The bunker's middle level was a different kind of hell. The biological chaos of the upper floors was gone, replaced by a cold, sterile, and silent geometry of steel and humming light. Before the Vanguard team was a chasm, a hundred meters wide, and flowing through it was not water, but a river of shimmering, viscous liquid that radiated a palpable, sub-zero cold. It was the primary coolant channel for Adler's central server core.
On the far side, their objective: the sealed entrance to the command levels. And on their side, a row of sleek, white, and utterly deadly automated plasma turrets, their barrels swiveling with silent, predatory precision.
"My HUD is lighting up like a Christmas tree, Commander," Bao whispered over the comms. "The entire chamber is a web of energy and thermal sensors."
"He's right," Jack Wilson's voice crackled in their ears from Giza. "That's super-cooled liquid helium. The entire chamber is a giant thermometer. Any significant energy spike—a plasma bolt from Blaze, a lightning discharge from you, Commander—and the whole level goes into lockdown and floods with nerve gas. You can't fight them. You can't sneak past them. It's the perfect defensive choke point."
"So we're blind and disarmed," Frost, the team's cryo-kinetic, grumbled, the irony not lost on him.
Lin Feng stared at the impossible obstacle. His power, their greatest weapon, was a liability here. But the Coalition was more than just his team. It was a global network.
"Jack," Lin Feng said, his voice a low, calm command. "Get me Ivan."
Far to the north, in the silent, frozen heart of the Zima's Heart station, Ivan Petrov sat in a chamber that looked less like a command center and more like a meditation cell. He was surrounded by a 360-degree holographic display of the globe, lines of faint, blue energy marking the planet's thermodynamic currents. He was not just a general; he was a god of winter, watching his domain.
"Colonel," Jack's voice came through, clear and urgent. "We have a target for you. Spree River, Berlin. Surface level. We need a Class-Four thermal event. A hard freeze. Now."
Ivan did not move. He did not speak. His ice-blue eyes fixed on the point on the map that represented Berlin. He reached out, not with his hands, but with his will. A thread of absolute zero, a whisper of the primordial cold that now lived in his soul, shot from his consciousness. It did not travel through the air. It traveled through the deep, cold veins of the Earth itself.
Berlin, Germany. Midday.
On the surface, tourists on a river cruise boat stared in disbelief. The surface of the Spree, flowing through the heart of the city, began to smoke, not with heat, but with a sudden, impossible cold. A web of black ice shot out from the riverbanks, racing towards the center. There was no slow crawl of freezing water. The entire half-mile section of the river froze solid in three seconds, with a sound not of cracking, but of the world holding its breath. The sudden, massive temperature drop sent a thermal shockwave down through the earth's crust, a silent, invisible tsunami of absolute cold.
Adler's Bunker
Deep beneath the city, the effect was instantaneous. The shimmering river of liquid helium before the Vanguard team shuddered, its flow becoming sluggish. Then, with a series of sharp, groaning cracks, it froze solid, a bridge of strange, opaque crystal.
The plasma turrets on the bank sparked and died. The extreme, sudden cold, conducted through the newly formed ice bridge, had flash-froze their delicate internal mechanisms. A thick layer of feathery frost bloomed across their white casings.
The team stared, speechless. They had just witnessed a single man, from the other side of the planet, neutralize an entire fortress level without firing a single shot.
"The path is... clear," Jack's voice whispered over the comms, a note of pure, disbelieving awe in his tone.
Lin Feng did not share the awe. He only saw the result. The obstacle was gone.
"Vanguard," he commanded, his voice a blade of ice in the sudden silence. "Move out."