Chapter2

The fierce polar winds of Alaska cut like icy blades, relentlessly slicing through my mask.

"Outsourced maintenance, antifreeze leak in the condenser pipe of Zone C." I slammed the forged electronic work badge heavily against the bulletproof glass of the security station, my eyes so cold they could freeze.

The mercenary behind the glass looked at me and Chuck, who was carrying a toolbox and trembling like a leaf, with suspicion.

“Mr. Victor didn’t say there would be any maintenance today.” He pressed his hand to the Glock pistol at his waist.

"Then call him right now and ask him if he wants Reactor No. 3 to explode into the sky because of a cooling failure!" I suddenly leaned close to the window, releasing the violent and malevolent aura I had rolled in piles of corpses in my past life without reservation.

The mercenary was intimidated by the fierce glint in my eyes and subconsciously glanced at the maintenance log. As a low-level engineer here in my past life, I knew better than anyone that there was indeed a minor redundancy error in the pipeline in Area C today.

"Beep—" The gate opens.

As soon as Chuck stepped outside the fortress, he leaned against the titanium alloy wall, completely exhausted.

"Stop talking nonsense and get the cable connected." I ripped open the maintenance panel on the wall and pulled out the main fiber optic cable.

Chuck immediately got into the zone, his ten fingers leaving afterimages on the tactical tablet. Green code cascaded across the screen like a waterfall, but after only ten seconds, the screen suddenly flashed a blinding red light.

"Damn it! That madman Victor has accessed the military-grade quantum firewall!" Chuck gritted his teeth. "External intrusion is absolutely impossible, I'm stuck!"

"How close does it need to be?" I asked, staring at the ventilation duct above my head.

"The physical chip must be plugged directly into the central interface of the core computer room! But there's an infrared laser grid there; not even a fly can get in!"

"Leave it to me. You stay here and maintain the surface data disguise."

I snatched the black chip, about the size of a fingernail, leaped up, gripped the vent grille tightly with both hands, and ripped it off with a mighty effort, disappearing into the dark pipe like a nimble cat.

The memories of being a slave here in my past life have become my most lethal weapon. The exact location of the laser grid with its 0.5-second delay, the blind spots of the gravity sensors—it's all in my mind.

Just as I was crawling along the ceiling above the core server room like a gecko, a rough, angry shout suddenly rang out in my headphones.

"Hands behind your head! Turn around, you fatso!"

My heart skipped a beat. Chuck had been found out!

"Sir... I'm just a plumber, my mom is waiting for me to earn money for her medical bills..." Chuck's voice trembled on the channel, choked with sobs.

"Trying to intrude into a polar fortress, go to hell and earn money for your mother's medical bills!" The mercenary cruelly pulled the bolt of his submachine gun.

“Evan…save me!” Chuck screamed desperately.

"Click." The metallic scraping sound of the trigger being pulled pierced my eardrums along with the electric current.

There's no time left!

I kicked the ventilation louvers of the core server room and crashed into the quantum hub below, which was shimmering with a ghostly blue light, like a falling meteorite!

The alarm shattered the fortress's deathly silence in an instant! Blinding red light flashed wildly!

"Who goes there?!" The guard outside the server room roared as he burst through the door, and the dark muzzle of his gun instantly locked onto my head.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the earpiece, the mercenary in front of Chuck had already pulled the trigger.

A split second between life and death!

Ignoring the gun barrel pressed against the back of my head, my eyes bloodshot, I slammed the physical chip into the physical interface of the central motherboard with the force of a thunderbolt!

"Beast Infrastructure System, devour it!" I roared like a wild beast in my heart.

[Core interface detected. System module forced injection in progress—]

"Bang!" The guards behind him opened fire.

But in that one ten-millionth of a second after the bullet was fired, the red warning lights of the entire fortress seemed to be choked and went out instantly!

[Fingerprint overwriting complete.]

[Iris reshaping complete.]

[The highest-level execution code has been modified.]

The bullet that was originally aimed at me was precisely intercepted by the AI-powered automated defense machine gun that suddenly descended from the ceiling. Sparks exploded right in front of my nose.

The soft, deep blue light re-illuminated the core computer room.

No gunshots came from Chuck's earpiece. Instead, a cold, mechanical female voice boomed simultaneously through thousands of speakers within the fortress:

"Smart security deactivated. Weapon authorization locked. Welcome home, new owner."

The mercenaries inside and outside the server room were horrified to discover that all the smart weapons in their hands had turned red and their triggers were locked. A dense array of defensive machine guns on the ceiling were aiming their infrared beams at their foreheads.

I slowly stood up, brushed the dust off my leather jacket, and looked at the asset list that was jumping wildly on my retina.

A military-grade canned food storage facility costing billions of dollars, a hydroponics garden capable of supporting 10,000 people, and three inexhaustible miniature nuclear reactors...

Victor's billions of dollars of hard work now all bear my name.