The Isolation Protocol

The command center was a crypt of dying light. Shadows clawed at every corner, swallowed whole by the acrid tang of overheated circuitry and raw desperation. Luo Jian’s skeletal fingers trembled above the console, casting jittery, broken shapes on the keyboard’s worn surface. His gaunt face was bathed in the cold, sickly glow of flickering monitors—pallid light deepening the hollows beneath his eyes into dark, cavernous pits, heavy with paranoia and dread. The servers that once thrummed with ruthless efficiency now wheezed like a dying beast, their mechanical hum fading into a rasping dirge.

His voice cracked, raw as dust scraped across stone. “Shut it all down. No communications. No access. Now.”

The technician—a young man whose sweat glistened like beads of mercury on his brow—froze, fingers hovering hesitantly over the kill switch. His Adam’s apple bobbed in a desperate swallow as the weight of that command settled over him like a tombstone.