Ye Shen's fingers convulsed over holographic keys, binary storms reflected in his irises. Server racks spewed liquid nitrogen fog, blood droplets snaking across circuit boards to form grotesque meridian maps.
"This isn't EMI..." He ripped his collar, QR code pulsing on clavicle. "Those eggs are rewriting geomagnetism... Our hemoglobin's becoming antennae."
Bulletproof glass rippled before he finished. A crystalline heart materialized, each throb emitting concentric pulses. Su Yao's scalpel vibrated in harmonic resonance - the tremolo perfectly matched Wagner's Bridal Chorus.
Li's lightning whip crystallized mid-air. When violet arcs pierced the core, the wall exploded into holographic shards projecting their worst memories.
Lin saw desert comrades crawling with severed limbs; Su's lenses reflected exploding lab equipment; Ye's screen showed scalpels cleaving his skull. Only Li's display stayed obsidian until fabric ripped - holographic Su Wan quantumizing with storm clouds pouring from eye sockets.
"Cognitive hazard!" Li's thunderous roar jolted them awake. He plunged bare hands into the core, flesh vaporizing to reveal X-ray bones. The dying light left scorched city maps with twelve crimson markers.
In stinking alleyways
Moonlight painted rainbow sheens on dripping sludge. A homeless man stumbled backward as mold spores coalesced into faces. Crimson mycelium engulfed him, cocooned in amber-like resin.
Police drones exploded in cable tentacles glowing with bioluminescent moss. Neon billboards warped into flesh factories, models' jaws unhinging into lamprey maws.
Li crushed bone fragments underboot - pre-Rain victims surfacing in wrong timelines. Ye's pulse gun sprouted dendritic growths. "Magnetic flux up 15%!" Su's scanner crawled with parasite code. "The eggs are pumping neurotransmitters..."
Office workers scuttled ceiling-bound in mutated suits, engraving Lin's chest sigils with boxcutters. Li's barrier shattered as phosphorus-scented energy grazed his temple. Ye's EMP grenade froze them in electric rigor mortis.
"They're receivers!" Su tweezed ocular crystals. "Downloading blueprints like 3D printers!"
Lin's organic arm ripped through a mutant. Darkness swallowed the corridor as he extracted the core, floating wedding packages glowing in thermal vision.
In abyssal galleries
Tidal sounds echoed through elevator shafts. Li's lightning spear revealed cave paintings - primitive humans worshipping twelve orbital eggs. A veiled bride sacrificed her heart in fresco margins.
"New Era's original mine..." Ye's words clanged metallically. Flashlights exposed crystal coffins - doppelgängers of Su Wan nailed with lightning rods. The oldest casket bore cuneiform: "Brides of Chronos".
Lin's prosthetic lunged at Li. Electrified joints spewed spiderlings with countdown carapaces. "Quantum parasites!" Ye froze the swarm. "They're data-mining timelines!"
Su dissected Lin's necrotic nerves. The cavern folded spacetime, coffins decaying into chrono-sand. A magnified grain revealed micro-apocalypses - infinite Lis kneeling over Su Wan corpses.
New Era's bleeding mainframe
Arterial cables pulsed in server rooms. Researchers knelt before环形screens streaming real-time footage. "Vessels found the Chrono-Cocoon." The lead scientist's neural tendrils quivered. "Flood all timelines with quantum tides."
Hologlobe's twelve markers ignited. Lightning tendrils from Pacific vortexes fused with orbital eggs. Tokyo billboards played wedding vows, crowds prostating toward Luo City.
Li's countdown brand morphed into ouroboros emblem. Ye's laser saw breached bioconduits - temporal memories oozing like pus. "Su Wan's EEG patterns!" Su's device wailed. "327 mutations across timelines!"
Lin's skull burst open, micro-egg gleaming. Quantum Su Wan descended in stormcloud bridal gown, twelve eggs orbiting her waist. "Kill me," her multiverse voice echoed, "or build nests for new mankind."
Li's power collapsed into singularity. The light revealed eggs cradling bridal-gowned selves, Su Wan's heart pumping Earth's projection.
Blood seeped from unopened wedding packages. Holographic clocktowers crumbled into infant wails. Pacific storm-eye blinked, observing rewritten causality.
Ye jammed his gun into servers before blacking out. Tokyo's devotees exploded into sky-spanning QR codes. Su injected herself with anti-parasite serum, seeing her mother smile in flames - the lab fire originated here twenty years prior.
Lin's ouroboros tattoo glowed as he crushed the last spider. Desert echoes whispered: "Wake! The time capsule..."
Falling through quantum foam, Li grasped Su Wan variants. With fabric-of-reality tearing above, the first egg hatched.
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