"You want to negotiate?" she whispered to herself, fingers flying across the controls, "I will give you a negotiation response."
She accessed the remote server she had cracked moments earlier and triggered a feedback loop in the lab's electrical system. Lights suddenly flickered and an alarm immediately wailed.
Back underground, Professor Mo turned sharply glaring at Lu Zhi Hao, "What did you do?!"
Zhi Hao grinned widely, feeling proud, "Let me introduce you to my wife."
Alarms blared. Red emergency lights pulsed through the corridor like a monitored heartbeat.
Professor Mo spun toward the terminal, typing furiously as files vanished from the system one by one. "No.... no, this data took years....!"
"This can't be happening!"
"No... No... No.."
The door behind him exploded open. Smoke poured in, framing Lu Zhi Hao and Lu Zi Zhen, weapons drawn. Shadows of Hawk Team operatives flanked them.
"You," Professor Mo heavily hissed, "You brought her into this? You and that woman ruined everything... Everything I ever worked hard for for so many years!"
Lu Zhi Hao's steps were slow and purposeful. "You kidnapped my son, our precious little bit, and now you want to play the victim? Who told you things work out like that?"
"You don't understand anything," Mo seethed in fury, "Your children… are the future. Do you think I care about one or two lives when I could cure a disease? Create evolution itself?"
"And yet here you are, hiding in the underground. What do you think happens in the darkness? If you were morally upright, you should be doing your things openly," Zi Zhen coldly responded, "you are just chasing power like a rat in the dark."
"You think killing me will stop this?" Mo held up the remote, "There are others who are involved, the funders, governments, people who will finish my work whether you like it or not!"
"Then let's make sure there's nothing left for them to finish."
A bullet was fired, not from Lu Zhi Hao, but from the shadow behind them.
Lu Wan Ruyi emerged through the smoke, her face was calm and steady.
The bullet struck Mo's hand, shattering the remote device he was holding like his final leverage. The pieces clattered to the floor.
"You messed up with me once," she said softly with determination, "this time, I won't let you slide away! I will finish everything completely."
Mo laughed bitterly, clutching his broken hand that was already bleeding, "And yet again, we are against each other instead of working together for this experiment to be successful! Who doesn't like power? Who doesn't want to be recognized?"
Lu Wan Ruyi stepped forward, getting closer and closer, her eyes blazing with the fury of every scar he left, "No. I'm not interested!"
Then, she pulled the trigger again. One clean shot, in between his eyes.
Professor Mo dropped dead before having a final twitch and then there was silence.
"Ruyi, the system is rigged," Zi Zhen warned as they backed out of the lab, "You triggered a failsafe cascade, so you have five minutes before total structural collapse."
"Then we'd better move fast."
Ting Zhou was being wheeled through the tunnel by two Hawk Team medics, with Yaya supported by another. Lu Wan Ruyi guided the rear while her husband stayed on point.
As they reached the halfway mark, a sudden tremor hit. The walls groaned and heavy dust rained from above.
"Move! Faster!" Zhi Hao yelled, grabbing Ruyi's hand as a ceiling slab cracked open behind them.
Another explosion roared through the tunnel, this time from deeper underground. The core lab detonation system had been triggered.