Forging a Storage Core from a Dead City

The empty test ground unfolded beyond the wall: white laboratories, deserted roads, and a substation. Life scan read zero. Then Mi Li seized Lu Yao's hand. “Someone inside is counting.” Han's rescue team found a doorless wall beneath the substation. Lu Yao decomposed it with Manufacturing Authority II, revealing a cryogenic chamber. Inside lay all 187 people from the Energy Institute night roster. Su had changed the buildings' coordinate, not the order's human association. The Matrix Engine copied the empty site and physically removed the researchers from reality. They carried no fabrication marks. Every one was an original transfer. Behind the deepest observation window stood an elderly man in an old engineer's uniform. Su froze. “Dad?”