"This is an emergency announcement within the station! All citizens please stay away from the third and fourth residential areas immediately!"
Jiang Ling had assumed the site's managers had all gone home, but moments later, the announcement went off. It went off three times, but the crowd downstairs showed no sign of dispersing. A few calmer individuals tried to disperse them, but to little avail.
"Are they a little too excited?" Jiang Ling stood at the window and looked down. Those people looked like they were taking drugs together. This reminded her of a street in Country M that she had seen before. Those guys whose brains were damaged by drugs looked almost the same as they do now.
"Mom and Dad!" Jiang Ling called out again, but there was no response. She turned around and saw the two people standing behind her, staring at her with twisted expressions. She was startled, but the two people in front of her didn't move further. She waved her hand in front of them and found that they didn't change at all.
Jiang Ling finally realized something was amiss. Recalling what she had noticed upon arriving: the people gathered at the entrance were acting strangely, the name "Yuri X" popped into her head. These people were clearly being mind-controlled. Although she hadn't figured out how the mutant was doing it, considering she was completely unaffected, she figured its abilities were similar to her own "psychic perception," perhaps even a shared origin.
She tried to use her sensory abilities to control the two people behind her. Their expressions froze for a moment, then they broke free from the control of the unknown mutant, their faces gradually softening. Jiang Ling spoke to them in her mind, "What happened to you just now?"
"I don't know. My last memory seems to be when I returned home, and I even dreamed of you!"
"I don't know. I was about to grab a drink, and the next moment I was on the balcony."
After a while, there were some metallic friction sounds from the isolation door at the entrance of the passage, and the manual rotating bolt was turned by something from the outside, but those who should have noticed this abnormal event did not react at all, they were still immersed in the joy from the bottom of their hearts.
Then, a long arm pushed open the escape hatch on the isolation gate. From where Jiang Ling was, she could only see a few legs resting on the doorframe. A creaking sound of flesh and metal rang out as a monster emerged from a manual escape hatch barely wide enough for one person. This mutant, roughly two stories tall, resembled an upside-down pot, its base covered in long, bare white legs and its upper surface crisscrossed with arms and heads. The expressions on those heads were indescribable, while the arms grasped various weapons.
Jiang Ling had never seen a mutant like this. She only remembered a similar monster from a horror game, but that monster didn't have any mind control abilities. The cheering people blocking the entrance were completely unaware of their impending death. They continued to cheer as if the mutant didn't exist. If these people had stayed there, would the soldiers have opened fire without hesitation? Jiang Ling didn't know, and she didn't want to dwell on it. She was trying to use her sensory abilities to help them.
She'd never experienced so many people's senses at once. It felt like falling into a washing machine and then tumbling down a cliff. Jiang Ling's stomach churned, but she couldn't vomit. She clutched the windowsill, desperately trying to maintain her balance. Fortunately, the perceptions coming from these people were intermittent and didn't distract her from her thoughts. She felt like there was a consciousness living in their heads, one that was trying to attack her tentacles.
In an unseen location, Jiang Ling and the mutant engaged in their first clash, a battle reminiscent of two octopuses. Jiang Ling's tentacles were stronger, while the mutant's were even more numerous, resulting in a frenzied exchange of blows. During this time, the real-life mutants and the surrounding crowd froze in place, their expressions becoming incredibly captivating as Jiang Ling and the others engaged in a virtual battle.
Jiang Ling felt more curious than disgusted about this strange battle in her mind. After adapting to the dizziness and nausea at the beginning, she was even a little happy. She had never found anyone with similar abilities to herself, and this feeling of pleasure was actually the pleasure of finding a companion. After discovering that she was not the only one in the world, Jiang Ling felt inexplicably relieved, and her fighting power increased rapidly. She extended more tentacles of consciousness and wrapped around the little guys who were still fighting stubbornly. Then, a voice suddenly appeared in her mind: "Mom! I can't breathe!"
"What?" Jiang Ling was momentarily stunned. Several tentacles of consciousness took advantage of the opportunity to break free and escape. Then, gunshots rang out outside the window, and two people trapped by mind control collapsed unconscious. Then, as the space for the clashing consciousnesses decreased, more and more tentacles lost Jiang Ling's control. Suddenly, gunfire rang out outside the window, and people around him fell to the ground, shot one after another. This triggered an avalanche effect. Jiang Ling soon lost touch with the consciousness. Meanwhile, more heads in the mutant outside regained consciousness. They began to control the arms and legs of the torso, causing the mutant to move again after a brief pause of several minutes.
"Whoosh!" A rocket was fired from a land-based drone and exploded on the mutant that had just slaughtered hundreds of people. The fragments produced by the explosion created a crater with a diameter of two meters on the mountain of flesh, but failed to stop the mutant's functions.
More explosions rang out, shattering the glass in the surrounding suites.
"Everyone! Everyone who can still control their bodies! Please stay away from Areas Three and Four immediately! Others, do not approach the passage, do not approach!" The loudspeakers hanging from the ceiling broadcast these voices in a loop at maximum power. The man's words were very fierce, and he was almost cursing.
Jiang Ling regained consciousness from the turmoil, realizing she hadn't saved a single person. She collapsed. She slumped down on the balcony, oblivious to the explosions outside, as if what happened next had nothing to do with her. She wasn't a hero, a soldier, or a volunteer. She was just an ordinary person. Even if an ordinary person possessed superpowers, their thoughts and ideas couldn't escape their own framework. For a moment, she felt like she'd been lost in self-admiration these past few days. Nothing she'd done could even remotely compare to what this country had done.
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