Chapter 87: Willpower

Next, Lily was forcibly dragged into a strange room. It appeared to be a large, sealed chamber lined with thick acoustic paneling; the soundproofing was likely exceptional. Even if she screamed at the top of her lungs, no one outside would hear a thing.

Ten-year-old Lily’s small body trembled slightly. She had no idea what horrifying ordeal she was about to face.

A massive, morbidly obese man sat in the center of the room, staring at her with glazed, hungry eyes. Just that look… even without her mind reading, Lily could practically smell the filth radiating from him.

“So, your name is Lily?” the large man asked, his voice thick and unsettling.

Disgusting. She didn’t want to subject herself to the vile static of his mind; using her ability right now offered no tactical advantage. Even a complete fool could guess what this repulsive man was thinking.

Because of her abilities, Lily had been forced to mature far too quickly. She knew about the darkness of the world, things a normal little girl shouldn’t even comprehend.

So this enormous pig is Mr. Vance? Judging by his sheer mass, he easily weighed over 300 pounds. He could crush her into a paste just by falling on her. How on earth was she supposed to escape?

Suddenly, an eerie calm washed over her. Her body stopped trembling. Inexplicably, her mind filled with a series of cold, abstract calculations… She didn’t even fully understand the thoughts racing through her own head.

Her brain shifted into that peculiar, hyper-accelerated state, and her small face hardened into an expression of chilling seriousness.

Lily’s sudden, stoic indifference only seemed to excite Vance further; even the thick rolls of fat on his face flushed with anticipation. What a fascinating little thing, he thought. Should we start with the leather, the heat, or perhaps the wire…?

Lily knew with absolute certainty that she wasn’t walking out of this room today without a fight.

Either Vance died in this room, or… she did. She tightly gripped the small metal pencil sharpener hidden in her pocket and made her decision.

“…And then what?” Jason couldn’t help but ask, breaking out in a cold sweat as he listened.

He was deeply engrossed in Lily’s story. For a girl to come from such a broken home, only to end up in that nightmare scenario, it was a truly tragic fate.

A ten-year-old child facing down a monster.

Jason had served in the military and had traveled extensively across the old world. He knew firsthand that every nation, no matter how outwardly civilized, harbored a dark underbelly. He had heard countless horror stories of organized crime syndicates and the depraved predators they catered to.

“They died, of course. All of them,” Dr. Roman recalled with a heavy sigh. “Not stabbed or bludgeoned, but killed by some form of psychic backlash… When the local police finally breached the compound, they found the men dead, their eyes wide open in terror. Total brain death.”

“The end result is simple to state, but the mechanism behind it is incredibly complex. The human brain is a fragile, intricate machine; even the slightest external disruption can cause catastrophic failure… Based on current scientific understanding, we know that focused infrasound, specific resonance frequencies, or intense targeted magnetic fields can all be lethal.”

“We don’t know exactly what ability Lily triggered to defend herself that day, mostly because she hasn’t used it or anything like it, since the incident.”

“Alright. What happened next?”

Jason let out a long breath of relief. He was just glad Lily had survived; as for those absolute scumbags, they got exactly what they deserved. Although this massive detour into Lily’s traumatic past seemed to have strayed far from the original topic of the Perfect Element, he was still deeply invested in the story.

He knew Lily quite well, yet he had absolutely no idea she carried such a dark history. It was strange, he hadn’t seen a single mention of this in her official personnel file. Had the records been classified as top secret?

Dr. Roman offered a grim smile and continued. “The local government and their intelligence agencies quickly caught wind of the anomalous incident.”

“You have to understand, the militaristic, opportunistic factions within any government had never fully died out. They saw a terrifying incident and immediately saw an opportunity. They wanted to seize Lily, study her physiology, and train her as the prototype for a new generation of biological weapons.”

“If they could map her brain, mass-produce clones, and weaponize whatever mysterious psychic force she used to kill those men… it would have been an unstoppable, terrifying asset.”

“However, a localized mass-casualty event involving inexplicable brain death was simply too big to cover up. The intelligence leaked to the global community. The major superpowers within the Earth, all of whom were already deeply suspicious of each other’s black-book research programs intervened.”

“They formed a unified front, applied massive diplomatic and economic pressure, and the local authorities were forced to quietly hand Lily over to international custody.”

“The internal debates over what to do with her were endless. One faction demanded we study her lethal abilities, while another wanted to permanently suppress any research into psychic warfare. Ultimately, because the global focus was entirely shifting toward the cooperative research of the Perfect Element, no single nation wanted to risk an international incident over one girl.”

“I won’t bore you with the exhausting political tug-of-war from that era. After countless twists and turns, they finally placed Lily in my custody. I had a clean record, my political leanings were considered neutral, and I had no family of my own… So, I was tasked with both her ongoing observation and her upbringing.”

Roman sighed, a mix of exhaustion and fondness in his eyes. “Ten years have passed in the blink of an eye.”

“Over the past decade, I’ve come to view her as my own daughter. I guided her away from the darkness, steered her toward the pursuit of science, and encouraged her to safely channel her brain’s hyper-accelerated processing capabilities to solve complex engineering problems.”

“The results have been spectacular; she’s a certified genius!”

“I also strictly forbade her from indiscriminately using her mind-reading abilities on others. Everyone has a fundamental right to privacy; it is a sacred, inviolable boundary. Intruding on someone’s mind without consent is a profound violation. Furthermore, I taught her that no one is a saint, every human being possesses both light and dark within them, and she shouldn’t judge people solely on their fleeting, intrusive thoughts.”

“If she didn’t learn that lesson, the psychological burden would have destroyed her.”

Jason nodded in profound agreement. If you truly possessed mind reading, and you saw the raw, unfiltered thoughts of everyone around you, you would eventually conclude that the entire human race was evil.

Even the most virtuous, kind-hearted person occasionally experiences dark, selfish, or inappropriate thoughts. But they are just thoughts; having a dark thought doesn’t mean a person will ever act on it.

“Over the years, she’s learned to ground herself and live more like a normal person. She no longer actively scans the minds around her, which saves her from a lot of unnecessary suffering.”

Jason finally relaxed. The concept of someone effortlessly plucking thoughts from his head was genuinely unsettling. After a moment of contemplation, he steered the conversation back on track. “Alright, let’s return to the Perfect Element…”

“Based on what you’ve explained, psychic abilities and the Perfect Element don’t actually share a direct, causal connection, do they?”

“Correct. There is no fundamental, biological link between the two!”

Dr. Kelly suddenly interjected, her eyes lighting up. “However, our data indicates that the self-awareness and cognitive resilience of psionicists are exponentially stronger than those of ordinary humans!”

Individuals who manifest psychic abilities often possess incredibly focused, disciplined minds, which is why many of them throughout history gravitated toward deep religious or meditative practices. However, because extreme religious zealots were barred from the Noah project, there were very few highly disciplined minds aboard; having three genuine psionicists was already a stroke of immense luck.

In all previous historical experiments, when a subject was exposed to the Perfect Element, their brainwaves would spike wildly, fluctuating at impossible frequencies before the amplitude rapidly degraded, eventually flatlining entirely, resulting in total brain death.

Whether the subjects were condemned death row inmates or dying world leaders desperately seeking a cure, the outcome was universally identical. Unanimous brain death.

“The Perfect Element itself is completely non-toxic; it doesn’t chemically poison the body!”

“We hypothesize… that the fatalities occur because the subject’s self-awareness is violently disrupted by the integration process. In simpler terms, their core willpower is insufficient to withstand the fundamental cognitive rewiring demanded by the Perfect Element.”

“This is purely theoretical…” Dr. Kelly said slowly, leaning forward. “But psionicists inherently possess a magnitude of self-awareness and sheer willpower that vastly outstrips ordinary humans. That is the core of our new hypothesis.”

Jason nodded slowly. Okay, this makes a degree of logical sense. It’s certainly better than throwing darts in the dark.

However, he absolutely would not authorize haphazard, reckless human trials. He would not risk the lives of the ship’s only three psionicists on a theory with a 100% historical fatality rate.

Because if the theory was wrong, they died.

“But wait,” Jason countered, his brow furrowing in doubt. “Didn’t you mention earlier that government on Earth did test the Perfect Element on psychic individuals in the past? And didn’t those trials also end in failure? Furthermore, human willpower isn’t some infinite, magical resource; it has a hard biological limit dictated by the physical structure of the brain.”

Decades of neurological research had proven that willpower was heavily tied to physiological states; cognitive endurance and physical fatigue were inextricably linked. It was impossible to simply “will” yourself past total biological failure. No matter how much willpower a person possessed, could they simply ’choose’ to ignore a lethal dose of a chemical agent? Impossible!

Therefore, Jason remained deeply skeptical of Kelly’s optimism. What if even the absolute peak of human willpower was still fundamentally incapable of surviving the Perfect Element’s integration?

If that was the reality, then no matter how many trials they ran, the result would always be a pile of corpses, psionicists included.

“You are absolutely correct; baseline willpower has a hard biological limit. But… we believe we’ve found a catalyst that can artificially alter that limit,” Dr. Kelly said, a wide, almost giddy smile spreading across her face. This was their single most significant breakthrough in years!

“What kind of catalyst?” Jason’s heart skipped a beat, though he forced his expression to remain completely neutral.

“…It’s a neurotoxin. Specifically, a synthesized derivative of the Martian pathogen!”

Kelly paused for a moment, deciding not to draw out the suspense any longer. “We’ve discovered that this specific neurotoxic derivative can induce a state of extreme cognitive rigidity. While in this rigid, hyper-focused state, the brain’s susceptibility to external mental stimuli, like shock or panic is drastically reduced. Imperceptibly, it artificially reinforces a person’s cognitive endurance and willpower to superhuman levels!”

“Because of this breakthrough, we are officially requesting an allocation of the Perfect Element. We want to conduct a new series of animal trials utilizing this neurotoxin, followed by controlled human trials!”

“This is…” Jason stared at the floor, his face grim and deeply conflicted. The Perfect Element was a total black box, a complete unknown. But… if humanity was ever going to survive, this was a risk they eventually had to take.

How could they ever master the unknown without taking risks?

He finally looked up, meeting their eager gazes. “Here is my decision. First, your team must completely and thoroughly map the biological mechanisms of this neurotoxic derivative! I want to know exactly how it works before it goes anywhere near a human subject. That isn’t an unreasonable demand, is it?”

“As for the allocation of the Perfect Element… it will remain strictly classified and tightly controlled. But when your preliminary data on the neurotoxin is flawless, I will authorize the transfer for the animal trials.”

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