Chapter 2
Deep within the Sterling estate, in the S-class underground medical area, sterile air carried the faint scent of synthetic mint—a stark contrast to the blood and gore of the cloud penthouse hours earlier.
Sylvia pressed her trembling fingers onto the console, watching the half-dead Christian being stuffed into an expensive quantum cell-repair pod by android nurses. As the pale green polymer healing fluid slowly filled the pod, Christian's convulsing body finally stilled. Though he'd lost his neural module and male organs, at least his life was saved.
Only then did Sylvia's tense nerves begin to relax.
She collapsed into an expensive white-rhinoceros leather chair, pulled a photo-energetic e-cigarette from her platinum case, and took a long drag.
"Crazy... you fool..."
The doors slid open with a bang, and the head of the Sterling family, Arthur Sterling, strode into the medical area. His face was livid as he pointed at Sylvia, who was puffing out smoke. "You actually took that pretty boy to a hotel behind Victor's back and brought this wreck back to the estate! Do you have any idea that Vance Tech holds over sixty percent of our gene quotas?!"
"Father, what are you afraid of?" Sylvia exhaled a plume of rose-scented vapor, raising her chin proudly, full of indignation. "Victor is just a low-born upstart. At heart, he's still a brute who only understands violence! He ripped out Christian's module without even investigating, showing zero regard for the Sterling family!"
She crushed the e-cigarette into a crystal ashtray, gnashing her teeth in reply. "We'll immediately cut off Sterling Heavy Industries' parts supply to his lower-city factories! Tomorrow I'll go to the board and impeach him! Does the Sterling family's hundred-year legacy fear a mad dog with no foundation? As long as we pressure him, he'll still—"
Beep——! WARNING: S-class commercial strike detected!
Sylvia's words were cut off by the piercing robotic warning. The medical area's soft white light instantly turned a blood-curdling red!
Arthur's wrist-mounted micro-terminal emitted a frantic beep, then over a dozen holographic screens exploding with crimson data streams blazed open in midair.
"Vance Tech fully withdraws investment!"
"Twelve core supply chains physically severed!"
"Cloud United Bank freezes all credit lines!"
"Mutagenic disease serum quota——ZERO!"
The numbers cascaded down like a waterfall. Within ten seconds, the Sterling family's proud ten-billion-dollar assets were ground into worthless paper by a ruthless, cold financial algorithm.
"That... that's impossible..." Sylvia's face drained of blood as she screamed at the screens, "Fight back, Father! Use our family reserve funds to—"
Slap!
A heavy backhand struck Sylvia's face with such force that she was knocked to the floor, a ceramic tooth flying out with blood.
"Fight back? Legacy? You arrogant fool!" Arthur's eyes were bloodshot as he roared like a cornered beast, "Vance has cut off every lifeline we have! Reserve funds? He didn't even leave us enough to buy a tube of low-grade nutrient solution! He's slaughtering us from above!"
Overwhelmed with panic, Arthur stopped scolding his daughter. With trembling hands, he forcibly placed a direct encrypted call to Victor.
Within seconds, the holographic screen flickered and the connection went through.
On the screen, there was no full view of Victor—only a segment of a perfectly tailored suit cuff and a hand swirling a wine glass. The cold sound of rain mixed with classical jazz drifted from the speakers.
"Mr. Victor! President Vance!" Arthur transformed from a high-and-mighty patriarch into a groveling beggar. His knees buckled as he dropped to the floor, voice quivering. "This was all the foolish behavior of Sylvia alone! The Sterling family had absolutely no knowledge of it! I'm willing to hand her over—anything, I'll do anything—please, spare the Sterlings a way to survive—"
"Arthur."
Victor's voice came from the speaker, utterly flat and icy enough to freeze blood. "If the garbage doesn't clean itself out, then the whole trash can goes to the landfill. You have three minutes."
Beep. The communication was unilaterally cut off.
The cold, emotionless sentence shattered Arthur's sanity completely.
He spun around and locked eyes on the still-operating S-class repair pod.
"Drain the healing fluid immediately!" Arthur typed frantic override commands into the console.
"No! Father, what are you doing! Christian will die—" Sylvia lunged forward in terror.
Arthur kicked her brutally in the stomach, then grabbed her hair and dragged her out like a dead dog, his expression demonic. "Victor wants to see garbage cleaned up—so I'll clean it up for him!"
A few minutes later.
The outdoor holographic broadcast platform of the Sterling Estate.
The central photon tower of New Detroit abruptly switched channels, and hundreds of holographic drones surrounded the platform. At that moment, every billboard in the city was forced to broadcast this live public execution of power.
In the pouring rain, Arthur pinned Sylvia's neck down, forcing her to kneel before the camera, and roared hoarsely at the drones: "Citizens of New Detroit! President Vance! I, Arthur Sterling, hereby declare to the entire network—immediately stripping Sylvia of all family status! From this moment on, she is nothing but a piece of waste, utterly unrelated to the Sterlings!"
"Don't... Father, please, don't strip my status like this!" Sylvia wailed in despair in the rain, her precious noble aura shattered in full public view by her own father.
The moment Arthur finished his pronouncement—
Beep.
The frantic red data stream on Arthur's wrist abruptly halted. Vance Tech's short-selling program had stopped precisely at 0.1% above the Sterling family's bankruptcy threshold.
The financial strangulation had paused.
Arthur's chest heaved heavily. He stared at the sliver of green on the screen—a sign of life—and let out a long, shaky breath.
They were alive.
With his rationality returning, Arthur looked down at Sylvia, slumped and shivering in the puddles. There was no longer any warmth of a father in his eyes.
"Load these two pieces of waste into industrial waste-disposal capsules." Arthur coldly ordered the android guards. "Shoot them directly into Sector 4's acid-rain landfill."
"No!! Father! That's the lower acid-rain zone!" Sylvia broke down completely, clutching Arthur's mechanical combat boot. "Without serum protection, the mutagenic disease will eat me alive! Please let me stay at the estate, even as a servant—"
"Get lost!" Arthur kicked her away.
Two androids hoisted Sylvia up like a chicken, while another dragged the limp Christian and stuffed the pair brutally into a foul-smelling, rust-ridden circular waste capsule.
The hatch locked mercilessly.
THUD!
The capsule dropped like a dead weight, plummeting down the estate's waste chute with a howling roar. Violent G-forces and stomach-churning jolts slammed Sylvia against the walls in the pitch-black darkness, her screams swallowed by the tunnel's thunder.
A few minutes later, with a massive jarring impact—CRASH!—the capsule slammed into the mud of Sector 4.
The hatch popped open, and Sylvia was dumped out like stinking industrial waste. She hit a heap of trash hard, sharp metal scrap shredding her expensive photochromic dress, mud and black sludge swallowing her elegance instantly.
"Cough... cough..." Sylvia spat blood and tried to push herself up.
Suddenly, from the nearby mud pool, a horrifying, inhuman hiss scraped at her ears.
She turned in terror.
The dumped Christian was thrashing in agony in the acid-rain pit. Without the protection of his neural module, his genetic barrier had completely collapsed. The corrosive acid rain poured onto his wounds, and within seconds, his neck and chest erupted with swollen purple boils. His skin bubbled and ulcerated like boiling water, black-green veins bulging like snakes.
The most relentless nightmare of the cyber world's underbelly—genetic mutagenic disease—had struck.
"Help... it hurts... give me serum..." Christian vomited black fluid, his bloodshot eyes locked onto Sylvia with desperate survival instinct, crawling toward her like a mutating beast.
