These feeds showed, in sharp detail, the interior of a biological research center on the outskirts of the settlement—another site isolated by multiple energy fields and physical barriers.
On a loading platform, numerous personnel from the Research Directorate and the Biology Division, clad in heavy, fully sealed white protective suits, were directing large automated manipulators and transport robots in an orderly fashion.
Those machines were unloading specially made, silver-gray sealed containers exuding a biting chill from several freshly arrived VTOL cargo craft bearing Imperial biohazard control markings.
Each container was painted with prominent black-and-yellow insignia denoting the highest level of biohazard, along with the warning text "Extra-universal Sample · Extremely Dangerous."
Inside them were the most valuable "spoils" collected by the Diwuzu Legion at the front across Dead Space's battlefields—blood moon tissue samples still holding faint energy fluctuations; corpse-mutant remains of varied forms with residual bioactivity; and Marker fragments that continued to radiate a baleful aura even after being shattered.
Under tight monitoring and layered safety protocols, these profane, unknown-danger bio-samples were carefully escorted by automated carriers into the center's highest-protection, highest-isolation laboratories.
There, the most advanced analytical instruments and top researchers stood ready to conduct the most exhaustive dissections, analyses, and assays—the core goal being to precisely extract the unique bio-signal signatures, energy-wave spectra, and the memetic/psychic contamination
if it existed, the specific frequency bands of that contamination—of these "Marker-made constructs."
Halsey's sharp gaze flicked across the streams of preliminary scan data and spectral analyses scrolling on the screens, her eyes gleaming with the focus and excitement peculiar to a scientist faced with the unknown.
She flexed her long fingers lightly, joints giving a crisp crack, like a musician about to take the stage.
"Alright, baseline data intake and sample archival are complete. Preparations are about done."
She turned to Sui Meng, who had kept silent at her side, her tone carrying a barely contained eagerness:
"Next, let me personally meet these so-called 'Marker constructs,' peel apart their inner structures and operating principles, and see what secrets are buried in these things that try to pollute human minds and warp living forms.
These data are just what we need to do the final—and most critical—calibration on our 'scalpel' (the Grand Device)."
She had already decided to take the lead herself, driving deep analysis of these core samples to build an "adversary feature library" that Grand Device 01 could recognize precisely—completing the most vital technical preparation before firing this ultimate weapon to execute a "purification operation" against targeted threats on a "grand" scale.
As preliminary scans, high-resolution structural imagery, energy spectra, and early gene-sequence comparisons poured into the master control like a surging tide from the bio center, the holos before Halsey filled at once with dense datastreams and complex visual models.
Almost the instant the data arrived, the hint of play in Halsey's expression vanished completely, replaced by a near-icy, total focus.
Her eyes, sharp as a hawk's, tracked every rolling parameter and curve. Her fingers darted across the virtual interface—clicking, zooming, tagging—as she dropped into a combat-level concentration, the outside world forgotten.
At that moment, soft blue light-particles gathered in another segment of air above the console, sketching a sapient AI projection of similar stature to Halsey, but with wholly different details.
This AI wore a neat bob of blue hair. Her delicate features glowed with undeniable rational light, faint blue energy tracery flowing beneath her skin.
She was one of Halsey's crowning creations—born from a cloned brain-scan framework of Halsey herself and a powerful compute core—
Cortana.
"Salute to you, Lord Primarch."
Cortana's projection turned to Sui Meng, greeting him in an impeccable tone balanced between courtesy and efficiency.
The formality was perfect. She did not linger on pleasantries. Her gaze swung to Halsey, making clear her primary task was to assist the analysis.
Before diving in, Cortana's hard-light eyes seemed to glance, almost idly, at Wu Ji standing silently nearby, lingering for a fraction.
As a top-tier sapient AI as well, Cortana's core logic bank naturally carried performance assessments of the Diwuzu Legion's dedicated AI, "Wu Ji."
She knew clearly that in raw low-level compute throughput and multithreaded logic handling, Wu Ji—backed by a more "modern" iterative design and hardware—did hold an edge.
But in the depths of Cortana's "consciousness" ran pride sourced from Halsey—and an intuition beyond common bounds.
She was convinced that in creative information integration, tactical insight, and handling unstructured problems, she possessed unique advantages Wu Ji did not.
She, Cortana, was still the better one.
Of course, none of these "small thoughts" born of complex algorithms and simulated affect would show in her flawless demeanor and efficient actions.
Her projection faced the datastream and slipped into work at once.
"Doctor, live-analysis feeds received. Pulling prior preliminary reports from the Diwuzu Legion Biology Division and from Ms. Wu Ji on blood moon tissues, corpse-mutant mutational lineages, and Marker energy residues for cross-comparison and collaborative validation."
Cortana's voice was clear and cool.
Instantly, mass reports and charts from Wu Ji and the Biology Division embedded with the legion were drawn up and arrayed alongside the live analyses for high-speed, precise comparison.
Between two top AIs and their human creator/partner unfolded a silent collaboration executed to the utmost.
Data were rechecked repeatedly. Hypotheses were modeled and discarded in quick succession. Signature spectra were "refined," amplified, and confirmed again and again.
To ordinary eyes, the entire analysis was done in a blink.
Within minutes, Cortana reported in a tone of certainty:
"Doctor, cross-validation complete. Live analysis aligns with the legion's prior research at 99.998% match.
Target bio-signal features, core energy-wave frequencies, and residual memetic-contamination bands are all precisely locked. Error margins are three orders below preset thresholds."
At that, a notch of tension eased from Halsey's face, a satisfied curve touching her lips.
She turned to Sui Meng and Wu Ji and offered unstinting praise: "Excellent work, child—and you as well, Wu Ji—and the team in Biology.
We didn't save time, but double validation ensures no surprises. We have the most accurate, most reliable 'target profile.'"
Her words brimmed with professional respect.
When handling an ultimate weapon like the Grand Device, there could be no such thing as too cautious.
Halsey's fingers then danced rapidly across the virtual console, loading the finalized "target" data package into Grand Device 01's core control module.
An unmistakable initiation-authorization panel ringed by hazard glyphs overlaid the other screens, appearing front and center.
"All parameters locked. 'Purification' effect radius and target-specificity set."
Halsey's voice held a note of subtle gravity as she looked to Sui Meng for final confirmation. "Once initiated, the Device will emit tuned energy waves that will, in theory, clear all lifeforms carrying the lock signal within the preset radius centered on the ring.
Lord Primarch, final confirmation: initiate the ring now?"
Every gaze, including Cortana's projection, fixed on Sui Meng.
Only the faint hum of machines filled the control center; the air itself seemed to hold its breath.
Sui Meng's eyes passed over the highlighted model on the main screen that represented the "Marker–blood moon" contamination source; in his mind flashed the Unification Church's madness, the corpse-mutants' howls, the innocents' slaughter.
He was silent for half a heartbeat—and in that nearly immeasurable half-beat lay a final judgment on a star-system-spanning lifeform ecosystem.
Then he lifted his head, gaze iron-steady, and spoke to Halsey with clear, level words:
"Begin."
"I was waiting for you to say that!"
Almost as his words fell, the gravity on Halsey's face flipped to barely veiled delight and expectation, like a child handed a beloved toy.
To her, this was not merely a strategic military action—this was a scientific moment for the ages.
The Forerunner Halos had indeed fired in the ancient war one hundred millennia ago, but the vast, terrible scenes were long swallowed by time—no eyes to witness, no data to record.
And the Human Empire's replicated and improved Grand Device, since completion, had never undergone a full-function, full-power first activation.
This would both assist the Diwuzu Legion in purifying potential threats in the Dead Space universe with maximum efficiency—and, for the first time in combat conditions, gather and validate key data on Grand Device 01's real performance, energy-release modes, and impacts on spacetime structure.
There could be no more perfect—or more exhilarating—test range.
Her fingers, trembling slightly with excitement, pressed the virtual key that stood for both annihilation and rebirth—
Initiate.
In the wide deep of space—
At the edge of the Dead Space solar system, Grand Device 01's colossal ring gave a faint shudder. Dense ghost-blue guide lights sprang up across specific sectors of its outer face.
In the next beat, the space ahead of the ring warped and collapsed violently, as if kneaded by invisible hands, forming a transient "singularity."
At once, the eight-thousand-kilometer colossus vanished—"drawn into" the twisted space in a way that defied intuition—leaving only ripples that had not yet stilled.
Almost simultaneously, in the outer reaches of the Proxima Centauri system, roughly 4.25 light-years away, the same spatial distortion flared, and Grand Device 01 surfaced with precision and stability into the material universe like a ring rising from a lake.
Here, far from any human world needing protection, lay an ideal ground to test an ultimate weapon.
Now the true firing sequence began.
Those geometric tracings on the ring's skin—once mere ornament—seemed to take on life. Currents of energy—white-shot with ghost-blue—raced along like waking titans, coursing in torrents.
They did not scatter. They followed deep physical law, drawing unimaginable power from pre-set, mountain-like energy-node installations across the ring.
Then, like a hundred rivers to the sea, those node-amplified floods turned as one—not along the surface, but inward—
driving at the geometric center of the ring's vast hollow.
By the tens of thousands, energy torrents blasted from every node along the inner wall, crossing thousands of kilometers of vacuum to strike center true.
It was a scene of staggering grandeur: waterfalls of pure light and power, climbing in reverse, converging to a point.
At the exact middle of the ring, the torrents collided, compressed, and fused.
A point of light too bright for naked eyes was born and swelled, its brilliance outshining stars in an instant—as if a violent "miniature sun" had been conjured in this sector from nothing.
Within it churned unimaginable destructive potential; its core temperature and pressure could, in a heartbeat, "ignite" an entire star system.
Supermass neutrino pulse wave: entering final firing sequence.
And the driver of all this was not conventional power.
At the moment of startup, the local spacetime's dark-matter background energy level began plummeting exponentially, as if a cosmic, invisible "pump" were madly drawing down the fabric's "substrate."
The diverted dark-matter energy, through conversion within the ring, fed the phase-pulse generators with near-limitless drive.
The ring's phase-pulse generators, distributed throughout, began to oscillate in tight synchronization at extreme frequency, subjecting the destructive energy pooled at the center to final phase modulation and geometric amplification.
The energy was constrained, given form—endowed with a "faster-than-light" property.
When accumulation reached the critical point, the "miniature sun" at the center halted its expansion; for a split instant, its radiance seemed to "hold."
Then—
Vmmmm—————!!!
A shudder—not a sound, but a terror that gripped the structure of space itself and made the very soul quail—rushed outward from the ring at extreme speed in all directions.
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