Chapter 22 Zero Hour Override

The bearings beneath the wheelchair ground to a halt.

Vivienne’s black stiletto halted half a meter away. She looked down, eyes sweeping over the shriveled face before her.

The family sigil—a double-headed eagle—had been crudely hammered into the right cheekbone with four medical steel pins. Dried black blood fused around the edges, sealing it like a grotesque trophy.

Her knife flicked open, lifting the slack skin. “Crude technique,” she murmured, lips curling in disdain. Her gaze traced the misaligned jaw.

As the darknet’s reigning queen, she had personally logged every skeletal gene in the Alexander direct line.

The right hand twisted. A cold-gray tactical folding knife snapped open in her palm, icy and precise.

She probed the face: a 10.5-centimeter jaw gap, a two-degree bite misalignment. No true Alexander heir would carry such skeletal flaws.

Pressing her wrist down, she peeled back the yellowed hospital gown. A row of thumbnail-sized titanium plates had been hammered through the skin.

Dozens of fine neural electrodes burrowed along the spinal cord.

A live bait stripped of autonomy, wired to function as a biological switch.

“They used elder blood as a trigger. The remnants of the council… dying in the water prison is far too good for them,” she said, withdrawing the knife.

The instant the blade cleared the electrodes, the underground trembled with high-frequency vibration.

A piercing alarm cut through the speaker array.

Thousands of micro-spotlights ignited on the ten-meter-high dome, weaving cold blue beams into a massive, floating mechanical eye.

“Eden’s Brain… awake.”

The reinforced walls groaned.

Titanium blast doors, over eighty centimeters thick, disengaged from their hydraulic locks and slammed down under gravity, sealing the chamber.

A mechanical voice boomed, rigid and arrogant:

“Unauthorized intrusion detected. Carbon-based lifeform classified as non-compliant.”

“Lower-level defense protocols activated: five-minute countdown. Complete oxygen extraction. Local nuclear reactor self-destruct imminent.”

Air vents hissed as high-pressure suction ripped the oxygen from the hall.

White frigid gas sprayed in a perfect ring. The floor frosted instantly. Minus eighty degrees—enough to shatter lungs into powder.

The holographic eye pivoted, locking onto the two intruders.

“To override, dual conditions required: cranial excision of embedded sigil and verification of Alexander bloodline warmth. Survival probability: 0.00%.”

A hundred meters away, deep in the access corridor, the polar crawler rumbled.

The assistant’s fingers flew across the tactical terminal, trying to force a connection to the outer defense chain.

Red rejection alerts flashed. Data streams threatened to backfire, almost frying the terminal.

“No. This is a UN-level defense. External intrusion is impossible!”

The radiation curve on the monitor shot straight into the red. The bodyguard’s finger twitched uncontrollably on the rifle trigger.

The underground reactor alone could vaporize this kilometer-deep pit—and everything on the surface.

Inside the chamber, the frigid gas rose ankle-high.

Alexander ignored the floating eye. He tore open his dark shirt, peeling the tailored coat from his broad shoulders.

The coat wasn’t ordinary—it held military-grade nano shielding and active thermal fibers.

His right arm swept across, palm gripping Vivienne’s slender waist, pressing her against his chest.

The coat, warm and tight, wrapped her completely. The internal heating system kicked in, blocking the first wave of lethal cold.

His heartbeat pressed against her back. Calm.

With his free hand, he retrieved a palm-sized, bulletproof military-grade computing terminal, tossing it onto the wheelchair armrest.

“Forget its rules,” he rasped, seasoned with battlefield grit. “Break it.”

Vivienne slid her arms free, hands pressing over the projected laser keyboard. She didn’t glance at the massive eye above—not once.

“Hundreds of billions of simulations telling me how to act? You’re nothing.”

Her fingers struck the virtual keys. No sound. Only the ghost of light.

The highest privileges of the darknet activated.

She abandoned conventional logic cracking, opting for brute force: forced logic override viruses.

Streams of code became jagged blades, carving through Eden’s Brain’s first-layer firewalls.

The holographic eye froze. Red flashes of panic lit its core.

A distorted voice stuttered:

“Warning… low-level logic encountering un… known forced override…”

In the crawler, the assistant gasped. The supposedly invincible underground network was collapsing. Code cascaded backward, disintegrating in reverse.

All guards stared, stunned.

Two carbon-based beings a kilometer underground were manually rewriting the system, manipulating the supercore.

Thirty seconds left.

The eye flashed blood-red. The AI, unable to resolve the breach, bypassed the timer and prepared for reactor meltdown.

Alexander’s large hand covered Vivienne’s. Fingers intertwined.

He glanced at his tactical watch. Thumb pressed confirm.

In orbit, four Alexander-flagged private military satellites adjusted solar arrays. 1.2 seconds later, handshake protocols succeeded, linking all channels.

The orbital computing matrix poured its power into Vivienne’s terminal.

Veins bulged across his hand. Vivienne’s lips curved coldly.

Together, they slammed the enter key.

A flood of data surged forward, armed with orbital computing might. Eden’s Brain’s core logic shattered under the assault.

The countdown froze at 00:00:01.

The massive floating eye shrieked, beams fracturing into meaningless fragments.

Power flickered.

The sealed blast doors disengaged with mechanical groans.

All nuclear warning lights in the kilometer-deep abyss went dark.

A single green halo—the mark of top-level access—illuminated the passage.

Hidden darknet nodes across the globe froze. Those who ruled in shadow stared at the green code, stunned.

No one expected anyone to forcibly cut a UN-level nuclear self-destruct.

The doors opened fully.

No rotting corpse smell, no decades of festering—only high-purity medical condensate flowed outward, glowing sickly blue in the green light.

Across the ocean, two gray-haired contracted specialists stared at sensor charts. One staggered, knocking over petri dishes.

“Absolute-zero cryogenic medium… hyperactive cell preservation…”

Pointing at the upward-sloping chart, his voice shook:

“This purity… the old madmen actually did it. The Lazarus Immortality Project… realized.”

Alexander didn’t release his hold on Vivienne.

Left arm around her shoulders, boots crossing the metal threshold into Zero Core Lab.

The circular chamber was empty except for an oversized cylindrical water tank, suspended magnetically midair, filled with glowing blue medium.

A woman floated inside. Eyes closed. Hair like drifting kelp. Her face, forehead line, even the slight asymmetry of her jaw—eerily similar to Vivienne.

Vivienne’s gaze locked.

Her hospital gown swept aside by the flow, the left chest cavity was a gaping void.

Ribs twisted outward.

In the heart’s place, a mechanical heart pulsed, emitting blue light.

Hundreds of fiber conduits pierced the metal surface, connecting to top-of-tank maintenance systems.

Pumping rhythmically.

One pulse. One glow.