Chapter Three

【Catastrophe Countdown: 10 Hours】

The sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows had completely turned iron gray.

Fierce winds carrying ice shards scraped like files against the outer explosion-proof glass. The thermometer's mercury column was stuck dead at minus ten degrees.

"Click—"

A crisp metallic collision sound came from the outer defensive line of the hallway. I picked up the tactical tablet and pulled up the surveillance footage.

In the surveillance, Dad George dusted off his hands, having cleverly concealed the last modified landmine in the blind spot angle of the load-bearing pillar. The detonation line connected directly to the physical circuit breaker in our main control room.

"All twelve outer detonation points are deployed, high-voltage grid closed-loop self-check passed. Son, not even a fly can get through this door now." Dad pushed open the steel door and strode back into the core living quarters, grabbing the whiskey from the bar and downing it in one gulp.

Then Dad pressed the red lock button on the wall. The hydraulic door emitted a heavy "hiss—bang" sound. Eight steel bolts as thick as a baby's arm simultaneously bit firmly into the wall structure.

The fortress officially entered absolute lockdown status.

"The hydroponic chamber's UV lights and internal circulation system are also calibrated," Ivy emerged from the greenhouse, holding a towel she'd just wiped machine oil with. Her eyes were as cold as a freshly sharpened military blade. "Next, let's watch how those clowns outside perform."

As soon as she finished speaking, the 【Hallway Infrared Alert】 on the tactical tablet suddenly flashed frantically.

I smiled coldly and projected the main surveillance footage onto the living room's holographic large screen.

In the image, the elevator door was forcibly pried open. Toby, who had been chased away by police like a stray dog a few days ago, had miraculously appeared again. Clearly, this fool had somehow bailed himself out through underground money lenders, or perhaps he had promised those debt-collecting gangsters even greater benefits.

Because following him and mother-in-law Karen were five thugs covered in tattoos, holding heavy hydraulic shears and sledgehammers.

Toby's face was now pathologically flushed with excitement. He held up a phone with a fill light on high, actually livestreaming in these final hours before polar night.

"Folks! Look at this door! This is what my selfish, violent brother-in-law with severe doomsday paranoia created!"

Toby spat as he spoke into the camera, his face twisted with jealousy: "The whole city is worrying about not being able to buy bread due to rising prices, yet this capitalist dumped millions of dollars into this penthouse! They've hoarded decades of rations and purified water! Is this fair?! Today, I'm going to represent the starving lower class and smash open this door, taking back the survival rights that belong to us!"

Beside him, my dear mother-in-law Karen, wrapped in a mink coat, was shivering from cold but still shrilly screaming at the surveillance probe: "Reese! Ivy! You two inhuman beasts! Think you can hide in your turtle shell and we can't do anything? Today either you obediently hand over the house and supplies, or I'll have the brothers tear down this wall!"

Watching these jumping clowns on screen, I didn't even have the interest to curse back. I simply walked to the rosewood leather sofa and sat down, striking a match to light my cigar.

"Watch the show." I exhaled a puff of blue smoke, pulling Ivy into my embrace. The oak in the fireplace was crackling as it burned. We had set the interior temperature control to a comfortable 24 degrees.

Outside the door, Toby was obviously completely enraged by our disregard.

To gain more tips in the livestream, he arrogantly snatched the eight-pound sledgehammer from a nearby thug's hand, backed up two steps, and with all his strength, swung it hard at the outermost polycarbonate bulletproof glass blast door.

"Bang—!!!"

A dull, tremendous sound echoed through the hallway, causing the surveillance microphone to emit a piercing blind tone.

The huge recoil force from the hammer tore open Toby's palm. He screamed and staggered back, blood dripping on the ground, yet our blast door didn't even have a white scratch.

"Smash it! Keep smashing! Once we break through this door today, everyone splits the supplies inside!" Karen shrieked frantically.

The enraged Toby, eyes red, gritted his teeth and grabbed the hammer again, roaring at the livestream camera: "Don't worry everyone! With this next hammer, I'll show you how this coward's glass shat—"

"Wooo————!!!"

Just as Toby raised the sledgehammer high over his head, muscles tensed to the limit, preparing to deliver the second strike!

A piercing, high-pitched air raid siren capable of tearing through everyone's eardrums suddenly erupted frantically across Anchorage's sky without warning!

This sound was like a death knell from hell. Toby's motion froze in mid-air. He turned his head in bewilderment toward the window at the end of the hallway.

The originally pitch-black gray sky suddenly erupted with dark red aurora like dried blood. The instant the aurora flashed, the entire city was like having its main artery severed by an invisible giant blade—

"Snap! Snap snap snap!"

Outside the window, all the lights in homes, all the streetlights in the entire neighborhood, went out within a third of a second. Anchorage's power grid instantly paralyzed.

Our hallway surveillance also plunged into brief darkness, but in less than a second, the penthouse fortress's independent military-grade infrared backup power automatically engaged, and blood-red emergency lighting illuminated the hallway like a slaughterhouse.

On screen, Toby's phone lost signal as base stations went down, the livestream forever frozen on his arrogant, stupid expression. Those thugs holding crowbars looked at each other in confusion. Karen covered her mouth in horror as the temperature plummeted cliff-like the instant power failed!

"Thud."

The sledgehammer in Toby's hand dropped powerlessly onto the cold tile due to his violently trembling arms.

Just as he was about to speak, an utterly bone-chilling sound drifted up from directly below the stairwell, through the open shaft passageway.

"Ugh... gurgle gurgle..."

Initially, it was the eerie wheezing of some viscous liquid blocking airways.

Immediately after, "rip"—an extremely clear muffled sound of living flesh being torn exploded, accompanied by a man's shrill scream, distorted beyond recognition from extreme pain:

"Ahhhhhh—Help! It's eating my neck!"

The screaming abruptly stopped, leaving only spine-tingling chewing sounds and crisp bone-breaking sounds echoing through the pitch-black, deathly silent corridor.

The entire top floor hallway fell deathly silent, even breathing stopped.

That was a monster that could no longer be called "human." It wore the tattered uniform of a security guard, half its head parasitized by a gray-white fungus displaying eerie veins. Where eyes should have been were only two blood holes rolling outward with yellow-green pus.

Toby, who had been insufferably arrogant moments ago, was now trembling uncontrollably. A trickle of warm yellow liquid ran down his pant leg, instantly freezing into foul-smelling ice chunks on the floor. Karen was even more frightened, collapsing to the ground, her eyes filled with immense terror.

Inside the warm-as-spring door, I raised my wine glass, gently swirling the blood-red liquid inside, watching their faces paler than corpses on the surveillance screen, my lips curling into an extremely cruel arc:

"Welcome to hell, my dear family members."

The apocalypse I had been waiting for had finally arrived.