MTLNOVEL Chapter 10: Chapter 10: Neural Warfare in the Missile Base
1967, a missile base in New Mexico, USA. Alison injected cobalt-blue serum into her fingertips, etching a temporary holographic projection onto the plastic surface of her NASA engineer ID badge. As she crossed the heavily guarded security checkpoint, the cracks in her pocket watch dial oozed faint light, and the countdown reversed from 15% of her remaining existence—Charles' Temporal Strangler's destruction had inadvertently activated the marrow core's "entropy feedback mechanism."
The underground control room reeked of a mix of transistors and coolant, with amber lights blinking on the guidance consoles for Minuteman-II missiles. Alison formed a microscopic probe from serum, inserting it into the circuit board interface, and discovered the missile launch program code was overlaid with Charles' incantations: every binary instruction was coiled by embryonic neural tentacles. Once the missiles launched, navigation signals would transform into a parasitic seeding network, hatching new embryonic hosts in military facilities worldwide.
"Dr. Jones, perfect timing!" Base commander Richard Carlson emerged from the shadows, his left iris glowing with a metallic sheen. "We detected 'neural pulse interference' in the missile self-check system—" Before he finished, his Adam's apple split open, and three embryonic tentacles emerged, wrapped in KGB-style Russian incantations.
Alison stepped back, a temporal blade condensing in her palm. Carlson's pupils morphed into two overlapping symbols: one was the embryo's fission marker, the other a memory fragment of Ivanov from the 1955 Moscow archive. She realized Charles had woven parasites and Cold War intelligence networks into a "neural warfare" puppet chain—Carlson had been marked as a backup host by the embryo a decade earlier.
"Take him down, but don't damage the eye!" The watch's spirit hissed in her mind. "His visual cortex holds the missile control key!"
Embryonic tentacles arced toward Alison. She activated the watch's new ability—a fusion of temporal anchoring and serum's "neural mimicry"—instantly disguising her neural signals as the base's original commands. Carlson's attack misfired into the console, destroying two auxiliary computers, but Alison's left shoulder burned with an arc scar, and the watch core's meltdown rate surged by 5%.
Control room alarms blared as six scientists charged in, their skulls implanted with embryonic "neural anchors," incantations spreading from their spines to their fingertips. Alison formed a nanoscopic serum barrier but found the embryo parasites had hijacked the base's ventilation system, spraying "neural corrosion gas"—victims' brains would be seized by tentacles within 30 seconds.
She a silver serum capsule, and the watch unleashed a mirror storm, sucking the gas into a temporal rift. The cost: her right ear's auditory nerve vanished in the mirror dimension, requiring 3% of her countdown for serum regeneration. The scientist puppets fired modified M-14 rifle rounds with Charles' whispers coiled around each bullet: "Alison, every resistance feeds my entropy."
Alison stabbed the temporal blade into Carlson's eye, and embryonic fragments shrieked: "I foresaw you'd steal the key, but the missile launch countdown has only 7 minutes left—neural anchors infest military bases worldwide. My offspring will descend on every continent with nuclear missiles!"
On the console, the Minuteman-II's fuel pumps roared as the launch program locked down by the embryo. Alison injected Carlson's key neural pulse into the console, but the embryonic incantations activated a "self-destruct protocol"— would cause all missiles to fission in place, detonating New Mexico's underground nuclear reserves.
"Use 'marrow resonance' to hack the incantation logic!" The watch's spirit warned. "But your existence is only 12%—resonance will melt the core directly!"
Alison embedded the watch in the console's core, activating marrow resonance. Her body began crystallizing from the wrists upward, serum regeneration failing to keep up with the meltdown. As the missile countdown hit zero, the watch unleashed silver-snake incantations, engaging in neural warfare with the embryo program—each resonance wave dropped her existence by 1%, but the embryo's self-destruct protocol peeled away layer by layer.
With 3 seconds left, the watch core fully melted, and Alison's visual nerves in the mirror dimension. But the missile launch program suddenly stalled, the embryonic incantations replaced by KGB anti-entropy codes—Gorbachev's final gift from the entropy trap: locking the parasitic network with Soviet nuclear defense logic.
Alison used her last 2% existence to trigger the emergency shutdown sequence, killing the missile fuel pumps. Her body collapsed into sand, yet new marrow energy oozed from the dial cracks—Charles' self-destruct protocol had become marrow nourishment, pushing the countdown back to 20%.
"You won this round, Jones," embryonic fragments hissed from the console. "But my offspring have completed parasitic seeding in Antarctic ice, Cuban missile bases, and British underwater nuclear docks. When 72 hours end, the global nuclear chain will activate 'embryo rebirth'."
Alison picked up the melted watch, new coordinates materializing on the dial: Lake Vostok, Antarctica, where Charles' designed "embryonic neural hub" lay buried under ice. She injected serum into the core, and liquid gold began slow reconstruction.