Chapter 491: Gene Virus Bomb! Order Collapses! Chaos!
Paul's words made everyone's mood sink. Indeed, in the underground city, electronic devices were everywhere—anything could project a holographic screen.
All of these things were powered wirelessly. Electricity was transmitted through microwaves or various kinds of electromagnetic oscillation beams, forming a supply field within a certain range.
Any electronic device inside this range required no cumbersome wiring—an antenna or electromagnetic resonance coil was enough to recharge itself.
That meant, in this enormous underground city, they had no way of stopping the electronical devices controlled by the sophons. The only thing they could do was stay on guard.
Paul and the others returned to the bustling street. Since hiding somewhere was pointless, they might as well go to a more spacious place, where they would at least have more room to maneuver.
If the sophons dared to carry out another blatant assassination, the human agents here would notice something wrong and quickly launch an investigation.
At that point, it would be far harder for the sophons to kill Paul and the others.
Standing in a corner of the street, Paul, Agent K, and the others stood back-to-back, wary of their surroundings, patiently waiting for time to pass—for the next assassination attempt to come.
Cough, cough—!
A passerby walked past Agent Leon, letting out an extremely restrained cough. Leon, annoyed, instinctively held his breath until the man moved away.
At that moment, the giant holographic screen in the square began broadcasting the midday news—mostly trivial matters.
The news was deliberately sugar-coated; the media here never put too much focus or attention on the hibernators.
Even an ordinary case of the common flu could make the square's newsfeed.
[Recently, a mild flu has appeared in New Life Underground City. Main symptoms include coughing and runny nose, with some patients experiencing throat irritation.]
[This illness requires no medication—just rest for three days, and it will heal on its own. Please drink plenty of water, exercise, and maintain a good daily routine.]
[...]
Paul and Luke, the two veterans in the team, naturally kept their attention on the pedestrians by the roadside and the surrounding electronics, while K and Leon watched the passing vehicles and the various airships overhead.
The four of them cooperated seamlessly, shifting positions from time to time.
But before long, Agent Leon suddenly felt an itch in his lungs and coughed aloud.
This instantly caught Paul's attention. He frowned and asked, "What's wrong? You caught a cold too?"
Paul had an excellent memory—he never forgot what he heard. The news just played on the giant screen in the square, including that report about the flu, was all fresh in his mind.
"It shouldn't be. Maybe my throat's just itchy." Leon instinctively shook his head. With his physique, how could he possibly catch a little cold?
Even if he really did, he should still be full of energy, bouncing around as usual.
But Paul realized something was wrong. Every agent sent here had undergone genetic modifications. Their bodies were far stronger than ordinary humans.
Forget the flu—even a lethal virus might not necessarily infect Leon effectively.
True, Leon was only a rookie in the team, and hadn't undergone the full set of genetic modifications yet, but compared to ordinary people, he might as well be another species.
Ordinary people could catch colds. How could he catch one?
Seeing the suspicion in Paul's eyes, Leon still tried to hold out. Waving his hand, he was about to say he really was fine.
But the next second, he coughed up blood. The itch in his lungs rapidly worsened into stabbing pain.
Only then did Leon realize the severity of the situation. This was clearly a gene-virus attack arranged by the sophons!
Watching Leon cough so violently, the surrounding passersby quickly scattered, casting wary looks at Paul and the others. They too had caught the so-called flu to some degree—
—but none of them coughed as severely as Leon.
"Cough, cough! Boss, we need to retreat…"
Leon's throat was so raw it was hard for him to even speak. For a man to admit he couldn't go on—it meant he was already on the brink of death.
Paul understood the gravity immediately. He grabbed Leon, ready to get him out of here.
The hospitals here could never save him. They had to get him back to the Hornet, the team's support ship, for treatment.
To buy Leon more time, Paul summoned their transforming ship while using a portable nano-med kit to ease his symptoms.
Agents of The Megacorp rarely carried healing items. Their own genes were the best medicine—most injuries could heal on their own.
Blades, bullets—so long as they weren't blasted to bits by heavy artillery, they could recover.
As for viral infections? Even less of a concern.
But Leon was just that unlucky. Before completing his full suite of modifications, he was sent on this mission—only to run into this mess.
That was why Paul and the others hadn't been infected.
It was also a grim reminder: the sophons' methods weren't limited to physical attacks. Biological weapons were also in their arsenal.
And sure enough, after successfully infecting one of The Megacorp's agents, the sophons' assaults grew increasingly brazen.
Paul carried away the half-collected data along with the AI Red Queen, boarding the transforming ship to head for the underground city's exit.
But along the way, billboards kept sparking, then snapping loose with a loud crack, crashing straight down toward them. No pretense—these attacks were aimed directly at them.
Fortunately, the transforming ship's evasion speed was fast enough. With a lightning-quick drift maneuver, it narrowly dodged the falling signboard. Wherever Paul's group went, electronic devices dropped, broke, or went haywire.
The surrounding pedestrians were stunned.
When had their underground city become so fragile? Why were bizarre malfunctions happening left and right? This made no sense at all.
Now, the sophons' assault had gone completely rampant. They knew that if they didn't take extreme measures, they couldn't stop Paul's group from leaving with the data.
Meanwhile, on the square's giant screen, a flood of breaking news appeared:
[We now interrupt with urgent news. Just ten minutes ago, multiple underground cities—Tokyo, Paris, London, Washington—have suffered building explosions and collapses.]
[The exact cause remains unknown. Relevant authorities have launched emergency investigations.]
[...]
It was clear that the other investigation team members had also come under various attacks, facing explosions orchestrated by the sophons. Several agents were already injured and had been forced to retreat.
"The others have run into trouble too. Luckily, none of them have suffered any serious losses so far," Agent K reported through the team's internal channel after receiving updates from the others.
But Paul did not lower his guard. The accidents arranged by the sophons were becoming more and more like targeted strikes. Any human authority with half a brain could tell that the Trisolarans were behind this sabotage.
At this point, the only thing left was for the sophons to directly tinker with a missile to blow them up.
Before Paul could even drive the car out of the underground city, fresh trouble came their way.
Countless bionic robots emerged from restaurants, arcades, and the streets, moving in unison to surround Paul's group.
Such an abnormal sight naturally caused unrest among the crowd. The underground city dwellers, used to lives of comfort and safety, had never seen anything so bizarre.
The bionic robots ignored attempts at interception by ordinary humans, forming neat ranks to block Paul's path.
The street Paul was on quickly became gridlocked with traffic. Even worse, more bionic robots were streaming in from other intersections, converging on them like Infinity swarms of ants drawn to a piece of sweet, fresh cake.
The other pedestrians on the street were terrified, thinking a machine uprising had begun, that these robots were rebelling.
Seeing that the road ahead was completely blocked, Paul had no choice but to activate the flying mode of the transforming ship. Right in front of everyone, it rose into the air and swept away toward another direction.
Every traffic lane in the underground city had strict regulations: cars could only drive on the ground, hovercars could only fly along aerial tracks.
Paul's vehicle, darting both on the ground and through the sky, would normally have his license revoked and his vehicle confiscated in minutes.
But in the chaos of this scene, no one paid the slightest attention to traffic violations.
The entire underground city was already in utter turmoil, and it was clear the sophons were willing to go to any lengths to kill them.
When more hovercars swooped in to intercept from the air, Paul had no choice but to deploy the ship's weapons, blasting every blocking vehicle to pieces.
These hovercars were all civilian transports, completely unequipped with weapons. Paul only had to press a switch to sweep aside swaths of them.
Meanwhile, Leon's condition was worsening, making Paul increasingly anxious. Fortunately, the transforming ship's weapons were powerful enough to clear the way, so progress remained relatively smooth.
But the wreckage of hovercars and the massive bionic robot riots had already thrown the city into chaos. Citizens fled in panic, desperately hiding in what they thought were safe places.
At the same time, the artificial blue sky and white clouds projected on the underground city's dome vanished as the electronic systems failed. In their place appeared a flickering blood-red glow, dim and ominous.
Without proper lighting, the underground city seemed to have plunged into doomsday. Those who had once scoffed at the Trisolarans now felt disaster crashing down upon them. Terror and madness awakened the most primal violent instincts.
At first, the crowds only used weapons for self-defense. But soon the violence escalated—they began actively hunting down the bionic robots that ran through the streets.
Yet the robots' appearance was nearly identical to humans, and the only way to tell was by their movements. In the dim red glow, most people ended up mistakenly killing each other instead.
Panic-stricken, people slaughtered one another—pulling guns at the slightest argument. Among them, looters and thugs took advantage of the chaos to rob, burn, and kill.
Just hours earlier, this had been a civilized, harmonious modern city. Now, merely because the blue sky had vanished and chaos spread, it regressed into a wilderness of beasts as if tens of thousands of years had turned back in an instant.
Bullets rained in crisscrossing streaks through the urban jungle. Countless building structures sparked with fire as they crumbled, debris crashing from above to randomly crush unlucky bystanders to death.
All order collapsed in the blink of an eye.
Along the way, burst underground pipelines sprayed water jets tens of meters high. High-voltage cables whipped about like serpents. Elsewhere, a natural gas explosion hurled massive boulders into the path of the transforming ship.
It was as if everything had grown eyes, converging on them. The Trisolarans, intent on killing Paul and his fellow investigators, had clearly abandoned all restraint.
Fortunately, the ship's onboard AI was extremely sophisticated. Paul didn't even need to manually steer—the AI plotted the optimal escape routes on its own, evading every attack.
In just moments, the situation in the underground city had spiraled beyond even the police's control.
Finally, a police hovercar arrived with sirens wailing, pulling up beside the transforming ship. Unlike the AI-piloted civilian vehicles, this one had a human driver.
A policeman inside spoke through the car's comm system: "I'm Guo Zhengming from the City Public Security Bureau's Department of Digital Reality. I'm here to help you. The exit ahead has been blocked—follow me."
As soon as Guo Zhengming spoke, the ship's AI confirmed to Paul that the nearest exit was indeed blocked. They would need a new route—but without detailed schematics of the underground city, finding another exit would take too long.
For now, they could only trust that this policeman was genuinely here to help.
No time to waste, Paul decided to believe him. "You lead the way, then!"
Without hesitation, Guo Zhengming accelerated in another direction, Paul close behind.
In truth, incidents this absurd were not unprecedented. Half a century earlier, similar events had occurred, and the authorities had gradually realized these "accidents" were the work of sophons.
So, when this happened again, Guo Zhengming quickly received orders from above: protect the people targeted by sophon assassinations.
Luckily, they had arrived in time.
At that moment, an explosion tore through the dome's screen, shattering countless transparent glass tubes. Shards rained down like knives, pelting the underground city with a storm of glass.
Sharp fragments smashed down like hailstones. Many passersby couldn't dodge in time, glass piercing skulls and killing them instantly.
Paul had no choice but to activate the backup power system and raise the energy shield against further hazards.
Who knew if the sophons might suddenly arrange a surface-to-air missile strike to take them down?
After all, their transforming ship was only marginally more versatile than an ornithopter. Its defenses weren't particularly strong.
Without the energy shield, even ordinary humans here could have shot their ship down.
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