Chapter 86: No Way Out

Lily was a quiet girl who rarely spoke. Her absolute favorite places on the ship were the library and the research laboratories.

She loved to lose herself in thought in these quiet spaces, sometimes spending an entire day just sitting there or rather, a whole day working in her own head. Her mind would race, continuously calculating the design schematics and operational parameters of a new cutting robot.

The library offered a tranquil sanctuary for everyone to study, with people coming and going in total silence. There weren’t many physical books here, wood pulp was a precious commodity, so the vast majority of the collection consisted of e-books. The administration only printed a small, strictly rationed number of physical books each day to maintain a sense of culture and literary atmosphere.

She sat there simply because the absolute quiet soothed her.

The people who frequented the library rarely harbored chaotic thoughts or distracting, turbulent emotions. They were all there with a singular purpose: to study or work. In that environment, their minds were relatively clear and pure.

This was the other reason it was her favorite place.

Although she was no longer accustomed to actively using her mind reading, she still possessed an innate instinct to roughly sense a person’s nature, whether they harbored malice or benevolence.

“Mind Reading” was classified as a specific branch of parapsychology.

Many people possessed a rudimentary form of mind reading. Highly experienced psychologists could often infer a subject’s mental state by carefully observing their micro-expressions and speech patterns.

Some devoted spiritual masters, through decades of profound meditation and a pure heart, claimed to be able to sense the dark intentions hidden within cruel people.

Certain fortune tellers and supposed mystics also employed a form of “mind reading,” though theirs was usually a mix of cold reading and calculated deduction.

But Lily’s ability was entirely different. Her mind reading was a genuine, innate biological talent.

When the scientists had tested her psychic abilities, they verified several key facts: her brain structure physically differed from a baseline human’s, and under specific conditions, she entered a peculiar neurological state where she could actively sense ambient brainwaves and microcurrents in her immediate vicinity.

By intercepting these bioelectric signals, she was able to instantaneously simulate the other person’s thought processes within her own brain. Therefore, she didn’t literally “read” their thoughts like a book; instead, her brain perfectly mimicked and deduced their internal monologue based on the raw data she received.

In those fleeting moments of intense concentration, her brain operated at speeds far exceeding standard human limits. In mere seconds, she could process the same amount of computational data that would take an average person over ten hours. This raw processing power was also what allowed her to make such complex engineering deductions and theoretical assumptions in her daily work.

The accuracy rate of her “guesses” was over 99%. She was virtually never wrong.

However, mind reading was incredibly taxing on her body’s energy reserves, leaving Lily perpetually hungry. She was an absolute glutton. This was also her most frustrating quirk, she constantly craved high-calorie foods like french fries and chocolate.

Thinking about it suddenly made her stomach rumble. She lowered her head, discreetly pulled out a small piece of chocolate, and carefully took a bite. Such luxuries were incredibly expensive aboard the Noah, and she ended up spending the vast majority of her salary just feeding her accelerated metabolism. Buying her own private quarters felt like an impossible dream.

For some reason, the taste of the chocolate triggered a memory from the past, from nearly a decade ago…

The truth was, possessing mind reading was not a gift, especially not for a young girl.

Adult minds were chaotic, filthy, and complex. Even if people never acted on them, their heads were constantly filled with dark, selfish, or outright criminal thoughts.

Growing up in Oakhaven, she had overheard all sorts of horrifying things.

“What’s he bragging about? He’s just a…”

“His girlfriend? Hah, I’ve been sleeping with her for months…”

“If I take this from the register, no one’s ever going to notice, right?”

Darkness was everywhere: lust, greed, violence, fraud. Even seemingly righteous, upstanding citizens harbored deeply disturbing thoughts hidden beneath the surface. It was terrifying.

Fortunately, Lily was highly intelligent. She learned to protect herself from a very young age, instinctively keeping her distance from anyone whose mental static felt too dark or twisted. She figured that as long as she stayed away from them, she would be safe. Right?

This was likely the root cause of her severe social anxiety. Human thoughts were generally just too terrifying. She was deeply afraid to interact with people.

However, there was one person she couldn’t simply avoid: her father.

Her father was a severely abusive, domineering man who would beat her and her mother over the slightest perceived slight. In his mind, they were nothing more than his personal property, to be controlled and disposed of exactly as he saw fit.

He embodied the absolute worst traits of toxic, traditional patriarchal control, a mindset that, unfortunately, still lingered in isolated, impoverished communities.

The real tragedy was that her mother seemed to have accepted this dynamic as an unavoidable fact of life.

Young Lily learned to walk on eggshells, meticulously controlling every word and action to ensure she never gave her father an excuse to explode.

She constantly hoped that his struggling career would turn around, believing that if he found success, his violent temper might finally cool.

She missed the days when she was four or five years old. Back then, her parents had seemed happy, their home was warm, and the violence hadn’t yet started. But a few years later, following a massive career setback, everything unraveled. Her father became a hair-trigger explosive, and her mother spent her days weeping, sinking deep into severe depression.

Lily could only pray to whatever power was listening that their lives would eventually improve.

But as the years dragged on, fortune never smiled upon their family. Broken by repeated business failures, her father spiraled into severe alcoholism and gambling addiction.

And finally, after one desperate night at the tables, he backed himself into a corner with no way out.

“Lily!”

When she arrived home from school that afternoon, her mother called out to her from the doorway. Her mother’s eyes held a complex, utterly shattered expression that Lily had never seen before.

“You’re home early today,” her mother said, her voice dry and hoarse. She looked like she desperately wanted to say more, but the words died in her throat.

“Lily, the weather is beautiful today! Let’s go out and celebrate!” her father said gently. He was already wearing his coat.

His face was haggard, and his eyes were heavily bloodshot, but he was trying incredibly hard to appear kind and approachable.

That gentleness, that forced kindness… Lily hadn’t seen that look on his face in years.

Lily nodded blankly. She was only ten years old at the time.

Although she didn’t understand what they could possibly be celebrating just because the weather was nice, she was still relieved he wasn’t yelling. She didn’t fully register her mother’s erratic behavior and tentatively reached out to take her father’s hand.

In that exact instant, a wave of bottomless, abyssal malice crashed over her. It was a cold, suffocating darkness unlike anything she had ever felt, like the freezing depths of an arctic ocean.

Lily froze completely solid, goosebumps erupting across her entire body.

“What’s wrong?” her father asked, his smile straining.

Lily snapped out of her shock and instinctively focused her mind reading directly onto her father.

“Lily… I owe so much money! I have no other choice! From now on, you belong to Mr. Vance… I had no choice! If I don’t give you to him, I’m a dead man! They’ll kill me!”

His internal monologue was a roaring tempest of terror and guilt, but he had already violently justified his actions to himself: it was her or him, and he didn’t want to die.

He felt entirely trapped and was desperate to shed his responsibility and guilt by sacrificing her.

Lily immediately shifted her focus to her mother. Her mother’s mind was an overwhelming void of paralyzing sorrow and agonizing guilt. There was no plan to save her. There was nothing else.

Lily lowered her head, her mind spinning wildly.

Who is Mr. Vance? Lily had no idea who this man was, but judging by the sheer terror radiating from both her parents, he was a monster.

Her accelerated mind processed the variables in a fraction of a second, piecing together the horrifying reality of the situation.

My father lost a fortune gambling, and he’s using me to pay off his debt? Because if he doesn’t, they’ll kill him? What use is a ten-year-old girl to a loan shark? How much could I possibly be worth?

People always say I’m pretty… but what exactly does Mr. Vance want with me? Is he… a pervert?

A wave of absolute ice ran through her veins, nearly making her collapse. Lily was screaming internally, but her survival instincts kicked in, and she forced her face into a blank, obedient mask.

She knew that since her father had already made up his mind, panicking or fighting would only result in a beating. So, as she walked with him, she subtly unzipped her schoolbag and slipped a small metal pencil sharpener into her pocket.

What do I do? What do I do?

How do I escape? How do I get out of this?

She was only ten. She was tiny, weak, and didn’t have a single penny to her name. Her father had already forcefully ushered her into the back seat of a waiting car. How could she possibly run?

Jump out of the moving vehicle? End it all right here?

Lily couldn’t formulate a single viable plan. She squeezed her eyes shut in pure agony. Was this really how her life was going to end?

“Mr. Jones, I brought my daughter, just like we agreed. Along with the deed…” her father’s voice whined from outside the car. In front of these men, his domineering bravado vanished; he was nothing but a cowering dog.

Her mother was huddled next to her in the back seat, shaking violently. Lily suddenly felt a cold drop hit her neck, it was her mother’s tears. Her mother had completely surrendered; she wouldn’t protect her.

Even if I manage to run away now, they’ll just take it out on my mother… Lily thought, a crushing sense of defeat washing over her. She seemed to have no choice but to accept her fate.

“Good. Hand her over to Mr. Vance.”

The man standing outside scoffed, his mind radiating absolute disgust for this man who is pathetic enough to sell his own flesh and blood. He snatched the deed from her father’s trembling hand and shoved him backward. “Get the hell out of here!”

The car door was ripped open, and a massive, rough hand grabbed Lily by the arm, violently hauling her out of the vehicle. The man holding her had bleached blond hair and a cruel face.

He had a cigarette clamped between his teeth. He dangled Lily in the air with one hand. For a split second, there was a flash of genuine pity in his eyes, but it was quickly replaced by a cold, hollow smile.

Lily heard his thoughts loud and clear: “Pretty little thing. Mr. Vance is definitely going to enjoy this one…”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep