The roar of the cosmic reactor turbines echoed deafeningly, churning up fierce waves of air pressure hundreds of meters above the subterranean floor. Zulfa sprinted up the vertical emergency stairway built from an open steel framework, ignoring the aching agony in his joints and lungs, which burned from a lack of oxygen.

Down below, on the ground floor of the main control room, the situation was no less critical. Naya was racing against the final seconds before the secondary terminal console. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, inputting lines of manual passcode bypass code.

"Damn it, the encryption is triple-layered..." Naya growled, sweat pouring from her temples. She glanced briefly at the main screen displaying the activation countdown: 08:42 minutes remaining. "If I can't override this door lock system right now, we're all going to be buried alive in here!"

Meanwhile, several levels above, Zulfa finally broke through to the top of the emergency stairs. He vaulted out onto a circular open-air platform nestled right beneath the tower's glass dome ceiling—the highest vantage point of Aethel Corp's cosmic reactor facility, where howling high-pressure night winds lashed against the giant glass walls.

Amidst the open platform, Vian Pratama stood panting heavily. His neat suit was now rumpled and caked in dust, while his right hand clutched a cylinder case glowing with a bright purple aura—the reactor's primary control core. In his left hand, Vian gripped a semi-automatic pistol leveled straight at the upper deck's emergency control console.

"You're out of running room, Vian!" Zulfa shouted sharply, halting a few paces from the corporate director. He raised his rifle, steadying his ragged breath. "Hand over that control core, and end this madness right now!"

Vian Pratama snapped his head around. Rather than displaying fear or panic, the corners of his lips curved into a cynical smile, mirroring the cold expression of a fanatic standing at the absolute precipice of sanity.

"Stop right there, Engineer Arditama!" Vian snapped, stepping backward toward the edge of the open platform overlooking the subterranean cosmic abyss. "You really are a persistent kid... Just like your father, always showing up at the wrong time to wreck the magnum opus we've been building!"

Zulfa locked eyes hard with Vian. Behind Vian, the night sky of the city above twinkled with skyscraper lights, standing in stark contrast to the threat of destruction pulsing beneath their boots.

"Magnum opus?" Zulfa repeated with a voice trembling with rage, stepping forward slowly to close the distance. "You call the slaughter of millions of citizens and the torture of living human batteries a magnum opus, Vian?! You aren't civilization's saviors! You're monsters hiding behind tailored suits, robbing this city of its future!"

"You don't understand a damn thing, Zulfa!" Vian roared, his voice rising to match the howling night wind. "This city—even modern human civilization up top—was built on a fragile foundation of lies. Without this dimensional energy, humanity will run out of resources in less than a decade! We aren't slaughtering them; we are saving human evolution by transferring their consciousness into cosmic eternity!"

"That's a fraud's bullshit to justify your own greed!" Zulfa countered fiercely. "My father rejected this project because he knew the price of that 'eternity' was the loss of humanity itself. And I'm standing right here today to make sure that legacy doesn't fall into the wrong hands!"

Vian let out a harsh laugh—a cold sound reflecting absolute despair. He glanced briefly down at the control core cylinder in his hand, then shifted his gaze to the upper deck console countdown screen, which now read 05:10 minutes remaining.

"If I can't own this world... then nobody will!" Vian snarled, his eyes blazing with fury.

Before Zulfa could react or lunge forward, Vian Pratama whipped his pistol up with lightning speed, aiming the barrel directly at the primary reactor core console seated at the center of the open platform.

"Back off, Zulfa! One more step closer, and I'll blow this control core to pieces this very second!" Vian threatened hysterically, laying his finger straight across the trigger. "If this core is destroyed by direct gunfire, the entire reactor system will experience a cosmic overload, triggering a chain reaction that brings every skyscraper down straight into the dimensional chasm!"

Zulfa stopped dead in his tracks. His heart hammered violently against his ribs. He stared intensely at the console threatened by Vian's weapon. The youth knew full well that Vian wasn't bluffing; an unstable reactor structure could indeed suffer a total detonation if its primary core was forced apart at such extreme altitudes.

"Vian... don't do it! You'll go down with this building too!" Zulfa warned, striving to buy time while glancing downward—praying Naya had successfully cracked the emergency door downstairs.

"I don't give a damn!" Vian Pratama screamed with ragged breaths, tears of fury and madness mixing across his face. "I've sacrificed everything for this project! We're all going down together!"