Chapter 13
390words
The "Ark" lay overturned on a frozen river, roof solar panels shattered, aquaponics system destroyed. Three tilapia flopped helplessly on the ice, their scales glowing faintly blue like dying fireflies.
Lila dragged Amy through the twisted doorframe. The girl's breathing came in shallow gasps, golden threads beneath her skin pulsing erratically.
"The inhibitor's failing..." Lila frantically searched for magnets, discovering the neodymium array had been demagnetized in the explosion.
Kay dragged himself toward the driver's seat. The control panel sparked sporadically, its last power driving the damaged audio system. A mechanical female voice cut through the howling blizzard:
【...Warning...Absolute zero void detected in Arctic Circle...Repeat...Absolute zero...】
Amy suddenly convulsed, golden threads erupting from her eye corners! She lunged at the seed bank USB in Lila's arms, gnawing at its metal casing like a feral animal!
"Stop it!" Lila desperately shielded the USB drive. In the struggle, it slipped from her grasp, sliding toward a crack in the center of the frozen river.
Kay dove after it! The moment his fingertips touched the USB drive, the ice collapsed with a thunderous crack!
Bone-chilling water engulfed him. In the darkness, something wrapped around his ankle—a fungal mass lurking at the river bottom! Mycelium rapidly climbed his leg.
At the brink of consciousness, he felt a hard object in his pocket. Buck's circuit board.
Pure instinct made him jam the circuit board into the USB port!
HUMMMM——
Unearthly blue light erupted from the USB drive! Fungal filaments touching the light instantly crystallized and shattered. Kay clawed his way out of the ice hole, clutching the glowing device.
"Cold..." he coughed violently, expelling water. "Fungi fear cold...Buck's absolute zero..."
Lila suddenly pointed skyward. In the night sky where the snowstorm had briefly subsided, a blue aurora-like crack spread across the heavens. Wherever it reached, falling spores instantly crystallized into ice.
"Absolute zero void..." she whispered. "The universe's cold vacuum...it's breaking through..."
Golden threads inside Amy's body writhed frantically as the girl released an agonized moan.
Kay looked from the glowing USB drive to the dying girl.
The seed bank screen suddenly illuminated with text:
【EXTREME ENVIRONMENT DETECTED...INITIATING DEEP FREEZE PROTOCOL...】
Frost crystallized across the USB drive's casing. Kay's eyes widened with realization—the seed bank wasn't storage at all, but a miniature cryogenic weapon!
Humanity's last hope was a bomb.
