8: Chapter 8 The Genetic Scam

The air in front of the blast door solidified like a gel, every breath carrying the metallic tang of rust and the sickly sweetness of decaying organic matter. Lin Yuan stared at the faint red lines on the floor that appeared and disappeared; they pulsed like blood vessels, creating a morbid resonance with the Biological Armor writhing on his left arm. A Genetic Resonance of thirty-five flashed on his neural interface, meaning the trap's kill radius was enough to cover a fifteen-meter spherical space, with an explosive yield sufficient to tear carbon-based life into basic particles, leaving even the metal walls coated in a film of flesh and blood.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Scarface crouched in the shadows, his fingers nervously rubbing the hilt of his dagger, his knuckles turning white from the pressure. "Backdoor code can fool the access control system, but it definitely won't fool the thing beneath the floor. That thing is alive. If the blood of the Lin family drips onto it, it will feed until it's full, just like an infant suckling at its mother's breast."

Rat Eye shrank beneath the ventilation duct, his pupils dilated into pitch-black dots, his fingers grasping the exposed cables in a spasm as black grease seeped from beneath his fingernails. His breathing was rapid and shallow, as if those pale red fungal threads had already coiled around his throat.

"It's not about fooling it," Lin Yuan said as he slowly took off his coat, revealing the layer of dark red Biological Armor writhing on his left arm, its surface covered in a fine network of blood vessels. "It's about feeding it. Making it believe its prey is already dead."

He dropped to one knee, holding his left arm out flat and pressing his wrist directly into the center of the pale red pattern. The floor immediately let out a creak like the grinding of bones, as if a slumbering giant beast had been startled awake. Dark red fungal threads burst frantically from the gaps in the metal, coiling around his wrist like a swarm of hungry leeches, their tips secreting corrosive mucus that etched hissing white smoke onto the surface of the Biological Armor.

Agony exploded instantly. It wasn't physical pain, but a sense of tearing at the genetic level, as if every strand of DNA was being crudely pulled apart, inspected, and compared. The trap identified the lin clan bloodline genetic code flowing through him, while the Biological Armor released Tyranids alien pheromones; the two forces turned his left arm into a battlefield for a tug-of-war. The dark red tissue proliferated wildly, creeping past his elbow toward his shoulder, as lumps bulged and shifted beneath his skin like countless rats scurrying through his muscles.

"The resonance is jumping!" Scarface stared at the trembling portable detector in his hand, his voice cracking with fear. "Thirty-eight percent, forty-two, forty-five! Dammit, it's at forty-seven! You're going to explode into a mist of blood!"

Lin Yuan ground his molars until they cracked, the taste of blood filling his mouth, which instead helped his mind stay sharp amidst the intense pain. He forcibly suppressed the metabolism of his left arm, using the Biological Armor to simulate necrotic biological signals, disguising his life signs as a corpse that had just lost its body heat. His heart rate dropped to twenty beats per minute, his blood flow slowed, and cellular activity fell to the lowest critical point. The fungal threads coiled tighter, their probes piercing the armor's surface, greedily searching for a spark of life, only to touch the cold breath of death.

At the fifth second, the fungal threads loosened their grip and retreated unwillingly into the crevices, the lines on the floor fading to a dull, dead gray like dried bloodstains.

Lin Yuan jerked his arm back and knelt on one knee, cold sweat dripping onto the metal floor like a waterfall, making a crisp sound. A strange heaviness came from his left shoulder; the Biological Armor had permanently occupied the entire shoulder like a dark red birthmark, completely fusing with his nerve endings and bringing a constant stinging sensation and the feeling of a foreign object.

"The door is open," Scarface's voice trembled, his eyes a mix of fear and calculation. "You're crazy, absolutely insane, but you actually opened it."

The blast door groaned as the hydraulic system restarted and slowly slid open, releasing a gust of stale cold air carrying the musty smell of decades without circulation and the scent of chemical reagents. In the center of the main control room was a hemispherical console covered in a thick layer of dust, surrounded by six hibernation pods also layered in dust, their glass lids clouded with dark brown stains. Lin Yuan forced himself to stand and crossed the threshold, the hand holding his sword steady as a rock, though the mutation in his left shoulder made his gait slightly limp.

Rat Eye practically crawled inside, throwing himself beneath the ventilation duct exit and using his small body to block the pitch-black passage like a devout martyr's statue.

"What are you doing?" Lin Yuan frowned, his voice hoarse from pain.

"Protecting," Rat Eye's muffled voice came from the floor, filled with a religious fervor. "You need silence. Anything coming from the ventilation duct must pass through me first."

Scarface quickly scanned the room, his fingers feeling along the walls and scraping away dust to reveal scratches beneath. "Anvil Gang maintenance markings from three months ago. What Martin wants isn't just the STC Master Template; he wants the core protocols for the basic permissions."

He entered the code, and the console screen lit up with a ghostly blue light, illuminating the three tired and tense faces.

[ARK-07 Main Control Terminal Restarting...]

[Genetic Key Verification: lin clan bloodline, Resonance 45%, Authorization Level: Core]

Lin Yuan took a deep breath and pressed his palm onto the identification area. A sharp pain immediately resonated with the mutation in his left shoulder, like an electric current coursing through his spine. In his vision, the system interface flickered violently, and the originally golden data stream suddenly turned a piercing blood-red.

[God-Emperors Gaze: 0.8%...0.9%...]

[Tactical Suggestion: Execute temporary ally "Scarface" to save 4 minutes and 32 seconds and eliminate the risk of betrayal. Efficiency increase: 23%.]

Lin Yuan's fingers froze in mid-air. A holographic blueprint of the base pulsed on the screen, with a red countdown flashing in the corner. Four minutes in the wasteland meant life or death—it meant whether they could complete the evacuation before the Scavengers returned, and whether they could seize the initiative before Martin's plot unfolded.

He looked at Scarface. The wasteland opportunist was staring at the ventilation duct, his left hand clutching his dagger and his right hand ready to reach for the frag grenade at his waist, his posture showing he was ready to flee at any moment. His value seemed to have been squeezed dry; his loyalty was built on pure fear and calculated interest, like a candle flickering in the wind.

Executing him was indeed the optimal solution. One bullet, or one sword strike, for four minutes of time and no risk of betrayal.

The nerves in his left shoulder suddenly twitched violently, as if seared by a branding iron. Lin Yuan remembered the price his grandfather had mentioned in the holographic recording; the God-Emperors Gaze was never a free gift. He slowly withdrew his hand, his fingernails scraping harshly against the metal console.

"Reject suggestion," he whispered in his mind, each word squeezed through his teeth. "Search for remote link protocols."

The system interface flickered a few times, and the red faded, but the 0.9% mark for the Gaze remained stubbornly in the upper right corner of his vision. A severe headache followed, like red-hot wires scraping against the grooves of his brain inside his skull. He leaned against the console, his knuckles turning white from the strain, cold sweat soaking his back.

"You look like you're about to die," Scarface took a half-step back, holding his dagger across his chest. "If this is a side effect of the trap, I don't want to be buried with you. I helped you open the door, but I never said I'd die for you."

"Permissions activated," Lin Yuan forced out the words, his voice low like a beast's growl. "Access the Anvil Gang backdoor and pull up the ARK-03 status monitoring. Now."

"Are you crazy? That's the Scavengers' nest! That's Martin's headquarters!" Scarface's voice was shrill, but seeing the bloodshot madness in Lin Yuan's eyes, he swallowed hard. "Fine, fine, but if you get me killed, I'll haunt you as a ghost."

Scarface cursed as he lunged at the console, his fingers flying across the keyboard. Lin Yuan endured the headache and brought up the remote link interface. A holographic map expanded in the air: ARK-07 (Green - Secure), ARK-11 (Yellow - Unknown), ARK-19 (Yellow - Unknown), ARK-03 (Glaring Red).

The moment he touched the ARK-03 icon, the screen jumped, and a loading bar crawled slowly. The image suddenly cleared, showing massive culture vats lined up in a dim underground space, filled with murky green liquid and bubbles rising from the bottom. Distorted figures floated inside the vats—green skin, knotted muscles, protruding tusks; they were modified Orks, connected to tubes and electrodes, their bodies covered in black runes. There were at least fifty vats, each emitting evil fluctuations of WAAAGH! Energy.

The image shook violently as the camera slowly turned. A man's face occupied the entire screen; his silver-gray short hair was combed impeccably, and he had an aquiline nose. The scar at the corner of his left eye was identical to the one in the photos of a young Lin Weiguo, yet it carried a completely different sinister air.

"I've been waiting for you for a long time, nephew," Martin Lin's voice carried electronic distortion, yet it couldn't hide the mockery and madness within. "I knew you would make it this far. ARK-07 was the bait, specifically meant to catch the foolish fish with Lin family blood. What your father failed to complete, you have completed for him, becoming the most perfect culture medium."

Lin Yuan's left hand reached for the emergency disconnect button, his muscles tensing.

"Your Biological Armor is quite beautiful," Martin sneered as the camera zoomed out to reveal more experimental equipment behind him. "But do you know why it's proliferating? Tyranid genes are rewriting you, consuming you. When you turn into a monster, I will come to collect you. You will be the best biomass source, even more perfect than those Orks."

The communication was suddenly cut, and the screen turned to static.

The main control room fell into a dead silence, broken only by the low hum of the ventilation system.

Lin Yuan looked down at his left shoulder; the Biological Armor was indeed more active than before, the blood vessel patterns on its surface pulsing with an eerie light. The neuropathic pain was constant, like invisible wires connecting his temples to his fingertips, each heartbeat bringing a surge of stinging pain.

"He can see us," Scarface's voice was dry. "He knows we're here."

"No," Lin Yuan closed the link and brought up the defense system, his fingers sliding rapidly over the holographic images. "He can only see the activation status. Now he knows I have permissions, but he doesn't know how much data we've obtained."

With rapid movements, he upgraded the defense protocols to the highest level, rebuilt the firewall, and downloaded the basic database to a portable storage device. There was no STC Master Template, only an overview of the Ark Project: four sites, with ARK-03 specializing in biological weapons, ARK-11 specializing in medical and genetic repair, and ARK-19 as an unknown military restricted zone.

"How much time?" Rat Eye crawled out from under the ventilation duct, his face covered in dust, his eyes still burning with fanatical loyalty.

"Forty-three minutes," Lin Yuan looked at the timestamp in the bottom right corner, the numbers ticking down coldly. "The Scavengers' rapid response force is returning, seven kilometers away—all-terrain vehicles, at least twenty armed personnel."

He stood up, the weight of his left shoulder making him tilt slightly. The Biological Armor had become an inseparable part of his body, rising and falling with his breath, bringing a constant sense of pain and power.

"This isn't the end," Lin Yuan picked up his crude power sword, the blade glinting with a ghostly blue light in the dimness. "This is just the beginning. Martin wants a war; I'll give him a war. But not here, and not now."

"What do you plan to do?" Scarface's gaze was complex, a mix of fear and a new kind of assessment. "ARK-03 is a fortress, and you only have a broken sword and half a life. Besides, you're turning into... something."

Lin Yuan looked at the map on the wall; the markers for ARK-11 and ARK-19 were flashing. There might be antibiotics there, a way to stop the erosion, or power that the Scavengers had not yet laid hands on. The neuropathic pain struck again, and the glaring 0.9% in his vision flashed like a countdown.

"Let's go," Lin Yuan opened his eyes and turned toward the door, his left shoulder's Biological Armor glowing dark red and casting a grotesque shadow on the floor. "To ARK-11. The answers I need are there."

The blast door closed heavily behind them. The console screen lit up again without anyone touching it, and a string of encrypted data was automatically transmitted as a red progress bar silently filled the screen; the destination was unknown, and the sender identification was marked as a string of garbled code.

Lin Yuan walked down the corridor, his steps heavy yet firm, the pain in his left arm reminding him of the weight of deception and its price. Scarface and Rat Eye exchanged a complex look and followed, their shadows lengthening and shortening under the emergency lights.

At the end of the corridor, a faint scraping sound came from the ventilation duct, like scales brushing against metal, or perhaps some multi-legged creature crawling. Something was approaching, faster than the Scavengers and hungrier, and it had already caught the scent of blood.