At the top of the Tree of Life, in Miller’s private study.
The white clouds outside the window were dull, not as vibrant as the holographic projections of vegetation and lake water. Miller put down his stylus pen, and looked at Moran standing in front of the desk.
“Captain Shen didn’t find Amor?” Miller asked.
“No,” Moran bowed slightly. “Professor Amor is likely in great danger.”
Miller let out a heavy sigh and leaned back in his chair. “Have Captain Shen report to me personally.”
“Alright, he should be here soon,” Moran replied, looking at his wrist to check the time. Then he changed the subject abruptly, “General, we need to test him first to ensure that he hasn’t undergone any changes after going to the lower levels for the mission.”
“Are you afraid he might betray us again?” Miller furrowed his brows impatiently. “If there’s another problem, there’s no need to continue this experiment.”
Moran lowered his body even further. “Yes, General.”
The aircraft landed in the open space in front of the laboratory, and the researchers who had been waiting there carried Captain Shen Siwei on a stretcher into the lab.
Although Shen Siwei was conscious throughout the entire journey, he pretended to be asleep, keeping his brain in an inactive state.
After a thorough examination, the researchers left, leaving only Dr. Chen in the laboratory. He sat in front of his workstation, recording his work log in front of the camera. After a while, the lifting door opened, and Moran walked in.
“Colonel,” Dr. Chen quickly stood up to welcome him.
“How is he?” Moran approached the life capsule.
“Everything is normal. There were no errors this time,” Dr. Chen pushed his glasses and asked, “Shall we start repairing his cardiopulmonary system?”
“Not yet.” Moran walked around the head of the life capsule, took off his gloves, and ran his index finger across Shen Siwei’s cheek. “Wake him up. I have questions for him.”
“Alright.” Dr. Chen walked to the control panel and pressed the buttons on the tabletop.
The control chip in Shen Siwei’s brain immediately received the command to “wake up.” He moved his eyes and slowly opened his eyelids.
In his field of vision, he saw Moran’s concerned face, where false and real memories overlapped, momentarily confusing Shen Siwei. He sat up and looked around, saying, “Is this… the laboratory?”
“Yes, you must have been tired and fallen asleep on the way,” Moran said, leaning down as if to carry Shen Siwei.
Despite a strong resistance in his heart, Shen Siwei obediently raised his arm and embraced Moran’s neck.
“About the trip to the lower levels, do you have any more updates?” Moran placed Shen Siwei on a chair nearby.
“No,” Shen Siwei shook his head, looking at Moran and asked, “Where’s my mask?”
His tone was natural, and the question was reasonable. The mask was important to him, and he would naturally look for it after waking up.
“Oh, it has been upgraded,” Moran said casually, then immediately changed the topic, “You stayed in the Tech Building for so many days, but didn’t find any trace of Amor?”
As he said that, he added with a hidden meaning, “The progress was impressive at the beginning.”
Shen Siwei understood the implied message from Moran. It meant that his initial progress was smooth, and he almost found the Tech Building without any delay..
However, he stayed at the Technology Building for a few days, which was indeed somewhat unusual.
“To be honest, the clues were lost as soon as I arrived at the Technology Building,” Shen Siwei lowered his head and said regretfully. “But I was unwilling to give up and wanted to continue searching.”
His acting skills apparently made Moran drop his guard, and he only heard Moran say, “I understand. After sleeping for so long, it’s natural to want to achieve some results on your first mission.”
Shen Siwei nodded, “Hmm.”
“Don’t force yourself if you can’t find him,” Moran brushed aside the stray hair on Shen Siwei’s forehead with his hand. “General Miller wants to hear your report in person. Rest well tonight, and we’ll go to the top floor together tomorrow.”
Shen Siwei hadn’t expected this.
When he found out that Moran took Amor away but didn’t report it to Miller, Shen Siwei’s first reaction was that he had to tell Miller about it.
With Miller’s status and position, pressuring Moran would surely reveal Amor’s whereabouts easily. However, Shen Siwei couldn’t contact Miller earlier, which made him feel that the situation was difficult.
But now that Moran wanted to take him to meet Miller, things became much easier. As long as he informed Miller of the true situation, Shen Siwei could basically stop worrying about Amor.
However, the situation at that time would definitely be very chaotic, and who knows what would happen. Therefore, that night, Shen Siwei decided to retrieve his memories from the control center and try to find out any information about Avis.
It only took a second for Shen Siwei to think about all this, and he obediently nodded, “Okay.”
“I’ll have someone fetch your mask,” Moran rubbed Shen Siwei’s shoulder. “Just wait a moment.”
Things went much smoother than Shen Siwei expected. It seemed that Moran didn’t have any suspicions about him and even wanted to give him the mask, unleashing his combat abilities.
But it seemed that fate liked to play tricks on people.
Just as the elevator door opened and the researcher held the familiar mask, about to enter the lab, Moran suddenly said, “Oh, by the way, I heard from the team members that someone called you while bringing you back.”
Shen Siwei’s relaxed nerves tensed up instantly. To buy time, he intentionally slowed down his speech as the researcher approached, “It was an unknown number, and I didn’t answer.”
“Is that so?” Moran’s expression didn’t show any suspicion. “Let me see what number it was.”
Shen Siwei had already deleted the call and message, but he couldn’t avoid answering completely.
He maintained a calm demeanor and said, “It seemed like a telemarketing call, so I deleted it.”
“You deleted it?” Moran raised an eyebrow, and a hint of doubt appeared in his eyes.
He raised his hand to signal the researcher to stop, then glanced at him and asked, “Why did you delete it?”
Tension immediately filled the room as Shen Siwei estimated the distance between him and the researcher, and calmly said, “I don’t want anyone else in my communicator besides you.”
At least on the surface, Shen Siwei and Moran were still in a romantic relationship. He wanted to emphasize this point to highlight that he was still on Moran’s side, but Moran seemed to have suddenly become smarter and asked, “Are you still going to say things like that?”
Without changing his expression, Shen Siwei replied, “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Before the mission,” Moran slowly took a step and stood between Shen Siwei and the researcher, “you didn’t even want to stargaze with me.”
Perhaps Moran was careless in some aspects, but it had to be admitted that he was very accurate in these details.
Shen Siwei didn’t seem like the kind of person who would say such things, and he didn’t know if being with klet made him gradually more open in terms of emotions, but he himself was not aware of it.
“After I went down, I realized I didn’t like being alone,” Shen Siwei could only choose to pretend.
There were only a few meters between him and the researcher, but Moran stood in the middle. Without a doubt, Shen Siwei had no chance of getting his mask back.
Sure enough, Moran waved his hand, signaling the researcher to leave, and the mask that was within reach flew away just like an uncooked duck.
Suppressing his unease, Shen Siwei asked, “What’s wrong?”
“You never make things easy,” Moran sighed regretfully, “Last time when you went down, there were records of messages with someone else in your communicator. How about this time? Have you become smarter?”
Shen Siwei was unsure if Moran had truly seen through his flaws or if he was just testing him. Either way, he could only continue pretending to be confused and asked, “What do you mean by ‘last time’?”
Moran observed Shen Siwei’s expression as if trying to find some clues from his face. But in the end, he seemed undecided and simply raised his chin towards Dr. Chen.
The “sleep” command appeared once again, and Shen Siwei had to relax his entire body, lowering his head while sitting on the chair.
“Do you think he’s acting suspicious?” Moran put Shen Siwei back into the life capsule.
“Yes,” Dr. Chen operated the control panel and projected a monitoring video in mid-air, “I accessed the aircraft’s recorder, and after he hung up the phone, he operated the communicator for a while, probably sending messages.”
“Tsk,” Moran frowned unhappily, “Have the communication department retrieve the records.”
“I’ve already done that,” Dr. Chen said, “It was from an anonymous number, we couldn’t find anything.”
“So, he has regained his memories?” Moran’s tone turned unpleasant, “What’s the wrong with your research, why does it keep failing?”
“I’m not sure,” Dr. Chen hurriedly accessed the memory module, “You can see that his missing memories are stored here, and no data has been lost.”
“Then what’s wrong with him?” Moran asked.
“For now, it’s still unclear,” Dr. Chen pushed his glasses, “I need some time to investigate.”
“What if we don’t have that much time?” Moran furrowed his brows, “He contacted someone behind my back, indicating signs of rebellion. No need to investigate further, just reboot him.”
“Um, start over again?” Dr. Chen hesitated.
“Or do you have another idea?” Moran asked.
Shen Siwei was messaging someone in the aircraft, keeping it a secret. This already indicated that he wasn’t obedient. Regardless of the final results of the investigation, it was certain that his memories had to be erased.
“Fine,” Dr. Chen said. “What about General Miller?”
“I will inform him of the true situation. Captain Shen may have betrayed us again,” Moran said. “As for whether we should continue this project in the future, we’ll see what he thinks.”
“What if he decides not to continue?” Dr. Chen expressed his concern.
“That won’t affect you from rebooting Shen Siwei now,” Moran said firmly.
Finally, Shen Siwei could confirm that his memories were stored in the central console. However, he couldn’t help but worry. Perhaps the control chip couldn’t stop the heavyweight “reboot” command, but his concerns proved to be unnecessary.
After the reboot program started running, Shen Siwei’s brain remained unaffected, and he could clearly understand that the reboot program would take a total of six hours.
After patiently waiting for two hours, Dr. Chen finally finished his other work, turned off the lights, and left the laboratory.
In the spacious laboratory, only Shen Siwei remained, but he knew that the surveillance cameras were definitely still working.
Infrared cameras could capture images in the dark, as long as someone was monitoring the laboratory, they could see Shen Siwei’s every move.
But then again, the guards shouldn’t be specifically watching this laboratory. Moreover, according to Moran’s intentions, it seemed like he wanted Shen Siwei to continue to sleep, so even if he chose a different time, Shen Siwei could only approach the central console at the risk of being caught on camera.
He could only rely on luck.
After using all his strength, Shen Siwei crawled out of the life pod and took a moment to catch his breath in the blind spot of the surveillance. Then he continued crawling towards the central console.
Although the central console was only a few meters away from the life pod, climbing made Shen Siwei gasp for breath.
He hid in the blind spot behind the central console, disconnected the connection between the mainframe and the display screen, and then connected the mainframe to his own microcomputer.
Once he finished those actions, he used all his strength to crawl back to the blind spot behind the life pod, and then used his own computer to operate the central mainframe.
Finding the memory module wasn’t difficult, he just had to go through a few files, and Shen Siwei found it.
Everything went smoothly from then on. The data began to transmit to Shen Siwei’s brain, and his eyes started flashing countless short and long fragments of memory.
However, just as the puzzle was about to be completed, familiar military boots suddenly sounded outside the laboratory.
It was Moran. Why did he suddenly come back?
Without much time to think, Shen Siwei quickly flipped back into the life pod, and just as he lay down, the hatch also opened simultaneously.
Moran didn’t turn on the lights and walked straight towards Shen Siwei. Unlike his usual loud footsteps, this time he seemed more cautious. Although the sound of his military boots was still audible, it didn’t have the usual sense of gusty wind.
Could it be that the guard noticed something wrong with the surveillance footage and notified Moran to come back?
But Shen Siwei couldn’t understand why Moran didn’t turn on the lights and looked so sneaky.
Moreover, from the moment Shen Siwei crawled out of the life pod until he crawled back, it only took a few minutes. Could it be that Moran had never left?
The images of data reading flashed in his mind, and the progress bar kept changing–
75%, 78%, 85%, 90%…
As he watched the numbers about to reach 100%, Moran’s footsteps also grew closer.
If Moran opened the central console, he would notice that the screen was currently black, indicating a problem with the connection between the mainframe and the monitor.
As long as Moran bent down and reconnected the disconnected data cable, the screen on the central console would display that the data from the memory module being transferred, and the progress bar was about to reach 100%.
In that instant, Shen Siwei’s heart almost jumped to his throat. He silently prayed for the data to transfer faster. However, just as the progress bar displayed 99%, Moran’s footsteps stopped in front of the central console.
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