Chapter 193: Investigation

Jason frowned deeply.

Despite the sheer absurdity of the claim, Peter didn’t seem to be lying, and he certainly had no logical reason to invent such a terrifying story just to amuse himself…

Could it be that what he’s saying is actually true?!

“I’m telling the truth! Captain Jason, you have to believe me! You have to believe me!” Seeing Jason remain silent, Peter shouted again, desperation clear in his voice.

For some reason, the “Black” entity deep within his mind seemed absolutely terrified of Jason. It had completely stopped fighting for control and had gone entirely silent, hiding like a frightened animal. As a result, Peter had almost no difficulty controlling his physical body in the captain’s presence.

“I’m telling the truth! We… we have to investigate this immediately!” Peter shouted frantically, acting as if the end of the world was imminent.

After pondering for a long time, Jason finally made a decision. “…Calm down. Sit here and wait for me for a moment!”

He stepped out of the office and immediately dialed Lily’s number. In a potential crisis like this, he had to unconditionally trust at least one person. If he refused to trust anyone and became as paranoid as Peter, he wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything.

The absolute best and most reliable candidate was Lily. Her unique telepathic abilities were perfectly suited for exactly this kind of situation.

Moreover, apart from Dr. Roman and a select few others, no one else on the ship knew about her abilities, not even her close friends like Austin. Because Jason worked with her every single day and had never noticed any strange, uncharacteristic behavior, the mathematical probability that her memories had been overwritten was microscopically small.

A few minutes after receiving the urgent notification, Lily knocked on the captain’s office door. Jason quickly ushered her into an adjoining private room.

The two whispered for several minutes. When Jason relayed Peter’s frantic story, even Lily was momentarily stunned.

Memory alteration?

Could a weapon like that actually exist?

She had initially assumed Jason’s secretive behavior meant some massive political crisis, but she had never expected something like this. She was left momentarily speechless.

“…You want me to read everyone’s mind on the ship to check for an alien invasion?” Lily asked slowly after a long silence. “Jason, that’s incredibly difficult. There are nearly 60,000 people aboard. Unless you can somehow capture everyone, line them up, and let me scan them one by one… it’s inevitable that some sleeper agents would slip through. Furthermore, an operation of that scale would take weeks, if not months.”

She paused, looking at him seriously. “And on another note… you know we can’t just expose my abilities to the public like this.”

Jason understood her meaning perfectly. This kind of investigation had to be done in absolute secrecy; they couldn’t even tell Austin or the security chiefs. If the general public found out that a high-ranking official was a telepath, it would trigger massive riots. No one wanted their deepest, most private thoughts exposed to the government. Lily’s abilities were a top-secret asset, and they needed to remain that way.

Lily thought for a moment before offering a solution. “I don’t think a ship-wide scan is necessary right now. If the metal sphere truly acted as a localized neural transmitter, the infection would definitely start at ground zero: the Silver Lake Supercomputing Center. We just need to go there and check if the researchers are functioning normally…”

Jason sighed in relief. Lily was right; the prime suspects were the scientists at the Silver Lake Supercomputing Center.

After all, the alien metal sphere was being held and studied by the personnel there. If the device was altering memories, the IT researchers would be the first victims. Case in point: Peter had originally been a low-level researcher stationed at that exact facility when he fainted.

This drastically narrowed the scope of their investigation. If the scientists inside the supercomputing center were clean, then it was highly likely the rest of the ship was clean as well.

I hope so… Jason thought grimly.

“You should scan Peter first just to be sure,” Jason finally instructed.

Lily nodded, and the two of them walked back into the main office together.

Peter had been lost in terrified thought while he waited. What if a mind-controlled security guard suddenly bursts in and shoots me? What if the entire sector is swarming with aliens right now, and even the captain is powerless to stop them?! He grew increasingly panicked, feeling as if his bladder might actually explode from the stress.

Seeing Jason walk back in with a young woman, Peter quickly forced his wild thoughts down and sat up straight.

“I am going to ask you a series of questions. You will answer them clearly, one by one. Do not ramble about anything else,” Jason ordered sternly.

Peter nodded frantically, while Lily sat down, pretending to take shorthand notes on a digital pad.

The two engaged in a rapid-fire Q&A session, covering specific details: exactly when Peter’s memory was altered, the physical location of the incident, his recent medical condition, and the specific nature of his internal communications with the alien personality. Jason deliberately re-asked several questions they had already covered to check for inconsistencies.

Lily appeared to be diligently recording the conversation, but in reality, she was deeply focused on reading Peter’s surface thoughts.

Peter’s mind was incredibly chaotic and complex, jumping erratically from one anxious thought to another like a frantic pinball. This was typical for an ordinary human under extreme stress; it was very difficult for a non-telepath to maintain a singular, focused train of thought.

“If only I could win Dr. Chloe’s heart…”

“I definitely didn’t invent the superconductor. No one can ever find that out, right?”

“…I’m telling the truth! Captain Jason doesn’t believe me, does he? What the hell am I supposed to do if he doesn’t believe me?!”

“If the entire population has already been overwritten, even Captain Jason won’t be able to save us. What happens then? Is humanity just doomed?”

Reading these frantic thoughts, Lily frowned slightly, but she continued to scan deeper.

“Captain Jason really trusts this woman? Well… I remember Black once said that the two of them possess exceptionally high ’spirit energy levels’ and could easily detect my ’abnormality.’ That means the probability of her being an alien puppet is zero.”

“What exactly is a ’spirit energy level’ anyway? Black never explained it clearly. I’ll have to interrogate him later when I have time.”

“…The captain is really lucky, though. She’s gorgeous. I’d give her a solid 8 out of 10. And… wow, she is stacked! Based on my years of experience back on Earth, I’d estimate at least a C-cup, maybe even a D. Man, the captain is so lucky!”

Lily’s frown deepened. Isn’t it a bit pathetic that this idiot is thinking about my chest size during a potential apocalypse? she thought, annoyed.

Suddenly, Peter felt a sharp, stinging pain in his head, like a mental mosquito bite and quickly stopped his inappropriate daydreaming.

After about fifteen minutes of questioning, Jason finally caught Lily’s subtle nod. “Alright, Peter,” Jason said in a deep voice. “We understand the gravity of the situation. We are going to investigate your claims immediately. You can return to the medical ward. Don’t worry, you are safe.”

“Captain Jason, everything I said is the absolute truth! You have to believe me!” Peter urged one last time before finally leaving the office, his heart still hammering with trepidation.

Once the door closed, Jason turned to her. “Well? Did you find anything? Is he telling the truth?”

Lily nodded seriously. “When he answered you, he wasn’t lying. He genuinely believes everything he just said.”

“However,” she added, “he definitely didn’t invent the room-temperature superconductor. His thoughts were very clear on that. It seems the alien entity within his mind provided the formula.”

She took a deep breath. “…Roughly eighty percent of the neural fluctuations in his brain are standard human thought patterns. However, the remaining twenty percent are composed of unknown, highly complex fluctuations that I cannot read. And Jason… those unknown fluctuations feel identically similar to the psychic signature of the alien fleshy sphere we encountered on Mars.”

She then summarized Peter’s frantic internal monologue, highlighting the confirmation that he hadn’t invented the superconductor and the alien’s passing mention of ’spirit energy levels.’

Naturally, she omitted the wildly inappropriate and boring thoughts regarding her physical appearance.

Jason paced around the room, his expression darkening. Even if there was only a one-in-ten-thousand chance that a mass infection had occurred, humanity’s situation was extremely precarious.

Humanity had been happily scavenging alien tech for years, never once considering the possibility of insidious “memory weapons.”

“Let’s go,” Jason said firmly. “We’re heading to the Light Lake Supercomputing Center.”

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