The decision of the Council of Seven was absolute. The war for humanity's survival would be fought on two fronts: one against the alien Vultures in the void, and a second, more immediate war against the human cancer that festered in the heart of Europe.
In the holographic briefing room of the Sanctuary, the mission was given its official designation.
"Operation Serpent's Head," Amira announced, her voice echoing in the silent chamber. A 3D model of General Adler's subterranean Berlin bunker, built from Jack's stolen data and Sakura's spatial analysis, floated in the center of the room. "The objective is twofold. Primary: neutralize General Adler and his 'Hive Queen,' and secure all research related to his 'Perfect Race' project. Secondary," she paused, her eyes meeting Sophia's, "extract Subject Zero-One, Anna Cohen, alive."
"This will be more than a mission," Ivan Petrov added, his voice a low rumble. "It will be the ultimate crucible for this Coalition. Our first combined-arms, multinational, trans-spatial strike. If we fail here, our alliance is meaningless. We will have proven that we cannot even police our own species, let alone fight a war with the stars."
The stakes were set. The mission was not just a decapitation strike; it was the final, brutal exam for their fledgling army.
The Sanctuary became a hive of frantic, purposeful activity, a planet's immune system preparing to excise a tumor.
In his laboratory, Jack Wilson was a whirlwind of controlled chaos. The smell of burnt ozone and stale coffee hung thick in the air as he and his team worked in a sleep-deprived frenzy. "A conventional mech assault is suicide," he explained to his team, gesturing wildly at the bunker's schematics. "Adler's base is shielded against stellar nucleus energy signatures. It's designed to repel a Vulture ground assault. We can't go in heavy. We have to go in smart." He scrapped his plans for a new generation of Sentinels and began designing something new, something faster, lighter, and more intimate. A symbiotic suit of armor, not a walking tank. A scalpel, not a sledgehammer.
On the Giza training grounds, under the scorching sun, Lin Feng was forging his own scalpel. He stood before the survivors of the "Vanguard" team, the elite recruits who had failed so spectacularly in the Amazon. There was no sympathy in his eyes, only the hard glint of a whetstone.
"You fought as individuals," he told them, his voice a blade of cold steel. "You died as individuals. Today, you will be reborn as a team."
His training was a hellish integration of his own brutal special forces regimen and the esoteric energy control techniques he had developed. He pushed them past every conceivable limit, forcing them to rely not on their own power, a crutch he now forbade them to use, but on the power of the person standing next to them. He ground away their pride, their arrogance, and the last vestiges of the flags on their souls, until all that was left was the pure, unyielding core of a single, unified fighting unit.
And in the quiet, sterile sanctuary of her own lab, Sophia Cohen was in a desperate race against the clock. She was no longer just a scientist; she was a safecracker, and the lock was the most complex biological machine ever created: her own sister.
"Adler's control is absolute," she explained to a concerned Professor Brandt, her eyes red-rimmed from exhaustion. "It's a constant, high-frequency neural command. I can't just inject a cure; her own cybernetics would identify it as a hostile agent and destroy it. I have to create a window."
She was designing a two-stage solution. First, a targeted electromagnetic pulse, calibrated by Jack, designed to momentarily disrupt the command signal from Adler. And in that fleeting window of silence, a second, bio-reactive agent that would not just cure the virus, but actively sever its connection to her cybernetic implants. It was a poison for the machine and an antidote for the girl, all in one. A single, desperate prayer in a syringe.
The serpent was sleeping in its nest in Berlin. And from across the world, the hunters were sharpening their fangs.