Chapter 109: Psychological Warfare

Pacing down the silent metal corridor, the only source of light came from the heavy tactical flashlight in his hand. It was so deathly quiet that Jason could hear the thudding of his own heartbeat and the rhythmic crunch of his boots. Every sound traveled far in the dark, bouncing back with a faint, eerie echo.

It created the terrifying illusion that someone or something was walking right behind him.

In such a desolate, pitch-black environment, psychological pressure multiplies exponentially. Add the knowledge of an unseen enemy lurking in the shadows, and an ordinary person’s mind would likely be broken within hours.

Fortunately, Jason was no ordinary man. Though his muscles were tense, he was far from his breaking point. He continued his cautious exploration, keeping a strict watch over his own mental state.

He wasn’t entirely alone, either. The medic, Henry, was slung over his shoulder. Even though Henry was unconscious, his steady breathing provided a comforting anchor to reality. Having another human being nearby kept the fear at control.

“Don’t worry, I’m getting us out of here,” Jason muttered under his breath. It was the promise he had made before the mission began: he was responsible for bringing every single team member home.

But after navigating the labyrinthine halls for a while, a chilling realization hit him: he was completely lost.

No, I didn’t just lose my way, he thought. My sense of direction is being actively jammed.

Jason scowled. Bizarre, fleeting hallucinations kept flashing across his mind, constantly fracturing his focus and subtly nudging him to walk in one specific direction.

Fighting off the mental static required absolute concentration, draining his cognitive reserves at an alarming rate. This was the exact phenomenon that had lured the rest of the team.

A knot of unease tightened in his gut. If he kept wandering blindly, he was going to walk straight into a trap.

While he didn’t know what the entity controlling the ship wanted, it clearly wasn’t friendly. Jason had been deliberately walking in the exact opposite direction of the psychic pull. He instinctively wanted to put as much distance between himself and the source as possible. Yet, paradoxically, the further away he tried to walk, the louder his danger instincts screamed.

A cold sweat broke out across his forehead.

Wait. This telepathic interference is strong enough to muddle my thoughts, but it isn’t strong enough to hijack my motor functions… As an Enhanced Superhuman, my willpower is too strong to be brute-forced.

That’s it! It’s a double bluff

. He stopped dead in his tracks. Whatever is in here is highly intelligent. It knew it couldn’t physically force me to walk to the center, so it anticipated my psychological resistance. It knew I would deliberately do the exact opposite of what the trance demanded.

It wanted me to walk the other way. Which means… I’m walking right into the real trap! The direction the trance was pushing me toward was actually the exit.

Realizing this, Jason immediately spun around and took a few hesitant steps back the way he came, his face pale behind his visor.

But if I follow this logic, should I just surrender to the pull?

No. The entity could alter the direction of the psychic drag at any second. If I rely on it, I’ll be walking blind again.

He was plagued by a terrifying uncertainty: what if he was slowly meandering his way toward the ship’s core? If he breached the central section, he was as good as dead. He no longer knew if he could trust his own gut instincts, or if his instincts had been entirely hijacked to betray him.

It’s a terrifyingly brilliant plan, he realized grimly. Their understanding of neurology is centuries ahead of humanity’s. They are using basic electromagnetic frequencies to induce vivid hallucinations and make the human nervous system there puppet.

Jason walked forward for a few more minutes before stopping at a junction. He set Henry down gently and leaned against the cold bulkhead.

He didn’t dare take another step. His combat instincts were screaming that he was in lethal danger, yet a synthetic, forced sense of relief was washing over his brain, whispering that safety was just around the next corner.

The cognitive dissonance was agonizing. He had no idea which sensation was real. For the first time in his life, his prized sixth sense had completely failed him.

What exactly am I up against? A rogue AI? Or are there actual, living extraterrestrials barricaded in the core?

Jason checked his HUD. An hour and a half had passed since he was separated from the squad. Command and the rest of the strike team were undoubtedly scrambling to mount a rescue operation. But he prayed they wouldn’t do anything reckless. If they blindly charged back into this sector, they would instantly fall back under the hypnosis.

He was barely holding his own mind together; he wouldn’t be able to save them a second time.

Taking a deep, ragged breath, he analyzed the tactical board.

Their power reserves must be practically non-existent, barely enough to maintain life support. They can’t afford to waste a single joule. Otherwise, they would have just dispatched a pair of combat drones to apprehend me.

Or… maybe all their drones are scrapped?

Jason forced his breathing to slow, his mind racing through the possibilities. In psychological warfare, patience was the ultimate weapon.

Is it trying to lure me to the center to open a dialogue?

No. Absolutely not. He immediately scrapped the idea. Does a tiger try to negotiate with a rabbit? Does an eagle establish diplomatic ties with a field mouse? Impossible. He had felt the pure, unadulterated malice radiating from the psychic. This was a predator playing with its food, not an ambassador seeking for a talk.

So why go through the effort of luring us in?

The technological chasm between their two species was so vast that Jason couldn’t fathom what use an advanced alien would have for a human. Out of habit, he reached up to run a hand through his hair, only for his armored gloves to clink uselessly against his glass visor.

The occupants of this vessel had been buried here for millions of years. It was highly probable that the Federation’s recent excavation efforts had woken them from a deep hibernation. After millennia of dormancy, it made perfect sense that their reactors were running out of feul, leaving them no choice but to rely on low-cost, psychological warfare.

If I were an advanced alien commander... Jason grounded himself, trying to reverse-engineer the enemy’s tactical doctrine.

If he were commanding an advanced starship that had crash-landed on a primitive planet, what would his first move be?

He would lock down the perimeter and assume a hyper-defensive posture. Given the massive gap in technology and ideology, diplomacy would be a waste of time. He would simply need to flex a fraction of his superior firepower to completely terrify the primitive natives, forcing them to back off for a few months.

That would buy him enough time to route his remaining power to a distress beacon, calling his homeworld for a rescue fleet!

The realization hit Jason like a physical blow. If that was the enemy’s endgame, humanity was completely screwed. If a fully operational Interstellar Civilization answered that distress call, the entire Federation would be exterminated as easily as a nest of termites.

But the current situation contradicted that theory. Why bother luring the strike team inside? Were they trying to harvest them for biological fuel? Or did they intend to mind-control the commanding officers and enslave the Federation from the inside out?

The implications were horrifying. However, the fact that the enemy hadn’t utilized a single kinetic or energy weapon told Jason two critical things: One, their power grid was genuinely failing. Two, they lacked the physical capacity to launch a direct assault. Furthermore, if they were barricaded in the core, they were likely completely immobile.

Regardless of their motives, Jason’s primary objective remained the same: break out of this maze.

The escape plan was simple in theory: cut through the mental control, navigate to the outer perimeter of the hull, and use the Gauss Rifle to blow a hole straight out into the Martian basin.

The ship was already heavily compromised. Even if the enemy had sliced into the automated doors, they could only lock down a handful of sectors. They couldn’t seal the entire grid.

The problem was his heavily compromised navigation. Trapped in a pitch-black labyrinth where every corridor looked identical, fighting off severe hallucinations, finding the outer hull was going to be a nightmare. He had absolutely no idea where he was on the ship’s map.

The hostile entity was relying on advanced neurological interference to drag him to the core, keeping him completely disoriented. But Jason was determined to crack the enemy’s logic and march in the exact opposite direction.

Shattering the enemy’s psychological hold over him was his only path to survival. This was a war of the mind, and to win it, he needed absolute, ice-cold rationality.

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