The antique CRT monitor at the far end of the secret laboratory chamber glowed a fierce red, casting tense reflections across the faces of Zulfa, Naya, and Captain Danu. The digital numbers on the automated countdown system ticked mercilessly downward, ignoring the suffocating tension cloaking the room.

[ 00 : 12 : 45 ]

[ GENESIS TRANSMISSION PROTOCOL INITIATED ]

[ TRANSMITTING DATA PACKET TO OUTER SPACE COORDINATES ]

"Damn it!" Captain Danu growled, raising his rifle to train it straight at the vintage computer terminal's chassis. "This facility's been abandoned for months, yet its automated protocol's still active piping secret data packets out to space? Let me pump some hot lead into this junk machine so its transmission blows to kingdom come!"

"Don't shoot, Captain!" Zulfa called out swiftly, restraining Danu's rifle barrel with his left hand. He stepped closer to the terminal desk. "If we forcefully destroy the hardware with gunfire, its emergency encryption system will immediately trigger an automated hard-reset. That'll just dump a backup data copy straight to the nearest relay satellite in under five seconds!"

Naya hurried to join him, her fingers flying fast to open the secondary connection port on the console terminal. The girl's face bleached pale as she scanned the network flow diagram on the side monitor. "Zul's right, Captain! Its primary transmission line is hardwired straight to the quantum wave-directing antenna on the harbor roof. We can't destroy it physically; we have to hack and sever the pipeline cleanly from within the system!"

Captain Danu lowered his rifle, exhaling a rough breath. "Fine, Engineer. We're short on time. How long do you need to hack this primordial terminal system?"

Zulfa didn't answer. He had already pulled up a laboratory iron chair, sitting up straight before the dusty terminal keyboard and splicing his portable scanner cable straight into the computer's primary data slot. His eyes locked intently upon the lines of binary code and high-level programming language cascading across the CRT screen.

"The defense system here runs on a hybrid encryption architecture—a blend of old corporate military protocols and Arkian quantum geometry ciphers," Zulfa spoke in a tone calm yet saturated with absolute concentration as sweat began beading on his temples. "They deliberately engineered multi-layered passcodes to block conventional cracking."

"Do whatever you need, Zul. Captain Danu and I will watch the entrance in case any other surprises drop by," Naya offered full support, standing behind Zulfa's chair while monitoring outer network indicators.

"Time's ticking, kid. We're down to nine minutes!" Captain Danu warned, watching the red numbers on screen sink further.

[ 00 : 09 : 12 ]

Zulfa began typing out advanced decoding sequences with blistering manual speed. His fingers danced agilely across the wheezing old keyboard.

Tap-tap-tap-clack!

"First firewall layer breached..." Zulfa muttered in deep focus. Yet instantly, the terminal screen flickered wildly, spawning a blazing red warning window bearing bold text: [ ACCESS DENIED: ARCHITECT BIOMETRIC CODE REQUIRED ].

"Damn it! The security system's demanding a direct blood biometric verification from the Architect's lineage!" Zulfa exclaimed with a deeply furrowed brow.

"Blood biometrics?!" Naya gasped. "But you already used your blood during the biometric verification at the central tower back then, Zul! Why is this terminal demanding a re-verify?"

"This system runs on local encryption isolated from the tower network," Zulfa answered swiftly, teeth gritting tight. "Meaning this terminal recognizes my genetic frequency, but it demands direct confirmation via an active neural link!"

Without a shred of hesitation, Zulfa drew a small crystal utility knife blade from his tactical jacket pocket, slicing the sharp tip swiftly across his left palm to draw fresh blood. Ignoring the sharp sting, he pressed his bleeding palm straight onto the biometric optical scanner embedded beside the terminal desk.

Bzzzt—Verification Accepted.

"Argh..." Zulfa hissed as the terminal system siphoned his neural impulses and blood frequency, unspooling the core source code across the screen.

[ 00 : 05 : 30 ]

[ WARNING: DATA TRANSMISSION PROTOCOL REACHING 70% ]

"We've only got five minutes left, Zul!" Naya panicked, watching the data packet transmission graph creeping toward the finish line.

"Found it... a backdoor glitch right amid its decoding protocols!" Zulfa shouted, his eyes blazing sharp.

Summoning his remaining concentration, Zulfa punched in the final override code lines—a memory-rewriting program engineered specifically to reverse the transmission stream's flow and lock down the primary server before the data packets fully transmitted to outer space.

Click... clank! Rizzzt!

The hum of the cooling fan inside the terminal CPU shrieked high, then slowed drastically. The string of red numbers on the countdown system shuddered violently at the final threshold.

[ 00 : 00 : 03 ]

[ 00 : 00 : 02 ]

[ 00 : 00 : 01 ]

[ TRANSMISSION HALTED: SYSTEM HARD-LOCKED ]

Boom... click!

The terminal screen suddenly went pitch black, plunging back into a silent obsidian void. Every indicator light on the lab control desk died in unison, leaving behind the ragged breathing of Zulfa slumping limply in his chair.

Naya exhaled a long breath with a heaving chest, then wrapped her arms around Zulfa's shoulders with a broad smile. "Good God... we made it! Right down to the final second!"

Captain Danu wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, letting out a chuckle of pure relief. "Nice work, Engineer. That was entirely too close to letting the neighbors out in space catch earth's classified memos."

Zulfa offered a faint smile, lifting his bleeding left palm to let Naya tear a strip of fabric from her pocket to wrap his wound swiftly. "That was intensely stressful... but hold on, before the system flatlined completely, I managed to divert the remaining data cache file meant for export straight to our local server."

Zulfa touched his portable scanner screen wired into the main terminal. On the device's small display, a digital topographical map file was successfully salvaged before permanent deletion.

Naya and Captain Danu leaned in close, tracking the scanner screen. "What map file is that, Zul?" Naya asked curiously.

Zulfa amplified the map image's resolution. Geological coordinates and natural outdoor topography layout lines stretched clearly across the screen.

"That's not a city corporate data map," Zulfa answered with a deeply furrowed brow, grasping the implication of the location displayed on screen. "That remaining map file points to the geographical coordinates of a second signal source hidden out in the wilderness mountains beyond the city."