The air inside Aethel Corp's cosmic reactor core control room felt glacial, nearly freezing to the touch. The subtle hiss of liquid nitrogen gas blending with the low-frequency hum of giant turbines forged an atmosphere thick and suffocating. Overhead, human-sized cooling pipes crisscrossed the space, casting purplish-blue neon reflections across the highly polished metallic tiled floor.

Zulfa signaled to Captain Danu and the resistance fighters behind him to hug the shadows of the main pipe pillars. They kept their footsteps dead silent, picking their way through the labyrinth of colossal infrastructure serving as the command nexus for the city's entire dimensional energy harvesting network.

"Stay behind the cooling pipe line," Zulfa whispered softly near Naya's ear, his eyes alert as he scanned the steel hallway ahead. "The automated optical security systems here are hyper-sensitive to fast movement. Follow my exact steps."

Naya nodded slowly, gripping her compact rifle barrel tight. Yet as they pushed further down the side corridor flanking the reactor hall, Naya's gaze abruptly snagged on a horrific sight visible through a high-pressure transparent glass wall on their left.

Naya's stride froze dead. Her breath caught in her throat, and her eyes blew wide.

"Zul... wait, look over there..." Naya whispered with a trembling, stifled voice, pointing toward a row of giant glass cylindrical tubes lining the room's wall.

Zulfa and Captain Danu halted their march, pivoting toward the direction Naya indicated.

Inside those glass tubes hung dozens of unconscious human beings. Their bodies were riddled with bio-electric cables jabbed deep into their arms and chests, pumping a slow-pulsing, glowing blue nutrient fluid. The prisoners' faces looked chalk-white with their eyes squeezed shut, enduring eternal agony as living power sources.

"Dear God..." Captain Danu hissed in fury, clenching his fist until his knuckles turned stark white. "They're actually using living humans as biological batteries... Those bastards have completely shed their humanity."

Naya glared at the tubes, tears spilling slowly down her cheeks from a storm of overwhelming rage and pity. She recalled Mr. Darma's words in the underground prison long ago—that the tortured inmates were repurposed as energy sacrifices to feed the dimensional engine.

"They're political prisoners and missing civilians vanished without a trace over the past few years..." Naya whispered in a raspy voice, turning to look at Zulfa. "Zulfa, we have to stop this right now. We have to free them!"

Zulfa stared with hollow eyes at a nearby tube. Inside it, a youth his age lay limp with cables snaking across his temple. A raging inferno of fury surged through Zulfa's chest, yet as an engineer, he knew precisely what their top priority was.

Zulfa wrapped an arm gently around Naya's shoulders, locking eyes with her with a gaze brimming with firm conviction. "Naya, listen to me. If we try to crack these tubes open by force right now, the reactor's emergency fail-safe will instantly trigger an automatic purge, and every life inside these tubes will vanish in seconds."

Naya bit her lip, holding back a sob before nodding slowly in understanding. "Then... what do we do, Zul?"

"We head straight for the main terminal console at the end of that room," Zulfa answered, pointing toward the central control platform towering across the reactor hall. "By punching in the master chip and cutting its primary power feed from there, the entire tube grid will shut down simultaneously, freeing the victims without triggering a detonation."

"Alright. Lead the way, Engineer," Captain Danu chimed in, racking his rifle bolt. "We've got your six."

Zulfa resumed leading the small strike team in a fast, silent advance. As he walked, Zulfa's eyes never left the floor and walls, reading every power circuit trace hidden behind transparent panels. As a top-tier engineering graduate inheriting his grandfather's and mentor's notes, Zulfa's brain mapped the high-voltage electrical currents humming through the room at lightning speed.

Main cooling circuit links to Sector B... mana distribution routes through the central console... Zulfa mentally analyzed every mechanical detail he passed.

Yet right as they reached the final steel pillar boundary before the main console platform stairs, Zulfa's stride froze in place.

He raised a hand to signal a total team halt.

"What is it, Zul?" Danu whispered vigilantly.

Zulfa didn't answer. He peeked slowly from behind the steel pillar wall, directing his gaze toward the reactor's central console platform stationed in the middle of the room.

Zulfa's breath caught instantly.

Before the brightly glowing holographic screen of the primary console stood a sharply dressed man facing away from them. The man tapped out a series of digital commands with calm, deliberate finger movements.

The red console light cast sharp reflections across that neat hair and intimately familiar posture.

It was Vian Pratama.

Aethel Corp's chief executive appeared to be talking to himself via a wireless earpiece comms unit, while on the giant overhead screen, a massive activation progress bar blinked with the text: "PROJECT TOTAL PURGE: 98% - READY FOR FINAL EXECUTION."

Vian was punching in the final-stage activation codes to execute the Total Purge across the entire city within the next few minutes.

Zulfa clenched his fists tight, glaring at the back of his arch-nemesis with a blaze of fury igniting in his gaze. Their silent infiltration had finally reached the ultimate, decisive line of direct confrontation.