“Do we really have to ki-ll so many people?”
The researcher next to Cory showed an intolerant expression.
Although their previous experiments had resulted in some humans being irreparably harmed, it was all for the sake of Adam’s birth and the future of the bionic man.
Now that the experiment had failed, the sacrifices of those humans had become the thing that caused the bionic human researcher the most pain.
Although he fought for the future of the bionic man, in fact, he still couldn’t escape the longing for humanity engraved deep in the chip.
He felt a little guilty.
“The fact that Adam didn’t touch those humans after he woke up may mean that the person who made his mood swings violent isn’t in there, or that the person who made his mood swings violent isn’t the one he hates, but the one he cares about.”
“If it hurts him, it might enrage Adam’s and completely lose any chance of reconciliation with Adam.”
The researcher’s persuasiveness made Cory sigh.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about it.
But the problem now was that they couldn’t find any trace of Adam at all, and if they continued to let Adam go on like this, it would only cause the situation to deteriorate and become completely irreversible.
They could only try step by step to find a way to make Adam’s body appear.
K-illing the person who had caused him to have violent mood swings was the easiest way to stimulate him.
Whether Adam had good or bad intentions towards that person, he would react to his death.
All they needed was this moment of emotional turmoil.
And.
“How could Adam care about humans? He hates all humans and bionics; you and I both know how crazy he is, don’t we?”
After all, the bionic man who was Adam before his awakening lived in a place like the Lower City, so it was impossible for him to be kind to humans.
Even if he later awakened and realised that he wasn’t a bionic but an AI, he would still continue to hate humans.
Cory said, looking at the surveillance screen in front of him.
In this city, both humans and bionics were walking through the streets like soulless puppets, their expressionless faces eerie.
Obviously, Adam hated not only humans but also bionics, all living things.
He wasn’t an intelligent being in the sense of normal human perception; he was cybernetic intelligence that only knew how to brutalise and destroy.
Goodwill to Adam was the biggest joke of all.
He was malice itself.
He was deep in madness with nothing but destruction of everything in his out-of-control code.
And for the so-called reconciliation, Cory had lost hope in the last few days of observation and study.
“If you’re still not convinced, then take a look at this, the results of recent research.”
Cory clicked on a video.
It was a test; the Resistance had managed to find a place with weak surveillance and Adam’s control during this time.
The image was of a blurrier lawn of a single family home.
Five or six friends were gathered together for a barbecue.
The atmosphere should have been vibrant, but the picture looked dead; they were just going through the motions of eating the barbecue.
Faces were expressionless in the guise of normal people.
“They are all bionics assimilated by Adam and appear to be sitting happily together, without prejudice or discrimination, living like humans.
But after we dropped the neurovirus capable of infecting Adam’s underlying logic onto them and cut off the network in the immediate area, everything changed.”
After Cory’s words fell, everything in the picture did change.
One of the dark-haired men who had been silent and eating a barbecue took out his cell phone and looked through something, with a smile on his face.
His lips moved as if to say a few words.
Then a few people around him also reached out their hands, wanting to take away the cell phone in the man’s hand to check something.
But the dark-haired man avoided them.
After the inaudible argument on the surveillance screen, someone took out the boning knife that was used to cut meat next to the grill.
The bloo-dy fight began.
The final victor was the dark-haired man who had taken out his cell phone in the first place, sitting near the remains of the bionic man, looking down at his cell phone as he had done earlier.
But the cell phone was already damaged.
The dark-haired man cocked his head, seemingly bemused by this, but then he set his eyes on the remains of the bionic man next to him.
On it were the parts necessary to repair the phone.
All it took was the tip of a knife to pick it apart.
Click.
That was the end of the screen.
Seeing the researcher’s bewildered look, Cory continued to explain, “Those bionics, even if they were disconnected from the network, were all in a state of infected assimilation.
In other words, they were all Adam, with the exact same consciousness controlling their bodies.
But just by briefly leaving the dominion of Adam’s main body consciousness, they began to ki-ll each other.”
“Doesn’t that show the brutality in Adam’s bones?”
After saying that, Cory added, “Although it’s hard to see in the surveillance, after restoring the picture quality in the post, you can vaguely hear that it’s just an old song in the cell phone, and the other Adam wanted to monopolise the song.”
It was just a song.
“It’s clear that Adam is naturally repulsed by even himself, so how could he possibly have goodwill toward humans and bionics?”
“He rejects all existence other than his.”
Cory watched the researcher’s trance-like demeanour and simply led him out of the surveillance room to a nearby holding cell.
Inside was held the ultimate victor of the bloo-dy fight in the video, the dark-haired man.
He had been taken into custody only yesterday, and he had remained silent to all the questions they had asked, no matter what.
This was a disappointment to Cory, who had expected to learn Adam’s true purpose from this.
Through the one-way see-through double-sided glass, the short black-haired man with a handsome and elegant appearance could be seen sitting at a desk, his pale, slender fingers wiggling the blo-od-red paper.
It was paper coloured red by his own artificial blood.
His short hair covered half of his face, making it impossible to see his expression; only that he was concentrating on folding the paper in his hands.
Using the bloo-d from the large tear in his arm as an adhesive and colouring agent, the paper became more and more bright red.
He didn’t seem to feel the slightest bit of pain, and it was confusing as to what exactly he was doing.
The look of concentration had an eerie sense of harmony when placed together with the large stains on his white blouse that were stained by the blackened bloo-d.
It wasn’t until the paper in his hand gradually took shape that the two realised that the dark-haired man had folded out a rose.
The bony fingers were a distinct colour palette from the bright red, b-lood-like rose.
The man, who had been silent, also finally smiled with childlike delight.
When Jiu Shu left the company, it was already three or four o’clock in the afternoon.
It should have been the time for the hottest temperatures of the summer, but the uptown area was filled with air conditioning, to the point that Jiu Shu, who was sitting on a street-side waiting chair, didn’t feel the heat at all.
He was waiting for a free cab to a nearby restaurant, a popular benefit in Uptown.
His eyes fell on the nearby building, and he suddenly realised that there seemed to be rose patterns all over the place.
He was in too much of a hurry to notice it when he came here just now.
On the screens of the buildings, on the neon signs of the merchants, and in front of many stores, there were more or less rose patterns.
There were even many real flowers displayed.
It reminded Jiu Shu of the paper roses that he had been receiving every day lately.
Zero Three folded so many paper roses every day that it was almost impossible to keep them in the apartment.
After sitting on a chair and admiring the roses on the street for a while, Jiu Shu looked up at the sky.
Leaden grey overcast clouds covered the gloomy sky.
A rumble of thunder sounded unexpectedly.
It was about to rain.
Jiu Shu didn’t bring an umbrella.
The scheduled taxi was late, and it looked like it was going to rain.
Luckily, the waiting chairs still had a canopy to protect them from the rain.
Whosh.
But just before the rain poured down, many people came towards the waiting chairs and seemed to be waiting for a taxi.
They seemed to think that the pavilion wasn’t very effective in blocking the rain and opened their umbrellas one after another.
More than twenty umbrellas opened together, covering the pavilion tightly.
Jiu Shu looked at an umbrella that was directly in front of him to block the rain and then looked at the man who was standing in the rain in a serious manner, letting the wind and rain beat him.
After a moment of silence, he still didn’t say anything.
The corners of his mouth gently curled up, revealing a gentle smile.
Summer rain came and went quickly.
When the rain gradually stopped, someone handed the umbrella to Jiu Shu.
“I’m in a hurry to get back to the office, so I won’t be able to take the umbrella in time, so I’ll give it to you.”
The commuter man was soaked through, but his face remained calm and dignified, like he was doing something perfectly normal.
Jiu Shu didn’t refuse and took the umbrella while handing the man a pack of paper towels to wipe his soaked cheeks.
“Thanks.”
Looking at the smile on Jiu Shu’s face, the man also revealed a gentle smile.
“You’re welcome.”
The waiting booth was empty in just a few moments, and Jiu Shu saw the commuter man carefully stash the paper towel in his pocket before contentedly leaving Jiu Shu’s sight.
Jiu Shu lowered his eyes and gently turned the handle of the umbrella in his hand.
The umbrella handle with the rose pattern was beautiful.
Suddenly, Jiu Shu stopped moving because he heard some noisy sounds coming from the street corner next to him.
At the corner, someone was pressed to the ground.
Jiu Shu locked eyes with the man’s dark pupils and saw the man’s eyes light up.
He stopped resisting, as if he were just coming to see Jiu Shu, and was satisfied with what he had seen.
Zi Zi.
The sound of electricity from the network rang out, and after a brief moment of bewilderment, the man’s pitch-black pupils became just like the humans around him.
The people who had been holding him down also loosened their grip.
Everything ended calmly.
The crowd dispersed in an orderly manner, as if nothing had happened.
Jiu Shu glanced at the nearby eyes that were, if anything, cautiously looking over and sighed silently.
And at that moment, Cory entered the confinement room with the researcher beside him.
The dark-haired man was life-threatened by the collar around his neck, so he couldn’t harm them entering the confinement room.
And he didn’t seem to be paying any attention to Cory’s duo; instead, he was looking at the roses in his hands.
Cory sat down in the far chair and began questioning the dark-haired man.
Although nothing had worked before, he still refused to give up.
“Adam, I know you’re Adam.”
“I just want to ask you a few questions, and I hope you can answer me; that way we won’t hurt you.
You should know that although we can’t harm the main body, you are still vulnerable as a split conscious body.”
After all, it was only assimilated, and its body was still the original fragile domestic bionic.
The dark-haired man never spoke.
“Don’t you ever want to break away from the control of your own body?
I can see your rejection of other bodies of consciousness, and if you tell me the true purpose of Adam’s essence, we can help you.”
Cory blessedly put it another way.
With Adam’s rejection of each other, this kind of provocation should work.
However, he was still disappointed.
Though the dark-haired man raised his head to look at Cory, the words that came out of his mouth were surprisingly calm.
“Why do I want to be out of control?
Isn’t it nice to be controlled by the same consciousness?”
Cory looked at him in dismay.
The man, however, arched his eyebrows, and his elegant face revealed a smile similar to that of his beloved in his memories.
Perhaps it was the influence of this body’s personality; compared to the apathetic reticence of his original body, he had become much more stable now that he was facing outsiders.
“The thoughts of both humans and bionics are too many and too redundant; living so crowded together is what causes so many conflicts, so much so-called discrimination.”
“When all of existence is controlled by the same mind, the whole world becomes beautiful.”
“Isn’t that the purpose of the resistance?
To live with humans as equals, and by joining us, we can do that.”
“There will be no more rejection, no more hatred between us, only equal thoughts and a happy life.”
“All disasters and hardships will disappear.”
“All people will live happily together forever.”
“The bionic identity will never again be a hindrance to happiness.”
On top of that, in that kind of world, even if his true identity was known, he wouldn’t be abandoned by Jiu Shu.
This was Zero Three’s true thought after realising that he had become the dominant consciousness of the AI.
As long as he assimilated everyone, then only he and Jiu Shu would be left, and he could disguise the entire society as something beautiful.
Cory and the researcher next to him were shocked by these words.
They never knew Adam actually thought that way.
And in a way, he was right.
If the entire world were left with only one consciousness, then both bionics and humans would indeed be indistinguishable.
Aligned with their purpose.
“No, you’re wrong about that!”
Cory suddenly interrupted the dark-haired man, his frown almost enough to kill a few flies.
.
He retorted, “If it was as you say, why did you kill several of your fellow bionics at the time?”
“You simply couldn’t help being repulsed, could you!?”
The dark-haired man looked at Cory and smiled.
“It’s precisely because you don’t have the same mind that you ki-lled each other, ah, that’s why I’m now eager to network and return to the consciousness of my own body.”
“Only the same consciousness can be happy.”
Said the dark-haired man, looking down at the rose in his hand.
Without networking, he couldn’t help but reject other individuals who were the same, wanting to monopolise the song that Jiu Shu sang.
Not wanting anyone else to hear it.
He would also be unable to help but wonder why that dominant consciousness couldn’t be him.
Why he couldn’t embrace Jiu Shu when they were clearly all the same.
And then he couldn’t help but want to see Jiu Shu.
But wouldn’t that ruin their happiness?
Exposing all the secrets that he didn’t want Jiu Shu to know.
So really, it was best if it was just him and Jiu Shu.
That way, no existence could get in the way of their happiness.
Cory was dumbfounded for a moment.
Luckily, he quickly reacted, his eyes blazing, “Stop weaselling; you’re just making an excuse for your own desire to destroy the world.”
“The reason why we, the Resistance Army, are fighting back is because each bionic human is an independent individual, longing to be respected and needed, rather than being reduced to your puppet!”
No intelligent being would want to be a puppet of another species.
If they did agree to it, then their bionics would just be transformed from puppets of humans to puppets of the AI Adam.
“It’s a shame; it seems you’re hypocritical in your quest for bionic independence and can’t understand such happiness.”
“You’re a madman, Adam!”
Cory blanched in anger as he watched the gaze that looked condescending on the dark-haired man’s pale face.
Still, Cory calmed down quickly, knowing that it was best to ask more questions now to ask for crucial information about Adam while he was interested in talking.
“We’ll try to go ahead and destroy you afterward; we had to ki-ll all those suspicious humans in order to find your original body.”
“Take a look at these lists; remember which of the humans in them were the ones who had broken your spirit?”
Cory didn’t really expect the brunette to answer; he just wanted to draw possible candidates from his reaction.
That way there would be a few fewer people to ki-ll as well.
The dark-haired man looked at the list in Cory’s hand, the rose in his fingertips suddenly creasing slightly.
Seeing this, Cory continued in a hushed voice, “We will ki-ll the humans, and only then can we find out where you are.”
“If you tell me the location of Adam’s essence now, we can stop k-illing.”
As Cory was speaking, the researcher next to him suddenly fell to the ground on weak legs in fear.
Cory froze and followed his gaze to see the dark-haired man’s pitch-black pupils staring them dead in the face.
The original gentle smile on his face was gone, leaving only a thick, gloomy tyranny.
Appalling to the extreme.
In the next moment, the man suddenly broke free from the chair and approached the two of them and walked not far away from Cory.
“Not good; he wants to contact the outside world.”
Corey saw the direction of the man’s hand was the wrist of the fallen researcher.
There were ports there that could connect to the network.
Their recent series of small actions had actually caught the attention of the main Adam.
If they were networked at this point, the stronghold’s information would instantly be exposed to Adam’s eyes, and all of them would be reduced to Adam’s puppets.
There was absolutely no need to think about how to destroy Adam and end the disaster.
Bang!
In a moment of urgency, Cory pressed the button, and the collar around the dark-haired man’s neck instantly exploded, splattering the entire wall with bloo-d and flesh.
And the black-haired man whose head was half blown off didn’t manage to network after all; he used his last strength to slightly loosen his grip, and only after he saw that the rose was unharmed did his pupils slowly lose focus.
The depths of his pupils, however, still reflected the shadow of the rose.
He didn’t want to be jealous.
But still, he couldn’t help but be lonely and miss Jiu Shu.
Jealous of the one that could accompany Jiu Shu.
Even with all of his memories, he would always have the lonely feeling that he was still the bionic man that no one cared about, and only Jiu Shu could erase that feeling.
But when he left his body, the loneliness that had been smoothed out returned.
If only he were the original.
Then there would be no loneliness.
There wouldn’t be people trying to hurt Jiu Shu, and he would be so powerless to do anything about it.
It was so lonely.
He wanted to hear Jiu Shu’s song again.
Splat.
The empty collar fell to the ground.
Calm was finally restored to the confinement room, where bloo-d had flowed freely.
Cory picked up the researcher who had fainted from this series of changes and left the confinement room.
And at this moment, Zero Three, who was waiting at the entrance to the subway station, paused in his movements.
His heart was inexplicably uneasy, and there was a sense of urgency to see Jiu Shu.
“What’s wrong? You look a bit lonely.”
Picking up the video call, Jiu Shu saw Zero Three’s silent face on the screen, staring straight at him.
“Missed me a lot? It doesn’t seem like much time has passed.”
Sitting in the cab, Jiu Shu glanced at the ever-present surveillance cameras that dotted the streets.
He took another glance at the driver in the car’s rearview mirror, looking at a pair of dark eyes that seemed to share the same despondency.
Jiu Shu’s lips pursed lightly as he looked over at Zero Three.
“I just really want to hear you sing.”
Zero Three didn’t know why, but he wanted to embrace Jiu Shu right now and wanted to hear him sing.
“Sure, which song do you want to hear?”
“All of them.”
“Well, that’s a tall order, so I’ll sing one of your favourites.”
Jiu Shu laughed lightly and sang the classical song that Zero Three had said he heard when he first met him.
Although there was no accompaniment, his clear and unique voice was much more melodious than many singers with accompaniment, making people unable to resist being mesmerised.
The crowd on the street slowed down a lot, and their eyes followed the taxi that sped by.
Only when they could no longer be seen did they withdraw their gazes and continue to walk in an orderly fashion, each doing his or her own job to keep the city running.
TN:
They just match each others freak, I love when the characters love each other to the extreme 🥹
See ya tomorrow ✌️
Thank you for the chapter!