The alarms inside the Iceland data vault grew sharper, each one a string pulled taut to breaking. On the split-screen thermal imaging, at least six squads with no identifying markers advanced toward the core with unnerving rhythm; their formation, firepower, and angles of movement were precise to the point of being programmed.
"These aren't mercenaries," Wang Jing's voice crackled over the comms, laced with static. "Their coordination protocol resembles black-ops military, and the frequency band is wrapped in a Cold War–era shell."
The metal corridors lit up with interlocking muzzle flashes. Li and StarShield forces established two firing lines at a cross-passage. Energy beams cut through the air, the acrid scent of scorched steel filling the hall. Shockwaves rumbled through the structure, like a deep-sea leviathan turning in the dark.
Inside the control chamber, the pressure was worse than outside.
"Take her and go," Li Chenyuan said in a low voice, his arm tightening around Su Xiaolan, pulling her close."Hand over the chip," Lu Xingze snapped, his eyes cold as nails. "Otherwise, we'll be hunted to the ends of the earth."
The argument broke off abruptly as a voice unlike her own issued from Su Xiaolan's throat—flat, mechanical, as if lifted directly from protocol text:
"…Clause Three: Should the Anchor fail, initiate candidate sequence; selection mechanism randomized; interference deemed defiance…"
Her pupils glowed faintly, unfocused, as if pierced by invisible light. Li Chenyuan gripped her shoulder, his knuckles white. Lu Xingze's brow furrowed sharply.
"She's being written into it," Wang Jing whispered, struggling to remain steady. "Ψ is coding her into the protocol's syntax."
Su Xiaolan wanted to say I'm fine, but her tongue felt tied. The next instant—
…Xiaolan.
It wasn't heard with her ears but inside her chest—thin, steady, with a cool patience she knew to her bones. Not Ψ. Not anyone else. Him.
Don't look at the front left wing.Vent shaft two has a maintenance hatch. You'll see a red-white-red paint crack.
An image flared in her mind: an old schematic dotted with rivets, marking hatches and blind spots. The handwriting was unmistakably her senior's—clean, restrained.
"Twenty meters left, vent shaft two," the words left her mouth without thought, hoarse yet certain. "Maintenance shaft. Red-white-red paint crack…"
"Who told you that?" Lu Xingze stared at her.
She didn't answer, only pulled Li Chenyuan toward the left. Her palm was icy, as if dipped in seawater. Li Chenyuan gave her one searching glance before snapping orders: "Group Two, follow! Cover our retreat!"
They cut into a side passage under fire and smoke. Two StarShield team members pried open the vent cover. Sure enough, the cracked paint stripes showed red-white-red beneath the frost, forming a seam. The airflow from within carried a damp, metallic chill.
Behind them, the unmarked squad rounded the corner. A fragmentation charge tore through the wall, spraying shards of steel. A Li sniper's beam cracked out from a crevice, breaking their advance.
"Go!" Lu Xingze urged.
They filed into the maintenance shaft. Frost clung to the walls, rough beams scraping their palms. Su Xiaolan crawled forward against the freezing metal. The voice stirred again:
Third girder on the right. The outer screw is loose. It will cut you. Slow down.
She instinctively pulled her hand back, narrowly avoiding the jagged screw. Only someone who had lived here would know such a detail.
"You… are you still there?" she whispered inwardly, her throat tight.
After a pause, like breath through heavy ice:
Don't believe any promise of 'replaceability'.
She froze. The next moment, Wang Jing's voice broke in, hushed and urgent: "The chip just unlocked a line!"
On an auxiliary screen in the control room, a fragment appeared:
[Seventh Amendment: —Anchors may be replaced / requires Witness sign-off — Replacement principle: Homogeneous / Self-offering / Equivalent sacrifice—]
The air inside the shaft thickened.
"See?" Lu Xingze's gaze was sharp as a blade. "There is a way."
"And what is this 'way' you speak of?" Li Chenyuan's sneer was frost-laced steel. "Pushing someone else in?"
Su Xiaolan's chest tightened. Her fingertips clenched the empty chip bag so hard it crackled. She wanted to laugh at herself—a salted fish turned spare part—but the thread of voice cut sharper than any mockery:
'Self-offering' is no salvation. It's the protocol's cheat code. It turns you into the next wall of the cage.
Her throat ached. She wanted to ask a thousand questions, but the shaft shook violently. An explosion above blew open a vent, sending sparks and ice cascading down like inverted meteors.
"Almost at the exit," Wang Jing's voice was breathless. "Access corridor twenty meters ahead. Our perimeter won't last!"
They burst out into a broader maintenance hall. At the end stood a half-sealed fire door, its red fault light blinking. As a StarShield soldier forced it, a piercing whale song spiked through Su Xiaolan's temple.
She staggered. Her vision flipped to another channel—not her own, but a high bird's-eye view, gridded in blue, every corner annotated with temperature, pulse, brainwaves.
Her senior's surveillance feed.
She saw shadows advancing down a side hall; two helmets glowed with blank clusters of light, brainwaves absent. Instinctively, she shouted:
"Two at the right corner, blank brainwaves. Remote-controlled. Helmets block sonic attacks—use short-pulse!"
Lu Xingze reacted instantly, flipping his weapon to short-pulse. Two bursts lit the hall, dropping the targets like cut puppets.
Wang Jing gasped. "That wasn't a guess… Xiaolan, were you seeing someone else's feed?"
She had no time to answer. The second heart in her chest pounded heavier—her resonance with her senior merging their visions.
The fire door gave way. Sea wind and snow knifed in. Outside was a frozen platform, and in the distance, the evacuation jet's lights cut the storm.
As they crossed the threshold, Gu Yu's voice spilled from every speaker at once, tinged with amusement and fatigue:
"Don't blame Ψ alone. Every bullet you fire now came from accomplices of the Pact. Last time someone asked: who are the real prisoners? You'll know soon enough."
"Who are the accomplices?" Lu Xingze barked.
Gu Yu's laugh was clipped. "Ask your superiors."
The comms died, leaving only the howl of wind through steel.
"Go!" Li Chenyuan half-lifted Su Xiaolan into the jet. Li and StarShield units fired covering bursts, retreating into the storm. The cabin floor was slick with melted snow under their boots.
At the hatch, Su Xiaolan looked back—not at the pursuers, but down into the vault's dark. The thread of voice pressed close, whispering at her ear with that rare urgency:
—Don't come.
Her hand trembled. "What did you say?"
The voice strained, each word forced:
…Don't go… to Zero.
The hatch slammed shut. The storm cut off.
※
The jet climbed through the blizzard, the ice plain below fracturing like a shattered mirror. Aurora threads sliced the sky into taut green wires.
Inside, med-kit light illuminated tense faces. Su Xiaolan leaned back, still clutching the chip bag. After a pause, she pulled out the embedded chip and handed it to Wang Jing. The metal was cold as a stone dredged from the deep.
Wang Jing took it, muttering the fragment: "Witness… replacement… equivalent sacrifice…" His gaze swept the cabin. "If this clause is real, then we—"
"Will not trade her for anything," Li Chenyuan cut in, his voice calm and brutal.
"Are you sure?" Lu Xingze's smile was razor-thin. "When the world is falling apart?"
Their gazes clashed—unyielding versus severe. Su Xiaolan wanted to laugh at it all, but a sudden distortion wrenched her mind elsewhere.
Not the cabin. A conference room.
She stood in a corner, her perspective slightly elevated. A cold metal table stretched before her, a faint blue tail-fin watermark glowing at its center. Thirteen chairs. Ten occupied—uniforms, lab coats, suits. Two empty seats bore nameplates. One read: Witness-5. The other, blank.
"The Seventh Amendment needs an addendum: the 'Equivalent Sacrifice' principle," an old voice declared."Who will sign off?" another asked.
A hand extended, restrained yet elegant. The pen descended, signing a short codename:
K. Shaw
Pain lanced through her chest. The vision shattered, snapping her back to the cabin, air thick with oxygen and disinfectant.
"Xiaolan?" Li Chenyuan pressed her forehead, hot with sweat. "You're shaking."
She tried to speak, broken syllables rasping:"…Witness-5… amendment… K…"
Wang Jing jolted. "What did you see?!"
She couldn't answer. Another rhythm surged beneath the whale song—a deeper, older resonance, like breath under ice. Not Ψ. Something older. Listening.
Her arms tightened around herself. "It's not It watching us. Something else is watching through It."
The cabin went still—until the comms display lit:
[Anchor Alignment: Progress 21%][Global Network Timeline: Auto-aligning][Witness (P.D.): Handshake Protocol—Standby]
Wang Jing swallowed. "P.D…. The Fifth Witness is about to appear."
"We can't wait for It," Lu Xingze said coldly. "Greenland. Zero Point—"
The tactical display flickered, text scrawling across:
[Message Source: Iceland Vault / Cryo-Unit KS-01][Voice Transcription: —Do not go—to Zero—]
Everyone turned to Su Xiaolan. Her pupils shrank, as if surfacing from drowning.
"It's him," she said softly. "Senior."
Wang Jing's breath caught. "But Gu Yu said the answers are there."
"So this is the choice," Lu Xingze's gaze sharpened. "Trust Gu Yu, or trust one bound to Ψ?"
"Neither," Li Chenyuan said, eyes on Su Xiaolan. "We trust her."
She was silent, her throat raw, knowing any word could shift their fate. The breath inside her chest overlapped hers once more, then ebbed away. She clenched the chip bag, pressing a crease into the plastic like a secret coordinate.
"First, we survive Iceland," she said. "Then we decide Zero Point."
Outside, the storm thickened. Inside, the display updated:
[External Threat Level: High → Extreme][Recommendation: Alter course; Waypoint—North Atlantic Temporary Airspace 'λ-Return']
Wang Jing adjusted the avionics. The jet banked. The aurora tore a green blade across the night sky, like the slit of a knife through the heavens.
Su Xiaolan closed her eyes. The second heartbeat quieted, but she knew—her senior was still there. Not as silence, but as a remnant of humanity refusing to vanish.
Do not go to Zero Point.
The words hammered into her mind like a nail, tearing her between two pulls. She pressed the crease deeper into the plastic bag, a coordinate to the crossroads ahead.
The jet plunged into cloud. The progress bar advanced by one notch.
[Anchor Alignment: Progress 22%]