Cat and Rose - Cat & Rose - Chapter 66 - The Sun is Dazzling, So Are You (1)

Chapter 66 – The Sun is Dazzling, So Are You (1)

The chip was very small, in a silver-white colour.

“She already told me you two are searching for the truth about Ye Selin’s infection,” said Ling Yi, forthright.

Lin Si did not expect Su Ting would already have informed Ling Yi of the matter. He thought Su Ting would protect Ling Yi and keep him away from the past.

“I want to see it too. After all, all my family is involved,” said Ling Yi, “moreover, you’re still a long way from finding out the truth. I can also help out from Area 3 in the future.”

Lin Si pondered for three seconds, then answered “okay”.

Ling Yi had the right to know everything, and also had enough ability to help them. Obviously, Su Ting had insight into this, while he was the only one who still treated Ling Yi as a child.

Ling Yi used his bracelet to read the contents stored in the chip. The first thing that appeared in front of them was the catalogue page. There were only two files; one was “timeline”, and the other was “changes”.

Lin Si did not immediately choose one of them to open, but said to Ling Yi, “First of all, you need to understand what we’re doing.”

“Yes.”

“The first is to trace the cause of Ye Selin’s death, that is, who brought the Berlin virus to the spaceship in the first place.”

Ling Yi nodded.

“Secondly, that virus incident is associated with a series of conspiracies against the Voyager. There is one person or a group of people trying to obstruct this voyage, while directing the spearheads at me.”

Ling Yi said, “I know.”

—Many people on the spaceship were not excited to see Lin Si; the Marshal even believed that Lin Si bore hatred towards the Voyagers. He understood all of this.

“That’s why, if we want to know the truth about Ye Selin’s death, we must trace back the series of anomalies on the Voyager over the years.”

“Because we don’t have any clues about Ye Selin’s accident?” asked Ling Yi.

“That’s right.”

All matters originated from the same source. If they wanted to find the truth they desired, they needed to look for clues and traces in every area of oddity.

This was undoubtedly a very difficult thing, but it was also something that needed to be done.

If the truth does not float to the water’s surface, one may never free themselves from the past.44

Lin Si clicked on the only file that was named “timeline”.

The three-dimensional projector turned on. It was a movable graphics program; on the horizontally-extending timeline, there were several eye-catching points..

Year 2543 AD, in the early morning of December 22, the Berlin virus broke out.

Year 2544 AD, on the evening of June 14, the Voyager set off.

The same year, on July 3, the Berlin virus underwent its fourth mutation, and the Earth collapsed.

Next up was the memorabilia of the Voyager, which recorded events such as changing several leaders, obtaining important scientific research results, and so on. When they clicked on a particular event, the details would pop up.

Continuing across, the closer to the present, the denser and more detailed the event points became.

It recorded the accidents on the Voyager over ten years ago where the key suspect was Lin Si—engine malfunction, toxin in the nutrient fluids—these were cases that had been tightly locked away. Su Ting must have spent a lot of effort to find this information.

Seeing this, Lin Si frowned.

Because after these accidents, there came a real, major incident that impacted the survival of the spaceship.

The black hole.

The black hole incident that indirectly caused Ling Yi to wake up—if Area 6 was not thrown out to provide recoil force, the entire Voyager would be stuck and destroyed inside.

This incident was marked red by Su Ting.

“This incident always felt strange, but investigations never yielded any results in the end,” said Lin Si. “Logically, our detection system and universe simulator will detect the existence of black holes in advance, then avoid it, but it did not.”

This event was eventually defined as an accident. Area 1 concluded that the properties of that black hole were too bizarre to be detected.

If even this incident had a human cause—

The culprit behind the scenes could bring the Berlin virus to the Voyager, deceive the detectors and universe simulator of Area 1, drive the entire spaceship into a black hole, poison the nutrient fluid ingredients provided by Area 6 to Area 2, reach into the absolutely sealed storage room, attempt to leak the Berlin virus, sneak into Area 5 to tamper with Lucia’s programming—without leaving a single trace!

Ling Yi imagined the power a person needed to do these things, frowning. “They’re almost omnipotent.”

It was important to know that Voyager had a strict security and defence system, as well as a clear, hierarchical authority ranking system, where almost nothing could threaten it.

But those incidents happened just like that.

“There are two explanations,” Lin Si said steadily. “They’re in a high position, and it’s not a typical general high position.”

For the leaders of an Area like Lin Si and Zheng Shu, even if they obtained a high enough level of authority, accomplishing these things with only a single person’s strength was no different than having a surreal fantasy.

Unless it was the level of Marshal and Madam Chen.

—But what could their motive be?

“The second—they’re an organisation spread all over the ship.”

In each Area, there would be multiple pairs of secret eyes, following strict organisation and leadership to find the opportunity to attack the vital points of the behemoth that is the Voyager. If they did not succeed in one hit, they would lie dormant in the dark, awaiting the next opportunity.

Lin Si opened the second file, which detailed areas that Su Ting found odd, including those who applied for sleep before the appointed time they were supposed to work until, experiment programmes that were halted midway… even the whole story of Ling Jing’s incident was recorded inside.

No matter how much an incident was kept in secrecy, it would always create ripples at the very end. What Su Ting did was combine all the major and minor incidents over the years, so after detailed analysis, he could eliminate irrelevant factors and see the entire trend of events.

“The programmes of Area 6 have always been restricted. Spies, Chimera project, Limitless, they’ve vetoed many experiments that touch the boundaries of ethics.” Lin Si turned to the next page. “So, unless we’re in crisis, the leaders have always been conservative about scientific research.”

Ling Yi looked at the Chimera project. “The fusion of animal tissue and machinery. Living machinery?”

“I also think it’s pretty crazy,” said Lin Si.

Ling Yi nodded.

They flipped the page over; the next section was the cryogenic sleep and defrost list.

“There’s something odd here,” Ling Yi suddenly said.

“Hm?”

“Unless someone reaches the age limit, generally no one will go to cryogenic sleep in Area 3.” Ling Yi magnified the names on the page. “But many people have been frozen in the past few years.”

Looking at the points in the timeline, it was the two or three years after the Expeditioner’s departure.

“It’s the Marshal,” said Lin Si.

He communicated with the Marshal before he was frozen, and by then, the Marshal had already made up his mind to carry out a thorough cleanup of the Voyager. Freezing him, firstly, was to completely prevent the mastermind from using him again as a shield to block his sight, and secondly was because he harboured suspicion towards him, which was understandable. So why clean up Area 3? Did the Marshal also think Area 3 was suspicious?

Looking at the number of frozen people, Area 3 not only seemed suspicious, it seemed they held great suspicion.

Indeed, even very early on, the Marshal had shown distrust of Area 3, which was under his jurisdiction.

Area 6 was a suspect because it was possible the Wilkins laboratory bore hatred for the Voyagers, but why is Area 3 suspected too?

Lin Si did not comment and simply noted down this question.

“The Marshal was cleaning up the crew members of the spaceship…” Ling Yi muttered. “But it’s useless. At the very least, it’s not completely clean.”

Lin Si looked at him and listened to his analysis.

Ling Yi tucked a loose strand of black hair behind his ear and said seriously, “Lucia had a virus on her and forced connection with the Voyager. It couldn’t have been a preset program from the beginning, because no one knew the Expeditioner would encounter the purple virus.”

Lin Si said, “Certainly.”

“Hence, Lucia must’ve installed a program to send a message to the Voyager. That person knew the Voyager was carrying a deadly virus, then commanded Lucia to connect with the Voyager. This is the only explanation that makes sense. Therefore, the Voyager isn’t completely cleaned up.”

“Or… that person was not on the Voyager, but on the Expeditioner! When we contracted the virus, they predicted the virus would not be cured, then set up that program for Lucia.”

Ling Yi’s eyes suddenly widened. “Lucia kept resisting all this time! Ever since she discovered the virus infection, she kept making errors. I also saw her crying alone, perhaps she found out she wasn’t able to resist…there must be someone on the Expeditioner!”

Lin Si’s gaze became cold. “When did she start making errors?”

“It was that day, the day the purple virus appeared.” Ling Yi strained to recall the night when they brought the virus back to the Expeditioner. “When the resting hours arrived, none of us noticed anything different, so we went back to our rooms to rest. In the middle of the night, I suddenly woke up and saw Lucia standing in front of me. She was crying, and even said ‘sorry’ to me. Then I went to the master control room and saw the errors that kept appearing in her program, so I restarted her… Then Dempsey got sick and collapsed, and that was when we realised there was a virus infection.”

“In other words, you think that before Lucia appeared in your room, someone had already noticed the virus on the spaceship, then entered the master control room to modify Lucia’s program?”

“Yes, then Lucia asked me for help. She didn’t say what happened, maybe she wouldn’t say it because she didn’t have that high intelligence, or maybe that person restricted her and she couldn’t say.” Ling Yi spoke quickly. “There must’ve been someone who discovered the virus ahead of everyone, could it be Dempsey? He was the first person to contract the virus, even though we all believed he contracted the virus purely because he was too curious.”

After saying this, Ling Yi shook his head again. “But Mr Dempsey is a very upright person. I never felt any malice in him.”

“You believe your intuition?”

Ling Yi nodded, his feelings had never been wrong.

“Your feelings aren’t wrong, but your approach is incorrect,” said Lin Si.

“Why?”

“No matter who it is that wants to destroy the Voyager, they will be a normal person who appears open and upright to others, not a criminal with darkness in their heart.”

Ling Yi shook his head. “Why?”

Lin Si looked into his eyes. “Whether it’s driving the entire spaceship into a black hole, or bringing the purple virus to a crowd of people, whoever does this will not survive in the end either.”

“A suicide attack?”

Lin Si nodded and continued. “So they did this not to pursue power or status, but to achieve goals that at least they thought were noble and just. The Voyagers did something wrong, and this person wanted them to pay the price. Therefore, who we should be looking for is not a gloomy person with twisted psychology, but…the most gentle and kind people. Only a person like that will exact revenge on the Voyager for the hundred millions of innocent dead souls on Earth, or some other things.”

He raised his eyebrow at Ling Yi. “There aren’t many people of this kind on the spacecraft, but there aren’t few either.”

Ling Yi blurted out, “Like you?”

Lin Si stiffened, then started to laugh.

Ling Yi pouted.

He finally knew where the Marshal’s suspicion of Lin Si came from, and why those people followed all the clues to Lin Si—he was too much like a murderer.

This Mister Warlock, who was particularly mysterious because he was not close to people, and was known for his indifference and harshness in his work, and unless necessary, people tended to stay away from him as far as possible. But everyone knew how good he used to be—back on earth, everyone had seen that video, and saw that gentle and serious Lin Si, who said seriously, word by word, to all the people deep in suffering: “Please believe that the sun will rise tomorrow just as before. Hope is coming.”

Neither lacking in ability nor lacking in motivation, that role was basically tailor-made for him.

“I did do some really bad things,” Lin Si said flatly, “like pointing a nuclear gun at the Marshal and the master controls of the spaceship, and almost pulling the trigger.”

He appeared to sigh. “That person should’ve hidden themselves better than me, but no matter what, they’re a good person.”

“Then what about you?” asked Ling Yi.

Lin Si did not realise the intention of his question. He turned his gaze to him, and saw the gentle starlight dappled in those beautiful black eyes.

“So many years have passed,” said Ling Yi quietly. “Have you finally forgiven yourself?”

*

The author has something to say:

I was wrong.

I am a bald puppy.

Woof.

You cannot even imagine what happened to me.

Two days ago, I read a novel that resonated with my heart, and asked my roommate whether she had recommendations of the same subject matter.

She let out a cheerful laugh.

Then returned the gesture by sending me 17.

Which caused me to turn into a bald puppy.

Thank you for reading on myeasynovel.com