The room that Bryce and Alyssa broke into was very dark and had a very unpleasant smell, but Bryce and Alyssa didn't have time to complain about the hygiene at that moment.
The moment Bryce entered the room, he jumped up and slammed his hand on the door, locking the metal hatch from the inside—that way, even if those damned bugs were still searching for them, the door would at least hold them off for a while.
Immediately afterwards, Bryce and Elisa collapsed to the ground. They seized every opportunity to rest and prepare for another possible escape.
However, after holding their breath and waiting for a long time, the rustling sound of the monsters outside the door did not follow them as closely as before.
Even though their breathing and heartbeats had gradually returned to normal, the silence outside the door still made them feel uneasy.
At that moment, the surroundings were completely silent; it seemed that only their heartbeats and breathing could make any sound in the entire world.
"I...I hope I'm not being too optimistic..."
Elisa used her elbows to prop herself up and struggled to sit up from the ground. She looked at Bryce and gave him a weak smile.
“No, not optimistic. I think we might actually have escaped this time. That guy… I mean, the ‘kind person’ who gave us this thing,” Bryce shook his personal terminal and gave a wry smile, “is probably pretty good food for those bugs.”
Elisa relaxed.
But then she pressed her hands against her cheeks and rubbed them vigorously to try and wake herself up.
"So, let's take a look at the situation here, and then we'll stick to the old way?"
She said.
She was referring to the two of them taking turns keeping watch at night, with one sleeping while the other was on guard, and that's how they'd managed for the past week.
However, due to the insects' maddening sensitivity, their shelter was always quickly discovered by the monsters...
Bryce nodded.
"Hopefully this place can hold out longer this time."
He muttered to himself.
Then he turned on his flashlight and carefully searched every crevice and every piece of metal wall for any traces the insects might have left: slime, rust left by saliva corrosion, deep scratches made by the insects' claws on the metal surface, and bloodstains and bits of flesh that would inevitably be left wherever the insects went...
During their week on the run, Bryce and Elisa had become quite calm and skilled at doing this.
"Wow—"
This time, however, after seeing everything around him clearly, Bryce let out a whistle, his mood becoming more elevated than before.
"This place looks pretty sturdy."
After an extremely thorough search, the two found no trace of any insect infestation.
This is incredibly fortunate for them now.
What's even more wonderful is that all four walls here are thick, flat, and smooth metallic in color—which gave Bryce a sense of security.
These walls are clearly new alloy walls installed during the most recent refurbishment of the spaceship, rather than the old, fragile, and dilapidated metal walls found throughout the Helios, which have become fragile and mottled over three hundred years. This means they might have more time to deal with any insects attempting to break in.
There is almost no unnecessary clutter here.
Some instruments were haphazardly piled up in the most shadowy corner, while in the middle of the room, more than a dozen rectangular silver metal blocks were arranged in a regular pattern.
Elisa walked over and placed her palm on the metal block.
A vibration that would be completely undetectable without careful examination emanated from beneath the metal block.
Tiny specks of light would occasionally flicker on the surface of the metal block.
Elisa frowned slightly.
"This thing is still working?" she said, somewhat incredulously.
"What's this?"
Bryce walked over to her and, mimicking Elisa, felt the slight trembling of the metal cubes with his palm.
“Supercomputers,” Elisa said. “These are all…if the artificial intelligence system on the Helios hadn’t been stripped away, these computers would have been its ‘brains’.”
She turned her head with some suspicion and began to look around the room they had just barged into.
"I remember, the Helios didn't have any artificial intelligence at all?"
Bryce asked, somewhat puzzled.
“That’s right, that’s why this is so strange. Those artificial intelligences consume too much energy, and they are too uncontrollable. A long time ago, older spaceships like the Apollo had their individual intelligence erased. However, since the computer components were originally embedded as a whole inside the spaceship, they ultimately didn’t remove it from the spaceship…”
"But it's still working, someone's using this thing—"
The unspoken understanding between the two began to take effect once again. Without saying a word, Bryce had already cautiously reached for his waist.
But all he could find was his empty waistband, and then he remembered that his gun had been discarded earlier due to insufficient power.
However, this might be a good thing, since he doesn't really want to provoke certain people—especially if they have guns.
It was an exceptionally thin figure, and from Bryce's current angle, it was difficult to make out his features. However, out of the corner of his eye, Bryce caught a glimpse of the gun in the man's hand. His movements immediately froze.
"How did you get in...?"
Even just by his voice, Bryce could tell that the man was in a terrible state; his trembling, neurotic voice sounded full of despair and fear.
Even the gun in the young man's hand was trembling uncontrollably due to his extremely poor mental state.
"Sith?"
However, just as Bryce was on guard, Elisa's gaze went straight over Bryce's shoulder and looked directly at him.
Then she opened her eyes wide in shock and called out the other person's name.
“…Elisa?”
Sith Lem looked equally shocked. He stared blankly at Elisa, and his hand trembled, causing the gun to fall to the ground.
Bryce turned his head quickly, and when he saw Sith's familiar face, which always looked tired, he couldn't help but exclaim with surprise, "You're alive! Oh God, this is wonderful—you're alive!"
Sith was their friend and had been on the ship for a long time, responsible for comparing star charts and calculating the coordinates of their current planet.
In the early days after the jump failed and the ship had to make an emergency landing, the group was still able to find some humor in getting together to curse Taran and complain about their work... However, as the situation on the ship became increasingly out of control, Sith almost never appeared in front of them again.
Before this, Elisa and Bryce had both been pessimistic, thinking that given Sith's personality, he had probably already died from the mouthparts of his crew, who were constantly mutating into monsters.
Upon seeing Elisa and Bryce, Sith also appeared unusually excited.
He was almost ready to burst into tears in the arms of his old friend...
God knows how long it took Elisa to calm Sith down when he was on the verge of losing control.
In addition, they also learned from the Sith why those supercomputers, which were originally supposed to be used by artificial intelligence, continued to operate.
...
"Wait, you mean... that motherboard?! That motherboard actually contains the star map left behind by the Providence?!"
In the dark server room, Elisa accidentally raised her voice.
But no one blamed him for it, after all, the information they got from Sith Lem was far too important for them at the moment.
The motherboard that Lin Xi risked his life to retrieve from the aircraft was given to the ship's technicians for data decryption, and Sith Lem was naturally one of them.
"Everything went smoothly at first, but soon... those things happened..." Sith still trembled as he recalled the anomaly that occurred in the data processing room. "Joanna, Bailey... one by one... they all became very strange, and then... then they all turned into those disgusting, inhuman things..."
As his colleagues left one by one, a helpless Sith could only watch as the progress bar on the motherboard slowly climbed to ninety percent and then got stuck. If Sith were just an ordinary person, he probably would have given up and let the same things that happened to his colleagues happen to him.
“I was being chased by those things… and then I accidentally escaped here. And then I found these computers—” As he spoke, Sith looked longingly at the metal blocks around him.
"You decided to get these idle electronic brains running again, to let them help you crack the motherboard, right? Oh, Sith, you're a fucking genius! With the star map, we can go back! We can get out of this hellish place!"
Bryce couldn't help but give Sith a big hug.
He didn't feel the need to exert too much force, partly because his own body was on the verge of collapse, and partly because Sith was so thin that he looked almost like a skeleton covered in pale skin.
“No, no, I’m not a genius,” Sith said with a bitter expression after hearing Bryce’s praise. “All the data on that motherboard has been decoded, but… but we can’t see the files inside. When we were cracking this motherboard, we overwrote our program onto it to make it work for us, and now… now…”
As he spoke, Sith began to stutter again.
“Now that the ship is Taran’s domain, the key content on this motherboard, like everything else on the ship, probably requires Taran’s authorization for us to access, right?”
Finally, it was Elisa who spoke the terrible truth directly on behalf of Sith.
"Taran...Taran?"
Bryce was completely stunned.
“That’s right, it’s him. We need to find a way to allow him to give us the star map. Also, if we really want to leave here, we need him to open the escape pod or start the engine.”
As soon as Sith finished speaking, the three of them fell silent.
They looked at each other, and both saw a hint of despair on each other's faces.
...
despair.
At the same moment, the same despair also enveloped Lin Xi's heart.
Just a moment ago, Lin Xi felt as if he had merged with a long, narrow corridor filled with hungry and bloodthirsty insects.
He turned into that worm.
And that worm was indeed himself.
He could even clearly see the backs of Bryce and Elisa through the heat source and infrared light.
Bryce, Elisa—
In that instant, he almost shouted it out.
But all that came out of its throat was that grotesque and evil hiss.
Immediately afterwards, Lin Xi felt as if she had been forcibly expelled from her mental world by something.
That feeling couldn't be worse.
Lin Xi collapsed to the ground, her body trembling uncontrollably, her head throbbing as if it would explode at any moment.
Cold, hunger, and... a strong sense of emptiness was spreading through his body.
He yearned for a source of energy, and for more followers... To this day, "He" has still not established the prototype of a proper Zerg hive, and those disobedient subjects have plunged the Zerg queen within him into extreme anxiety.
"Lin Xi".
As soon as Lin Xi fell, "Number One" quickly appeared beside him.
The insect's strange, grotesque body clung tightly to Lin Xi, and a row of small holes on either side of "Number One's" ribs suddenly opened, releasing a captivating and sweet fragrance...
Lin Xi's body, which was originally so tense that it was almost convulsing, immediately relaxed after smelling that rich fragrance.
Even his headache lessened a bit.
A sense of security.
Lin Xi was unwilling to admit it, but he couldn't deny his most instinctive feelings.
"Number One" is His retinue, His King Insect.
Its embrace and scent soothed the restless "He".
Similarly, as Lin Xi's body relaxed, her consciousness involuntarily became sluggish and relaxed as well...
He remained weak and helpless, letting "Number One" hold him tightly—a close embrace he could never have imagined when he was still human.
"Number One's" arms trapped Lin Xi's upper body, and then silently... two fleshy, embracing legs emerged from "Number One's" back, beneath its wings, and gripped Lin Xi's waist tightly, rendering him completely immobile.
For a few minutes, Lin Xi even had the illusion that she was about to be directly embedded into the body of "Number One".
But what truly jolted him awake was not the embrace, but the bulge on the eighth abdominal plate of "Number One"...
There are also bony tubes that bulge rapidly from below the abdominal plate.
"Lin Xi..."
"Number One" lowered his head and whispered sweetly in Lin Xi's ear.
This is its favorite "Lin Xi", so...
Author's Note:
Number One: It's confirmed, it's the bug I like. So happy! ~ I can do the things my favorite bugs love to do!
Lin Xi: Aa ...
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