North American riot police: Start by arresting P. Diddy!

Chapter 221 Harold: "Are you sure you want to arrest me?"

坐标：37°14′06″N 115°48′40″W
The underground complex in District 51, Nevada.

This is an address that does not exist on any official map.

The area is a barren desert within a radius of fifty kilometers, and the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division (Ivy Division), known for its overwhelming firepower, is stationed here.

It is publicly claimed to be a routine training range, but internally...
In the dead of night, the temperature in the desert drops to freezing due to the significant temperature difference between day and night. The biting wind, carrying sand grains, howls in the darkness.

Outside the military camp, dozens of fully armed soldiers from the 4th Division stood like statues in the cold wind.

Inside the guard post, a soldier on duty is keeping a close eye on more than a dozen surveillance screens.

Suddenly, he stood up abruptly, his gaze turning serious as he looked out the bulletproof window—

Five black jeeps with military license plates sped towards them, breaking through the night.

"squeak--"

The convoy came to a smooth stop in front of the military camp gate.

The passenger-side window slowly rolled down, revealing a face with the rank of a general, exuding an imposing and dignified aura.

"General!" The soldier immediately straightened his body and saluted.

"Open the door."

The old man's voice was hoarse, "I need to have my [Siren-9] and [Siren-10] checked again."

He then handed over his identification.

"Yes!"

The soldier quickly checked the documents, but glanced at the jeep behind him out of the corner of his eye.

Behind the car window sat a dozen expressionless soldiers, exuding a fierce and murderous aura.

"General, the laboratory is only authorized to [operate in certain situations] according to regulations."

“They are special guards I recently transferred from the military,” the old man interrupted, “to guard the experimental subjects.”

The soldier swallowed hard and pressed the switch.

The access control system emitted a mechanical roar as the convoy slowly drove into this steel fortress that concealed countless military secrets.

Before long, the group arrived at the reinforcement laboratory located on the 30th underground floor.

In the silvery-white corridor, fluorescent lights cast a cold glow, and the elite soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division stood guard in front of a heavy alloy door, fully armed.

"General."

"Ah."

The round-faced general nodded to the guards, then walked to the alloy door.

He first pressed his thumb on the fingerprint scanner, and after the display screen on the door lit up with a green pass mark, he bent down and aimed his eyes at the iris scanner.

However, the iris verification failed in three consecutive attempts.

"Ugh"

The round-faced general sighed helplessly.

Seeing this, the guard beside him frowned and asked, "General, could it be a problem with the system? Should I notify the doctor and the others?"

"Whoosh-"

A cold light flashed.

A gruesome wound instantly split open on the guard's neck, and the gushing blood sealed his unfinished words forever in his throat.

Almost simultaneously, the soldiers behind the "general" suddenly launched an attack!
Before the guards could react, they were silently felled by daggers, bayonets, and other weapons.

In the blink of an eye, the entire corridor was filled with corpses lying haphazardly, and blood meandered like a river on the metal floor.

The "general" coldly glanced at the guards on the ground, raised his hand and "ripped" off the human skin mask that was stuck to his face, revealing the face of a middle-aged man with sharp features.

He took out a palm-sized electronic device from his pocket and stuck it to the door lock.

A few seconds later, a string of blue garbled characters flashed on the electronic lock screen, followed by a soft "beep" sound!

The team's coordinated actions were astonishing. From infiltrating the military camp to breaching the underground base, and now opening the laboratory's final defenses, the entire process was executed flawlessly and in an unbelievably short time.

"boom--"

The door slowly opened.

A huge laboratory, spanning several hundred square meters, came into view.

The entire room was completely encased in specially made bulletproof glass, which gleamed with a faint blue light under the cold illumination.

Behind the glass wall, dozens of reinforced glass sealed tubes, each about the thickness of an arm, were neatly arranged, with a clear blue liquid flowing slowly inside.

In the adjacent isolation cabinet, however, a container of the same size contained a completely transparent, unknown liquid.

Upon seeing these items, the soldiers of unknown origin all showed expressions of joy.

The guy who had just disguised himself as a general immediately strode towards the test tubes, but just then—

Accident happened!
"call out!"

A cold arc suddenly swept through the air!

The next second, his head rolled to the ground, and the headless corpse, gushing blood, crashed down.

This scene happened so fast that the intruders behind him didn't even have time to think about why a knife suddenly appeared in the air before bullets suddenly appeared in the air!

“Bang bang bang bang—”

Like firecrackers, bullets rang out, and the remaining twenty-odd invaders fell dead in pools of blood in a single encounter, their eyes wide open in disbelief.

They never discovered who their enemy was until their deaths.

The laboratory returned to its deathly silence.

A distorted optical effect appeared in the air.

Scarlett (Liz) lifted the camouflage suit she was wearing and strode over to the corpses lying on the ground in her combat boots.

Looking at these intruders who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, she frowned and turned to look at her teammates beside her.

The masked man, completely shrouded in a black ninja outfit, slowly sheathed his sword.

"Snake Eyes, do you really think they're General Hammer's men?"

The masked man didn't speak, but his attitude was clear.

Aside from that African emperor, who else could possibly know about this military's underground experimental base?
Scarlett glanced back at the hundreds of test tubes behind her; these were all chemical weapons developed by the military.

Siren-9 – “Siren” nerve gas.

It can put the target group into a state of indiscriminate attack within fifteen seconds.

Siren-10 – “Reaper” gene-targeting virus.

This is arguably the military's greatest invention of the past decade, capable of precisely eliminating DNA fragments from specific ethnic groups.

Although there are still many margins of error, as long as it is released by missiles, it can easily destroy and kill hundreds of thousands of specific groups when the enemy has no defenses.

As for who this ethnic group is, they are definitely not from the West.

The Department of Homeland Security had learned of Hammer's infiltration from the counterterrorism division and had even accurately predicted the target.

She and Snake Eyes, as top-tier enhanced agents, were secretly deployed by the department to lie in wait here.

As it turned out, the counterterrorism agency's intelligence was spot on; Hammer had indeed set his sights on these strategic weapons.

Even more frightening is that, according to intelligence, this base is just the first stop on a massive list.
"Fuck. What exactly is this old man trying to do?"

Scarlett's face was filled with anger: "Does he know the global catastrophe that would be caused if these weapons were to fall into the wrong hands?!"

The young woman was both shocked by the accuracy of the counterterrorism intelligence and puzzled by General Hammer's intentions. At the same time, she was also somewhat worried.

As far as she knew, Rorschach seemed to have a close relationship with that African emperor. Could he also be involved in this operation?
She bit her lip awkwardly.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Counterterrorism Bureau have joined forces to lay a trap in all the key facilities that General Hammer might attack!

--------

Coordinates: Underground of the Brooks Range within the Arctic Circle

Alaska Ice Castle Polar Research Institute
Several stealth supersonic fighter jets roared past under the aurora, their 30mm cannons, GAU-19 rotary machine guns, and Hydra70 rockets raining down on the frozen wasteland like hail.

Under overwhelming firepower, the intruders had no chance to fight back and were blasted into pieces.

Homeland Security Director Janet glanced at the monitor screen and elegantly flicked her cigarette ash: "What's the situation at the [lab]?"

"[Snow Blindness] All normal. The intruders were completely vaporized upon contact with the outer defenses," the subordinate reported.

Janet smiled contentedly, her red lips curving slightly upwards.

[Snow Blindness] is a prehistoric pathogen discovered by their security bureau based on research on the permafrost. This aerosol weapon, once used, can cause an entire army of enemies to suffer permanent blindness.

These are all strategic-level biological and chemical weapons. How dare Old Hanmo come and steal them? Does he think these intelligence and law enforcement agencies are just for show?

She gave a mocking snort.

After this bloody lesson, that old guy should learn to behave himself.

That night, from the Nevada desert to the Alaskan tundra, multiple top-secret weapons research facilities across North America were attacked simultaneously, but none of them succeeded in their attack.

Deep in the underground salt mines of Lubbock, Texas.

This top-secret facility, codenamed "The Farm," is marked as a unit with the highest level of security in military records.

Their self-developed "Lightning Plow" electromagnetic pulse missile can plunge the entire city of New York into darkness for 72 hours in an instant.

This place was attacked again tonight.

But Hammer's task force was wiped out before it could even break through the first line of defense. The Counterterrorism Bureau's Black Ops team, which had been lying in wait, had already taken advantage of the situation.

In Montana, 280 meters underground, disguised as a Walmart distribution center.

This is the research base for MIRVs (Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles), with a single warhead yield of 45 kilotons, 30 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Its distinctive feature is that it carries 12 decoy warheads and 1 live warhead.

As a weapons research base, this place is experiencing continuous gunfire tonight.

It's no surprise that it was Old Man Mo's men, sent to North America, who invaded this place once again.

Unfortunately, Hammer's elite troops fell before they even saw the nuclear warheads, all before the quantum laser defense network.

Such incidents occurred tonight in multiple locations across the United States.

But the most sensitive place is in Washington.

Counterterrorism Bureau Base Zero.

As the most heavily guarded and most secretive base of CTU, it not only houses a large number of elite agents from the operations department, but also has a large number of agents disguised as ordinary people lurking in the three streets outside.

Although it may sound exaggerated, the reason is quite simple—this is where the main unit of a super-intelligent AI [machine] that monitors the information of all citizens in the United States is located.

To protect this ultimate weapon, which has the potential to overturn the world order, even the most stringent protective measures are insufficient.

Tonight, Zero Base, which had never been invaded by the enemy before, is experiencing its first invasion.

"Bang bang bang-"

In the core command center on the 50th underground floor, Jack Bauer calmly held a steaming cup of black tea, his gaze sweeping across the monitor screen.

In the footage, an invading team composed of dozens of elite combat personnel is being relentlessly annihilated by CTU action teams on various levels of the base.

Each of these agents wore a special headset, and under the omniscient and omnipotent surveillance of the "machine," they easily divided, surrounded, and defeated the enemy one by one, just like hunting livestock.

No, perhaps it's not appropriate to describe them as enemies.

As the surveillance footage zoomed in, Jack could clearly see the scars of the Purple Heart medals visible beneath the soldiers' uniforms; each of them had shed blood for the Stars and Stripes on the battlefields of Africa.

Unfortunately, they followed the wrong leader.

He followed a war-crazed man blinded by hatred.

Soon, the gunshots recorded on the surveillance footage gradually subsided.

Jack took a sip of his black tea, but his expression grew increasingly serious.

Old Hammer's task force, once inside North America, could not escape the machine's inescapable net.

Moreover, the machine had already accurately predicted their attack targets based on these people's movement patterns and communication records.

Now everything is unfolding with the precision predicted by the machine.

But a terrible question arose in Jack's mind: How could Hammer, who was just an outpost war zone commander, possibly know the exact coordinates of so many top-secret facilities?

Especially the location where the host machine is stored.

Aside from those within CTU, no more than five other people knew this secret, including the president and the secretary of defense.

How could an old general who has been away from the center of power for more than ten years know about this top secret that even cabinet ministers are unaware of?
Jack put down his teacup, his knuckles tapping unconsciously on the table.

He vaguely realized that tonight's massive attack was likely just a tentative prelude to a larger conspiracy.

The real mastermind may be watching coldly from the shadows.
----------

Manhattan.

The coffee shop was dimly lit late at night, and apart from a few white-collar workers working overtime, there were hardly any other customers.

Harold, in the corner, typed rapidly on his laptop keyboard, his eyes behind his glasses flashing with an unusual sharpness.

Just a few hours ago, he suddenly discovered that the hidden backdoor he had set up inside the machine had been compromised.

This is incredible!

Aside from himself, only Rorschach knew about the existence of this backdoor.

Although the specific reasons were unclear, Harold understood better than anyone that if malicious individuals were allowed to obtain federal secrets and citizens' data through the "machine," the entire social order of the United States would face a devastating blow.

So, without even notifying Rorschach, and annoyed by the noise of his two dogs, he went to a coffee shop he frequented and began a silent battle of code with the intruder, engaging in close combat in the digital world.

Of course, the main reason for not notifying Luo Xia was that even if he came over, he would just sit there, completely clueless about the internet.

Half an hour later.

Harold gently pushed up his glasses. By this time, he had built an even stronger firewall and successfully cut off the intrusion link.

He let out a long sigh, took off his glasses, and rubbed his sore eyes.

The sky outside the window was already pitch black, and Harold suddenly regretted not bringing Brian along.

New York at night is not as civilized and orderly as it is during the day; danger may suddenly appear in the dark alleys.

He wrapped his coat tighter, tucked his notebook under his arm, and walked briskly home, hugging the wall.

But he hadn't gone far when he suddenly stopped.

A black Cadillac Escalade suddenly blocked his way, with two burly men in suits standing in his way.

"you."

"Don't be too rude to my idol."

A languid female voice came from inside the car.

The burly men immediately and respectfully stepped back.

The car door slid open, and a woman in a form-fitting dress, her curves accentuated, closed the notebook on her lap, raised her red lips, and looked at him:
"So, how should I address you? 'Father of Machines'? Or Mr. Finch?"

(Root, from the American TV series "Person of Interest".)
(End of this chapter)