[ILLEGAL ACCESS! ILLEGAL ACCESS!]
[LOGIC POLLUTION SOURCE DETECTED.]
[DEFENSE PROTOCOLS ACTIVATED: LOGIC LOCK / NEURAL BURNOUT.]
Before Andy could react, massive red warning boxes exploded in the center of his vision. Immediately following, a ferocious torrent of data surged back through the interface. This wasn't ordinary data—it was a "Logic Bomb."
In the Golden Age, humanity had installed such defense mechanisms in all vital STC equipment to prevent industrial machines from being corrupted by Warp scrapcode or hijacked by xenos hackers.
The principle was simple: if an external command logic failed to meet factory specifications, or if the operator's identity was suspect, the defense system would release a high-frequency pulse through the connection, attempting to physically fry the intruder's electronic brain or neural interface.
The Helios Group had undoubtedly messed with this machine extensively. In their attempts to bypass security restrictions, they had flooded it with garbage code and forced-overwrite commands, leaving the Black Box's defense system in a state of hyper-sensitive stress. In its current judgment logic, whether the one plugging in was Andy or anything else, it was categorized as a virus!
Andy felt his processor core temperature spike by twenty degrees instantly. The numbing sensation of the electric current turned into a sharp sting. But he didn't rush to pull out the probe. He was an Iron Man; a logic bomb of this magnitude was merely a bit "warm" to him.
"Trying to burn me?" The blue light in Andy's electronic eyes intensified. "Your computing power is a bit too raw for that... Ow, hot, hot, hot!"
Andy shut his mouth. In the subsequent operation, he didn't bother trying to crack the chaotic encryption layers left by Helios, nor did he attempt to repair the garbled control code. That would be a waste of time, and patching a system built on a "mountain of shit" would only result in a functional mountain of shit.
Andy chose the simplest, most brutal, and most effective method.
Format!
He directly mobilized his top-tier authorization computing power as an Iron Man, bypassed the machine's application layer, and dove straight into the low-level BIOS system. Andy wrote an incredibly dominant system command: whether it was an efficiency optimization script written by Helios or some security restriction patch—delete it all!
[COMMAND EXECUTED: FULL DRIVE FORMAT.]
[TARGET: RESTORE TO FACTORY SETTINGS.]
The progress bar on Andy's retina advanced at lightning speed. The defense programs that had been stubbornly resisting collapsed instantly under the absolute crushing weight of his computing power. Now, the world was quiet.
As the progress bar hit 100%:
Hum—
The suffocating, low-frequency humming that had filled the entire core workshop suddenly vanished. The purple light swirling on the surface of the floating black cube flickered twice and then extinguished completely. In its place, a yellow breathing light began to glow, indicating standby mode.
The machine stopped. The lethal "Core Meltdown Containment Protocol" was forcibly terminated.
But Andy didn't feel relieved. The moment the connection broke:
Sizzle—!!!
A massive surge of residual energy and unreleased error data flowed back into Andy's body through the probe he hadn't yet withdrawn. Andy's vision went black, and his entire hydraulic system failed instantly.
Clang.
The half-ton metal body fell straight back, crashing heavily onto the concrete floor.
[WARNING: CORE OVERLOAD.]
[WARNING: MOTION CONTROL MODULE FORCED OFFLINE.]
[EMERGENCY HEAT DISSIPATION IN PROGRESS... ESTIMATED TIME: 300 SECONDS.]
Andy lay on the ground, unable to move. His cooling fans spun frantically, making a loud whirring sound. The armor on his wrists was hot enough to fry an egg. Though immobilized, his consciousness remained clear. For an Iron Man with near-instantaneous thought speed, three hundred seconds of cooling was a long sentence.
Since he had nothing to do: "Let's find some entertainment."
Andy began to browse the final system logs exported from the machine. The logs recorded all operational states and external interactions before the formatting. Most were red error reports showing abnormal core temperatures due to missing coolant. But amidst these errors, Andy found a set of very strange data.
"What's this?"
Hundreds of "Refused Response" records. The timestamps were highly concentrated, specifically during the period right before Andy entered the underground area—exactly when the Purestrain Genestealer was leading its subordinates in their frantic excavation.
"Strange..." Andy muttered internally. "Those bugs don't understand electronic technology; they don't even know where the data interface is. How could they send connection requests to the Black Box?"
A "connection request" usually refers to an external device trying to perform a handshake with the host via electronic signals. But these Genestealers were using pickaxes and claws. Unless...
Andy pulled up the detailed waveforms of the rejected signals. He compared them with the radiation waveforms the machine had been releasing at the time. A few seconds later, an absurd conclusion emerged.
According to his previous understanding, when the Black Box went out of control, it released a high-energy radiation field to reconstruct surrounding matter. The wavelength of this radiation was peculiar, stabilized between 380nm and 420nm. But behind this purple light radiation was a low-frequency magnetic pulse oscillating thousands of times per second.
In physics, this was just a byproduct of energy overload—it had no special meaning. But in biology...
Andy quickly searched the "Tyranids" entry in the STC biological database. Tyranids are a hive-mind race. They communicate not through sound, but through biological signals known as the "Synapse Network." This signal is essentially a special frequency mixed with psionic and bio-electric energy.
By sheer coincidence, the low-frequency magnetic pulses emitted by this malfunctioning Golden Age industrial machine were 99% identical in frequency, wavelength, and even rhythmic oscillation to the "Rally/Fusion" signals sent by high-level Tyranid synapse creatures, such as Hive Tyrants or Norn Queens.
It turned out the Genestealers weren't trying to move the machine. In their perception, this machine emitting intense purple light and pulse signals wasn't a machine at all.
It was a God!
It was a newly arrived Hive Mother emitting a powerful summoning signal! Translated, the signal essentially said:
"I am hungry, children. Come back to Mother's embrace, sacrifice your biomass to me, and let us become one."
This genetic-level summons was irresistible to the Genestealers. That was why the Purestrain had been commanding its subordinates to dig so desperately. The purple-skinned hybrid workers Andy had shattered earlier hadn't felt fear in the second before they turned to crystal; they had felt a fanatical happiness.
They believed they were answering a divine call, undergoing a sacred fusion with the Great Mother. They didn't even care that the result of this fusion was becoming a purple rock. In their logic, as long as they got inside, they would achieve transcendence.
"This..."
Andy lay on the ground, staring blankly at the ceiling, feeling that the situation was far too abstract. Helios's reckless tinkering had accidentally created a counterfeit Tyranid beacon. A Purestrain Genestealer lurking in the Underhive, originally prepared to destroy the world, had lost its life chasing a fake signal. The hybrids had died one after another in front of a broken printer...
"This is the result of blind faith."
Whether you believe in the Emperor, the Warp, or the Hive Mind—if you don't understand science, you'll eventually be schooled by the laws of physics. Especially those who believe in the Warp—they are truly doomed for life!
[HEAT DISSIPATION COMPLETE.]
[MOTION CONTROL MODULE BACK ONLINE.
][SYSTEM REBOOT SUCCESSFUL.]
As the red text vanished from his retina, Andy felt control over his body return. His hydraulic pumps repressurized with a faint hum. He climbed up from the ground, stretching his somewhat stiff joints. The earthy-yellow hazmat suit had completely crystallized and shattered into a pile of crumbs as he moved.
Andy didn't care. The radiation here had vanished, and the purple light was gone. He walked over to the Black Box, which was now hovering obediently in mid-air. Its surface was as smooth as a mirror, reflecting Andy's cold metal face.
It had now been restored to factory settings, becoming an obedient industrial unit. As long as he gave it power, fed it the right blueprints, and fed it "trash," it could spit out any raw material Andy desired.
"Alright, you're saved," Andy said, patting the Black Box's casing. "Come home with big brother."
"Follow me from now on, and I'll give you all the trash you can eat."