The blizzard at Icespire Peak hurled glacial shrapnel, slamming Chen Ran's helmet. His knuckles whitened around the geologist's pick as ice pitons screeched against permafrost—this Precambrian batholith was defying thermodynamics. The thermometer read -41°C, yet liquid water meandered through quartz veins in bioluminescent patterns.
"Dr. Chen, Drill 3's bogged down." Intern Zhao's voice crackled over comms, drowned by diesel generators. Chen Ran peered into the abyssal crevasse. Retinal afterimages flared: neon-lit petroglyphs glowing on moraine boulders, identical to Paleolithic cave art.
He staggered, gripping his ice axe. Fractured memories pierced his temple—April 3rd, 2077. Arctic Research Outpost 7. Cryo Core meltdown. Surveillance footage of Serena Su shoving Lu Mingxuan into a liquid nitrogen vault. That traitorous ex-commander's neck still bore the Techno-Council's serpent insignia.
"Set depth to 1,200 meters." Chen Ran wiped blood from his lip, ignoring Zhao's panic. In his prior incarnation, he'd learned too late—beneath the glacial cap lay 30,000-year-old cryopods from Project Prometheus. Now his palms burned, nanites surging through veins. The apocalypse's harbinger: reborn survivors called it the Frostwave Precursor.
Metallic rasping echoed through ice. When the diamond bit breached the ninth stratum, all breaths halted. There—half-embedded in basalt—a bronze gear etched with the same bioluminescent patterns. More disturbing: blue-black cartilage-like matter frozen in its interlocking teeth.
"How old?" Chen Ran's hammer struck ice. Zhao fumbled his portable isotope spectrometer, sparks erupting. "S-seventy-four thousand? Impossible!"
A leviathan's low-frequency hum pulsed through glaciers. Chen Ran's temples throbbed. He watched his blood freeze in gloves, then vaporize upon contact—symptom of the Cryo Core infection he'd survived in his last life. As the gear spun autonomously, he tore open his collar. A serpentine brand matched the gear's helix exactly.
"Abort! Immediate abort!" Comms drowned in screeches. Zhao's scream merged with ice fractures. Chen Ran turned as slopes shuddered. Dormant moraines jutted upright, their markings forming a celestial map pointing to Polaris.
0.3 seconds before unconsciousness, he caught Serena Su's cedarwood aftershave. The realization chilled him—their next encounter was scheduled 72 hours hence.
The glacial collapse hurled Chen into the abyss. Weightlessness lasted 0.3 seconds before hyperextension pain lanced through his cervical spine—a metallic object had pierced his spinal cord, vaporizing into ice mist upon contacting cerebral matter.
"Experiment #37 log entry," chimed the synthetic female voice in his skull. "Abnormal mitochondrial activity detected. Initiating emergency protocols."
Chen Ran's vision fractured into triple layers: the glacial chasm's reality, the Arctic Research Outpost's memory fragments, and a sterile laboratory filled with liquid nitrogen tanks. Within the latter, technicians in hazard suits retrieved a cyanotic cadaver from a cryo-pod—its thoracic cavity housed a pulsating biomechanical heart.
"Dr. Chen, your heart rate exceeds Homo sapiens' biological limits," the voice crackled. "Confirm activation of Neanderthal gene sequences?"
His ice axe's titanium handle pulsed with vascular red patterns. Instinctively swinging the tool, he shattered ice formations that refracted infinite reflections of Serena Su's face.
"Warning! Cro-Magnon DNA contamination detected." The scream distorted into static as Chen's left retina ignited with burning pain. When vision returned, basalt walls bloomed with cuneiform glyphs oozing hemoglobin-like fluid.
Zhao's SOS calls intermingled with bestial snarls. Peering into the crevasse, Chen witnessed three biomechanical sentinels tearing through parkas. Black ichor spewed from their joints, circuit boards embedded with human molars.
"The Techno-Council..." Chen's throat constricted. Only after his own cybernetic augmentation had he learned these war machines required living neural fuel. Zhao's right arm snapped at unnatural angles, deploying bronze chain-link restraints that shredded his torso into mist.
The glacial impact drove Chen's spine into fracturing. As his vertebrae crystallized into bioluminescent spines, he witnessed his reflection warping—subcutaneous vasculature had spread into celestial constellations. The serpentine brand pulsed with argent light along his clavicle.
"Gene anchor points locked," the voice chimed merrily. "Injecting Cro-Magnon mitochondrial cultures..."
Reality dissolved as Chen plunged into seven millennia of memory: a quartz-crowned queen injecting bioluminescent serum into mammoth orbits. When the tusk pierced her sternum, her pupils mirrored Icespire Peak's bronze gear patterns.
Returning to consciousness, Chen's left arm had jade-ified with crystalline patterns. Distant mechanical hymns echoed as bronze gear swarms crushed glaciers—each mech's thorax housed Zhao's duplicate biomechanical heart.
"Initiating Protocol B." Chen bit his tongue, spattering vital fluid onto his axe. The titanium surface's vascular patterns absorbed the blood, triggering 3-meter ice fissures. Amidst the cryostorm, he glimpsed Serena's holographic form calibrating a gene injector—her serpentine brand resonated with his own.
The glacial silence shattered as Chen knelt on jade-ified hands. Ice crystals grew between his fingers while comms crackled: "Dr. Chen... they're cryofreezing... living specimens..."
Staggering to the crevasse's edge, he witnessed five biomechanical primarchs assembling a hexagonal array. "Antarctic comms down," the voice switched to alarm. "Cryo Core activity elevated 300%. Recommend immediate..."
Chen's vision hemorrhaged crimson. When clarity returned, his bones had translucentized with neon-blue liquid nitrogen flowing through veins. The mechs' movements slowed as frost bloomed over their biomechanical hearts.
"Critical overload!" The scream became ultrasonic screech. Chen's fingertips erupted with ozone-scented liquid metal, melting the mechs into copper dust.
A draconic roar reverberated through ice. Chen's spine snapped audibly as crystalline growths burst through his back, forming biomechanical vertebrae. His reflection warped—subcutaneous vasculature mapped galactic constellations, the serpentine brand now radiating argent energy.
"Finally," Serena's voice echoed from the ice dome. She hung suspended in cryo-harness, her mechanized larynx distorting speech: "Or should I call you... the last Neanderthal?"
The biomechanical swarm pivoted as laser grids locked onto Chen. Liquid metal armor formed spontaneously, molten droplets carving smoldering craters into ice.
"Do you think resurrection is coincidence?" Serena hurled a gene injector containing azure fluid. "From your first touch of the bronze gear, we've been waiting."
Catching the injector, Chen triggered glacial inversion. Falling into the abyss, he watched Serena's armor disintegrate—her skin revealed identical jade-ification patterns, her serpentine brand syncing with his.
Twenty-seven minutes of freefall ended in Antarctic waters. Chen surfaced amidst leviathan-class mechs reassembling—their optical sensors converged on the crystalline spire rising from the trench. Within its core pulsed a biomechanical heart identical to Zhao's final form.
"Game on," Chen's larynx vibrated with synthetic resonance. His jade hand's constellation map aligned with the spire's nodal points. As dawn pierced the ice, he injected the serums into his neck—the queen's bioluminescent fluid swirled through his veins, completing the trinity between Precambrian gears, Cro-Magnon DNA, and 21st-century cybernetics.
The ice collapsed. Chen plunged into the abyssal spire as mechs disintegrated into prismatic dust. Beneath the glacial veil, he saw the truth: bronze gear networks spanned Earth's grid, each node connected to jade-ified hosts. And at all systems' core, a single gene-sequence pulsed—his own.