After entering, the old decorations gave way to a high-tech pure white atmosphere. The ceiling soared nearly ten meters high. When he looked up, it was a field of black, with no ceiling in sight. A few wall-mounted spotlights were on, providing only basic illumination, while large swaths of shadow dominated the rest.
The mechanical hum ran steadily through the darkness, echoing repeatedly in the vast space.
“Left side,” Ben Yian said.
Creak— Horne opened the door and peered inside through a narrow gap.
The computer in the lab monitoring room was on, its faint screen glow illuminating the large room. He scanned the area and confirmed that only the computer screen was lit—no one was inside.
A few light footsteps entered quietly, and the door closed behind them.
This trip had been fairly easy so far. As Horne let out a breath of relief, he quickly swept his flashlight over every corner of the monitoring room.
Just desks and computers. The filing cabinets along the walls held few items; the data must all be on the computers.
Horne took a few steps forward, and the people behind him followed immediately.
“Brother.” Hels’s voice was very low; he deliberately deepened it, making it sound even more gravelly.
“Mm?” Horne gave a short reply. His gaze lingered on one of the computer screens, which displayed real-time footage from various rooms on this floor.
The space they were in and the stairwell were both pitch black.
The surveillance for those two areas had been destroyed.
Of course, not by him.
The north-facing windows were tightly shut. Through the massive glass panes, he could overlook half of Loch City.
It was early morning, and half the residential buildings had already gone dark. Sparse figures dotted the streets, resembling crippled ants under the dim yellow streetlights.
In the few seconds Horne stared out the window, Hels took two steps closer to him. They stood very near, and Hels’s voice was almost right against his ear.
He said, “Brother, I’m scared.”
Horne’s face remained expressionless as he shone the flashlight straight into Hels’s face. Hels reflexively shielded his eyes and missed Horne’s speechless look.
He was actually scared now?
Ben Yian’s voice came from the other end of the monitoring room. He wanted to shout but kept his voice low instead: “The computer that showed me the data today—this one!”
The screen stayed on constantly, flickering with different numbers that lit up Ben Yian’s face.
“Can we copy the data?” Horne ignored Hels and hurried over to the computer Ben Yian indicated. He leaned down to check what was on the screen.
“I’ll try.” Ben Yian had a rough memory of how the lab staff had accessed their research results that day.
Click.
Pages opened one by one on the screen, and their ambitions emerged before Horne’s eyes through the popping windows.
Ten years ago, humans had attempted peace talks with the Aliens, but they failed—that round of talks led to the deaths of two generals.
In the two years after the failure, the fighting was at its fiercest, with massive Alien invasions. Defenses and counterattacks played out daily. It was during that time that Horne rose above everyone in the Military District to become the youngest and most acclaimed major.
At the same time, the remains of large numbers of Aliens allowed the government to uncover the secret of Xenomorph Particles. They attempted talks again, but this time privately.
The previous failure meant many humans no longer trusted the Aliens—especially extremists like Horne.
The biological differences between the two species made the project enormous. They started with plants, then animals, and finally humans.
“What does this mean?” Han Ya peered at it from the side, his face practically pressed against the screen. “They suspect quantum entanglement between Immortality Particles and some kind of Ghost Particle, so as long as the Aliens’ core isn’t destroyed, they regenerate indefinitely for a period. They want to implant this particle into humans? To repair injuries and ultimately achieve immortality?”
“The odds of immortality are currently zero, but they’re still trying,” Ben Yian explained. “It seems like it’s not just humans attempting fusion, though. The Aliens are trying to inject human cells too… Why? Do they want to become human?”
It was incomprehensible. The data reflected in Horne’s eyes as he said nothing, his palms braced on the desk, silently watching.
Xenomorph Particles now had a high disease repair rate; only a tiny amount was needed— even one strand sufficed. But after injection into humans, survival rates were uncertain: the lucky survived one or two years, the unlucky mere dozens of days. For someone like Ben Mu, with only days to live, the temptation of these particles was enormous.
Perhaps for others too.
Experiments showed repeated attempts at particle injection, but exceeding one caused mutations in the human body. The same happened when Aliens injected human cells—they couldn’t extract each other’s genetic sequences and keep the host body viable for long.
“The mutation probability depends on the test subject’s reaction?” Han Ya felt like he understood less the more he read. “So the degree of mutation is personal? How does that connect?”
Horne glanced over, frowned in confusion, and read the data aloud again: “Test subject survival rates depend on the test host’s emotional response. Extensive experiments prove that the calmer and less resistant the subject, the higher the survival rate.”
In other words, for success, the test subject had to be wholeheartedly willing, with no emotional fluctuations.
Obviously, those who were captured couldn’t contribute so peacefully; most were terrified and panicked, so the experiments kept failing until years later, when they discovered this.
“Oh, I get it,” Horne said. “They know if they’re truly willing, but almost everyone’s ‘willingness’ is just a ‘no other choice’ in their brain—like being coerced, unconscious, or agreeing just to survive. Human cells are far more honest than controllable consciousness, so progress has been slow.”
No human would wholeheartedly fuse with Xenomorph Particles without any fear or resistance—not even a racing heartbeat, which could cause oscillations. Fusion required absolute rational calm.
“I’ll copy these first and look them over later.” Ben Yian connected the computer directly to his Resident Chip. At the flash of green, he was somewhat surprised. “It actually connects?”
Click.
Perhaps they had never suspected anyone would find this place, let alone break in at night. The door guards were high-combat retired Military District personnel, yet the computer had no password? Too smooth.
Horne looked up, shining his flashlight on Hels, who had been wandering around alone at the other end, inspecting things.
Noticing the beam, Hels turned to look at Horne and gave him a smile.
Horne sighed and turned his attention back to the computer.
“I’ll import it to my Resident Chip and try.” Ben Yian clicked on the screen with his fingers, packaged the data, and uploaded it straight to his chip Terminal.
Click.
“How long?” Horne asked. They couldn’t stay here too long—the longer they did, the more unpredictable things could get.
Ben Yian calculated: “Fifteen minutes.”
“Good.”
With this data, even if he couldn’t immediately think of a way to counter the government without causing chaos, they wouldn’t be completely passive.
Horne wasn’t worried about burning bridges with those people entirely; it was just that going public could spark even greater unrest. Unless absolutely necessary, they needed to weigh it carefully.
“I’ll check the side area. Han Ya, stay here with Ben Yian and keep watch.”
“Good.”
Han Ya came over and stood guard by Ben Yian, watching the progress bar crawl along slowly.
Click.
Horne went to find Hels and discovered that Hels—who had been looking around earlier—now stood motionless in front of a computer, staring at the screen.
“What’s wrong?” Horne asked.
Hels made room for him: “Take a look.” He pointed at the screen.
Horne’s gaze shifted over. The instant it landed on the screen, he held his breath, his pupils contracting.
It was surveillance footage from various lab rooms, and without exception, every monitored room contained one thing.
People.
People lay in grotesque biological cultivation tanks emitting an eerie green glow.
And in each frame, there were several such tanks.
Semi-transparent solutions floated human organs, intact bodies, or deformed human forms.
Some tanks had shattered glass, with clear drag marks on the floor—likely from corrosive liquids encasing the bodies as the subjects tried to escape.
Each frame had a number corresponding to a different room—possibly next door or across the hall, all on this floor.
Horne’s fists clenched instantly.
Only now had the experiments reached the stage of repairing intact bodies—that is, disease repair. In the early experiments, they had used isolated limbs to test if completely dead ones could survive, or if half a limb could regrow the rest like an Alien.
It was a boon for the disabled—or so the research reports claimed.
Click.
Horne was speechless; his breathing quickened.
Hels took his hand, trying to soothe him, then pointed to a corner of the monitor, signaling Horne to look.
The moment he saw that footage, Horne heard his own heartbeat: Thump!
It plummeted.
“Who’s this?” Hels asked softly. He didn’t know who it was, but the face rang a vague bell.
Back when he had just started following Horne, this person’s face was everywhere in the news, along with mentions of Horne. Horne had been down for a while because of it—Hels hadn’t heard him say so, but he’d been focused entirely on Horne then and could tell from his state at home that it mattered to him.
Horne closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. The pain on his face flashed and vanished. He looked back at the footage, his voice suppressed to the extreme.
“Matthew.”
Yes, that was the name—Hels remembered now.
Matthew was just a head, floating in the vessel’s solution, drifting slowly from left to right and then elsewhere.
Even just a head, Horne recognized it at a glance.
The eyes on that head were open, staring blankly at nothing, wide in death. When it rotated in the float to face the camera, it seemed to look through it straight at Horne.
Horne felt nauseous and staggered back a step, a chilling sensation exploding across his scalp. Hels immediately steadied him.
Matthew’s supposed cause of death back then was suicide in prison, which sparked the first wave of public backlash against Horne—accusations against him. Yet now, parts of his body were here.
Horne would never forget this person.
At first, he had just been an innocent kid Horne rescued at the city gates. That year was the great migration from Langdao City; countless homeless died en route or midway. Even reaching Loch City and the shelters didn’t guarantee survival.
He had wanted to save everyone, wished he could. But he couldn’t. He had to leave the choices to God, and luck to fate.
It was much like how he first met Hels.
“Brother.” Hels called softly, pulling Horne’s thoughts back.
The screen’s glow lit Horne’s pale face. He gradually calmed, curling his fingertips and shaking his head: “I’m fine.”
Click.
Horne straightened up and looked toward Ben Yian, just starting to say: “How much…”
—the rest.
He didn’t get the last two words out.
Creak—
An utterly discordant sound rose behind him, cutting off Horne’s unspoken words.
The noise was familiar.
At first, Horne thought someone had gone out, but he quickly realized: Hels stood right beside him, both near the door. Ben Yian was crouched deeper inside at the computer, copying data, without moving. Han Ya had stayed by Ben Yian the whole time, guarding him.
No wind. None of the four had moved.
Yet the lab door had opened.
In the profound darkness, the door swung open. No one was outside—just a silent, terrifying void.
![The Tower Will Fall [Apocalypse]](https://i2.wp.com/dobynovels.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/93.jpg?resize=151,215 "The Tower Will Fall [Apocalypse]")
