The evacuation sirens wailed across Delta Sector, a total ear-splitting nightmare. Red emergency lights spun like crazy, casting jagged shadows that danced over lab walls now riddled with bullet holes. Arman was still buried in the main console, his fingers blurring across a flickering, glitchy holographic screen.​"Liana! I have to overload the central reactor!" Arman yelled over the roar of the engines. "Just killing the server isn't enough. Alice’s data is still synced to backup storage. We have to level this whole place!"​Liana stood at the doorway, wiping blood from her temple. She glanced down the hall. The Ares elites were back in the distance, moving in a tight formation behind heavy riot shields.​"Just do it, Arman! But hurry the hell up! We’ve got less than five minutes before the emergency lifts go into lockdown!" Liana shouted back. She slammed in her last battery pack, her hands shaking from pure exhaustion.​"The magnetic lock is jammed!" Arman slammed his fist on the

The tactical jet slammed into the pine canopy before plowing hard into a massive snowdrift. The engines died with a long, drawn-out hiss, leaving an eerie silence hanging over Glacier’s End valley. A thick gray fog swallowed everything, carrying the foul stench of frozen, charred flesh.​"Giselle! Status!" Liana barked, kicking at the jammed emergency hatch.​"Navigation's dead! Something out there is force-jamming our frequency!" Giselle yelled back, hugging her laptop which was showing nothing but static.​Nathan was the first one out, leading the way through waist-deep snow. About five hundred yards ahead, the bunker looked like a concrete mound buried under a pile of meat. It wasn't snow—it was thousands of frozen zombie corpses, stacked on top of each other, blocking the entrance.​"They're waking up," Anna whispered, drawing her twin blades.​One by one, zombies with skin as hard as ice began to rise from the snow. Their movements were stiff but coordinated. Their eyes weren't w

Their footsteps echoed through the damp concrete corridor, leading to a massive room smelling of chemicals and engine oil. The medical bay looked like a weird cross between an OR and a mechanic’s garage. Scattered across a steel table were remnants of microcircuit cables, scraps of titanium plates stained with dried blood, and a few tubes of synthetic nutrients.​Giselle approached a dim, flickering monitor showing an unstable heart rate graph. "This isn't a normal medical record, Liana. It’s a log for a self-surgery procedure. Someone... someone forced a neural sync into a mechanical life-support system."​Liana didn't hear her. Her eyes were glued to a small oxygen tank connected to a shredded face mask in the corner of the table. She touched the cold edge of the desk, feeling the floor vibrate as the secondary steel door at the end of the hall shut with a heavy thud.​The figure in tactical armor walked into the room, his steps way heavier than before. His breathing now sounded lik

The thumping on the bunker’s steel door sounded like a giant sledgehammer hitting a death knell. Every strike sent concrete dust raining down from the medical room ceiling. On the cold floor, Arman lay with his chest torn open, exposing wires that were spitting out weak sparks. His breathing was shallow and hitched—a clear sign his mechanical lungs were giving out.​"His life support is totally fried, Nathan! His biological heart won't last more than two minutes without power!" Giselle screamed in a panic, yanking two thick copper cables from the wall panel.​Nathan knelt by Arman’s side. He was pale, cold sweat soaking his forehead from the Signal King’s mental attack that hadn't fully let up. He stared at his trembling palms, where the silver Bio-Zero glow flickered unstable.​"Do it, Nathan! It’s now or never!" Liana shouted. She stood at the doorway with Anna, rifle aimed at the dark corridor that was starting to fill with growls and the heavy footsteps of a thousand undead.​"I d

The tactical jet sliced through the storm clouds in total silence. Inside the cabin, the only sounds were the hiss of the oxygen system and the soft moans from Alice, who was still out cold under the sedatives. Nathan leaned against the steel wall, breathing heavy, while the silver glow on his skin faded out like it was giving up.​In a dark corner, Liana sat cleaning the soot off her fingers. Her eyes were hollow, fixed on the small scrap of metal that belonged to Arman, now hanging around her neck on a makeshift wire cord.​"Giselle, how much longer until we cross the border?" Anna asked, wrapping a bandage around her shoulder.​"Ten minutes. Once we're over, military radar won't be able to—" Giselle cut off. The tablet on her lap let out a sharp, consistent beep.​The navigation map suddenly vanished, replaced by rows of fast-scrolling green code. Giselle’s brow furrowed, her fingers dancing across the screen.​"We’ve got an incoming transmission. Low-frequency encrypted channel,"