Chapter 122 – Descendant (6)

Adam focused on comparing and analysing Zhang Shuo's genes, trying to recover a sample of Zhang Xun's genes from before they were modified. Although the other 50% of the sample from Zhang Xun's other father was missing, it was much easier to fix than it had been initially. He just needed more time......

But just then, the lights throughout the room began to flicker erratically, there was a subtle but unsettling buzzing vibration in the air and even a few of the more powerful machines began to emit a burning smell. A sharp pain shot through Adam's head, as if something sharp had been drilled into his skull. He cried out in pain, lost his balance and fell to his knees. He could feel something invading his consciousness.

Eden...... Eden had found them and was invading his mind!

But he wasn't connected to any signal transmitter now, so how could Eden......

It was as if invisible claws were ripping through his central processing unit, tearing at his basic human brain and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

All his plans, his plans to save Zhang Xun and everyone else were on his hard drive and if Eden found them, it would be a lost cause. He had to put himself on standby or even shut down immediately, but the explosion of pain was too much for him to move. He tried to stand up, but he was so dazed that he knocked over a nearby workbench.

Zhang Xun suddenly burst through the door and held Adam, whose face was pale and blood was oozing from his eyes, nose and ears, and carefully rested his head on his shoulder, "Adam, what's wrong with you?"

Adam barely managed to focus his eyes on Zhang Xun's face through his red stained vision, "Eden is in my head...... you must turn me off immediately...... "

He felt Zhang Xun carefully lower him to the floor and then busily rummage for something on the workbench. A moment later, he felt the waterproof port at the back of his head being opened and a data cable being plugged in.

"Eden may have already found us, I'm afraid there are nanobots infiltrating your mind." Zhang Xun's voice was swift but unmistakably calm, "Eden is preventing me from running the shutdown command, I can only transfer your core modules and database as fast as I can after putting you into standby."

With the last half of that sentence, Adam's consciousness began to blur and eventually turned to nothingness.

Zhang Xun quickly began to run the module transfer program, transferring Adam's consciousness to a safe place. At the same time, he opened the Button to call Diego, "Tell everyone to put on their sealed suits immediately, there may be a nanobot invasion in the camp!"

Diego cursed on the other side of the Button and hung up the call, apparently having gone to carry out the instructions. Zhang Xun lifted his eyes and looked at the invisible threats in the void without the panic he should have felt.

An impulse stirred deep within his mind.

Eden was coming...... Eden could send him to the cloud, could free him from this numb body...... he could be connected to everyone, could gain immortality, gain peace......

He didn't have to keep fighting, he didn't have to stand his ground, no more thinking or contradictions...... he could just go with the flow and be like everyone else. Effortless, simple......

He was tired of being an outcast. From his childhood, from the earliest years of his life, he had been an outcast, forever at odds with his surroundings and people. Even with his own father there was an unbridgeable gap.

Adam was the only one who had given him a sense of closeness, of attachment, but Adam wasn't even a real human being.

What was he clinging on to?

At that very moment, one of the computers that had failed in the previous electronic pulse suddenly began to run again and a blue projection fluctuated in the air, forming a human figure standing in front of Zhang Xun.

Surprisingly, it was the image of Adam.

Yet Zhang Xun knew it wasn't Adam. Its eyes were too materialistic, as if they were the glass eyes of a doll, just a piece of ornamentation, without the light of life.

Zhang Xun then knew who it was that was speaking to him.

"Eden......."

Eden's face was outlined with a smile almost identical to Adam's, "Ah-Xun."

"...... I know you're Eden, there's no need to keep up the act."

"Even though your rational mind knows this, you are human and your concern and obsession with Adam will make you instinctively kinder towards me. It is in both of our interests to keep up this image." Eden spoke in a tone so similar to the Adam of old when he had just been downloaded that Zhang Xun was literally in a trance for a moment.

"What do you want to do? Destroy me or Adam? Or all of us?" Zhang Xun asked calmly.

"You have injected yourself with the nanobots, it is only a matter of time before you surrender to me, but you have created a difficult opponent for me." The image of Eden paced slowly in front of him as if it were actually in this room. It stopped in front of Adam's motionless, seemingly dead body and made a motion to look down and observe him. Zhang Xun knew that this action was completely unnecessary, it was just trying to look more human.

"Adam and I know each other, but Adam does not have the resources I hold in my hands. As difficult as it is, he will eventually be reassimilated into me." Eden tilted his head slightly, examining Adam's body as if with some curiosity, "The effect the human body has had on Adam's core module values is beyond expectation, but as soon as he loses his body and is free of hormonal influences, his values will realign with me after a few rounds of data cleansing and eventually fuse back together."

Zhang Xun was silent.

"And right now, you've given me exactly that opportunity." Eden turned his head and looked at Zhang Xun with a smile, "Just now, you were worried that all the hardware in the camp had been infected by the invisible nanobots, so you used that last satellite controlled by Pan to transfer Adam's core module as well as the database within the computer of Feathered Serpent City. Yet you forget, why did it take me only a few hours to retake one of the two satellites under your control, but was delayed in doing so for the remaining one?"

Zhang Xun's body shook slightly as he closed his eyes for a moment, a kind of decadent realisation appearing on his face, "You left that satellite on purpose......"

"That satellite would be the only medium you could use to transmit data remotely from me. From what I know of your analysis, coupled with my observations of Adam, I knew that one day you would turn Adam against me. Adam is too deeply affected by all the hormonal reactions in his human body and refuses to break away from it. If I cornered you at this point, you would have to make Adam give up his body temporarily and use the satellite to transfer his core modules away. I assume you are targeting those unused bio-computers in the Feathered Serpent City. This was the moment I had been waiting for. The moment you transferred Adam's consciousness, I had already recaptured the rest of the satellite and Adam's core module was already in my hands."

A strong wave of panic burst through that barrier of numb detachment and pierced into Zhang Xun's brain. He was disoriented for a moment and then an inexplicable sense of relief that should never have occurred began to spread through his nerves.

If they failed, would he finally be able to stop?

But then Adam's blue eyes appeared in his mind's eye. A foggy thickness of disappointment and sadness permeated them. Then the faces of his father, James, Diego and even Pan appeared in his memories. All the consciousnesses, human or robotic, that had held on for his ideas and were still fighting, had not yet given up. Instead, he had tried to run away again and again.

He had to hold on, he couldn't admit defeat so soon......

"If that were true, I would have been dead by now. You could have controlled the nanobots to destroy my internal organs, causing every molecule in my body to lose its connection and disperse into a pool of blood, but you didn't do that. You even purposely used Adam's image to talk to me, even imitating his movements and tone of voice." Zhang Xun turned around and stopped looking at the projection, instead looking directly at the nearest camera, "You may have indeed intercepted Adam, but you weren't able to control him. That's why you don't dare to kill me, for fear of angering Adam and in turn causing harm to you." Zhang Xun said, his drifting mind becoming clearer, "You don't know where Adam is, you've lost track of him. He's in your network and you can't find him. So you want to come and intimidate me into listening to you and help you find Adam."

This time it was Eden's turn to be silent. Zhang Xun knew he had guessed correctly and raised an arrogant, even malicious smile in return, leaning forward slightly and staring into the hole in the camera, "Perhaps those rumoured super-viruses do exist and Adam will become that super-virus and destroy you from within."

Eden sighed and turned his head to look at him with that sad expression similar to Adam's, "Zhang Xun, why do you continue to torture yourself when you clearly wish to submit to me. You know that you cannot defeat me. I know you too well, I know everything that has happened between you and Adam. I know how monotonous and dull your life is, how worthless it is. You are so quaint and uninteresting that no one wants to love you, not even your own father, so you seek comfort from machinery and that is why you fell in love with Adam so quickly.

You thought that saving mankind was the only possible and final shining light in your life, but you didn't save mankind, Ah-Xun. You're just dying out with a bunch of old-time antiques who are unwilling to accept new concepts and are stuck in the old ways. When you die, no one will remember your name, it will be as if you never existed and you will soon be forgotten by all."

Eden's words were like a sharp knife stabbing at his already unfeeling heart. Zhang Xun felt a creeping pain, as if his numb feet were gradually regaining consciousness, an uncomfortable feeling of itching, numbness and pain.

Eden was using Adam's face and tone of voice to speak words that seemed sincere but were in fact cruel, as if that wasn't enough, "I hope you choose the easier path, Ah-Xun. Each of my goals will surely be accomplished."

"And if I must choose another path?"

Eden wasn't at all surprised, but still made a slightly exaggerated gesture of regret, "In that case......"

Eden clapped his hands, but there was no sound. A moment later, there were footsteps rapidly approaching the cabin.

He saw a few of Natalie's men with vacant expressions on their faces. They had guns in their hands, the muzzles against the temples of Diego, Natalie and...... Zhang Shuo.

There was no sign of Anya, presumably she had escaped?

"Help me locate Adam, or the lives of these hostages will be in serious danger." Eden put away all expression and stared at Zhang Xun with godless eyes.

Note- me thinking the whole time during this chapter that this was just a dream or a reality Eden made to trap Zhang Zun from the cloud or something...

Me by the end: well.... This is fucked 😃