Chapter 112: Crisis and… Gains?

“Gauss Rifle” was actually an unscientific name. The weapon in Jason’s hands should have technically been classified as a “particle beam projector,” as its ammunition was infinitesimally small, consisting entirely of a concentrated stream of protons. The military simply called it a “Gauss Rifle” because the name sounded intimidating.

As Jason pulled the charging ring, a blinding beam of intense blue light erupted from the muzzle.

The proton stream itself was invisible to the naked eye. The brilliant blue flash was actually the result of high-velocity protons violently colliding with atmospheric molecules, supercharging them and instantly converting the air into glowing plasma. In short, the beam was leaving a trail of miniature lightning in its wake.

With a deafening BOOM, a violent explosion detonated exactly 2 kilometers down the corridor!

The blast radius wasn’t massive, only about 15 meters in diameter. But the moment the proton beam struck its target, it generated a localized secondary magnetic field. The terrifying kinetic heat birthed a blinding white sphere of plasma at the epicenter!

Jason had already thrown himself to the deck, clamping his eyes shut. Even through his tightly squeezed eyelids, he could see the glaring, blood-red light of the flash. A massive shockwave washed over him, but thanks to the planet’s thin atmospheric pressure, he was barely able to hold his ground.

After two or three agonizing seconds, he slowly opened his eyes, squinting through his fingers to assess the damage down the hall…

What he saw left him utterly paralyzed.

He couldn’t look directly at the epicenter of the blast because the residual glare was still too intense. Instead, his eyes locked onto the massive structure looming just beyond it: roughly 2,000 meters away sat a colossal, grotesque sphere of red flesh. It was pulsating rhythmically, exactly like a giant, disembodied heart. Its surface was the sickening crimson of raw meat, covered in thousands of deep, pulsing wrinkles!

The fleshy mass was suspended in a cloudy liquid, sealed inside a towering, transparent cylindrical containment tank, like a horrific biological specimen. The murky fluid inside the tank was running dangerously low, as if the life support system had nearly dried up.

The organic mass was utterly gigantic. At a conservative estimate, its diameter exceeded 300 meters! And that was only the portion visible above the liquid line; there was no telling how much more of the nightmare was submerged.

Dozens of thick, whip-like tentacles extruded from the top of the containment tank, hanging limply over the sides. While half of them looked withered and dead, the rest were actively writhing and pulsating with life.

“What… what the hell is that? A giant brain?” After just a fleeting glimpse, an overwhelming sense of primal terror crashed down on Jason.

Run! Run! His survival instincts screamed at him with absolute clarity. This wasn’t a synthetic illusion; this was real!

His Gauss shot had struck one of the tentacles hanging outside the tank. However, the containment glass was incredibly durable; the kinetic blast had only left a web of spiderweb cracks on the cylinder, leaving the central fleshy mass completely unharmed.

However, a torrent of thick, viscous yellow fluid was gushing from the severed tentacle, dripping down the glass like alien blood. The sight made Jason’s skin crawl.

He had no idea what kind of offensive capabilities the organic mass possessed, but he knew one thing for certain: staying in this chamber meant certain death!

The moment the shot connected, the entity seemed to erupt in pure, unadulterated fury. Its rhythmic pulsing turned violent. With every throb, a massive shockwave of pure psychic malice slammed into Jason. It felt as if an invisible sledgehammer had just smashed directly into his skull!

His vision swam, the edges of his sight tunneling to black as his consciousness violently wavered. He hadn’t been physically struck, yet he felt overwhelmingly dizzy, and his motor functions were completely spiraling out of his control!

A localized telepathic attack? Or something worse…?

…I can’t pass out!!

Jason reacted purely on instinct. Just as his knees began to buckle, he bit down on his own tongue with devastating force. The taste of blood flooded his mouth, and the white-hot spike of pain shocked his brain back to reality.

But in that exact moment, a glint of light caught his eye. Resting on a pedestal roughly 20 meters away was a strange, fist-sized, jet-black metallic sphere. It was perfectly smooth and practically humming with energy.

Take it! You have to take it!

Jason’s heart hammered against his ribs as a strange, overwhelming compulsion washed over him.

Take it! Take it! He could almost hear the desperate, echoing shouts of the Federation’s top scientists and engineers. It felt as if the entirety of the human race was standing right behind him, pushing him forward… This spherical device was the holy grail of alien technology they had been searching for!

I have to get it! I absolutely have to secure it!

Is this a hallucination? Or my own greed? His body was violently rejecting his commands, his head spinning so fast he felt nauseous. He knew with terrifying certainty that crossing those 20 meters was practically suicidal. It was the razor’s edge between life and death.

“…Damn it!” In that split second, all rational thought went out the window. Jason fully embraced the madness. He roared, forced his stiff legs to move, and sprinted toward the pedestal like a madman. Gritting his teeth, he forced his trembling fingers to raise the Gauss Rifle and fired another blind shot toward the tank.

Another violent explosion rocked the chamber.

He knew the blast wouldn’t penetrate the containment glass; he was just buying time. The resulting electromagnetic pulse from the proton detonation created a microscopic ripple in the psychic field, briefly shielding his mind from the entity’s attack. It gave him a one-second window of clarity!

He fired shot after shot, the brilliant blue flashes strobing off the glass dome. The fleshy mass throbbed faster, and Jason felt the invisible hammer relentlessly pounding against his skull.

He dropped to his knees, eyes squeezed shut, blindly firing the rifle with one hand while desperately crawling forward with the other. In less than three seconds, his gloved fingers clamped around the jet-black sphere.

“Got it!”

But there was no time to celebrate. He was now 20 meters closer to the alien entity! Those twenty meters had exponentially magnified the psychic pressure. The telepathic static was so intense he was literally at his biological breaking point. Biting his tongue was no longer enough to keep him awake!

“…Not today!”

Jason saw stars, his vision going completely black. He violently slammed his fist into his own chest, triggering the auto-injector he had primed while patching his suit earlier!

A massive, concentrated dose of combat stimulants and synthetic adrenaline mainlined straight into his heart. The chemicals hit his system like a freight train; a burning warmth flooded his brain, forcefully tearing him out of the psychic fog.

Run! Move!

Jason spun on his heel. He fired one final, wild shot with the Gauss Rifle before dropping the heavy weapon to the deck to free his hands.

Run! He had to get out of the core! He could feel the phantom weight of humanity’s expectations pushing him forward. He couldn’t die here. He refused to fall!

Move! Faster!

Suddenly, he felt a faint, rhythmic tremor vibrating through the floor plating. It was a localized acoustic frequency coming from the outer corridor!

...Are they breaching the blast door? It’s a rescue operation!

Jason didn’t have the mental bandwidth to confirm if it was real or another hallucination; he just had to gamble on it. Without hesitating, as the edges of his vision began to blacken again, he scooped the unconscious Henry off the deck, threw him over his shoulder, and sprinted blindly toward the exit.

Seconds later, his vision completely failed. He was running completely blind. His entire body began to violently convulse, and an insidious, overpowering urge commanded his legs to turn around and walk back to the core.

His consciousness was rapidly dissolving. His cognitive functions were shutting down one by one. If he paused for even a microsecond, the entity would seize total control of his nervous system.

This was a pure battle of wills.

“I will never… submit to you!”

Jason had lost all sensory input; pure, subconscious muscle memory took the wheel, driving his body forward against the crushing weight of the telepathic assault. To an outside observer, he looked like a man walking through waist-deep mud, every single grueling step requiring every ounce of his superhuman strength.

An immense, unyielding willpower anchored his soul. The slightest lapse in concentration would result in instantaneous hypnosis. That short, 1-kilometer sprint back down the corridor became a torturous eternity, taking him nearly twenty minutes of agonizing effort to cross!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The entire UFO violently shuddered. A deafening, mechanical roar echoed from just around the corner ahead. Through the darkness, Jason thought he saw a blinding flash of tactical light. His willpower violently flared!

“Fall back! Everyone get the hell out of here!”

He lunged toward the light, screaming at the top of his lungs, no longer caring if the communicator were compromised or if anyone could even hear him.

In the next second, several armored hands grabbed him. Shane’s voice, thick with overwhelming relief, rang out clearly. “It’s the Captain! We got him!”

“Run! Move! Get out!” Jason gasped.

Having breached the door, Jason was completely spent. His physical and mental reserves hit absolute zero, and his body went limp…

But the nightmare wasn’t over. The exact microsecond the strike team grabbed Jason, the entity’s psychic malice slammed into them like a tidal wave. Their eyes instantly rolled back into their heads, and their bodies went rigid.

Shane bit completely through his lower lip, using the blinding pain to buy himself two seconds of clarity. In those two seconds, he desperately looped his high-tensile tether securely around Jason’s harness!

The squad members weren’t Enhanced Superhumans; they couldn’t withstand the psychic pressure for more than a few seconds. Their faces went slack, their expressions turning completely dead as they involuntarily turned around and began marching back into the dark. But the heavy tethers anchored to their waists snapped taut, violently jerking them to a halt.

“The door is breached!” “We have the Captain!”

Those were the last two frantic transmissions that came over the radio before the communicator went dead. Outside the breach, Calvin felt a sickening wave of dread wash over him. His eyes went wide as he saw the four tethers anchored to the bulkhead violently snap taut.

“Pull! Something’s wrong!” Calvin screamed. “Hit the winches! Drag them back!”

“Heave!” Marcus’s head was spinning from the residual psychic bleed-out, but Calvin’s scream snapped him into action. He grabbed the heavy tether with both hands, planted his boots, and hauled with all his monstrous strength.

Deep inside the ship, the fleshy mass was ignoring all power constraints, redlining its psychic output. Even standing outside the blast door, the perimeter team was being hammered by the telepathic shockwaves. Their faces were flushed crimson, their teeth grinding as they fought to stay awake… but after ten agonizing seconds, they too began to succumb to the trance!

“If you’re fading, hit yourselves with the K3 stims! We have to drag them out!” Calvin’s neck veins bulged as he screamed, pulling on the line with everything he had. “Hold the line! Nobody lets go!”

“Raaargh! Damn it!” Marcus roared. His face was twisted in a mask of pure, berserker rage. Realizing his mind was slipping, he drew his serrated combat knife and violently plunged it straight into his own armored thigh! He was completely out of options; he didn’t care about compromising his spacesuit or bleeding out. He just needed the agonizing pain to keep him awake long enough to pull his Captain to safety…

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