Cat and Rose - Cat & Rose - Chapter 67 - The Sun is Dazzling, So Are You (2)

Chapter 67 – The Sun is Dazzling, So Are You (2)

Many years have passed. Have you finally forgiven yourself?

When you’re dreaming in the dead of the night, does that deep, crimson sea of blood still tangle around you?

Ling Yi looked into Lin Si’s eyes.

Only he knew that Lin Si did not loathe the Voyagers.

Hidden beneath his calm and indifferent expression, the weariness and disgust he felt was not for the Voyager—but for himself.

He, who could not resist when he was brought on the Voyager, and gave up on pulling the trigger when he raised the nuclear gun to the main control tower.

If the research had begun two days earlier, the vaccine could have been accomplished before the fourth mutation. If there were fewer detours during the tests, perhaps the Berlin virus would have been overcome earlier on. If he destroyed the main control tower of the Voyager at that time, the debts of blood would have been repaid early on.

However, the world was this cruel and broken. He could neither turn back time to make the vaccine come out sooner, nor destroy the Voyager and cause the last of humanity’s bloodline to completely vanish.

Adelaide said that the old days would always gradually fade away, and we could leave the indissoluble pain to time.

The torrents of time washed against both shores of the river, grinding the jagged, rocky riverbank into round and smooth pebbles, and finally turning into fine sand.

And have you let go of the past, and nourished the sharp, poisoned thorn in the centre of your heart into a soft, green newborn vine of early spring? 45

He waited for Lin Si’s response.

Lin Si looked at him. His gaze was very gentle, gentle and calm. When he spoke that answer, he did not need to hesitate.

He shook his head.

The rims of Ling Yi’s eyes turned red.

This was Lin Si, the Lin Si who was half in the sun and half in the dark, the Lin Si who would never choose to forgive and forget. Time could not polish the cold and sharp things in his heart until smooth, yet could not make the soft and warm part of his heart compress and turn hard.

“But what are you going to do?” asked Ling Yi.

His question was unprompted and open-ended, but strangely, Lin Si knew what he wanted to ask.

How will you, who chose not to forget, spend every day and night of your remaining life?

“I’ve always chosen to escape, to enter permanent cryogenic freezing, or leave the world,” Lin Si said flatly, “but there was always so much work to be done, so it was never carried out.”

Ling Yi gripped his hand and rubbed it uneasily.

Lin Si gripped back, “Later, when we entered the black hole, you woke up, and there was no other suitable person on the spaceship who could raise you. I obtained guardianship from Madam, and thought, I still need to live properly. I’ll think of the other issues after a few years, after you’re grown up.”

Ling Yi looked at him and said glumly, “I’m grown up now. What would you like?”

Lin Si asked, “What do you want me to want?”

“I want you to live happily, better than before, or just like on Earth…” Ling Yi intertwined his ten fingers with Lin Si’s. “Adelaide said that back then you were very bad on the inside, but you’re also gentle, bright, laughs often, likes all things beautiful, treats the Li Hua cat downstairs as your little girlfriend, and would get up in the middle of the night to ask the bacteria in the culture medium—why haven’t you grown yet?”

Lin Si started laughing even before he finished reciting that period of dark history.

“From what position are you making me do that?” he asked. “My little girlfriend?”

Seeing the playful, teasing smile in his eyes, Ling Yi pouted. “Be your little girlfriend, and get bullied by you?”

“Well… in theory, I don’t like bullying people.” His jesting expression gradually disappeared, then he said mildly, “Anyway, you—don’t you have anything to say to me?”

Ling Yi had just been teased by him, so a little temper still remained inside him and he did not want to yield. “I’m not saying it.”

Lin Si raised his brows. “Hm?”

Ling Yi made a “hmph” noise, turning his eyes elsewhere instead of looking at Lin Si, but still stretched out his arm to hug him.

The hug he gave was different from the squeamish hugs that demanded pampering when he was a child. It had connotations of possessiveness and attachment, like a kitten that often curled up in his arms, crawled up his clothes, and wrapped its two front paws around its owner’s neck.

Lin Si raised his hand to gently pat his back.

They separated after two minutes as they still needed to return to the main topic. Ling Yi called Vivian over to pull up the surveillance footage of the main control room, and rewinded the time to the night when the virus broke out.

Three clips were played at the same time: Ling Yi’s bedroom, Dempsey’s bedroom, and the master control room.

At 21:00, Ling Yi was writing in his diary, and after writing, he pulled out and opened a white box for a while. The angle of the footage was not good, so Lin Si could not see what he was doing, but he still watched with interest.

Dempsey was already showing signs of discomfort at this point, pouring himself a large glass of hot water and massaging his temples.

The master control room was empty.

Time resumed.

22:00, Ling Yi washed up, got into his bed, and turned off the lights.

Dempsey’s symptoms worsened.

The master control room remained empty.

23:00, everything was normal.

At 0:00, a shocking red error message suddenly appeared in the centre of the main screen, followed by a large string of illogical, garbled codes.

Two minutes later, at 0:02, Lucia appeared in Ling Yi’s room.

She stretched out her hand beside Ling Yi’s bed, as if she wanted to touch something, and put it down again. Her expression was calm, but tears were rolling down from her eyes.

The next moment, Ling Yi opened his eyes.

What happened next was the scene that Ling Yi recounted before. Lucia kept crying, said “I’m sorry”, then vanished from the room.

Ling Yi draped some clothes, ran towards the master controls.

Before Ling Yi came, no one had entered the master control room.

Then Ling Yi restarted Lucia, and Dempsey’s illness completely broke out. He stayed in his room the whole time; not only did he not touch Lucia’s program, he did not even turn on his own bracelet.

A ghost.

A ghost roamed the spaceship. Just like the incident where the Berlin virus almost leaked out, it left no traces and no clues.

There was no need to watch the footage after that, as only Ling Yi alone was active on the entire spaceship. His attainments in this area only allowed him to code a bubble sort, so of course, it was impossible for him to make such adjustments to Lucia.

Who in the world tampered with Lucia’s program? Lucia insisted on connecting with the Voyager, so was it a program that had been set when the virus broke out, or was someone on the Voyager operating it remotely?

They could not find the answer.

“Let’s ask Tang Ning?” said Ling Yi.

Lin Si nodded.

At this hour, Tang Ning was definitely still awake.

—Although he knew Tang Ning was awake, when he knocked on the door, Ling Yi was still shocked by the scene in front of him.

Lucia’s hardware was being read by a device, while Tang Ning was frantically rapping on the keyboard.

At least twenty program windows were suspended in front of him, each of them scrolling frantically.

—It made one unable to decide whether they should marvel at how his eyes could hold so many things, or marvel that his brain could process such a huge amount of information at the same time.

“Lin Si come help me calculate,” Tang Ning said quickly and did not ask what they were here for.

Lin Si came to him, Tang Ning highlighted several windows, and Lin Si quickly wrote mathematical formulas on the white paper.

Ling Yi and Vivian acted as mascots.

The high-intensity work lasted for a full two hours.

Tang Ning looked at a string of codes that suddenly flashed in the window in the far corner, and let out a sigh of relief. “…Got you.”

He moved the window to the centre and zoomed in.

At that moment, that window began to perform the deletion operation.

Tang Ning moved his hands away from the keyboard in disbelief.

He was not operating the keyboard.

The program was deleting itself.

“Vivian!” Lin Si said abruptly. “Back up the surveillance footage.”

Vivian opened her eyes wide. “It’s gone…”

She opened up the storage interface of the surveillance footage, and saw that the files were being deleted in batches.

Vivian began to frantically back up the parts that were not deleted.

The deletion progress steadily moved forward.

Tang Ning leaned back in his chair, gasped, then looked around, as if there was something watching them in this room at this very moment.

Lin Si put away the draft paper full with dense lines of calculations, a slightly mocking smile curving up at the corners of his mouth, “My materialist worldview is wavering.”

Hearing Lin Si’s words, Tang Ning eventually also calmed down.

“That’s right,” he said, “someone’s controlling it.”

The world of materialism had no ghosts, and even stranger events could not escape human manipulation. Even if it was bizarre to such an extent, it could only demonstrate that the person who intruded on Lucia had great ability in programming.

“Let’s continue the investigation,” Lin Si said expressionlessly. “Screen the resumes of all people working on the ship. Look for people whose coding level is similar to or higher than Tang Ning’s.”

—As long as it was the work of a human, the more they did, the more traces they would reveal.

There were very few people on the entire Voyager who could play such a high-intensity chess game with Tang Ning.46 Among those people, at least one of them had something to do with the culprit behind the scenes.

Ling Yi saw Zheng Shu’s name: “Is Zheng-ge this amazing too?”

“He’s an all-rounder,” said Tang Ning.

—Even Tang Ning admitted it himself. Sure enough, he was really amazing.

Lin Si did not say anything. He downloaded the list, and also reached an agreement with Vivian that she would back up all known data and activate a strict security mode.

“They don’t have any more opportunities left,” said Lin Si. “From now, to overcoming the purple virus—it’s the last opportunity.”

When the vaccine is successfully developed, the Voyager would set sail towards that planet, humans would take root in a habitable environment, and henceforth, no amount of conspiracy would prevent the rebirth of Earth’s civilization.

Therefore, if they wanted to do anything, they needed to do it before they reached the purple planet.

“Lucia’s already cleaned up,” said Tang Ning.

He took down the heavy piece of black hardware and stared at it, gaze heavy, thoughts indecipherable.

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