Mou Xuan wiped off the electronic component residue that splashed on his chin and rolled over the still smoking communicator fragments with his military leather boots.
Inspector Cai was placing three terminals side by side on an explosion-proof table. The sixteen fluorescent lights projected cut the entire information wall into pieces. The screen on the far right was playing the 3D modeling of the biological samples of the logistics team members in a loop.
"The moss spore division trajectory is highly consistent with the Mechanical City Wastewater Treatment Plant." Inspector Cai picked up the blood-stained bandage fragments with tweezers, "But Analyst Yu's blood sample shows that he has not left the base for at least ten days."
Chen Yao's tactical dagger suddenly nailed into the crack of the bulletproof glass, and the silver-gray hair wrapped around the handle swayed in the red light of the alarm: "Messenger Qi's mechanical arm has a built-in positioning chip." When she pulled out the dagger, she dropped two surveillance screenshots. In the screen, the intelligence agent was adjusting the filter valve of the windproof mask thirty seconds before he disappeared.
Mou Xuan grabbed the tactical board that was covered in ice. On the material list with ink still wet were eight monitoring station duty rosters.
As he used a railgun to pick open the ventilation duct drawings of the third monitoring station, the contact person wrapped in frost and snow broke open the explosion-proof door, and light blue condensation oozed from the cracks in the bionic skin on his left shoulder.
"Someone is selling encrypted memory cards on the black market." The contact's trembling mechanical fingers typed out Morse code on the table. The holographic projection showed surveillance footage of an underground clinic frequented by intelligence agents. "The doctor at the clinic said that someone used three epinephrines to exchange for his iris backup the day before yesterday."
Chen Yao suddenly held down Mou Xuan's hand as he was looking through the surveillance video. In the video, the hem of the intelligence officer's windbreaker was stained with dark red crystals.
She pulled out the spectral analysis pen embedded in her belt, and a few clusters of green sparks exploded as the tip of the pen swept across the screen. "It's an improved coagulant, and only the Mechanical City Medical Team has it."
The sound of falling snow on the top of the air-raid shelter suddenly became dense. When Mou Xuan grabbed two camouflage cloaks, Chen Yao had already disassembled the rail pistol into parts and hid them in the tactical belt.
The two men walked through three secret passages following the traces of hydraulic oil left by Qi's mechanical prosthesis, and found ventilation grilles corroded by acid at the fourth fork in the road.
The radiation-proof door of the abandoned warehouse was frozen and cracked on its hinges by Chen Yao using liquid nitrogen spray, and Mou Xuan swept the wall with a modified ultraviolet flashlight.
Twenty-three different sizes of bullet holes appeared under the beam of light, with a glass-like molten substance condensing around the deepest bullet holes.
"At seven o'clock." Chen Yao suddenly lowered her voice, her tactical gloves scraping across the dents on the ground. "The dragging marks disappeared behind the load-bearing column, but..." The black powder on her fingertips glowed a strange orange light under the portable detector. "It's the burning residue of the self-destruct communicator."
Just as Mou Xuan was about to squat down to check, Chen Yao suddenly grabbed his cloak and rolled to the right shelf.
Three micro-blasting spikes grazed the back of their necks and pierced into the ground. A triangular symbol painted with fluorescent paint emerged from the exploded smoke - each corner was decorated with a composite pattern of mechanical gears and DNA chains.
"It's the encrypted mark of the plunderer force." When Shen Yao scraped off the paint sample with a dagger, she found that Mou Xuan was staring at her dusty profile, "But the gear meshing direction is reversed..." She suddenly paused because the man's gun-calloused fingers were brushing against the scratch behind her ear.
The alarm sound became muffled through the thirty-meter-thick surface, and Mou Xuan's hand holding the spectrometer analysis pen was still suspended in the air.
Chen Yao realized belatedly that the two of them were squeezed in the angle between the shelf and the load-bearing wall. The other person's warm breath swept across her wrist holding the dagger, and the scratches from the bullet shell on the gun handle made her waist hot.
"Predators don't use reverse gears." Mou Xuan's voice was half a centimeter lower than usual. He unbuttoned his cloak and covered the two of them with bulletproof fabric. "The 'Night Owl' organization that was wiped out three months ago..." He suddenly stopped talking. On the holographic map projected by the tactical watch, green dots representing life detection were flashing regularly above their heads.
When Chen Yao reached for the electromagnetic pulse bomb at her waist, Mou Xuan's palm suddenly covered the back of her hand.
The man's body temperature, with the smell of gunpowder, came through his tactical gloves. His other hand quickly made tactical gestures in the gaps between the shelves: the six heat sources above were surrounded, but their heartbeat frequencies showed that they were all mechanical bionic people.
When the infrared scanning beam of the first bionic man penetrated the shelf, Chen Yao pressed the delay button of the electromagnetic pulse bomb.
In the three seconds of silence before the explosion, she clearly felt Mou Xuan's little finger hooked around her pinky finger - just like when he activated the Meltdown Protocol three days ago, with unquestionable force.
At the moment the blue light exploded, two people rushed out of the shelter from opposite directions.
Chen Yao's dagger pierced into the energy interface of the bionic man's throat, and Mou Xuan's rail pistol pierced through three mechanical heads in succession.
When the last bionic man fell to his knees in the electric sparks, they all pounced on the pool of fluorescent paint that had not yet solidified in the corner.
"It's not paint." The orange light substance that Chen Yao collected in a sealed bag suddenly began to wriggle, "It's some kind of dormant nanorobot!"
Mou Xuan pulled the safety pins of two freezing grenades and drew his gun to smash the fire sprinkler head above his head.
Ice water mixed with liquid nitrogen froze the entire warehouse into a crystal cave, and the nanorobots revealed their honeycomb structure during the rapid freezing.
Chen Yao was about to take a photo to record the situation when Mou Xuan suddenly grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards the emergency exit.
At the moment before the explosion-proof door closed, they saw a complete triangle symbol emerge on the surface of the frozen nanocluster - this time the arrangement of the gears and DNA chains was exactly the same as the pattern of Mou Xuan's pupils when his time ability was activated.
Back at the base, Analyst Yu was piecing together the torn tactical manuals into a three-dimensional map.
Inspector Cai synchronized the twenty-seven surveillance views to the main screen, and the memory card brought back by the contact person was spinning at high speed in the decryptor.
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