25: Spring cleaning

On a private island in the Caribbean belonging to an energy giant, Colonel Marcus was holding a small victory party in a luxurious villa with his core subordinates.

"Cheers to the first great victory of the Earth Purity Faction!" Marcus raised his crystal glass and toasted the crowd triumphantly.

"Cheers to the Colonel!" his subordinates responded one after another, glasses clinking in a lively atmosphere.

For them, these 24 hours were 24 hours where Paradox Technology had publicly embarrassed itself.

The mysterious company had done nothing but issue a stern but weak statement.

This undoubtedly proved their guess—the other side was just a group of keyboard-wielding nerds, paper tigers with no power in the real world.

"Boss, what about the ship we have parked in Cuba?" an adjutant asked. "Should we start unloading and dispersing the cargo?"

"No rush." Marcus took a sip of expensive rum, a playful, cat-and-mouse look on his face. "Wait two more days. Once the whole world has had enough of the joke that is Paradox Technology, we'll make our move. I want those idiots hiding behind the scenes supporting the space program to understand that their 'future' is in our hands now, and we can play with it however we want."

He was completely unaware that as he delivered this victory declaration, a judgment from another dimension had already arrived silently.

...

Ten thousand meters above the island.

An airplane belonging to an obscure aviation logistics company under Paradox Technology was flying over. This was an unmanned transport aircraft deeply modified by "white flower," flying steadily above the thick clouds at subsonic speeds.

Its existence did not appear on the civil aviation or military radar screens of any country.

In the face of "white flower's" god-like global information manipulation capabilities, this aircraft and the "cargo" it was about to release were completely invisible to the world.

The cargo bay doors slid open silently.

Over a hundred objects shaped like black metal raindrops were dropped into the cold, thin air one after another.

They had no engines, no thrusters.

In the initial stage of freefall, they were just silent lumps of iron.

When they fell to an altitude of five thousand meters, several gliding wings made of memory alloy, resembling bat wings, suddenly popped out from their smooth black shells.

The trajectory of their vertical fall instantly transformed into silent and precise gliding.

They were the Cleaner Combat Robots.

The "brain" of every Cleaner Combat Robots was also a sub-program of "white flower."

They shared a hive-mind network, exchanging their positions, speeds, and the dynamic information of the targets below in real-time with an efficiency that exceeded the limits of human understanding.

They did not need language; they did not need instructions.

They were the instructions themselves.

Meanwhile, directly above this silent army of death, on the belly of the unmanned transport aircraft, a huge dish antenna slowly rotated, aiming at the brightly lit island below.

"white flower" launched her first wave of attacks—information and electromagnetic suppression.

...

Inside Marcus's villa, the party was in full swing.

Suddenly, all the lights in the villa flickered once, then went out completely.

"What's going on? Is the power out?"

"What about the backup power? Start it up!"

In the darkness, someone took out their phone, trying to turn on the flashlight.

But he was stunned to find that his phone screen was pitch black, and no matter how he pressed it, there was no response, as if it had instantly turned into a brick.

"My phone is broken!"

"Mine too!"

Panic began to spread in the darkness.

It wasn't just phones.

All power systems, all communication equipment, and all electronic instruments on the island fell into paralysis at the same instant.

This was not a normal power outage.

This was a death sentence for all electronic components.

Outside the villa, the armed personnel responsible for guarding also discovered the abnormality.

The night vision goggles and communicators on their helmets all failed.

The infrared surveillance cameras and vibration sensors installed everywhere also turned into a pile of scrap metal.

The entire island was instantly stripped of all its electronic senses, regressing back to the most primitive dark age.

They did not know that high above their heads, "white flower" was pouring a directional, complexly modulated strong electromagnetic pulse onto the island through that huge dish antenna.

The intensity of this pulse was precisely controlled by "white flower" at a critical point sufficient to burn out any chip without special shielding, yet without causing direct harm to the human body.

This was one-way transparency.

The Cleaner Combat Robots legion could share battlefield information in real-time through satellite communications in space, where "white flower" had stolen control.

While their prey had become completely blind and deaf.

The first Cleaner Combat Robots landed silently on a guard tower on the outskirts of the villa area like a black feather.

A sentry on the guard tower was nervously holding his rifle, trying to pierce the darkness before him with his naked eyes.

He suddenly felt a breeze behind him.

Before he could even turn his head, a claw, elegant as a leopard and made of cold metal, extended from the shadows, precisely gripping his throat with a speed too fast to react to.

After applying a pressure precise to the gram, his throat could no longer make a sound, and blood gushed out.

Immediately after, another mechanical arm extended from the back of the Cleaner Combat Robots, placing the dead sentry on the ground without making a sound.

Then, its electronic eyes, like rubies, scanned the surroundings, and its four mechanical legs kicked lightly, turning into a black afterimage almost impossible to be captured by the naked eye, disappearing into the dark jungle.

Over a hundred Cleaner Combat Robots launched a silent, synchronized raid on over fifty military targets on the island at the same time.

At the entrance of an arsenal, two guards were back-to-back, vigilantly listening to the movement around them.

Suddenly, the ground beneath their feet transmitted a very slight vibration.

In the next second, two tentacles made of liquid metal with spikes suddenly burst out from the ground, accurately wrapping around their ankles.

The moment the two guards lost their balance and fell to the ground with a cry, two black lightning bolts leaped out from the nearby bushes, killing them silently using the same method before they could make any resistance.

On an apron, beside an armed helicopter, a patrol team was nervously forming a defensive formation with their guns raised.

"Headquarters! Headquarters! Please answer if you hear me! We have lost all power here!" The captain was calling out futilely into the already failed walkie-talkie.

Suddenly, he felt something cold drip onto his neck.

He subconsciously looked up.

He saw that above the helicopter rotors, a Cleaner Combat Robots with an appearance similar to a black panther was hanging upside down there silently like a giant spider.

Its red electronic eyes were like a gaze from hell in the darkness, and what dripped onto his neck was the undried blood on the Cleaner Combat Robots' claws.

"Ene..."

He only managed to make one syllable before a giant net made of ultra-tough nanofibers descended from the sky, firmly covering the entire patrol team.

The moment the net lines touched the human body, they released a high-voltage current.

The entire team collapsed to the ground, twitching all over, without even being able to let out a scream.

This was the suffocating pressure brought by the technological gap.

The Cleaner Combat Robots legion was like a group of ghost hunters from the future.

They did not use gunpowder weapons, because that would create huge noise and fire.

What they used were EL alloy claws, electric shocks, infrasound waves, polymer restraint nets, liquid metal traps...

These were the silent and efficient arts of killing that only existed in science fiction movies to humans in 2027.

Marcus and his group of battle-hardened mercenaries were perhaps the elites of modern warfare.

But in front of these Cleaner Combat Robots, they were like a group of primitives holding stone spears and wooden sticks facing a modern special forces unit equipped with night vision and silenced weapons.

They had completely lost the ability to resist before they could even see the shadow of the enemy.

...

Inside the villa, Marcus finally realized something was wrong.

It was too quiet outside.

Terribly quiet.

No gunfire, no explosions, not even the sound of insects could be heard.

He drew his pistol and roared at his subordinates who were in chaos beside him: "Shut up! Grab your gear! Follow me out and check it out!"

He kicked open the door of the villa and walked cautiously into the courtyard outside with his gun raised.

In the courtyard, there was dead silence.

Only the water in the swimming pool shimmered under the moonlight.

Just as he was scanning his surroundings in high tension, a cold, emotionless synthetic voice seemed to ring directly in his mind.

"Marcus Reno, former US Marine Colonel."

Marcus stiffened, turned abruptly, and aimed his gun at the direction the voice came from—the roof of the villa.

The roof was empty.

"Paradox Technology has listed you and your organization as hostile targets."

The voice sounded again from another direction behind him.

Marcus turned abruptly again, but still saw nothing.

"According to our statement, the 'Cleanup' program has now been initiated."

This time, the voice came from all directions.

Marcus and his terrified subordinates were like trapped beasts surrounded by invisible ghosts, spinning around desperately, but could not find any enemy.

"Giving up resistance is your only choice."

"Otherwise, physical elimination will be executed in 10 seconds."

"10..."

"9..."

The cold countdown struck everyone's heart like the death knell.

"Fire! Anywhere! Fire for me!" A mentally broken mercenary hysterically pulled the trigger towards the dark bushes.

The gunfire finally broke the dead silence.

And it also signed his own death warrant.

The moment he fired, a red laser, thinner than a hair and almost invisible, flashed across the treetops in the distance.

A tiny red dot appeared on the mercenary's forehead.

In the next second, his head exploded backward like a watermelon hit by a heavy hammer.

No explosion, no fire.

That was a tungsten core bullet the size of a rice grain, accelerated to ten times the speed of sound, fired by the micro-electromagnetic rail sniper rifle carried by the Cleaner Combat Robots.

This bloody and shocking scene completely destroyed the last will to resist of everyone remaining.

"I surrender! I surrender!"

They threw away their weapons one after another, knelt on the ground with their hands on their heads, their bodies trembling.

Marcus looked at the corpses of his men, and then looked at the bottomless darkness around him.

He knew he had lost.

Lost inexplicably, lost without any dignity.

He slowly placed his pistol on the ground.

The moment he put down his weapon, dozens of strong lights lit up from all directions, illuminating the entire courtyard like daylight.

Only then did he see that the roofs, walls, and treetops around him... were already filled with those metal monsters that looked like black panthers and were full of deadly beauty.

Their red electronic eyes were coldly watching him.

...

The next morning.

When the coast guard of the nearby country received an anonymous alarm call from an "International Humanitarian Organization" and boarded this private island cautiously, they were stunned by the eerie scene before them.

Except for a large number of disgusting corpses, all the living armed personnel on the island were bound together with an extremely tough material, piled up neatly like a bunch of zongzi on the lawn in front of the villa.

All weapons and ammunition were piled together in categories.

And Colonel Marcus Reno himself was stripped down to his underwear, and tied to the flagpole on the roof of the villa in the same way.

His mouth was stuffed with the cork of one of the expensive bottles of rum he had drunk last night.

For Marcus and his organization, this kind of humiliation was harder to accept than death.

This operation, codenamed "Cleanup," was like a precise surgical operation, rooting out the sharpest claws of the Earth Purity Faction in just one night.

And Paradox Technology showed the world its unfathomable and terrifying power hidden beneath the iceberg in a way that was almost magical.

The impact of this incident was profound.

Countries around the world, whether friends or foes, immediately raised their threat level for Paradox Technology to the highest.

They finally understood that this was no longer a company that could be measured by commercial logic.

It was a super entity with era-transcending technology, independent armed forces, and unfathomable intelligence capabilities.

And Senator John McConnell, who had been jumping around in Congress, locked himself in his office for a whole day after learning that his ace armed force had been "packaged and processed" in such a ridiculous way overnight.

When he appeared again, he voluntarily withdrew the bill requesting to cut the NDSM-RD budget, and announced that he would resign from his position as honorary chairman of the Earth Purity Faction due to "health reasons."

A political storm that swept the globe thus came to an end in such a dramatic way, starting with a bang and ending with a whimper.

Those who clamored to overthrow the space program no longer dared to openly target Paradox Technology.

Because everyone knew that there was an invisible hand that would clear away all the "trash" blocking the way for Paradox Technology in an unquestionable way.