[RE-ENG] What? My “Information Club” is Actually an All-Knowing Secret Society?
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Chapter 2.1 : First Page
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[Location: "The Fangs" PMC Headquarters, 100m Underground, Sector Gamma: Cijantung (6.3150° S, 106.8640° E)]
[Time: Day - 29 / 10:15 PM]
[Temperature: 16°C ]
The silence inside the subterranean dojo was oppressive, broken only by the hum of the air conditioning unit. The room was kept at sixteen degrees Celsius, calculated to keep the mind sharp and the body alert.
Yet, the man sitting cross-legged in the center of the training mat was sweating.
His true name had been erased from every government database, buried under redactions. He had no nationality on paper, no registered birthdate, and no legal existence. To the global underworld and the enemies who whispered about him, he was known simply by his callsign: Viper.
He was stripped to the waist, his torso was a canvas of scars. It's a form of souvenirs from having the whole lifetime spent in warzones. A bullet scar grazed his left ribcage from a skirmish in Mogadishu, a shrapnel starburst marked his shoulder from Damascus, and the precise lines of field surgery traced his abdomen.
None of those scars compared to the torment his body was enduring.
Resting on the floor, illuminated by the white light of the ceiling LEDs, was a ruggedized military tablet. The screen displayed an encrypted text file he had extracted from a QR code earlier that afternoon. The file bore the title `Evolution_Catalyst.txt`.
To any normal person, this document looks like just a fever dream kind of thing. A mess of pseudoscience detailing the forced manipulation of human cellular structure. But Viper was not a conventional man.
He was the Supreme Commander of "The Fangs," a Private Military Company (PMC) operating within the black market, accepting contracts regular armies wouldn't touch. He knew what classified black-ops research looked like. He knew how superpowers buried biological weapons programs behind layers of nonsensical data.
For four years, Viper stalked the encrypted forums of the Information Club. He pieced together the breadcrumbs dropped by the entity known as 'The Architect'. He knew The Architect was a whistleblower operating on a plane of intelligence no normal human could comprehend.
And this document was the holy grail. The biological schematic to survive the end of the world.
"Force oxygen into the blood plasma. Trigger forced apoptosis via intracellular thermogenesis,"
Viper muttered, his voice echoing off the soundproofed walls.
He read the next lines, his eyes tracking the brutal instructions.
*Step One: Extreme diaphragmatic compression. Electroporate the cellular walls. The mortal flesh must burn to ash from the inside out so the steel can be forged.*
For years, Viper trained his lungs based on the Architect's riddles. He pushed his breath-holding capacity past the limits of Olympic freedivers. He conditioned his body to withstand physical stress, submerging himself in ice baths while solving tactical puzzles. But he had always lacked the final piece. The exact sequence of pressure and biological manipulation required to cross the threshold from a human to a predator.
Now, the catalyst was in his hands.
Viper closed his eyes. He exhaled, pushing every cubic centimeter of oxygen out of his lungs until his chest cavity caved in tightly against his spine.
Then, he stopped breathing.
He locked his diaphragm, engaging his core muscles to simulate the crushing pressure of a deep-sea dive. He tightened his abdomen with such tension that he hunted for the biological spark the Architect described, the piezoelectric current.
Ten seconds passed. Thirty seconds. A minute.
Even in the state that his own body began to panic. Viper possessed a will forged in iron and blood. He clamped down on the panic, forcing his heart rate to slow to a normal rhythm, then spiking it by tightening and releasing his major muscle groups in rapid succession without taking in a single molecule of air.
Two minutes.
Three minutes.
Then, suddenly. A pain started in his veins. The extreme pressure forced the raw oxygen to dissolve directly into his blood plasma. As this hyper-dense fuel reached his cells, his mitochondria reacted. They ceased normal function and converted the fuel into pure heat.
His blood was boiling on a microscopic level.
*Forced Apoptosis.* His weak, mortal cells were being roasted alive.
He coughed, a ragged sound, and drops of dark blood splattered onto the grey mat.
Then, slowly. The numbness in his limbs evaporated. A heat exploded from his core, rushing outward through his arteries like liquid magma. Viper gasped, his lungs expanding as they pulled in the 16°C air.
The oxygen acted as an accelerant to a raging fire.
Viper snapped, his eyes flying open. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, catching the artificial light with a predatory gleam. He let out a low roar as the heat radiated from his skin. The sweat coating his body vaporized, rising from his broad shoulders in thick wisps of steam.
He looked at his hands. They trembled from a surplus of raw kinetic energy.
"It works,"
Viper whispered, his voice trembling with awe.
He slowly pushed himself to his feet. He felt light, his newly cellular cell thrumming with dense power. He walked over to a 70kg leather punching bag hanging in the corner of the dojo. He stepped into range. He pulled his arm back and struck the thick leather with a casual backhand.
*CRACK.*
The sound echoed like a high-caliber gunshot. The heavy bag flew upward, the thick industrial steel chain screaming in protest before snapping. The bag slammed into the concrete wall across the room, splitting open on impact and spilling fine sand across the floor.
Viper stared at his bare knuckles. Not aven a single scratch.
If this was real, then everything else The Architect had written over the last four years was undeniably real. The atmospheric collapse. The Great Freez.
The world was going to its end, and the Architect had chosen him to be its sword.
"Your command is my will, Architect,"
Viper vowed into the empty room, the fanaticism cementing itself in his soul.
***
[Time: 10:45 PM]
Viper marched through the concrete corridors of The Fangs' subterranean base. He used his black combat uniform woven with kevlar strands, steel-toed boots, and a tactical vest. He moved with grace, his footsteps silent despite the heavy gear, his body radiating heat.
The facility buzzed with chaos. This decommissioned Cold War-era bunker, purchased through shell corporations years ago, was a fortress. Passing through the armory sector, he observed dozens of armed mercenaries. These were veterans from Chechnya, ex-French Legionnaires, and discharged Special Forces operators. They were stripping and oiling assault rifles, calibrating thermal optics, and running diagnostics on sentry drones.
Up until ten minutes ago, they were preparing for a deployment to a conflict zone in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Viper bypassed the armory and entered the Command Center. The room was a hub of monitors, satellite uplinks, and radio terminals. Standing around the holographic tactical table were his lieutenants.
One of the most prominent among them was IronClad, a towering man with eyes that had seen too many atrocities to blink at violence.
"Commander,"
IronClad greeted, his voice cutting through the radio chatter.
"We are finalizing the transport logistics for the African contract. The cargo planes are on standby on the airstrip. We greenlight the insertion op at zero-four-hundred hours."
"Cancel the deployment,"
Viper ordered. He walked straight to the head of the tactical table.
The room went silent. The operators stopped typing. The hum of the servers grew louder. IronClad frowned, his hands resting on the edge of the table. His mind raced to calculate the reasoning behind such a command.
"Cancel it?"
IronClad repeated, his voice careful.
"Sir, the warlord's client has already wired a twelve-million-dollar advance in unnumbered bonds. Our advance teams have been embedded in the terrain for a week."
Viper pulled a decrypted flash drive from his vest and slotted it into the terminal.
"Transfer all monitor feeds to the primary display. The global sector will cease to exist in exactly thirty days. Why do we need to care if all conventional contracts will mean nothing."
The screens flickered, replacing the topographical maps of Africa with the contents of `The_Chronos_Log.txt`.
"Thirty days,"
Viper continued, his voice projecting across the room with authority.
"A celestial event will destabilize the Earth's magnetosphere. Global temperatures will plummet to unsurvivable extremes. The power grids will fail. Governments will collapse within the first week as mass starvation sets in. The world is entering an Ice Age, and the transition will be violent."
IronClad stared at the scrolling text on the monitors. He recognized the encryption formats and linguistic patterns. He looked back at Viper, his expression caught between respect and caution.
"Sir ...."
IronClad began, his voice lowering so only Viper and the lieutenants could hear.
"I've bled with you in ten countries. I know we've been extracting intel from this 'Architect' entity for four years. I've watched you restructure our logistics and training protocols based on those data drops. I trust your strategic more than my own heartbeat."
IronClad shifted his weight, his brow furrowing as he looked back at the timeline on the screen.
"But Commander ... canceling a twelve-million-dollar insertion op at the eleventh hour? Staking the future and treasury of The Fangs will it be worth it? If this timeline is slightly off, or if this is a psy-op from a rival intelligence agency, we burn our reputation permanently. The men will follow you to hell."
Viper respected the hesitation. IronClad was doing his job, protecting the fangs. But words were no longer enough to convey the reality of the new world.
Viper stepped closer to his lieutenant.
As the distance closed, IronClad felt it. The ambient temperature around Viper distorted the air, creating a shimmering mirage effect. It was a something that feels like radiating warmth.
Viper reached out and wrapped his bare hand around the reinforced steel barrel of the customized assault rifle slung across IronClad's chest.
"Look at me, IronClad,"
Viper whispered.
IronClad looked down. To his horror, he saw wisps of steam rising from Viper's grip where skin met metal. The high-grade steel of the rifle barrel groaned, emitting a high-pitched metallic whine. With a deliberate twist of his wrist, Viper bent the solid steel barrel upward by a full thirty degrees, ruining the weapon. He did it with the effort a normal man might use to snap a twig.
IronClad stepped back, his eyes wide, his instincts flaring in the presence something abnormal. He had fought in a dozen wars, but he had never seen anything like this.
The last sliver of doubt in IronClad's mind vanished, incinerated by the physical proof standing before him. The 'Evolution Catalyst' was never a theory.
Viper released the bent barrel and let his hand drop to his side.
"The era will change soon, and we need to be prepared,"
Viper said, his eyes scanning the awestruck faces of his killers.
"In thirty days, money will be useless paper. Gold will be garbage. The only currency that will matter is heat, calories, and ammunition. Are there any further questions regarding the validity of our new objective?"
IronClad looked at his ruined rifle, the steel warped beyond repair, then at the unwavering conviction in his commander's eyes. The caution in his posture dissolved, replaced by devotion. Slowly, he unclipped the destroyed weapon and let it clatter to the floor. He snapped a military salute.
"No, Sir. My life for the Vanguard. Awaiting your orders."
"Good,"
Viper turned back to the tactical table, the tension in the room shifting into obedience.
"Initiate Protocol: The Silo. We are retrofitting this bunker into a self-sustaining fortress. I want every surface entrance sealed and reinforced with blast-grade bulkheads. Purchase every industrial heater, air scrubber, hydroponic lamp, and geothermal generator you can find on the market."
"Sir,"
Another lieutenant, code-named Ghost, spoke up, his voice trembling slightly with adrenaline.
"To execute a logistics overhaul of this magnitude ... we're talking about cornering the local and international black market on concrete, steel, MREs, and thermal optics within a month. It will drain our operational treasury to zero. Worse, moving that volume of capital so quickly will trigger red flags with Interpol, the CIA, and global banking algorithms. We will be frozen out before we can buy the concrete."
Viper’s expression remained calm.
"I am aware of the logistical constraints of our finance."
He stepped up to his encrypted terminal.
He opened the proxy server connection to the Information Club, bypassing the main chat and initiating a direct, point-to-point secure connection with the user known as [FrostBite].
> [Viper]: I am mobilizing The Fangs right now, and currently need a supply chain. I also need liquidity that does not trigger global banking algorithms. Can you secure the perimeter's funding?
Viper waited. He knew FrostBite was an anomaly. While Viper was a man of blood and dirt, FrostBite was a phantom of the digital. Three seconds later, the terminal chimed.
> [FrostBite]: LMAO, relax General. The port 8080 is wide open. I’ve already set up a network of shell companies and decentralized crypto tumblers. I’ve been short-selling global energy conglomerates and liquidating digital assets all morning based on the Chronos Log.
> [FrostBite]: I have an amount of untraceable liquidity ready to deploy. We are talking hundreds of millions here. It's more than enough to buy a small country's defense grid without leaving a single paper trail. Just send the invoices to the shadow server. Buy whatever DLC you need to max out our defense stats. Consider it the Guild's investment for the late-game raid. We don't wipe on my watch.
Viper read the gamer jargon, ignoring the terminology to focus on the message.
> [Viper]: Acknowledged. Standby for resource acquisition.
Viper closed the terminal. He looked at the topographic map of the region displayed on the center table. The base was strategically sound, nestled in the bedrock, but it needed to be impregnable against both the cold and the starving masses that would roam the surface.
He drew his tactical knife, the matte black blade glinting under the command center lights, and slammed it down into the map. The thud echoed as the tip pierced the coordinates of their subterranean facility, burying itself deep into the wood of the table.
"IronClad,"
Viper commanded, his voice ringing with finality.
"The funding is secured. Buy anything we need on the list. I want automated sentry turrets on every choke point and a thermal perimeter established by week's end."
Viper gripped the hilt of the knife, his eyes burning with the burning Spirit of a holy warrior preparing for the end of days.
›› To Be Continued ‹‹
—KS