Chapter 153 Dominic Lockhart

Inside the smoke-filled fighter jet, a large hole had appeared in the pilot's chest, and blood soaked the cockpit.

At this moment, the throttle of the fighter jet was pushed to the maximum. The pilot was praying for a miracle, hoping that the good old machine beneath him could carry him away from the enemies pursuing him from behind.

However, no miracle occurred. An electromagnetic cannon shell fired by Ada Wong happened to strike the pilot squarely in the head.

The electromagnetic shell pierced through the pilot's head and then struck the master control panel, which was blaring endless warnings.

Completely out of control, the fighter jet slammed directly into the CELL Corporation building, triggering a violent explosion. The remaining undropped bombs on the aircraft were detonated in the blast.

A massive breach was blown into the middle section of the CELL building, sending countless shards of masonry cascading down toward the ground as the entire structure began to tilt slightly.

At this moment, Wang Jing had just returned to the Crysis universe. Looking at the blazing CELL building and the debris continuously falling from the sky, he asked with a bewildered expression, "What just happened?"

"Ada Wong shot down the fighter jet, and then the jet crashed into the building. Moreover, this building looks like it's about to collapse!" Liu Peiqiang said.

Wang Jing turned to look at Li Yiyi and asked, "Didn't you say it was very difficult to blow up?"

"It's possible that the earlier explosions and the electromagnetic shell punching through the floor damaged the building's load-bearing pillars," Li Yiyi speculated.

Just then, a tank in the distance fired a shell toward Wang Jing's location. Recovering their wits, the group quickly maneuvered and scattered. Six shells flew past Wang Jing and the others, and only Liu Peiqiang failed to dodge in time—due to the bulky size of his powered armor—and was struck by a round.

However, the shell was deflected by the energy shield and caused no actual damage to him.

The other six shells flew straight into the building, and as bad luck would have it, every single one of them struck the load-bearing pillars inside.

Billowing clouds of smoke surged from the building. Taking advantage of the smoke's concealment, Wang Jing sent the others back to the prime dimension, then burst through the smoke alone and soared straight up into the sky.

Charging the electromagnetic cannon on his back, he aimed at the ammunition compartments of the seven tanks below. Because the electromagnetic cannon was a kinetic weapon, it was somewhat difficult to detonate the ammunition storage directly after penetrating a tank's armor.

However, Wang Jing possessed other weapons in addition to the electromagnetic cannon, such as the armor-piercing missiles on his arms and the miniature missiles on his shoulders.

A single armor-piercing missile could take out a tank, and when the miniature missiles were used in conjunction with the electromagnetic cannon—the former detonating right through the bullet hole punched by the latter—the flames of the explosion could easily ignite the damaged shells inside.

In an instant, the turrets of tank after tank were blown off. Each armored vehicle transformed into a giant firework tube, with flames and propellant spraying dozens of meters into the air.

The CELL mercenaries hiding around the tanks were either knocked flat by the shockwaves of the exploding ammunition, killed outright by the blast wave, or struck down by machine gun bullets ignited by the extreme heat—the last fate falling to the unluckiest among them.

Just as Wang Jing finished eliminating all the tanks and prepared to set off for New York, a bullet fired from the roof of the CELL building behind him gave him a violent shock.

Although the bullet was stopped by his energy shield, the immense recoil still forced Wang Jing to stumble forward a considerable distance. If he hadn't stabilized his flight posture in time, he likely would have crashed into the ground.

A bullet with such tremendous kinetic energy was definitely not a traditional gunpowder weapon; it was unmistakably an electromagnetic weapon.

Wang Jing turned his head toward the direction the bullet had come from and caught a fleeting, instantaneous shadow at the very top of the CELL building.

Wang Jing flew rapidly toward the roof of the building, yet he found nothing at all. This particular floor happened to be an office.

Just as Wang Jing was checking to see whose office this was, a projectile from an electromagnetic sniper rifle, fired from point-blank range, shot out from behind the desk in front of him.

At the very instant his opponent opened fire, Wang Jing caught sight of who was launching the attack.

Reeling backward a short distance, Wang Jing immediately raised the electromagnetic cannon on his back and fired at the figure hiding behind the desk—a person wielding a sci-fi-styled electromagnetic sniper rifle and clad in a nanosuit.

The formidable kinetic energy and destructive power of the electromagnetic cannon drove the opponent straight back against the wall behind them. Wang Jing could clearly see the nanosuit on the enemy's body glowing with the blue light of armor mode.

Without checking the face beneath the enemy's visor, Wang Jing continued to charge his weapon and fired a second electromagnetic cannon shell, intending to pierce right through the adversary.

However, the next round was dodged by the narrowest of margins. The electromagnetic shell grazed the nanosuit on the enemy's chest and carved a massive hole in the wall behind.

Immediately afterward, the opponent executed a sideways roll, evading Wang Jing's subsequent electromagnetic cannon fire with a speed so astonishing it almost caught Wang Jing off guard.

Consequently, Wang Jing immediately chose to hand over the control of the back-mounted electromagnetic cannon to MOOS, while he himself fired the miniature missiles on his shoulders in an attempt to flush the enemy out.

Yet, after a barrage of explosions, the adversary still did not emerge. Facing this situation, Wang Jing dared not charge in for close-quarters combat. In games and movies, protagonists were almost always lured into hand-to-hand combat by villains in such scenarios, only to flip over and get thrashed and humiliated on the ground by the villains.

Therefore, Wang Jing had the prime dimension prepare his mech suit, and then he unloaded all his remaining miniature missiles in one go, denying the enemy a chance to peek out and buying himself time for a gear change.

The moment all the miniature missiles were spent, Wang Jing instantly teleported back, boarded the prepared mech, and then teleported right back. The entire process took less than two seconds, coinciding precisely with the detonation of all the missiles.

Wang Jing raised the 12-barreled electromagnetic heavy machine gun held by the mech, aimed at the load-bearing pillar where the enemy was hiding, and pulled the trigger. As the barrels spun rapidly, Wang Jing shouted loudly, "If you've got the guts, stay in there and never come out!"

Before Wang Jing even finished shouting, a torrential storm of bullets hammered into that pitiful load-bearing pillar.

In less than ten seconds, the wide load-bearing pillar was riddled like a honeycomb by the 12-barreled electromagnetic cannon. Through the dense array of bullet holes, one could even see the enemy lying on the ground on the opposite side, clad in a nanosuit and hovering on the brink of death.

Only then did Wang Jing leap out of the mech and walk over to the adversary. He looked down at the enemy, who, despite having a wrist-sized hole blasted through his chest, was still stubbornly clinging to life.

Wang Jing pumped a few more rounds into the body to ensure absolute death, and only then stepped forward to remove the enemy's faceplate.

The face beneath the faceplate gave Wang Jing a strong sense of familiarity, though for a moment he couldn't quite place where he had seen it.

It wasn't until his gaze accidentally drifted to a smashed photo frame on the floor that Wang Jing remembered: the person before him was none other than Dominic Lockhart, the CELL commander from Crysis 2.

Yet Wang Jing distinctly remembered that in Crysis 2, he had been thrown off the command building and dashed to his death by Alcatraz, who was then acting as Prophet. How could he still be alive now?

However, having identified the man's identity, Wang Jing decided against letting him die so easily.

Sending him back to the prime dimension, Wang Jing said to Ada Wong and the others waiting nearby, "Save him. What's inside his brain might still be useful to us."

"Understood," Ada Wong immediately stepped forward, dragged the body over to the medical pod, and placed him inside.

As for Wang Jing, he returned to the Crysis universe and hurried toward New York.