A high-pitched, warbling siren cut through the sterile silence of Sub-Vault Zero.
It wasn’t a bronze gong or a chanting horn. It was a clean, pressure-sparking tone that pulsed from the black glass dais at exactly one thousand hertz.
The green glowing text on the slate console vanished, replaced by a dark, flashing amber banner:
Above Lin Ke’s head, four heavy bronze vents slid open in the curved ceiling with a sharp, air-powered CH-CH-CHUNK.
A cloud of icy vapor drifted down from the ceiling nozzles, the heat in the vault plummeting ten degrees in three seconds. If the system flagged his living profile as corrupted malware, three thousand gallons of ice-cold fluid would flood the room, freezing his marrow into glass before he could turn around.
A scan beam of pale green light swept down from the end-post, piercing through his skin, his muscles, and into his dantian.
The flashing amber warning banner froze in the mental sandbox. The falling ice-cold vapor hung suspended.
In the mental sandbox, Lin Ke ran defensive masking protocols.
