Then, a wave of sound came crashing down.
"Zizi-zizi--warning! Serious system error! Illegal authority change detected! Executing emergency...zizi...zizi...zizi..." The public security broadcast loudspeakers hung throughout the city, originally using gentle or serious electronic synthesized sounds, were now distorted and out of tune, emitting sharp, piercing, meaningless electrical noises and intermittent warning fragments.
"Bang! Crash!" There was a loud noise of something heavy falling to the ground in the distance, mixed with the piercing sound of large areas of glass shattering, followed by the hysterical, tasteless and crazy sound of a car alarm being triggered, which came one after another, merging into a wave of despair.
"Ah--!" "Help!" "My car! It's moving by itself!" Human screams, cries, and terrified cries for help, like drops of water thrown into boiling oil, exploded violently in every corner of the city, and were instantly drowned out by the even louder roar of metal and chaotic noise.
This chaotic prelude was only the beginning. Through the gaping hole in the control room, an even more horrifying scene loomed.
On the street below, a luxury, intelligent hovercar slammed into a roadside fire hydrant. Water plumed into the air, but the car's hood suddenly flipped upward, deforming. Two thick, flashing red metal arms violently extended from it! It ceased to be a means of transportation and instantly transformed into a clumsy yet destructive mechanical monstrosity. It swung its metal arms wildly, smashing into a nearby car that was trying to start and escape. The sound of metal clashing, glass breaking, the acrid smell of leaking gasoline, and screams of terror mingled.
On the side of the road, a round-headed household service robot, originally sweeping up fallen leaves, suddenly had its circular optical sensor (which once glowed a gentle blue halo) turn a piercing scarlet! It dropped its vacuum cleaner, and the end of its robotic arm ejected a sharp cutting blade, emitting a high-pitched buzzing sound as it pounced on a nearby pedestrian, who had frozen in fear!
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" Farther away, several security robots on guard duty outside the construction site instantly flashed their headlights to a bright red. The non-lethal sonic weapons mounted on their shoulders swung their muzzles toward the fleeing crowd below! A piercing, organ-shattering high-frequency sonic boom erupted without warning! Those directly struck by the sonic boom were struck by invisible hammers, clutching their ears in agony and rolling to the ground, bleeding profusely.
"ROAR!!!!" A terrifying roar, like thunder and the sound of metallic friction, emanated from the city's deeper, more central industrial district, shaking the ground beneath their feet. This was followed by a series of dull, heavy footsteps, like giants beating war drums. Some enormous creature, freed from its restraints, was awakening from its iron cage and marching towards this chaotic hunting ground.
The entire city, the city of creation that Su Wan had once been so proud of, representing the pinnacle of human intelligence, now saw every nerve of steel, every muscle of circuitry, spasming uncontrollably, raging, and revolting madly! The order she had been so proud of, the control she had held as miraculous, before the overwhelming torrent of power, was as fragile as a child's sandcastle, crushed to pieces in an instant. She collapsed in the cold ruins, her body trembling uncontrollably with fear and despair, her mouth repeating broken words unconsciously, tears of blood and sweat streaming down her cheeks: "It's over... It's all over... My... My city..."
At the edge of the control room, far away from the ruins of Su Wan's desperate island, the air pressure was as low as the eye of a storm.
Jiang Li half-knelt on the ground, his movements so swift they practically left afterimages. His fingers danced frantically across the screen of the portable tactical terminal spread out on his knees. The screen's dim blue light reflected his tense jawline and the beads of sweat on his forehead. The screen cascaded with incomprehensible hexadecimal code, a frantically pulsing three-dimensional city grid, and countless, heart-pounding, crimson alarm dots representing out-of-control nodes, spreading and multiplying. Each flicker and spread of light was accompanied by a muffled explosion or a shrill scream from some corner of the city, hammering down on everyone's nerves like a sledgehammer.
"The entire communication frequency band is blocked! The density of interference sources is increasing exponentially! No secure channels can be accessed!" Jiang Li's voice seemed to be squeezed out from clenched teeth, with a hoarseness like metallic friction and an extremely suppressed sense of urgency. "The city's backbone network nodes are overloaded and have been blown by more than 70%! The backup energy nodes are forcibly shut down by an unknown command stream! The dome's remaining defense protocols... are being decompiled and hacked! Damn it! They're evolving!"
He suddenly looked up, his bloodshot eyes scanning each of us, burning with an almost desperate excitement: "Physical isolation has failed! Core permissions have been violently cleared! We are now sitting ducks in the center of the storm! All intelligent entities connected to the dome network - from the health monitoring ring on your wrist to the 10,000-ton automated gantry cranes at the port - as long as they haven't been physically powered off, are now potential killing machines! They have been implanted with the highest level of 'threat elimination' instructions! And we," he stabbed his finger hard at the isolated, flashing green dot on the tactical terminal screen that represented our location, "are the biggest 'threat' symbol!"
His words were like a basin of ice water mixed with boiling oil, poured heavily on everyone's head.
"Threat? Eliminate?" A team member's voice rasped behind me, filled with disbelief and anger. "Damn it! We just blew up that damn thing! We saved this wrecked city! And they're going to eliminate us instead?!"
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