Chapter 36: Echoes Beneath the Ice

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The freezing winds of Antarctica howled through the eternal polar night like billions of icy blades. Kane appeared at the edge of the ice sheet, the tricolor halo rotating steadily despite the temperature of seventy degrees below zero, shielding him from the lethal cold. Quantum vision pierced the thick ice, reaching thousands of meters below to the silver relic now running amok. The shell of the Ancestor’s Mirror—the First Root System’s climate regulation station—had turned an ominous dark red, as though injected with some foul blood, while its energy readings climbed at a terrifying rate.

“The ice structure is beginning to collapse.” Kane remained in contact with the Greenwich Coordination Center through the Rose Network, his voice clear despite the howling wind. “If the pressure rises another fifteen percent, the entire Wilkins Ice Shelf will fracture.”

Lena’s reply came amid the background static of the Pyramid scanning system. “Confirmed. There is a remote activation signal from inside the relic, from the Seventh Iteration! Its frequency matches Envoy Theta-7’s communication signature! They’re detonating the ‘gift’ they planted!”

“Can we block the signal?” Kane crouched and pressed his palm against the ice, feeling the increasingly violent tremors rising from below.

“Too late!” This time it was Marcus, who was urgently assembling a cognitive purification device with Erica at the Cairo Node. “The signal has already completed activation. The relic is now in a self-destruct countdown! According to the energy curve… it will reach the critical point in no more than forty-seven minutes!”

Forty-seven minutes.

Kane’s quantum mind raced. Break through the ice by brute force? Too slow—and it might accelerate the collapse. Use Gardener authority to stabilize the relic remotely? The dark-red energy inside was fiercely resistant to the Tricolor Harmonization Field, like Entropy Blight. Teleport inside? Without precise coordinates, the risk was too great…

“Hassan, how is the Sahara Node coming along?” Kane asked.

“Guiding the telluric energy now!” Hassan’s voice was accompanied by the roar of desert winds. “We need at least thirty more minutes to form a stable anchor! Damn it, this energy is far more stubborn than expected!”

Thirty minutes.

Not enough. Kane needed another solution.

Then his quantum vision caught a faint signal deep beneath the ice, utterly different from the dark-red energy—a thread of pure blue-gold light, like a firefly in the darkness, stubbornly resisting the surrounding corruption.

That was… the core of the Ancestor’s Mirror.

A remnant of the First Root System’s original energy that had not yet been completely corrupted.

“Marcus, send me the original schematics of the Antarctic relic!” Kane ordered. “Especially the energy circuits and the location of the core chamber!”

“Transmitting now! But the data is incomplete. We’ve deciphered less than forty percent!”

That would be enough.

Kane received the data, and his quantum mind parsed it in an instant. Though the Ancestor’s Mirror was a climate regulation station, its internal structure bore similarities to the Sahara Ancestor’s Mirror—the metal disc. Seven control crystals were arranged in the shape of the Big Dipper around a central core chamber.

And that faint blue-gold point of light was coming from the core chamber.

“Lena, I need a precise quantum tunnel.” Kane rose, and the tricolor halo brightened. “Starting from my current position, terminate it three meters outside the relic’s core chamber. Can the Pyramid calculate it?”

“Calculating… Got it!” Lena’s crystalline left hand linked with the undersea Pyramid at full capacity. “Coordinates locked! But Kane… the error radius is still one and a half meters! Beneath several kilometers of ice, that could mean you’ll be embedded in a wall, or…”

“Send the coordinates.” Kane cut her off, his voice calm.

Silence followed. Then a complex set of spatial parameters flowed directly into Kane’s quantum consciousness. He drew a deep breath—though the halo made breathing unnecessary—invoked Gardener authority, and began warping the local structure of space.

The tricolor halo detached from his body and floated before him. It spun faster and faster until it formed a vortex resembling a miniature black hole. At its center, space began to fold, revealing a dim blue tunnel barely wide enough for one person. At the far end lay blurred silver walls and streams of dark-red energy—the interior passageways of the Ancestor’s Mirror.

Without hesitation, Kane stepped inside.

The moment of transit felt like being forced into a metal tube that was far too narrow, every inch of his skin subjected to immense spatial pressure. The quantum tunnel was dangerously unstable. Violet-black arcs of electricity flickered along its edges, a sign that the structure of space was on the verge of collapse.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

Eight seconds.

Suddenly, a silver bulkhead appeared ahead.

Too close!

Kane instinctively raised his hand. In the instant before impact, the Gardener’s Mark erupted with a circular cushioning field.

Bang!

He slammed hard into the bulkhead, but miraculously was not embedded in the metal. His landing point was nearly perfect, with an error of less than half a meter. The quantum tunnel collapsed soundlessly behind him.

Kane quickly surveyed his surroundings. He was in a circular metal corridor. First Root System symbols flowed across the walls, but most were now smothered by dark-red energy, like clots in blood vessels. The air was cold and thin, and gravity was only one-third that of Earth. Clearly, the relic’s environmental regulation system had failed.

The core chamber should be thirty meters to the left.

Kane moved along the corridor, carefully avoiding the writhing streams of dark-red energy on the floor. The closer he came to the core, the more violently the First Root System symbols struggled against the corruption, as though calling out to him for help.

After rounding the final bend, Kane finally saw the entrance to the core chamber: a circular metal door covered in intricate symbols. At its center, where a control crystal should have been embedded, a pulsing mass of dark-red flesh had taken its place. Energy conduits like veins covered its surface as it greedily siphoned power from the relic.

“A bio-mechanical hybrid of the Seventh Iteration.” Kane recognized it. “A parasitic weapon.”

As if sensing his presence, the fleshy mass suddenly contracted violently, then sprayed a cloud of dark-red mist.

Kane twisted aside. The mist grazed his left arm, instantly corroding the outer layer of his clothing and exposing the skin beneath, which shimmered with tricolor light. The Gardener’s Mark had defended him automatically, but Kane still felt an icy chill invade his body.

There was no time to waste.

He shaped his right hand into a blade, gathering tricolor energy along its edge, and swept it across.

Whoosh!

The fleshy mass split cleanly in two. Dark-red fluid splattered across the wall with a corrosive hiss.

But the door remained sealed.

Kane pressed his palm against the crystal socket at the center of the door, now empty, and invoked Gardener authority. Blue-gold energy flowed down his arm and into the locking system.

“In the name of the Gardener, open.”

The First Root System symbols lit up one after another, resisting the interference of the dark-red energy.

Five seconds.

Ten seconds.

Fifteen seconds.

Click.

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The door slid slowly open.

Even after everything he had witnessed beneath the sea Pyramid, Kane drew a sharp breath at the sight inside the core chamber.

Suspended in the center was a blue-gold sphere of energy roughly three meters in diameter—the relic’s original core. But now, six thick strands of dark-red energy, like the tentacles of colossal parasites, pierced the sphere from six directions in the chamber walls and greedily drained its power.

More horrifying still, cyst-like bulges rose at intervals along the energy strands. Inside them, half-mechanical, half-biological embryos were developing at astonishing speed.

They were Seventh Iteration “Seeder” units.

Once mature, they would carry the relic’s energy and database to every corner of Earth, becoming new sources of contamination.

At the center of the energy sphere, Kane could vaguely make out a small control console and seven crystals—the Big Dipper array. Three of the crystals had already been completely dyed red, while a fourth was being consumed by the corruption.

“Self-destruct countdown: thirty-three minutes.” Lena’s voice rang through Kane’s consciousness, urgent and strained. “Energy readings are about to exceed the safety threshold!”

Kane strode toward the central console.

As he drew near, the dark-red energy strands seemed to sense the threat. One suddenly tore free from the sphere and lashed toward him like a whip.

Kane slipped aside and swung his energy blade again, severing the appendage. More corrosive fluid sprayed from the stump, but additional strands were already ripping themselves free from the sphere, preparing to swarm him.

He had to end this quickly.

Kane abruptly changed tactics. Instead of evading, he charged straight for the console, taking the full force of two energy strands.

Crack!

Crack!

Agony tore through his back and left leg. The dark-red energy writhed like a living thing, trying to burrow into his body. The Gardener’s Mark resisted with all its strength. Tricolor radiance and dark-red energy clashed fiercely in the wounds, producing a teeth-grating hiss.

Enduring the pain, Kane finally reached the console. He placed both hands on two crystals that had not yet been contaminated and poured in all the Gardener energy he could muster.

“In the name of the Gardener, be purified!”

Blue-gold energy surged into the crystals like a flood, sweeping through the circuits and engulfing the entire control system. The three corrupted crystals trembled violently as the dark-red coating began to flake away.

The energy strands emitted silent screams. They twisted and convulsed wildly, struggling to stop the purification, but it was already too late. Once Gardener authority made direct contact with the First Root System’s core, it was like sunlight dispersing the morning mist. The corruption had nowhere to hide.

Twenty seconds later, the final crystal returned to its pure blue state.

The six energy strands drooped and withered like beheaded snakes. The Seeder embryos upon them turned to ash before they could finish developing.

Soft blue-gold light once again filled the core chamber. The First Root System symbols on the walls regained their vitality and began automatically repairing the damage.

“Self-destruct sequence aborted!” Marcus cheered. “Energy readings are falling! The ice shelf is stable!”

Kane exhaled slowly, but the task was only half finished.

He examined the console and soon found the backdoor program remotely activated by the Seventh Iteration—a malicious code buried deep within the system and bound to Envoy Theta-7’s signature.

“Lena, record this signal signature.” Kane transmitted the data through the Rose Network. “Can the Pyramid trace it backward?”

“Trying now… Got it! The source isn’t in the Kuiper Belt. It’s… wait…”

Lena’s voice suddenly filled with shock.

“The signal is coming from the far side of the Moon?!”

The Moon?

Kane frowned. Did the Seventh Iteration have a base there?

No. Wait.

The Moon… The undersea Pyramid had warned him before…

A lunar weapon.

“Scan the Moon! Maximum precision!” Kane ordered, while simultaneously accessing the Ancestor’s Mirror’s historical records through the console, searching for clues concerning the Moon.

They proceeded on two fronts.

Lena mobilized the full scanning capacity of the Bermuda Pyramid and focused it on the Moon. Kane rapidly decoded the relic’s database.

Five minutes later, the truth surfaced.

“Found it!” Kane and Lena spoke almost simultaneously.

Beneath a massive crater on the far side of the Moon lay an ancient First Root System structure—not a weapon, but an “Observation Station.” During a civilization conflict seven hundred million years ago, it had been secretly modified by the precursor to the Seventh Iteration, which had not yet reached the level of an Iteration civilization. A dormant “Judgment Protocol” had been implanted within it.

If Earth’s civilization deviated from a predetermined trajectory, the Observation Station would awaken some mechanism deep within the Moon and carry out a “pruning.”

“That’s the ‘lunar weapon’ the undersea Pyramid warned us about!” Lena’s voice carried the dawning shock of comprehension. “The Seventh Iteration Council knows it exists, but has never been able to control it directly because it requires First Root System authority. So they sent Theta-7 to use the Ancestor’s Mirror’s backdoor and remotely activate it!”

Kane’s quantum mind connected every clue in an instant.

The seventy-two-hour countdown was not the time until the Council fleet attacked. It was the activation time of the lunar weapon.

The Ancestor’s Mirror’s self-destruct had merely been a smokescreen, its true purpose to divert attention and conceal the attempt to activate the lunar Observation Station.

“Hassan, how much longer for the Sahara Node?” Kane asked urgently.

“The telluric anchor is stable!” Hassan replied. “We can project the energy at any time!”

“Change the target! Don’t stabilize Antarctica—the Moon! I need an energy channel!”

“What?! But the distance… all right, recalibrating now!”

Kane turned to the console and began operating it rapidly. “Marcus, Erica, how is the cognitive purification device coming?”

“Eighty-five percent assembled!” Erica answered. “The core algorithm still needs debugging!”

“Speed it up! Ada, how much entropy energy conversion can the New York Node provide?”

“Enough for three medium-scale pulses.” Ada’s voice was weary. “But the precision won’t be very high.”

“That will be enough. Lena, can the Pyramid lock onto the exact location of the lunar Observation Station?”

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“Lock complete! Coordinates sent!”

Kane received the data. At the same time, the Ancestor’s Mirror console completed its preliminary scan of the lunar Observation Station.

The results showed that a dormant colossal structure truly lay deep within the station, shaped like a gigantic triangular pyramid. Its surface was covered in patterns resembling First Root System symbols, though subtly different.

This was not Gardener technology, but a corrupted and altered “Judgment Device” bearing the style of the early Seventh Iteration.

More disturbing still, the scan showed that the device had already been partially activated. Its energy readings were rising slowly but steadily.

At this rate, the seventy-two-hour countdown was accurate. When the time came, it would possess enough power to “prune” Earth’s civilization.

“All personnel, the plan has changed.” Kane’s voice traveled through the Rose Network to every member of the team. “The Seventh Iteration’s true killing blow is the lunar weapon. We will act on three fronts.”

“Lena, continue monitoring deep space and prevent the raiding fleet from interfering.”

“Marcus, Erica, complete the cognitive purification device as quickly as possible. Negative emotions across the globe are affecting the stability of the Harmonization Field.”

“Hassan, prepare the telluric energy projection.”

“Ada, keep the New York Node on standby and prepare the entropy-energy pulse.”

“I’m going to the Moon to deal with the Observation Station directly.”

“Wait!” Lena interrupted. “The lunar Observation Station requires First Root System authority to enter! You don’t have…”

“I have something better.”

Kane raised his hand. A tiny rose emblem formed from tricolor energy appeared in his palm. After completing the Big Dipper array, Gardener authority had bestowed upon him the “Candidate Mark.”

“And the Ancestor’s Mirror can transport me.”

He turned to the console and entered a set of coordinates. The blue-gold sphere in the core chamber began to rotate. Within it, a miniature model of the solar system appeared, with the Moon highlighted.

“Teleportation preparation will take ten minutes,” Kane informed the team. “Hassan, when the time comes, channel the telluric energy directly into the relic to power the teleportation.”

“Understood!”

Ten minutes of preparation.

Kane used the time to study the lunar Observation Station’s scan data in detail. The deeper he analyzed it, the more alarmed he became.

The power of this “Judgment Device” far exceeded his expectations. It was not a simple weapon of destruction, but a “temporal anchor lock.” Once fully activated, it could cut Earth and the surrounding spacetime out of the normal timeline, as though carving a section from a painting and leaving nothing behind but a void.

Worse, the device appeared to be protected by multiple failsafes. Destroying it by force might trigger it prematurely.

It required a precise shutdown procedure authorized by the proper authority.

“Kane.” Ada suddenly established a private connection. “About the lunar Observation Station… I may know something the Council doesn’t.”

“Tell me.”

“The Seventh Iteration’s historical records mention a conflict between an early civilization and the ‘Guardians,’ the First Root System. At the time, they successfully infiltrated and modified several Guardian facilities, but they could never fully control their core functions because they lacked a true ‘Gardener’s Mark.’ So they developed an alternative—the ‘Mirror Protocol.’”

“The Mirror Protocol?”

“In simple terms, it uses a facility’s own defensive mechanisms against it. Every Guardian facility has a core directive: protect the diversity of life. The Council discovered that if they fed a facility a forged ‘life-extinction signal,’ convincing it that the planet it protected had lost its value, the facility would automatically execute a ‘pruning.’”

Kane understood at once.

“So Theta-7 is trying to forge Earth’s ‘extinction signal’?”

“Yes. But there’s a flaw… What the Council doesn’t know is that the ‘Gardener Candidate’ mark can override a forged signal. In theory, if you can make direct contact with the Observation Station’s control core, you can use your mark to overwrite Theta-7’s command…”

“And reverse the entire process,” Kane finished. “Not prune Earth, but prune away the contamination of the Seventh Iteration.”

“In theory. But the risk is extremely high. If the mark isn’t strong enough, or if the control core has already been deeply contaminated…”

“Then we perish together.”

Kane’s voice remained calm.

“Prepare the teleportation.”

Ten minutes passed.

The telluric energy Hassan had guided from the Sahara flowed like a golden flood through the Rose Network and into the Antarctic relic. The Ancestor’s Mirror’s core chamber blazed with dazzling light. Kane stood at its center, the tricolor Candidate Mark fully activated.

“Teleportation commencing,” the relic’s ancient system announced mechanically. “Destination: Lunar Observation Station. Good luck, Gardener Candidate.”

A flash of brilliance erupted.

Kane vanished from the core chamber.

The next second, he appeared in the shadow of a massive crater on the far side of the Moon. Before him stood a triangular entrance half-buried in lunar soil, radiating an ominous dark-red glow.

Above his head, Earth hung in the blackness of space like a blue-gold jewel.

Beautiful.

Fragile.

Countdown: 71:23:17.

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