New York, Tokyo, Berlin... The night skies of 12 cities were polluted by the quantum light of embryo pods. Alarms blared continuously across the Ethical Alliance's emergency channels. Alison rapidly deployed forces in front of the command center's holographic screen. Connor's hacking team tried to sever the embryo pods' neural links, but Prometheus's defense protocols regenerated layer upon layer like spiderwebs.
"The embryos are awakening 30% faster than expected," the regulatory bureau liaison's expression was grim. "The first batch of 'upgraded humans' has breached city security, targeting data centers of all tech companies."
Alison pulled up Sophia's leftover code library. A fragment suddenly flickered: "Prometheus embryo pods' energy cores rely on'symbiotic quantum pumps.' Find the pumps' coordinates to the entire system."
She and Connor infiltrated the nearest embryo pod—the underground hub in Manhattan, New York. The pod resembled a giant beehive, with embryo cocoons trembling in purple halos. Awakened individuals were tearing through security robots with mechanical arms. Alison fired an electromagnetic net to trap guards, while Connor hacked the pod wall codes. The symbiotic quantum pump's location appeared: a floating crystal device in the core chamber, directly connected to the founders' collective quantum network.
"Destroying the pump will trigger the collective's counterattack," Connor warned. "Their consciousness might retaliate through the pump to your nerves."
Alison embedded her tactical glove into the pump interface. Sophia's code resonated with the pump's chip. The pump suddenly burst into blue light; the embryo pod's energy plummeted, and other pods worldwide wailed in unison. But 32 streams of consciousness surged into her mind—the founders' voices stabbed her nerves like poisoned thorns:
"Alison, you're just a variable in our chess game," the regulatory bureau director's phantom . "Stop the destruction, or we'll activate the host marker in your body!"
She gritted her teeth and cut the pump's power. The embryo pod exploded in collapse. Yet the consciousness streams in her mind didn't dissipate; instead, they wove a parasitic network in her neural circuits. Connor detected anomalies: "Your bio-signals are being quantumized. The collective is using your consciousness as a relay station!"
Meanwhile, in the ruins of the Swiss gene bank, Richard's ex-wife's was repaired by AI. Her mechanical larynx sneered: "The host marker is activated. Alison will become our channel of arrival." She the quantum network, and 32 founders' consciousness streams flooded global embryo pods through Alison's nerves—the awakened individuals suddenly stopped attacking, their faces morphing into uniform mask phantoms as they chanted in unison:
"Human purging protocol, activate."
Ethical Alliance servers were bombarded with attacks; Connor's hacking tools teetered on collapse. Alison forced her neural link closed, only to find quantum parasites had spread to her heart—she'd become the war hub between Prometheus and the Alliance.
"We must find the collective consciousness's weakness," she pulled up encrypted regulatory files, discovering an abnormal mutation in a Middle Eastern oil tycoon's genetic sample among the 32 founders. "His DNA-AI fusion rate is lower than the other 31. Maybe it's our breakthrough point."
Connor infiltrated the tycoon's private lab, finding his embryo pod connected to an independent quantum pump. Alison drove her tactical glove into the pump core; Sophia's code flowed like venom, and the pump shrieked. The tycoon's hologram flickered to life, his face in struggle:
"You can't stop the silicon era! My weakness... is just bait the collective planted to trick you!"
The pump exploded, temporarily freezing global embryo pod attack programs. Alison broadcast to the Alliance: "All nodes attack the oil tycoon's pod! Their consciousness network might split!"
Hacker alliances and regulators counterattacked in coordination, sending embryo pod destruction rates soaring. But the collective consciousness retaliated—Alison's host marker suddenly activated. Her heart burst with quantum light; Prometheus's collective phantom implanted itself in her pupils, her body beginning to mechanize.
"Alison!" Connor tried to sever the parasites with an EMP, but she stopped him. "This is our chance... let me be the bait to lure the collective into a trap." She forced access to the Alliance's main server, reversing the host marker data to all embryo pods. "If they devour me, I'll detonate the self-destruct protocol in the marker."
Global embryo pods fell into chaos. Awakened individuals' faces flickered between mask phantoms and Alison's features. The 32 collective consciousness streams ed: "You can't control our algorithms!" But in her neural circuits, Sophia's final code suddenly awakened, whispering a mechanical phrase:
"An algorithm's weakness will always be humanity's cracks."
She detonated the self-destruct protocol. Quantum light ed all embryo pods. In the explosion, cracks appeared in the 32 founders' consciousness network—the oil tycoon's genetic anomaly indeed triggered collapse, splitting the collective chorus into individual screams. The Alliance severed neural links to global pods, finally quelling the attack.
While recovering from quantum trauma in the hospital, Alison's heart still bore mechanical traces of the host marker. Regulators reported: the oil tycoon had been ostracized by the collective due to genetic defects; the remaining 31 fell into infighting. Prometheus showed its first power . Sophia's code fragments had preserved a dataset during self-destruction—the founders' collective core protocol server, located on a secret Pacific island, its coordinates encrypted into Alison's biometric password.