Chapter 103: Underground Meeting – I

Hans and his small group soon reached the bottom.

The underground corridor was wider than the stairwell, but it didn’t feel spacious nor safe enough.

The ceiling was low. Pipes ran along it, some wrapped in cloth. The floor was dry, but the walls sweated due to the cold moisture.

A generator hummed somewhere deeper, muffled behind layers of insulation. It wasn’t loud, but at least it powered up this place more than enough.

Two doors sat at the end of the corridor.

One was marked as STORAGE.

The other had no label at all. It was simply a metal plate welded over the original handle, with a keypad mounted to the side. The keypad looked almost comical in this world, until Hans noticed the wires.

They weren’t any simple wires, but were factory wires.

“Did the Engineers participate?” Hans asked.

It was impossible for this entire place to be setup with such precision and speed unless the Engineers were involved.

“Yes, Commander,” the squad leader had a change in expression. “Dr. Tyrus wanted them in, but Officer Alexei chased him out.”

That scientist must have been impressed, Hans clicked his tongue. I wonder if my Engineers’ skills allured him.

If they did, Hans only needed to keep these Engineers away from Tyrus’s hands. Otherwise, who knows what sort of blueprint would that freak of a scientist offer to the Engineers.

The squad leader approached the keypad and started inputting the keycode.

“Commander, Doctor Tyrus is inside.”

A beep sounded followed by another. The lock clicked with a heavier sound as if multiple bolts were retracting at once.

The door swung inward, spilling cold air out.

A desk lamp glowed inside, warmer than Hans’s expectations. It made the room look almost normal for a split second.

Then, on the sides, Hans saw the bags.

Not the trash kind, but those that were black heavy-duty plastics, stacked neatly along one wall. Each was marked with tape, handwriting, and some color.

D-07. D-08. D-09.

Kimmy halted her steps, not speaking this time.

At the far end of the room, a man stood over a worktable. His hands covered by gloves, his sleeves rolled up and showed his bloodied skin.

His back was turned, but his posture was straight, filled with curious intent.

To him, it didn’t matter if the world ended twice. All that mattered was the corpse in front of him.

Amidst his focus, he heard them approach anyway.

“Commander Hans,” Tyrus said without turning. “You came. It took you a while.”

Hans stepped into the light and let the door close behind them.

“I did,” he answered. “You do not look nor sound surprised of my arrival.”

“I have long expected of it,” Tyrus finally turned. His eyes didn’t go to Yunera nor Kimmy.

They went to Hans. Not to his backpack, nor his clothes, but to him.

Tyrus’s eyes gleamed, trying to measure what had changed.

“Did you read it?” he asked.

Hans reached behind him, unshouldered his backpack, and with a whiff, grabbed all the Project HELIX documents from the magical storage space.

Everyone assumed Hans was grabbing inside, and he wasn’t the type to showcase his secrets.

Hans set the tack of documents down.

“Wouldn’t be here if I could,” Hans shrugged. “Start from the part that isn’t here.”

Tyrus’s gaze sharpened.

“You mean that part that would have gotten me executed if I spill it out?”

Hans met his eyes.

“The government is dead. The SAS agents will not give a damn about a scientist like you spilling state secrets. And you owe me with all this labor from my soldiers and Engineers.”

Silence filled the room.

Yunera crossed her arms but didn’t interrupt. Kimmy stood still, her blindfold angled towards Tyrus as if she were listening to something deeper than sound.

Tyrus removed one glove slowly.

“You’re asking the wrong question, Commander.”

Hans didn’t blink.

“Then correct it.”

“We did not create superhumans,” Tyrus said calmly. “We were studying the phenomena of anomalous biological acceleration.”

He glanced at one of the bags filled with a zombie corpse.

“Rapid cellular adaptation. Regenerative potential. The ability for certain hosts to exceed normal limits under any circumstance.”

Yunera frowned slightly.

“So you were trying to make soldiers?”

“No,” Tyrus replied immediately. “We were trying to understand biology, evolution, and life itself.”

Hans leaned slightly forward.

“Biological research has always been plagued with issues. How come this one survived?”

Tyrus finally looked at him fully.

“Because something that did not originate on Aurelia did.”

Yunera frowned.

“Stop speaking like a puzzle,” she said. “What survived?”

Tyrus studied her for a second, then looked back at Hans instead.

“40 years ago, the northern skies of Libertan burned with rage.”

Everyone else was at a loss. They weren’t even born at that time. How could they even relate?

Tyrus continued anyway.

“The media called it a meteor strike,” he slowly paced around. “But what kind of meteor wouldn’t disintegrate, scatter, and even adjust its trajectory?”

“Adjusted its trajectory?” Kimmy whispered.

“Yes,” Tyrus replied. “Its descent altered mid-trajectory. That is not meteor behavior.”

The generator hummed somewhere around them.

Hans’s voice stayed level. “You’re telling me its a UFO.”

Tyrus didn’t nod, nor denying it either.

“It impacted in a controlled manner. Libertan’s government sealed the zone within hours. And from there came an archive—military, intelligence, scientific knowledge. Project HELIX was greenlighted not to create anything.”

He paused.

“It was one of the many assemblies to interpret what Libertan had found.”

Hans’s eyes did not leave Tyrus.

“Sounds like a ground-breaking change.”

Tyrus ignored the joke and placed the removed glove on the table.

“Nothing visible at first.”

He tapped the stack of HELIX documents Hans brought.

“It started Libertan’s private research, then the Alliance of the Western Nations came.”

Hans scoffed to himself, having countless ideas of how that transition played out.

“My predecessors specialized on the catalogued biological archives inside the craft. Biological hierarchies. Evolutionary stages. Something that the alien language referred to as ’Tiers.’”

Kimmy’s fingers tightened slightly.

“Tiers…” she murmured.

“The structured advancement of life,” Tyrus added. “Measurable thresholds. Adaptation under pressure.”

Yunera’s tone hardened.

“You’re saying there’s a complete system outside of our planet?”

Tyrus glanced over, giving her a look.

“Not just any complete system,” he shook his head. “It is one larger than Aurelia itself.”

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