist by a giant and smashed against the wall; as his spine broke, it reconnected on its own, and he flipped up from the pile of rubble, punching the back of the giant's knee joint.

Every time the giants killed them, they reassembled on the spot, and both sides fell into a temporary stalemate in the forward area of the atrium ruins.

The elite troops brought by Diana flanked and opened fire as the giants charged, the rain of bullets so dense that it almost shredded all the half-walls still standing on the ruins.

FBI agents Lewis, Rivera, and Owens immediately returned fire, relying on the two remaining support pillars in the east corridor, while the CIA strike team opened fire simultaneously from behind cover on both sides of the west wing ventilation duct exit, their crossfire pinning back the first wave of incoming assault teams.

Musk's special forces did not participate in this counterattack. They were quickly searching through the ruins for the tactical backpacks that had been scattered by the shelling. Brick pulled two half-burned backpacks from under a deformed alloy tabletop, tore open the shockproof lining, and poured out a dozen wireless in-ear devices. They looked similar to ordinary Bluetooth headsets, but the casing was matte black shockproof and waterproof titanium alloy, with a very thin flexible bio-electrode patch embedded on the inside.

He grabbed two of them and tucked them into the side pocket of his helmet, then instructed the other team members to quickly distribute the devices to everyone in the CIA and FBI.

The Warren Family death squads continued to delay time with their bodies, not retreating a single step in front of the giants' front line. In the rear, the FBI and CIA fire lines provided alternating cover, while Musk's team pried open the second batch of equipment boxes dug out from the ruins, stuffing the same type of in-ear devices into the hands of the soldiers who had just crawled up from the ground.

Diana stood on the slope in the back and clearly saw this scene. She saw the special forces not counterattacking, but searching for something in the ruins. Musk stood behind them, holding a black remote control, his gaze passing through the layers of figures falling and crawling back up and the broken walls, looking toward her.

She immediately turned to Augustus and Sterling beside her, her voice pressed extremely cold: "They are not defending. Have the vanguard group concentrate their fire and take out that remote control."

Augustus's order was quickly issued among the assault groups intermingled behind the giants, but the crossfire from the FBI and CIA had already completely sealed off the angle of attack for this offensive in the east corridor, with a few precise short bursts taking down the two assault team members charging at the front.

The Warren Family death squads took the opportunity to drag several assault team members who were still firing continuously from under the giants' feet, delaying the offensive by a few more minutes with close-quarters combat.

Across the entire front line, while the defense line was stabilizing due to the stubborn entanglement of the liquid zero and the Warren Family death squads, the last batch of silver devices had been pressed into the ear canals and jawbones of all their own personnel from deep within the ruins.

Musk switched the remote control from his left hand to his right, walked unhurriedly to the last half-collapsed blast wall on the defense line, facing the cold white moonlight leaking down from the crack above, and raised the remote control to his chest. His thumb pressed lightly on the activation button. He looked at Diana and the row of giant warriors still crushing forward behind her, his tone cold and light, as if he were debugging the final procedure before a launch: "You hicks who only know how to use shells for bombing, today I'll give you a real eye-opener!" "Let me show you what true high-tech weaponry is!"