The Caesar Group was the preeminent technology enterprise on the planet, having secured a position among the top five companies in the Global Five Hundred for two centuries. Its accumulation of capital, technological prowess, and connections ran deep, seemingly bottomless.

Its industries spanned numerous sectors, from military hardware to consumer goods and medical devices. Headquartered in New York, it maintained branches in every major city and on every colony throughout the Solar System.

It could be said that the reach of the Caesar Group extended across the entirety of the inhabited Solar System.

In the heart of Santos City on Mars, a magnificent hundred-story tower dominated the skyline—the Caesar Group's largest Martian division.

After centuries of intense terraforming, Mars now boasted vast tracts of land suitable for human habitation, capable of supporting five billion people. To call it merely a colony seemed inaccurate; Mars now deserved recognition as a primary living world. Santos City stood as one of Mars’s great metropolises, home to twelve million souls, serving as the planet’s economic, political, and cultural nexus.

It was already past two in the morning. The sun had long set, yet the night sky offered few stars, drowned out by the city's terrestrial luminescence. From a distance, the illuminated cluster of skyscrapers at the city center shone like a constellation unto itself.

On a narrow street not far from the Caesar Group headquarters, an autonomous taxi pulled to a stop. The soft white streetlamps lining the road bathed the cab’s roof in a cream-like sheen. The door hissed open, and an utterly unremarkable young man stepped out.

The young man’s features offered nothing memorable—ordinary eyes, an ordinary nose, ordinary lips. His clothing was slightly better tailored than average, but nothing striking; he would vanish completely in a crowd.

Only the young man himself could see it: a golden, square glyph branded onto the back of his right hand.

This was one of Yang Ying’s many cloned bodies, strategically hidden across the Solar System. This particular vessel, concealed deep within Martian territory, had just been activated by Yang Ying due to its proximity to Santos City.

After stepping out, Yang Ying looked up at the Caesar Group monolith two blocks away, a chill running down his spine, before melting into the shadow of a nearby building.

Not far from where he alighted, a middle-aged man, already heavily intoxicated, was clinging to a young woman in corporate attire. Spotting Yang Ying’s arrival, the pair staggered over and promptly crowded into the taxi just before it pulled away.

They didn't spare Yang Ying a glance, treating him as if he were a displacement of air.

It was the dead of night, and pedestrian traffic had dwindled to almost nothing. Those few who remained stood listlessly by the curb, yawning, clearly waiting for their own autonomous rides, much like the couple who had just left.

A few scantily clad sex workers loitered on the corner, surveying their surroundings. When Yang Ying had first disembarked, they had glanced over with a flicker of curiosity, but a quick assessment of his attire was enough for them to turn away, dismissing him as irrelevant background noise.

Yang Ying paid no mind to the assessments of these commoners. Once the taxi was gone, he produced a device identical in appearance to a standard communication unit—a sophisticated scanner. After confirming the area was free of active surveillance, he allowed his body to gradually fade from view.

No one noticed his departure. Even if someone had registered his absence from that spot, they would have simply assumed he had walked onward.

Yang Ying retrieved a glove bristling with micro-sensors from his coat and donned it, then affixed a visual sensor over his eye.

He employed the Diaphragm Shrink technique, covering the distance to the entrance of a seven-star hotel directly opposite the Caesar Tower in just a few strides. He walked straight inside without looking back.

He extended his hand, and a holographic screen, visible only through the visual sensor, materialized above his palm. It displayed a three-dimensional architectural blueprint.

The diagram illustrated the structure of the hotel. The visible portion comprised ninety-five floors above ground, plus three basement parking levels—all accounted for.

The issue lay beneath the third basement level: a massive elevator shaft, nearly a hundred meters long, plunged underground, connecting via a kilometer-long conduit to a spectacular subterranean complex—a secret research facility belonging to the Caesar Group, covering five hundred thousand square meters and spanning twenty-four floors.

This intelligence had been recently uncovered by the Ghost Agents. Caesar’s strategy was brilliant: the safest place is the most obvious one. Placing the secret lab directly across the street from their main Martian headquarters, mere meters away, was a masterstroke of misdirection. Any farther away would hinder surveillance; any closer—building it directly under the Caesar Tower—would instantly compromise its secrecy.

Following the schematics, Yang Ying made his way to the lobby manager's office. The room was empty. He located a hidden compartment beneath the manager’s desk—a compartment secured by a fingerprint password lock.

Yang Ying nodded slightly, producing a decoder and connecting it to the lock. Once activated, a long string of numbers flashed across the screen, taking nearly a full minute to stabilize.

When the sequence settled, Yang Ying pressed a prosthetic finger against the panel. Instantly, a line of green lights illuminated, accompanied by a soft mechanical whir. A section of the floor the size of a desktop in the center of the room sank away, revealing a long passageway descending into darkness.

Lights flickered on sequentially, tracing the path down the corridor.

Yang Ying smiled, highly satisfied with the investigative work of the Ghost Agents. He entered the passage, smoothly closing the entry behind him, and proceeded through the tunnel until he reached an elevator bay.

This elevator showed no external security measures. Yang Ying strode in and pressed the descent button for the sub-levels. The elevator hummed, rapidly dropping.

Twenty seconds later, the car halted. Twin alloy doors parted, revealing an extremely long, stark white corridor lined with orderly rows of hover-bikes for transport.

However, two fully armed soldiers stood guard before the elevator entrance. As the doors opened, they looked in, saw no one, and froze in alarm.

Before they could react, a sudden wave of dizziness overcame them, followed by a low voice whispering in their ears: "Everything is normal here. Continue with your duties."

The two guards mumbled back in hazy tones, "Everything is normal here. We continue with our duties."

Then, they turned back around, resuming their positions as if nothing at all had occurred.

Yang Ying internally acknowledged the efficacy of the Psionicist’s charm—unbeatable for infiltration missions of this nature. He glanced up at the security camera overhead.

The camera fed into a monitor in a distant security room where a lone operative sat leaning back, feet crossed, staring at over two dozen screens.

Suddenly, he noticed anomalous activity near the entrance elevator: the doors had opened, yet no one emerged. The two guards had glanced in, then immediately turned away, acting as if nothing had transpired.

Something is wrong, the operative thought, reaching for his communicator to file a report. Just as his fingers touched the device, a crushing pressure settled on his chest. His heart began to beat with violent, explosive intensity.

The communicator slipped from his grasp and hit the floor as he collapsed, soon lying still, limbs outstretched. Any subsequent autopsy would likely conclude natural causes: sudden cardiac arrest.

Yang Ying allowed himself a slight smile. Knowing the entire facility was blanketed by a wireless network, he projected a light screen and connected the glove’s onboard computer to the research facility’s mainframe, beginning the process of cracking through layer after layer of firewall.

While his glove’s processing power fell far short of supercomputers like Murphy or Kevin, it was more than adequate for the host system of this scientific installation.

The process of cracking the system while meticulously avoiding tripping any alarms necessitated more time. It took approximately twenty minutes to complete all necessary procedures.

Yang Ying finally relaxed. Through this sequence of actions, he had secured supreme administrative control over the entire research facility.

He immediately locked down all external communications, as well as access points like the main elevator and emergency tunnels, completely isolating the complex from the outside world.

Then, he moved deeper into the facility, intent on verifying the claims made in the Ghost Agents' report firsthand. He had no need for the hover-bikes; they moved slower than he could travel on foot.

Arriving at the third level from the bottom, he found a massive central laboratory where nearly a hundred researchers were working at their stations.

The workstations were only about thirty percent occupied; the remaining seventy percent of the desks were empty because most of the personnel were asleep, not actively working. Although the facility was designed for non-stop, twenty-four-hour operation, the researchers required rest.

In the center of this lab stood an enormous transparent chamber, occupying nearly a quarter of the room’s space. Its walls were constructed of high-strength titanium glass, tough enough to withstand a maddened elephant.

Inside the chamber, about thirty adolescents, aged fourteen or fifteen, half boys and half girls, were curled up in medical pods, clad only in thin, paper-like smocks. Their eyes were shut tight, mouths agape, their bodies trembling violently.

Though no sound could be heard, Yang Ying could perceive that they were all screaming internally.

Two researchers in white lab coats moved between the pods, each holding an electronic data slate, meticulously recording various metrics.

Suddenly, one medical pod flashed an intense, blinding red light, accompanied by a piercing alarm siren.

Yang Ying’s gaze sharpened. Inside the illuminated pod, a girl with vibrant purple hair suddenly cried out, arching her back, her body convulsing as if swelling unnaturally.

One researcher immediately rushed to the pod, drew a uranium dart gun, and fired, executing the young girl.

A spray of viscous, black blood splattered against the inner wall of the containment unit, a deeply unsettling sight.

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