The Great Rift Valley, Africa. Deep beneath the earth.
The central hall of the D-04 mining zone groaned low as it underwent structural collapse, dark-gold dust hanging in the air like fog.
Ryan stood before the ruins of the throne room, looking down at the dark-gold wreckage crumbling to powder beneath his feet. His expression was as flat as if he were inspecting a pile of obsolete industrial scrap.
No sign of Wesker. No final showdown.
Just a hollowed-out metal shell and a smug pre-recorded message.
Ryan wasn't angry about being played. He just found Wesker's self-styled godhood rituals spectacularly inefficient.
"Jill, decryption progress." Ryan pressed his earpiece, his voice echoing through the dead silence of the ruins.
"98%... 99%... decryption complete. Data force-loaded into the Dawn's command hub." Jill's voice was clipped and fast, the background filled with the high-pitched whine of thousands of servers running at full capacity. "Wesker buried three layers of logic bombs in the local servers, but against our processing power, his firewalls were about as useful as a screen door on a submarine."
Ryan walked to the half-destroyed console and yanked out a cable that was throwing sparks. "If he wants to play for time, then let's turn his whole playbook inside out."
"Parsing the Ouroboros No. 1 flight logs now... locked on." As Jill finished speaking, a high-resolution 3D holographic globe automatically projected from Ryan's holographic display.
A blinking red dot sat over the North Pacific, tracing a straight line along the edge of the stratosphere at subsonic speed.
"He's not just running, Ryan." Jill's voice took on a steely edge. "Based on atmospheric circulation modeling, his flight path is aimed directly at the North Pacific Rossby Wave Node."
"That's the core valve of the global atmospheric circulation system. The node controlling every wind belt in the Northern Hemisphere."
Ryan stared at the red dot, complex streams of data reflected in his pupils.
"Deploy the spores at the node, use atmospheric long waves for global dispersal... he's trying to bypass our ground-level quarantine net."
"Yes. If he succeeds, the virus will reach ninety percent of the Northern Hemisphere's population centers within seventy-two hours," Jill added. "Countdown: fifty-four minutes."
An ugly number. For any conventional aerial intercept force, crossing half the globe in that window to catch a stealth bomber was a suicide equation.
"Missile accuracy will be disrupted by his biosensitive skin coating. Only direct physical intervention will work."
"Got it." Ryan turned and walked toward the edge of the collapsing hall. "If he wants to hold his evolution ceremony in the sky, I'll be the one to crash the party."
He opened a full-spectrum battlenet sync as he walked. Star Fire core team strategic debrief.
"Chris, status on your theater." Ryan's voice went out on the open channel.
"Americas front is in mop-up phase." Chris's deep voice came back over the rumble of heavy machinery. "The Leviathan's remains are being dissolved by bio-enzymes. Radiation levels in Boston Bay are dropping."
"Leon, how's South America?"
"New Human legion main force is wiped out. I'm running Shadow Force through the last crystallization sites." Leon was breathing hard, sounding like he'd just burned through a brutal burst of exertion. "Ready to rally on your word."
"Sherry, Becky, report on the Asian front."
"The EM cannons plowed through that trash three times over. Southern slope of the Himalayas is showing zero biological signatures." Sherry's voice was calm and cold. "Uncle Ryan, Becky and I are on standby. Ready to support whenever you need us."
"All units, effective immediately, all fronts shift to defensive posture. Hand off to the standard inoculation garrisons." Ryan issued the final order, his tone carrying an absolute, unquestionable rationality. "All core combat assets converge on these coordinates. That's where Wesker's script ends."
He cut the earpiece, turned, and climbed quickly over the rubble to the surface of the Rift Valley.
The red-brown earth of the African continent glowed a dark, bloody hue under the setting sun. Overhead, the cloud layer had taken on a sickly purple from high-altitude electromagnetic reactions. Wind lashed sand against his face.
He wasn't waiting for some slow-ass plane. Time wasn't waiting for him.
"Heisenberg, where's my delivery?"
"Easy, Boss. A beauty this far ahead of its time needs a little warm-up."
The words had barely landed when a shriek of atmosphere being torn apart screamed in from the horizon.
A matte-black interceptor with a wingspan shaped like a recurve blade punched through the sound barrier. The Valkyrie, a heavy-industrial masterpiece jointly built by Heisenberg Heavy Industries and Star Fire's aviation division.
Its hull used biosensitive wave-absorbing material similar to the Ouroboros No. 1's, but its guts were pure brute-force fusion engines. It cut a sharp, impossible angle in the air, its vertical thrust nozzles blasting blue plasma columns that instantly melted the sand below into glass.
The interceptor held a steady hover in front of Ryan. The hatch blew open with a rapid series of mechanical locks disengaging.
Ryan stepped aboard. The interior had zero creature comforts. Nothing but exposed titanium-alloy framing and dense clusters of sensors. He dropped into the custom anti-G restraint chair. "Let's go. Stratosphere. Time to deliver a verdict to an old friend."
The Valkyrie let out a roar that could rupture eardrums, massive white shockwave rings bursting outward around the fuselage. It shot upward like a black spike driven straight into the sky ten thousand meters above.
Ryan watched the sky outside the window darken rapidly. Here at the silent edge of the stratosphere, the race that would decide the genetic future of human civilization had officially begun.
[This novel is now COMPLETE. Read the entire series right now on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]