The roar of the ice storm was the only sound left in the world.
Zero Station struggled like it had been thrown into the belly of a giant beast, shaking and groaning amidst endless tremors and thunderous noise. The metal structure creaked at its limits, lights flickering madly, casting the flickering panic and resolve on everyone's faces into stark relief. On the main screen, all signals representing external links had fallen into dead grey silence. Only that faint data line connecting to "Corona Borealis" still flickered stubbornly against the backdrop of the crimson storm map, like the last ember threatening to die out at any moment.
"Structural stress reaching threshold! Minor deformation in B7 sector bulkhead!" a technician shouted a warning through the chaos.
"Initiate secondary structural support! Divert all non-essential power to life support and the main shield!" Li Chenyuan's voice was as steady as a rock, cutting through the clamor with calm, precise orders. He seemed the only immovable anchor in the chaos, his sharp eyes scanning the room before finally settling on Wang Jing and Su Xiaolan in the medical pod. "You have thirty minutes, max. The storm won't give us more time."
Wang Jing and Lu Xingze were practically head-to-head, crowded around the only stable terminal. On the screen, the strange symbol chain from the "message in a bottle" was like a school of icy deep-sea fish, silent and elusive.
"The encryption matrix is a variant of some basic Atlantean syntax, but it's more... ancient, or perhaps... primal?" Lu Xingze spoke rapidly, his fingers flying across an auxiliary screen for theoretical modeling. "It bypasses the standard twelve-layer verification protocol, like a mutant strain of some... genetic code."
"Not a mutant," Wang Jing countered, sweat dripping into his eyes unnoticed, "a cripple. It's missing the key synchronization checksum codes. It's like a fragment torn violently from a larger, more complete message body!" His fingers practically sparked across the keyboard as he tried several decoding algorithms, only to yield more meaningless gibberish.
Time ticked away. The roar of the external storm grew ever more menacing.
"Let me try..." Su Xiaolan's weak voice came through the med-pod's comms. Her face was deathly pale, thin mist clouding the breathing mask. Li Chenyuan immediately moved to stop her, but saw her shake her head slowly, her eyes unusually clear. "Those symbols... they aren't 'speaking,' they are 'feeling.' I can hear it..."
She closed her eyes, her body trembling slightly as if reaching into icy water to touch something intangible. "Cold... endless cold... and... sadness... a very old, very heavy sadness... like a mother who has lost all her children..." Her brow suddenly furrowed, her breathing becoming labored. "No... there's something else... deeper down... not sadness, it's... a warning! Extreme fear! Get away! Run!"
Almost as she spoke, Wang Jing seized a flash of inspiration! "It's not an algorithm problem, it's a resonance problem! This signal needs a 'live Anchor' as a decoding interface! Xiaolan, stabilize it! Use your consciousness frequency to 'smooth out' those jagged fluctuations!"
It was a crazy gamble. Making the severely weakened Su Xiaolan use her abilities again was highly risky.
Li Chenyuan's hands clenched into fists, knuckles white, but he didn't voice an objection. He just gestured to the medical team, who immediately injected more stabilizers into Su Xiaolan's IV.
Su Xiaolan took a deep breath, focusing all her mind. Gradually, the data patterns on her arm, which had faded, glowed faintly again, achieving an intangible synchronization with the symbol chain on the screen. The chaotic symbols began rearranging themselves in a new, fluid rhythm.
A fragmented message, accompanied by intense emotional impact, finally appeared on the screen:
[…WARNING…THE ABYSS HAS AWAKENED…THE COLLAPSE OF Ψ IS NOT THE END…IT IS THE KEY…][…IT AWAKENS FROM PRIMORDIAL SLUMBER…IT CRAVES…UNIFICATION…][…THE CRADLE…MUST BE PROTECTED…OR ALL THINGS…WILL RETURN TO…SILENCE…][…COORDINATES…[UNREADABLE GARBAGE]…TIME…[UNREADABLE GARBAGE]…]
The message terminated completely.
Dead silence filled the control room, broken only by the storm's roar and instrument beeps. Those few short lines were more destructive than any weapon, instantly reshaping their understanding of the current crisis.
"The collapse of Ψ... released something..." Lu Xingze's voice was parched, filled with incredulous fear. "Something... older... 'IT'?"
At that moment, the data line to Corona Borealis fluctuated violently! What came from the other side was no longer a stable data stream, but frantic energy spikes and desperate system overload alarms!
"Corona Borealis is under attack!" Wang Jing cried out. "Energy readings... not conventional weapons! More like... direct erosion by some kind of energy-based lifeform!"
Then, an extremely distorted, noise-riddled audio fragment broke through the interference:
"...IT's here... protect the Cradle... [violent explosion]... power core... [a female scream, likely Elena]... help..."
The audio cut out abruptly.
All suspicion, probing, and hesitation were utterly shattered in that instant. A common, incomprehensible, lethally deadly threat bound the fates of the two groups across the ice sheet together.
The last trace of hesitation vanished from Li Chenyuan's eyes, replaced by a soldier's absolute calm in the face of an absolute threat. He strode to the comms unit, ignoring the severe channel interference, and spoke into it, each word clear and firm:
"Zero Station copies. We believe you. Report your status. Advise immediate coordination of next steps."
After a long, suffocating dozen seconds, with the channel on the verge of total collapse, a tiny data packet came through. It decrypted automatically, unfolding into a detailed schematic of Corona Borealis. The power core area was highlighted, accompanied by a single, brief tactical note:
"We are trapped. Power core failing. Require physical assistance. Coordinates attached."
The moment the data finished transmitting, that stubborn blue data line finally snapped in the storm, dissolving into scattered points of light.
The screen plunged into darkness, leaving only the hellish blizzard imagery from the external sensors.
Inside Zero Station's control room, the silence was tomb-like. Everyone stared at the schematic hanging in the air, marked with the distress call, and the distant coordinates that seemed nearly impossible to reach through the storm.
Physical assistance.
This was no longer a remote game of information. This was a one-way ticket into the heart of the ice storm, to face an unknown terror.
Li Chenyuan slowly turned, his gaze sweeping over every face in the room—the exhausted Wang Jing, the shocked Lu Xingze, the weak yet determined Su Xiaolan, and all the battered crew members.
His voice was low, but carried undeniable force, breaking the silence:
"Prepare the shuttle."