From Titan Corporation to the Empire of Man

Chapter 685

The frigid Antarctic winds, carrying ice crystals, scraped against the base's alloy exterior walls with a piercing sound.

This silver-gray fortress, buried beneath the ice cap, is now bathed in the stark white sunlight of the midnight sun.

The automated turrets around the base rotated slowly, their scanning lasers drawing spiderweb-like red lines on the snow. At one of the base entrances, five soldiers in heavy power armor were leaning against the blast wall, taking a break.

Their armor seams were covered in frost, and their breath condensed into white mist in the -40 degree Celsius air.

"Damn it, this godforsaken place." The sergeant in charge lifted his helmet visor and pulled out a crumpled cigarette case. "Three more days of shifts and we can rotate out."

His second-in-command, a burly man with a scar on his chin, came over to borrow a light; the blue light of the windproof lighter illuminated his somewhat purplish face.
"Have you heard? Something big has happened in the capital."

"What could be so serious?" the third soldier exhaled a smoke ring. "Those old men are fighting in Parliament again?"

The scarred man lowered his voice: "My cousin works in the Capital Defense Force. He said that yesterday a 'superhero' who looked like he stepped out of an anime or comic book caused a ruckus at headquarters, smashing two battleships like toys."

He gestured dramatically, "His eyes can shoot lasers, fly, and are fucking invulnerable to knives and bullets."

"real or fake?"

"Dude, is your cousin just drunk and trying to fool you?!"

"Hahaha!!"

Upon hearing these words, the crowd burst into laughter, the sound particularly jarring on the vast, icy plain.

"That's definitely nonsense!" The youngest soldier kicked at the snow. "If it were true, it would have gone viral online by now. Do you think the media control department is just sitting around doing nothing?"

At that moment, the sergeant suddenly narrowed his eyes and said, "Wait. What's that?"

The laughter of everyone abruptly stopped.

A shadow was slowly covering the snow beneath their feet; it wasn't a projection of clouds, for the Antarctic sky was cloudless at that moment.

The heads of all five people were raised at the same time.

The Homelander was suspended 30 meters in the air, his red cape motionless in the polar gale.

Ice-blue eyes looked down at the group of dumbfounded soldiers, a chilling "dull" expression on his face. Sunlight filtered through "his" near-perfect body, casting a golden shadow on the snow.

Good morning, gentlemen.

After numerous upgrades, Homelander has long since acquired a degree of independent thought, much like the new generation of clones, but his voice remains utterly cold. One can only hear:
"Excuse me, how do I get to the virus storage repository?"

Buzz~————Whoosh————!

As soon as he finished speaking, a piercing alarm sounded throughout the entire base.

"Enemy attack!!"

Thud—Thud—!
The sergeant's shouts and the roar of the automatic turrets exploded at the same time.

Twelve 20mm rapid-fire cannons spewed fire, and a barrage of bullets wove a deadly web in the air.

Homelander didn't even flinch; the 20mm high-explosive rounds exploded all in front of him, but the warhead fragments twisted and fell, burning countless tiny craters into the snow.
Similarly, Homelander instantly locked onto the turrets, his eyes gleaming red, and the next second—

Ri~咻——————! !

Boom! Boom!

The next second, turrets within sight exploded one after another, burning fragments scattering like fireworks.

The shockwave knocked the five soldiers off their feet, and the youngest rookie's helmet display flashed a red warning: "Threat Level: ∞".

Deep inside the base, in the communications room, the duty officer's coffee cup slipped from his hand.

"Activate emergency procedures!!" he roared, slamming down the red button. "Repeat, this is not a drill! All units immediately!"

Before he could finish speaking, the ceiling suddenly collapsed.

Homelander landed like a dancer, and the moment its boots touched the ground, it opened its mouth and released a shockwave that shattered all electronic devices within a radius of 100 meters.

"Sorry to interrupt everyone."

Then, Homelander, expressionless, looked around and asked, "Excuse me, on which floor is Dr. Lines' laboratory?"

The officer's trembling fingers moved towards the hidden alarm under the table—

Puff——!!

But the next second they discovered their arm was gone.

The cross-section was as smooth as a mirror, and there wasn't even time for it to bleed.

“Wrong answer.” Blood dripped from Homelander’s fingertip. He continued, “Next?”

Meanwhile, three kilometers away from the base, in an ice fissure, a stream of data was flashing on Lyon's helmet screen.

After secretly withdrawing from the UED capital using individual assault boats, Leon, Mike, Chris, and others arrived near the UED Antarctic base after several hours, under the cover of stealth-class ships.

"Homelander has drawn enough firepower."

Lyon turned to the fully armed squad behind him. "Dr. Lines, lead the way."

"call"

Lyons took a deep breath, and the ice crystals that had formed on his face mask began to fall off.

She gazed towards the steel fortress where she had once worked—

At this moment, bursts of fire and thick smoke are constantly erupting, while a long-lost heat surges in the chest, like a frozen seed finally breaking through the soil.

“Follow me.” She stepped into the snow. “I know a maintenance road that goes straight to the core area.”

Mike whistled, and his nanotech combat suit quickly switched to snow camouflage: "Looks like our scientist lady is about to unleash her power."

Chris checked the pulse rifle's energy bar: "Stay alert. The UED's most elite forces are also deployed here, and may already be."

However, Chris's warning was interrupted by a sudden tremor.

In the distance, a battleship hovering in the clouds suddenly tilted, the blue light of its main guns illuminating the entire ice field as if it were a ghostly realm.

Seeing this, Lyon frowned and said in a deep voice, "Damn it! They're preparing to bomb the base directly!"

Lyons whirled around, his eyes wide behind his mask: "Impossible! There are over three thousand researchers there!"

“For the UED leadership,” Leon pulled her away, “it’s just three thousand potential sources of leaks.”

Above the ice field, Homelanders, having received the news, withdrew from the base and looked up at the sky.

And the whites of his eyes gradually turned crimson.
Ri~咻——————! !

A crimson beam of light tore through the sky.

To the Homelander, the laser beam was like a divine spear of judgment, piercing precisely through the battleship's main power core.

Boom——! !

The one-kilometer-long steel behemoth trembled violently at an altitude of 10,000 meters, its armor plates twisting and peeling off like fragile tin foil.

The blue light from the overloaded engine seeped out of the crack, dyeing the entire cloud layer an eerie neon color. The battleship broke in two, and the burning wreckage spun and fell in the polar gale, smashing two "meteorite" craters with a diameter of more than 500 meters on the ice field.

The shockwave created snow waves hundreds of meters high, surging outwards like a tsunami.

But the crisis was far from over. On the helmet screens of Leon and the others, more than two hundred red dots were surging toward Antarctica from all over the world; clearly, the UED's rapid response fleet had been deployed.

The five most recent destroyers have deployed their missile bays in near-Earth orbit, and hundreds of tactical missiles, trailing orange-red plumes, broke through the atmosphere, raining down like an apocalyptic meteor shower.

“They’ve gone mad,” Lines’ voice trembled on the communications channel. “Those missiles are carrying fusion warheads!”

Mike's nanosuit quickly switched to anti-radiation mode, and he deliberately teased Lines, saying, "The good news is, we won't be captured. The bad news is, we might turn into molecules."

Lyon ignored his friend's joke and directly contacted the stealth-class ships, asking Homelander to deal with the threats.

Soon, Homelander suddenly looked up, his ice-blue pupils completely swallowed by crimson.

Its speed in the air also increased, and its red cape fluttered in the supersonic shock wave, exceeding thirty times the speed of sound in just a few seconds.

Boom! Boom!
The shockwaves that broke the sound barrier one after another vaporized the snow within a radius of one kilometer.

The figure of the Homelander transformed into a crimson lightning bolt, weaving through the rain of missiles. With each wave of his hand, "he" unleashed a powerful "air blade," precisely slicing through the missile's guidance system. In every direction his gaze fell, several warheads detonated high in the sky.

The commanders of the UED fleet in near-Earth orbit witnessed a scene they would never forget.

The figure in the red cloak traced complex topological trajectories among the missile swarms, and the fireballs that exploded wherever he passed formed a three-dimensional geometry of death.

The main screens of all five destroyers overloaded simultaneously, and the last thing captured was Homelander suddenly frozen in the stratosphere, the super-hot beams of light emanating from his eyes melting through the fleet's energy shields.

The bridge of the first destroyer was cut horizontally, and the metal at the cross-section was a lava-like orange-red color.

The missile compartment of the second ship was detonated, and the chain of explosions turned it into a steel flower blooming in space.

The third ship attempted an emergency warp jump, but its engine was pierced by a laser in the instant of spatial distortion, and the twisted wreckage remained forever in the rift.

An explosion over Antarctica illuminated the entire continent.

Even hundreds of kilometers away, observers at the research station could see the incandescent white spots flashing across the sky—the final "lament" of UED's advanced weapons in the face of absolute power.

In the afterglow of the explosion, Lyon's team finally reached the maintenance passage on the flank of the base. When Lines placed his hand on the biometric device, the frozen metal surface immediately glowed green.

"Access confirmed, Dr. Lines," the mechanical female voice announced. "Welcome back."

The moment the airlock slid open, a bone-chilling cold rushed out.

The emergency lights in the corridor flickered, illuminating the mottled bloodstains on the walls, clearly indicating that the visit from the homeland was not gentle.

Chris crouched down, his fingertips brushing against a still-smoking bullet hole in the floor: "There was a firefight here three minutes ago, with Gauss rifles."

“Standard equipment for the security team.” Lines’ voice was a little tense. “They should all have retreated to the core area.”

Mike suddenly raised his fist, and everyone froze.

A broken communication came from around the corner ahead: "Attention all units. Prioritize the destruction of Ω samples. Repeat at all costs."

Lyon made a throat-slitting gesture.

Mike slipped out of the shadows like a ghost, and two electromagnetic darts silently struck the speaker on the back of the neck.

Two UED soldiers fell like broken puppets, revealing a heavy blast door behind them that was flashing red and sprayed with the words "Ω Zone - Top Secret" in yellow paint.

“This is it.” Lines strode forward, focusing his eyes on the iris scanner. “But dual authentication is required; we need another one.”

Her voice stopped abruptly because behind the observation window of the blast door, a dark gun barrel was pointed directly at her forehead.

"It really was you, traitor."

The blast door slowly opened, revealing the fully armed UED Antarctic base commander behind him, along with twelve security guards holding Gauss rifles.

The supervisor's prosthetic eye flashed red, and the gun barrel remained motionless: "Tell me everything you know, and I can let you die a quick death."

Meanwhile, Leon, hidden in a blind spot, pointed his gun at the supervisor.

But at that moment, the entire base suddenly shook violently, and ice crystals from the ceiling collapsed and poured down like a rain of diamonds.

Homelander has just shot down his seventh battleship, and the wreckage just happened to land on the base.

The supervisor and UED security personnel's view was slightly obstructed, but that was enough.

Before the supervisor behind the blast door could finish speaking, Lyon's gun barrel was already emitting a ghostly blue pulse of light.

boom--!
A precise headshot shattered the supervisor's prosthetic eye, sending metal fragments mixed with blood and flesh splattering onto the blast door.

At the same moment, Chris and Mike appeared from either side like ghosts, the whirring of pulse rifles echoing through the narrow corridor.

Ta-ta-ta!
Bullets from the Gauss rifle whistled past, sparking blinding sparks as they struck the alloy wall. But the special forces reacted even faster. Mike's nanosuit hardened instantly, taking the brunt of two armor-piercing rounds. Chris, on the other hand, performed a tactical roll, raised his hand, and fired two bursts of fire. Blood mist exploded from the chests of the two security guards, and they fell to the ground.

Lynes stood frozen in place, the bullet grazing her hair, the scorching airflow even making her smell something burning.

She had never witnessed killing so closely before; the agents moved with inhuman speed, more like some kind of precisely programmed killing machine.

"Don't move." Leon's voice rang in her ear, deep and calm.

His arm blocked her way, while his other hand held the gun steadily. He fired three bursts in quick succession, and the skulls of the last three security guards exploded under the impact of the pulse grenades.

The gunfire stopped abruptly, leaving only the muffled thuds of bodies falling to the ground and Lines' rapid breathing in the corridor.

"You...you all..." Her voice trembled slightly.

"Don't worry." Leon sheathed his gun, his tone as calm as if he had just crushed a few ants. "When we take action, we will never allow our own people to be injured."

Mike whistled, kicked away the Gauss rifle at his feet, and his nanosuit returned to its supple state: "UED's security is still the same old thing, they don't even find tactical cover, they're sitting ducks."

Chris didn't speak, but quickly examined the body and, after confirming there were no survivors, nodded to Leon.

Lines took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

She looked at the laboratory behind the blast door—

The core sample of the quantum virus is stored there, which is also a "masterpiece" that she personally participated in developing.

“Time is running out.” She gritted her teeth and strode toward the biometric terminal. “I need to extract the sample and overwrite the key.”

Her fingers flew across the control panel, and a holographic projection unfolded, displaying a complex quantum encryption protocol.

Leon stood guard behind her, while Chris and Mike stood on either side of the corridor, ready for any reinforcements that might arrive.

"Data copying in progress..." The mechanical female voice coldly announced the progress.

The base shook violently again, and ice chips fell from the ceiling.

Homelander was still intercepting the UED fleet outside, but the roar of explosions was getting closer and closer, clearly indicating that the enemy's firepower was nearing its limit.

“A stealth-class ship has issued a warning.” Chris stared at the data stream on his tactical eyepiece. “We must evacuate within ten minutes, or we will be locked onto by railguns.”

Lines' fingers paused slightly, but he quickly continued.

She accessed the base's emergency communications channel and entered her authorization code.

"Attention all researchers, this is Dr. Lines." Her voice echoed throughout the base via broadcast, "Base is about to be destroyed. Evacuate immediately to Emergency Exit B7. Repeat, evacuate immediately!"

A cacophony of responses came over the radio, including panicked inquiries and angry shouts of disbelief, but Lines ignored them…

...

(End of this chapter)