bookbashuk Chapter 29 Alert! Alert!
Chapter 29 Alert! Alert!
Andy silently calculated the time.
Two hours and forty-five minutes had passed since the transport vehicle lost contact.
The surroundings were deathly silent, except for the sound of sand being whipped up by the wind and hitting the armor.
There were no Valkyrie transport planes roaring in, no fully armed private security forces, and not even a single servo skull for reconnaissance.
This is not normal.
This is extremely abnormal.
Given the Helios Group's style of action—recovering even a single gram of raw material and silencing even a single witness—after a transport accident of this magnitude, the armed recovery team would typically seal off the area within twenty minutes and then burn everything within a 500-meter radius to ashes.
But now, it's as if these people have all vanished into thin air.
Andy looked in the direction of the fully enclosed factory.
There is only one explanation.
The chaos within their factory was a thousand times more serious than the transport truck loaded with corpses made of purple crystals.
The situation was so dire that Helios's stewards at the bottom of the nest were completely paralyzed and could no longer care about the losses outside.
"Very well, since no one has come to claim it, it is unclaimed."
Andy made his judgment.
He turned around and looked at the heavy armored cargo box door, which, though twisted, remained tightly closed.
Gamma-9.
Andy pointed to the crack in the door.
"Cut it open."
Although Gamma-9 was terrified of the purple crystalline corpses, the Sage's command was absolute.
He walked over, trembling, carrying a thermoelectric cutter.
A blinding white light flashed, and a jet of high-temperature water, thousands of degrees Celsius, struck the special alloy door lock directly.
The sound of melting metal sizzling filled the air, and molten iron flowed down the cracks in the door.
Five minutes later.
"Bang—!!!"
The armored door, ten centimeters thick, finally gave way and collapsed with a crash, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Andy turned on the powerful searchlight on his shoulder.
A beam of snow-white light pierced the darkness inside the carriage.
The moment they saw what was inside, everyone gasped in shock.
……
……
Thirty kilometers away.
The core production workshop of Helios's tenth-generation fully enclosed processing plant.
"Waaah—! Waaah—! Waaah—!"
The piercing red alarm echoed through the huge, enclosed space, making people's eardrums ache.
But this sound couldn't drown out the low-frequency hum of the giant machine that occupied half the workshop.
At this moment, its core, which should have been tightly enveloped by a force field shield, was emitting a visible purple light.
As a terrifying energy leak occurred, the entire workshop was engulfed by this eerie purple light.
Bathed in purple light, hundreds of shirtless, bald workers with purplish-red skin were toiling away.
No, that can no longer be called labor.
They are being tortured!
The high-energy molecular reconstruction field is indiscriminately attacking every carbon-based organism in the workshop.
A worker carrying a box of ore suddenly had his left arm turn transparent in the purple light.
The originally soft muscles and tough bones underwent a phase transition at the molecular level in an instant, transforming almost instantly into a kind of purple, crystal-clear silicate crystal.
"Snap!"
A crisp sound!
The arm, which had turned into crystal, couldn't withstand the weight of the ore and broke off at the shoulder.
The severed arm fell to the ground and shattered into a cloud of purple dust.
If it were a normal person, they would have been writhing on the ground in pain by now.
But this worker didn't.
He didn't even utter a sound, just swayed slightly, then stretched out his intact right hand, picked up the box from the ground again, and continued to send it onto the conveyor belt.
At the same time, right above his head, all the fire sprinklers on the ceiling had been turned on.
"Sizzle—"
However, what was sprayed down was not water meant to extinguish the fire.
Instead, it was a thick green mist.
That was an "emergency production support gas" specifically developed by the Helios Group for this situation.
The ingredients are simple and brutal: high-purity adrenaline, military-grade nerve blockers, and the maddening combat stimulant "Rampage".
In this green, poisonous fog, all pain receptors were forcibly severed.
All activity in the cerebral cortex was forcibly suppressed.
All that remains are the most primitive muscle reflexes and the instinct to obey commands.
Even if the eyeballs have crystallized and ruptured, even if the legs have turned into brittle stones, even if the internal organs are gradually vitrifying.
These workers, who possessed the blood of gene stealers, were still driven by drugs, like a group of zombies without the ability to feel pain, frantically consuming their last bit of life force in the purple radiation.
To ensure that the feed inlet of the malfunctioning machine is not blocked, and to ensure that the production line runs for even one more second.
They are turning themselves into fuel.
An operator was pulling the gate when half of his body suddenly stiffened and turned into a purple crystal sculpture.
The workers behind immediately rushed up, kicked down and crushed their companion who had been turned into a sculpture, and then took his place to continue pulling the switch.
Dust filled the air, mingling with green medicinal mist and purple light.
This factory has gone completely mad!
……
……
The factory's top floor, panoramic observation room.
A half-meter-thick lead-lined radiation-shielding glass pane isolates the hell below from the outside world.
A young woman stood by the window, holding a glass of expensive Armase brandy.
Jacia Hull, Executive Director of the Nest Development Division of the Helios Group, and third in line to the Hull family.
Known as the "Golden Poison Bee," she is known for her ruthless methods, extreme pursuit of efficiency, and disregard for human life.
He is also the person in charge of this ancient black box excavation project.
Jessia's silk dress was spotless, and her meticulously styled blonde hair shimmered under the soft light.
She looked down at the workers below, who were being turned into crystal, shattered, and then crushed into powder, her eyes devoid of any emotion.
There was neither fear nor a trace of pity.
It's like a mischievous child observing an ant nest that's been doused with boiling water.
"director."
The security specialist behind him was sweating profusely, holding a data tablet in his hand, and speaking urgently.
"The energy index of the reconstructed field has exceeded the critical value."
"Conservatively speaking, the isolation shield will completely fail in three minutes."
"At that time, that crystallization radiation will instantly spread throughout the entire factory area, including here."
"The shuttle is already warming up on the tarmac. Please evacuate immediately."
Jessia gently swirled the wine in her glass, watching the amber liquid cling to the glass.
"Has the data in the black box been backed up?"
She only asked this one question.
"I've backed it up! And you have the key too." The specialist was practically jumping up and down in panic. "But all the equipment downstairs is ruined! This factory cost three billion..."
"Equipment is inanimate, people are consumables."
Jessia downed the wine in her glass in one gulp and casually tossed the expensive crystal glass onto the carpet.
Beneath her glamorous exterior lies an achievement built upon the bones of tens of thousands of workers at the bottom of the nest.
Although Jessia's current work is carried out in the Bottom Nest, to her, the Bottom Nest is nothing more than a huge garbage dump, and the people living there, especially the workers who serve her, are just lines of ink in the cost column.
"As long as the black box remains, as long as the key remains in my hands."
"What's three billion?"
"At most, the board of directors will fine me a year's worth of bonuses."
She turned around, walked towards the door in her high heels, and didn't even glance back at the workshop that was being destroyed.
In her view, the accident was just a less-than-successful stress test.
If you get the data and the black box is still there, then you've won.
As for those workers who died?
We can just recruit another batch from the bottom nest next week. Anyway, there are plenty of those bald guys, and we don't have to pay them any compensation.
"Let's go."
Jessia's voice was cold and arrogant.
Five minutes later.
A streamlined, luxurious shuttle took off from the helipad on top of the factory.
Its engines spewed blue flames, tracing a graceful arc through the atmosphere as it flew toward the towering spire of the Upper Nest.
And below it.
"Bang--!!!"
With a loud bang, the massive, fully enclosed factory suddenly collapsed inward.
A burst of purple light erupted instantly, turning the ruins within several kilometers around it into an eerie color.