Chapter3
"bite--"
The piercing notification sound of my phone shattered the deathly silence inside the heavy armored vehicle. I gripped the steering wheel with one hand, glancing coldly at the lit screen.
The Sterling Group's executive chat group is being flooded with messages from Victor.
"The doomsday flight is about to take off. Enjoy the last sunshine in New York."
The accompanying photo is a selfie taken at a high-end cocktail party in Manhattan. Victor is holding a champagne glass, his arms tightly wrapped around Nicole, the woman who had been yelling at him on the phone the night before.
She laughed like a bitch smelling blood, the Bulgari diamond necklace around her neck stung my eyes, and her cheek was pressed tightly against Victor's chin.
This nauseating vanity and provocation instantly transformed into the accelerator pedal I floored.
"boom--!"
The armored off-road vehicle, like a raging rhinoceros, roared and rolled across the last snowfields of Alaska, screeching to a halt in front of the alloy behemoth hidden beneath the glacier.
"Quick! Take Auntie to the cryo-chamber in the lower medical area!" I shoved the car door open, and a gust of wind carrying ice shards slammed into my face.
Chuck pushed his mother, who was wearing an oxygen mask and was in a deep coma, while my parents stood close to her on either side. The group stumbled and rushed into the fortress hall, which was now completely under my control.
As I watched my parents and Chuck's mother safely enter the core living area, my tense nerves hadn't even relaxed when the control panel suddenly emitted a blinding red light!
"Warning: S-level physical overwrite key detected as not destroyed!" The cold female voice of the central AI roared in the empty hall.
"If the key holder accesses the external port, all highest privileges of this fortress will be forcibly taken over within ten minutes!"
Chuck had just settled his mother in when he heard this voice and froze on the spot, his fat face trembling violently: "Physical key? Victor has a spare key?!"
Cold sweat instantly soaked my back. The painful memory of my past life gnawed at my brain like a venomous snake—Victor's ever-present titanium alloy combination lock!
“He has helicopters! If he gets there before the spore storm and forcibly takes back control, we’ll all be thrown out to feed the mutants!” Chuck grabbed his hair in despair, his newly ignited hope about to be crushed.
Fear, like solid ice water, flooded the entire hall.
"He doesn't have that chance anymore." I stared intently at the radar signal of Victor's private helicopter moving toward the airport, a desperate, violent glint in my eyes.
"Beast System, sever all external physical port connections! Abandon conventional closure procedures and immediately activate the ultimate defense protocol to weld the gate shut!"
"Evan, are you crazy?! If you seal it off in advance, we'll have no way out!" Chuck exclaimed.
I didn't answer, but instead slammed my hand hard on the red blood skull button on the main control panel.
"Boom—!"
The entire underground abyss erupted in a violent tremor, like an 8-magnitude earthquake. The alloy alarm lights overhead spun wildly, turning the entire hall a blinding blood red.
The tungsten steel gate, ten meters thick and weighing tens of thousands of tons, descended with unstoppable force amidst the teeth-grinding metallic scraping sound, like the fangs of two ancient behemoths!
"Bang!"
With a final, deafening roar, the absolute physical barrier, impenetrable even by a nuclear explosion, was fully formed. The hydraulic locking devices at the two side gaps deployed, a click signaling the complete isolation of this fortress from the world.
“The door is closed, but what if he brings mercenaries to storm it, and then uses heavy firepower to demolish it when he finds the door can’t be opened?” Chuck gasped for breath, his eyes bloodshot.
"Then let him give up the idea of coming here and stay in New York to wait for death."
The moment this crazy idea popped into my head, my hands were already typing away on the keyboard like phantoms. I directly accessed the fortress's internal network and forged a top-secret email from the Sterling Foundation's engineering department.
[Urgent Alert: A series of leaks of mantle coolant have occurred at Eden Fortress, with severely excessive radiation levels in the lower layers! Repairs are expected to take 24 hours. Please postpone your travel and do not approach the site!]
Click to send.
The moment that email with its death countdown was sent, I switched to the surveillance footage of a rooftop club in Manhattan, New York.
The holographic projection unfolded in mid-air. In the image, Victor was reaching his hand inside Nicole's evening gown, which was slit up to her thigh, causing her to let out a soft moan.
Suddenly, his phone, which was on the table, started vibrating violently.
Victor impatiently pulled his hand away, glanced at the "Top Secret Alert" on the screen, and his lewd smile instantly froze, his brows furrowing tightly.
He suddenly stood up, irritably loosened his tie, and slammed his phone onto the sofa.
"A bunch of useless construction workers who do absolutely nothing!" Victor cursed, then picked up the champagne on the table and downed it in one gulp.
Nicole coiled around him like a water snake, playfully stroking his chest: "Darling, why are you so angry? Are we not leaving?"
“The fortress is leaking coolant; going there now would be suicide.” Victor sneered, putting his arm around her waist again. “But it doesn’t matter. It seems this damn doomsday rumor will allow us to linger on this gold-leaf sofa for one more day.”
Nicole giggled, her eyes gleaming with a nauseating smugness: "Exactly, this doomsday disaster? I bet it's all lies made up by that penniless Evan. He's probably still in his run-down apartment in Brooklyn, heartbroken over his unsold house."
Looking at the two clueless scoundrels on the screen, I leaned back in my leather command chair, a cruel smile curving my lips.
Time passed by, second by second.
Inside the fortress, a comfortable warm breeze blew through the temperature control system. Chuck went to the kitchen and brought back two well-done Wagyu steaks. Meanwhile, in the surveillance footage of New York, the sky began to emit strange, eerie noises.
Countdown: 00:00:00.
"Sizzle—!"
Suddenly, a terrifying, tearing sound erupted from the Manhattan night sky on the holographic screen, like fabric being ripped apart!
The once dazzling starry sky instantly transformed into a distorted, dark purple vortex. Then, countless spores, radiating an eerie green light, fell like the most magnificent blizzard, blanketing the carnival-filled city that never sleeps.
Several drunk men on the street curiously reached out to catch the glowing "snowflakes".
The instant they made contact, their skin seemed to be splashed with highly concentrated sulfuric acid, emitting white smoke and dissolving at a visible speed!
"ah--!!!"
A bloodcurdling scream shattered the decadent atmosphere of the party. The drunkard's bones cracked and popped in agony, and his body began to swell and mutate rapidly, growing grotesque barbs and fangs.
The end of the world arrived as predicted.
"Bang."
A crisp sound of a cork being pulled out rang out in the quiet command room of the fortress.
With an exquisite silver corkscrew, I pulled out the bottle of Romanée-Conti that Victor had treasured for half a century. The dark red liquid, like fresh blood, slowly poured into the crystal goblet.
"Happy end of the world, Mr. Victor."
I raised my glass and downed it in one gulp, facing the crowd on the holographic screen who were screaming and running, mercilessly devoured by the green spores.
