Deep Space Scavenging, Hand Over Alien Warships at the Beginning

Miller roared, spittle flying onto the Chief of Staff’s face.

”Those are rules set for the weak during peacetime! This is a war for survival! The Great Xia people have secret weapons in their hands, and you want me to use what to reason with them?”

He pointed out the window, in the direction of Washington.

”If we don’t figure out exactly what they have, tomorrow, or the day after, the power that erased the TR-3B will fall on the White House! When that happens, will you go talk to the President about ethics?”

The Chief of Staff opened his mouth, then sat down dejectedly.

Fear overrode everything.

In the face of an absolute crisis of survival, moral bottom lines were like sandcastles on a beach; one wave, and nothing remains.

In the corner, the Secretary of Defense, who had been silent, slowly raised his head. He was as old as a piece of dried bark, and a flash of decisiveness crossed his cloudy eyes.

”Approved.”

His voice was raspy, but it was final.

”This devil was raised by us. Now, let it go and bite.”

...

Nevada.

Deep within Death Valley.

The scorching sun baked this barren salt flat, distorting the air. This was a blind spot on the map, the legendary Area 51.

Three hundred meters underground.

The temperature here was a constant minus ten degrees Celsius.

The heavy lead-lined door slowly slid open, and white cold air rolled across the floor.

Three scientists wearing full-containment biochemical suits walked in, pushing a levitating cart. A liquid nitrogen cryogenic tank was secured on the cart.

”Steady, don’t let your hands shake.”

The supervisor’s voice came through the bone-conduction headset, laced with obvious tension.

The young assistant swallowed, and a robotic arm reached into the cryogenic tank, extracting three finger-thick metal tubes.

The tube walls were made of a special high-strength transparent alloy.

Inside was a black liquid.

It wasn’t an ordinary fluid. It was viscous and deep, swallowing any light that entered. Even more bizarrely, even in a perfectly still test tube, it was slowly writhing.

It was alive.

It was even trying to find atomic gaps in the glass tube wall, wanting to drill its way out.

”This is the ’black liquid’?” The assistant felt cold sweat sliding down inside his suit. ”The original fluid... from that ship forty years ago?”

”Don’t stare at it,” the supervisor warned. ”This stuff has some kind of weak psychic radiation; looking at it for too long will give you nightmares.”

He quickly loaded the test tube into a specialized injection gun.

”This thing is Pandora’s tears. For forty years, we’ve conducted two thousand experiments on death row inmates. One thousand nine hundred and eighty people exploded on the spot, becoming nourishment for this stuff. The remaining twenty who survived...”

The supervisor paused, his gaze shifting to the massive isolation zone ahead.

It didn’t look like a laboratory; it looked more like a cage for giant beasts.

Behind a dozen high-intensity laser fences, a group of... creatures was imprisoned.

They wore oversized black prison uniforms, which still couldn’t hide their unnaturally bulging muscles. Their skin was a sickly grayish-white, and veins like black earthworms bulged on their bodies.

They crouched in corners, tearing at raw meat, low whimpers coming from their throats.

Those weren’t human voices.

They were the low growls of beasts guarding their food.

”Reaper Squad,” the supervisor said coldly. ”Pain nerves severed, adrenaline secretion levels fifty times that of a normal person, bone density comparable to titanium alloy. They have no fear, no mercy; their brains contain only one command—kill.”

”But... how do you control such things?” The assistant looked at the monsters, his legs feeling like jelly. ”Releasing them would be a disaster.”

”Through him.”

The supervisor pressed a button.

In the center of the isolation zone, the floor split open, and an independent transparent cage rose up.

Unlike the restless beasts around him, this cage was exceptionally quiet.

A man sat inside.

He looked far too ’normal’.

A lean build, a clean old military uniform, and even a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose. He was holding a yellowed copy of the ’Divine Comedy,’ his slender fingers gently turning the pages.

If not for the thick shackle on his ankle connected to a high-voltage cable, he would have looked like a young lecturer in a university library.

But when the assistant saw the man’s eyes, his heart skipped a beat.

Behind those eyes, there were no emotions belonging to a ’human’.