The emergency alarm wailed shrilly, piercing the eardrums and flooding the colossal subterranean control room with wild, rotating flashes of red strobe light.

"Catch him! Don't let that old man escape!" Vian Pratama snarled in a voice pitched high with fury, pointing toward the upper glass observation balcony.

Dozens of elite guard troopers from The Foundation Council scrambled instantly, charging up the spiral steel staircase toward the upper balcony in unison, leveling their assault rifle barrels right at the spot where Mr. Darma stood.

Behind the shadow of the cooling pipe pillars, Zulfa clenched his fists until they bled. Warm tears streamed fast down his cheeks, mingling with dust and sweat. His throat felt choked, holding back a sob threatening to rip free.

Mr. Darma... no, don't do this! Zulfa cried out inwardly, feeling for the copper-coated portable memory chip tucked in his jacket pocket—safe, clutched tight behind a sacrifice being paid for with a human life.

Up on the balcony, Mr. Darma stood tall amid the rushing cooling vents, fixing a piercing glare upon the approaching guards with their raised rifles. The frail old man showed not a shred of fear across his face. Instead, a proud smile curved his pale lips.

"You will never stop the truth, Vian!" Mr. Darma shouted defiantly, before turning on his heel to dive back down into the isolation service tunnel behind the balcony.

"After him! Don't let him touch the sector main panel!" Vian commanded in a panic, staring up at the holographic screens beginning to flicker unstably from the disruption overhead.

Seeing the guards fully drawn away in pursuit of Mr. Darma, Zulfa wiped his tears away harshly. He knew he could not waste a single precious second bought by his father's mentor. Moving with swift, silent steps, Zulfa vaulted out of his hiding place, sprinting across the far side of the control room toward the underground service corridor leading straight to the main transmission room.

The thud of Mr. Darma's bootbeats crunched against the damp concrete floor of the isolation tunnel. His aged, limping legs burned with agonizing pain, yet he forced himself to run on, drawing every single pursuing trooper farther and farther away from Zulfa's position.

"Up ahead! He's heading into the sector control room!" the guard commander roared, leading a dozen heavily armed soldiers sprinting hard down the narrow corridor.

Mr. Darma managed to reach the inner sanctum of the isolation sector control room—a cramped space packed with high-voltage reactor console panels and dimensional energy conversion cabling. He slammed the iron door shut from the inside, spinning three layers of emergency locking clamps with his remaining strength.

Click! Clink!

"Open this door! End this foolishness!" the guard commander barked from behind the iron door, followed by a rifle butt slamming against the door panel, denting it inward.

Mr. Darma leaned limply against the main reactor console panel. His breathing came in ragged gasps, and fresh blood slowly leaked from the corner of his mouth as radiation gnawed at his core. He smiled faintly, gazing at the glass-covered emergency trigger button before him.

"Aris... your old friend is coming to catch up soon," Mr. Darma whispered softly, invoking Zulfa's father's name.

He raised his hand, shattering the safety glass cover, and slammed the reactor system purge button down to its absolute maximum alongside the main electrical shock lever.

BZZZT—KRAAK-BOOM!

A cataclysmic internal explosion tore outward from within the isolation sector control room console. Blue fire jetted outward, collapsing the corridor's concrete walls and consuming the entire control room in a heartbeat, halting the guards' pursuit while crippling half of The Foundation Council's transmission system power.

At the other end of the main transmission corridor, Zulfa heard the massive blast echoing behind him and staggered slightly, looking back with a chest feeling as though it had been struck by a sledgehammer.

"Mr. Darma..." Zulfa rasped, tears spilling anew. He clenched his fists tight, forcing his legs back into a hard sprint through the dark corridor until he halted before a heavy steel door labeled MAIN TRANSMISSION.

Zulfa plunged into the small room illuminated by blinking analog monitors. In the center of the chamber stood a sturdy long-range radio wave transmission terminal console—the sole communication channel unbound by the corporate internal network.

Without wasting a single second, Zulfa drew the portable memory chip from his jacket pocket, jamming it swiftly into the main terminal's data port.

Bzzzt—

The terminal monitor flared to life, reading through the trove of classified files detailing the Total Purge master plan, The Foundation Council member roster, and his father's authentic voice recording.

"Send... send all this data right now!" Zulfa snarled, typing rapidly across the terminal keyboard to route the transmission frequency to the emergency IP address belonging to Captain Danu and Naya's hideout at the abandoned station.

The data transfer progress bar ticked upward on screen:

Ten percent... fifty percent... eighty percent...

Suddenly—

Crash!

The main transmission room steel door behind Zulfa blew inward from a brutal impact that tore its hinges clean off.

Zulfa jolted, whipping around in shock toward the doorway.

From behind the billowing dust of the shattered door, Vian Pratama strode inside with heaving breaths and a gaze radiating absolute fury. In his right hand, Vian gripped a semi-automatic pistol leveled straight at Zulfa's head.

"Your game is over, Engineer Arditama!" Vian roared with a voice shaking with rage.