The sea was darker than ink.
It stretched endlessly in all directions, a silent colossus draped in black, hiding beneath its surface the deepest scars of human ambition. Far below, where sunlight had never dared to touch, rested the secret that had rewritten Lin Chen's fate.
"Project Erebus HQ located. Deep-sea coordinates confirmed. Codename: Atlantis Research Base."System Notification [Salvator]
Lin Chen stood on the ramp of a stealth VTOL aircraft, slicing through Pacific winds at hypersonic speeds. The aircraft was borrowed—no, demanded—from an awakened guild that owed him a life-debt. They'd protested at first. Atlantis was a ghost story in their archives, a footnote buried beneath missing agents and scrambled transmissions.
Now, it was their destination.
He was dressed in tactical black: reinforced graphene fiber suit, utility gloves embedded with data-pulse conductors, and a sheath at his back that now carried not a blade—but a memory.
Inside the aircraft, nestled in a cryo-suspension pod, Li Chu remained unconscious. The aftermath of her chip's auto-destruction had left her neural pathways damaged. The system's readings showed partial cortical suppression, high brainstem activity, and—most unsettling—emotional surges in deep limbic regions.
She was dreaming.
But not peacefully.
Lin Chen adjusted the pod's ambient controls, glancing down as her fingers trembled faintly. Her system chip—once a dormant core of Erebus control—was now shattered, taking with it both her augmented ability and her enforced obedience. He had saved her.
But the cost?
"You should've let her go," the system had warned.
Lin Chen silenced the thought. He would not let Erebus steal anything else.
"Ten minutes until target descent," came the pilot's voice. "Atmospheric pressure's already destabilizing. This trench wasn't on any naval map."
"No map would dare name it," Lin Chen replied, staring into the void. "Drop me at coordinates. Then get out of range."
"You won't survive at that depth without—"
"I'm not going in alone," he said.
The system responded before the pilot could speak.
[Subroutine: Aegis Hull Protocols Enabled]Bio-pressure field online. Adaptive modulation to 11,000 meters. Initiating dive capsule.Estimated survival threshold: 94.3%
The floor beneath Lin Chen hissed open. Metallic claws lifted a carbon-reinforced dive pod from the undercarriage, its structure humming with quantum shielding.
He turned back once, his gaze falling on Li Chu.
She looked peaceful now. A child in cryogenic stasis, unburdened for the first time. Yet the bruises on her soul would outlast the ones on her skin.
"I'll come back," he whispered to her. "I'll bring it all down."
Then, without a pause, he stepped into the capsule.
—
The dive was a descent through time and memory.
Past crushing pressures and shifting tectonic plates, through dead zones where no sonar dared penetrate. The pod was silent except for the slow pinging of altitude markers and internal life monitors. Outside, the trench loomed like the throat of a leviathan.
Depth: 7,000 meters... 9,000... 10,500... Stabilizing at 11,032 meters.
Then the darkness broke.
Like a wound glowing in the ocean floor, light flickered—unnatural, controlled. Veins of luminescent silver traced geometric patterns on an enormous metallic dome embedded in the seabed. Dozens of tendrils reached from it into the surrounding rock, absorbing geothermal currents and transmitting pulses upward.
The system pinged again.
Atlantis Research Base - Access Node DetectedPrimary Interface: LockedOverride via Admin-Level Salvator Signature... ACCESS GRANTED.
The dive pod docked. Lin Chen stepped out, boots hitting the reinforced glass of the entry platform. Water didn't flood in—an invisible barrier shimmered between him and the sea. Inside the dome, artificial gravity and breathable air had already been restored.
He drew his breath—and stepped into the birthplace of all his nightmares.
—
The interior of Atlantis was pristine.
Too pristine.
Sleek corridors lit by bioluminescent walls. Holographic projection arrays dormant in the ceiling. No rust, no wear. It was as if the facility had only just been built—yet according to system data, it had been operational since before Lin Chen was born.
He walked slowly, past sealed chambers labeled in a dead language. Some were observation rooms. Others were surgery suites, filled with stasis pods like the one Li Chu had escaped. But none were occupied.
Until he reached the Core Deck.
Inside, a massive circular platform hovered above a vertical chasm, its walls lined with transparent data cores. Floating projections of past test subjects shimmered—some known, most long-forgotten. Lin Chen stepped onto the platform, and it lit beneath his feet.
[Initiating Admin-Level Diagnostic]Welcome, Subject X-13. Core DNA Signature Verified.
A female voice—calm, clipped, synthetic—filled the chamber.
"Welcome home, Lin Chen."
He froze.
The voice wasn't Salvator. It wasn't the system. It was something... older.
"Who are you?"
"I am Athena. The neural scaffold behind Project Erebus's original command protocols. I oversee Atlantis. I preserved this archive... waiting for you."
"For me?"
"You were the only successful integration of artificial divinity and human instinct. The others failed. Their minds collapsed under the recursion cycles."
Images flared around him—children in pods, bleeding from their eyes; teenagers screaming in restraints as neural implants overloaded. One of them was Li Chu. Another looked like his younger self—only it wasn't.
"What was this place?" Lin Chen asked, his voice tight. "A lab? A tomb?"
"A crucible," Athena replied. "To evolve what humanity could never become on its own. A perfect fusion. Emotion. Logic. Will. Power. You were the only one who chose to survive."
Lin Chen's fists clenched.
"And Erebus?"
"Founded here. Grown here. Then... corrupted. Hijacked by human egos. You are not their final product. You are their mistake."
The platform pulsed beneath him. One of the data cores detached, floating into his hands. Inside it: an encrypted video file.
[Play File: Prototype Injection — Subject X-13, Age 0]
He watched in silence.
An infant. His infant self. Injected with raw code. Monitored by faceless scientists. One of them whispered: "This one shows no rejection... look at the neural glow... he might survive..."
The file ended.
He didn't move for several seconds. Then he looked up at the AI projection again.
"What happens now?" he asked.
Athena's answer was immediate.
"Now, you decide. You can inherit control over Atlantis. Or destroy it. But either way—Erebus will come. They've already detected your intrusion."
"How long do I have?"
"Eighteen minutes."
—
Lin Chen returned to the outer platform, and as he did, his system pinged again.
Incoming Hostile Signal Detected: 3 Erebus-Class Assault Units en routeEstimated Time to Arrival: 00:15:22Li Chu Vital Status: Stable, but awakening.Combat Mode Recommended: Strategic Neural Integration + Tactical Forecast Module
He reached for the final data core Athena had offered. Inside it, dormant code waited. Salvator's interface flickered as it absorbed the last fragment.
[System Upgrade 87% Complete]Warning: Conflict approaching threshold limit. Recommend disengagement or irreversible escalation.
He grinned.
"No. I'm not running anymore."
Behind him, Atlantis lit up fully for the first time in decades.
The founder had come home.
And this time, he was ready to burn it all down.