Free Web NovelChapter 91: The Reluctant Warrior
The words had barely left Dr. Zhou’s trembling lips before the atmosphere in the residential suite fractured entirely. There was no hesitation, no debate, and no waste of breath. Han Zheng and Lin Qing moved simultaneously, their combat-honed reflexes kicking into overdrive as they vaulted past the dining table and bolted out the threshold of the room.
Behind them, Lieutenant Chen and Old Wang reacted with the seamless synchronization of seasoned veterans, drawing their sidearms as their heavy boots pounded a fierce rhythm against the reinforced concrete floor.
As they flew down the winding, dimly lit central stairwells toward the auxiliary terminal room, Lin Qing’s mind raced with rapid-fire calculations. A breach at the primary blast gates would mean total annihilation.
If Dr. Morse and Dr. Chen Wei managed to pull the manual emergency unlatch levers, the cold mountain air wouldn’t be the only thing rushing into the lower levels—Gao Feng’s heavily armed vanguard would flood the facility before they could even establish a defensive perimeter. Every microsecond mattered. Lin Qing’s fingers curled into tight fists, her muscles coiled tightly, preparing for a physical confrontation to reclaim the console.
Han Zheng led the charge, his newly upgraded kinetic core humming with an invisible, oppressive density that distorted the very air around his frame. Reaching the heavy steel door of the auxiliary server room, he didn’t bother waiting for a security keycard. He raised his boot and delivered a devastating, kinetically charged kick directly to the locking mechanism.
BANG.
The heavy steel door buckled inward, screeching on its hinges as it slammed open against the interior wall. Han Zheng stormed into the room, his weapon raised, his eyes scanning the shadows for the rogue researchers—only to freeze entirely in his tracks.
Lin Qing slid into the room right behind him, her gaze scanning the control panels, ready to neutralize a threat. But the words died in her throat, and she stopped dead, her eyes widening in complete, utter bewilderment.
There was no tense standoff. There was no desperate scramble over the override levers.
Sitting on the cold concrete floor in the center of the room, slumped against the base of a heavy mainframe server, were Dr. Chen Wei and Dr. Morse. Both men were completely unconscious, snoring softly in a deep stupor.
They were bound together back-to-back, wrapped in a chaotic, tangled web of heavy-duty black extension cords and ethernet cables.
The knots were comical—looped erratically around their torsos and arms in a sloppy, disorganized mess that looked like an accident in a supply closet rather than the work of a captor. To top it all off, a massive, angry purple lump was rapidly swelling right on the side of Dr. Morse’s forehead, gleaming prominently under the harsh fluorescent lights of the server room.
For a long, agonizing moment, the server room was dead silent, save for the hum of the cooling fans and the rhythmic, pathetic snoring of the two captive scientists. Han Zheng slowly lowered his sidearm, his features twisted into an expression of confusion. Lieutenant Chen and Old Wang stared at the scene, their mouths slightly open, utterly unable to process the sight before them.
A few seconds later, a series of ragged, desperate gasps echoed from the corridor outside.
Dr. Zhou finally stumbled through the ruined doorway, clutching her chest tightly as her lungs burned for air. Lacking the elite physical stamina and cardiovascular conditioning of the combat team, she had lagged significantly behind during the mad sprint downstairs. Her face was flushed bright red, her laboratory coat was practically falling off her shoulders, and her glasses were fogged up from sweat.
She stopped, leaning heavily against the dented doorframe, taking in the sight of the silent, shocked soldiers who were all staring down at her handiwork. Realizing the absurdity of the scene, Dr. Zhou let out a weak, nervous laugh, raising a trembling hand to awkwardly scratch the back of her head.
"I’m... I’m sorry," she panted, her voice cracking as she tried to catch her breath. "I know it looks... a bit messy. I don’t really have any experience tying people up."
Lin Qing turned to her, her voice laced with a mixture of disbelief and dark amusement. "Dr. Zhou... what exactly happened here?"
Dr. Zhou took one final, deep gulp of air, adjusting her crooked glasses as she began her confession. "Well... when I woke up this morning, I went to the secondary research lab to find the others so we could coordinate our morning diagnostic reports. But when I approached the door, I heard them arguing. They were whispering about how the satellite blackout meant the extraction team was dead, and how Gao Feng’s heavy artillery would turn this mountain into a graveyard soon."
She glanced down at her unconscious colleagues, a flicker of indignation crossing her features. "They were completely panicked. When I realized they were actively walking down here to pull the emergency override and open the gates for negotiation, I... I just snapped. I knew I couldn’t let them ruin everything everyone worked so hard for. So, I ran back to the medical cabinet and grabbed a vial of a highly potent, fast-acting veterinary sedating agent that Dr. Chen Wei uses for core stability testing."
The hardened soldiers listened in rapt, breathless silence as the tiny, frail tech specialist described her sudden descent into vigilantism.
"I snuck up behind them right as they entered the server room," Dr. Zhou continued, her hands gesturing wildly as she relived the adrenaline rush. "I managed to jab the needle directly into Dr. Chen Wei’s neck before he even knew I was there. He went down almost instantly. But... but Dr. Morse noticed the commotion. He turned around and realized what I was doing, and he lunged at me. We had this really clumsy, awful tussle right next to the desk. He was stronger than me, and he almost pinned my arms, but fortunately..."
She pointed a small, shaking finger toward the main administrative desk across the room. "...fortunately, my hand brushed against a penholder sitting next to the terminal. I just blindly grabbed it and clocked him over the head with it as hard as I possibly could. He dropped like a stone."
Old Wang stared at the massive, protruding knot on the side of Dr. Morse’s skull, then looked back at Dr. Zhou’s small, delicate hands. He slowly raised his hands in a defensive gesture, a brilliant, booming grin breaking across his rugged face as he broke the stunned silence of the room.
"Well, damn, Dr. Zhou," Old Wang joked, chuckling deeply as he shook his head. "Remind me to never, ever get on your bad side. Seeing the absolute size of that lump on Morse’s head, I just hope to god I’ve never unknowingly offended you before. You’re a lethal weapon!"
Dr. Zhou’s face flushed an even deeper shade of crimson, her eyes darting to the floor in embarrassment. "I really didn’t mean to hit him that hard. I just panicked. After they were both out, I gathered whatever extension cords I could rip out of the spare server racks and tied them together. Then I ran upstairs to find you."
Han Zheng stepped forward, his heavy boots stopping right beside the bound researchers. He knelt down, checking the pulses of both men with a practiced touch before nodding toward Lin Qing. "They’re stable, but they’ll be out cold for at least a few hours. The sedative is dense." He looked up at Dr. Zhou, his dark eyes filled with a rare, profound look of genuine respect. "You did well, Doctor. You saved the sanctuary from a catastrophic security breach."
"I... I also found something else," Dr. Zhou said, suddenly remembering the core reason for her urgency. She walked quickly past the soldiers, stepping over the tangled mess of cords to reach the primary administrative desk. She reached behind a stack of fried circuit boards and pulled out a heavy, heavily modified piece of machinery.
It was a compact, ruggedly engineered short-wave communication radio, cobbled together from spare satellite receiver parts and advanced processing chips. The digital display on the console was actively blinking, a steady green light indicating that the hardware was operational.
"Before I knocked them out, Dr. Morse had actually succeeded in finalizing this," Dr. Zhou explained, her technical mind taking over. "They didn’t just want to pull the levers blindly. They spent the entire night utilizing our internal relay nodes to build an advanced, highly specialized short-wave radio. Because it operates on a localized, ultra-high-frequency band, this device is uniquely capable of punching right through Gao Feng’s local jammers. They were planning to use this exact radio to establish a direct, private communication line with Gao Feng’s flagship to negotiate the terms of our surrender."
Lin Qing stepped forward, her sharp eyes locking onto the blinking green light of the makeshift radio. The wheels in her mind began to spin at an unmatchable pace.
Yesterday, they were completely blind, deaf, and isolated, trapped in a passive defensive shell while Gao Feng held all the cards at the base of the mountain. But now, staring at this unauthorized, highly functional communication device, the entire tactical landscape shifted beautifully in her mind.
A sharp, brilliant, and deceptive gleam entered her eyes, replacing her initial shock with the cold, calculating focus of a master strategist. She looked up from the flashing console, her gaze meeting Han Zheng’s piercing eyes.
A slow, dangerous smile curved the corners of her lips.
"I have an idea," Lin Qing said out loud, her voice ringing with absolute certainty through the quiet server room.
