Chapter 3
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Chapter 3: Against the Tide
After the initial clearing process completed, massive amounts of data flooded in, containing countless chaotic yet complete memories. Scene after scene flashed rapidly, filling the blank spaces that had long been reserved in his consciousness. Without these memories, he wouldn’t have even known he possessed such vast memory capacity.
This was a person—more precisely, a young man’s complete lifetime. The final scene of this scroll froze in a white room, with gradually blurring shadowless lamps in his field of vision.
He suddenly experienced a wonderful sensation, as if resonating with these memories. Gradually, he merged with the memories, becoming indistinguishable from them, as if this was how it should have always been.
He opened his eyes, looked at Dr. Chu before him, and suddenly felt a certain emotion.
It was deep, complex, seeming to be many things mixed together, impossible to identify clearly. Within the confusion, there was vague hatred, along with other elements. This emotion seemed to be an inherent part of him.
Dr. Chu looked at him, with faint light seemingly flickering in the depths of his eyes. However, the doctor’s face, marked by the passage of time, remained perpetually serious, without the slightest smile or any other expression.
“I’ve downloaded an escape route for you, along with your future identity, name, and subsequent action plan.”
“Name…” He repeated the word.
A barely perceptible gentleness flashed in Dr. Chu’s eyes as he said: “Yes, from now on you’ll have your own name… Chu Junguei.”
He searched through the newly acquired data and discovered a new mission data package after the escape, codenamed 44. However, the data package wouldn’t open, indicating that the prerequisite escape steps hadn’t been completed yet.
“After completing Operation Plan 44, what should I do?”
“We’ll discuss that when the time comes.”
“Understood.” He expressed compliance.
Dr. Chu disconnected the chamber’s link with him, pointed toward the side door, and said: “You’ll leave through there!”
He leaped up and rushed toward the side door.
“Wait!” The doctor called out to him.
He stopped and turned back.
The doctor’s eyes held something more—he understood some of it, yet didn’t understand other parts. However, the doctor quickly suppressed his emotions, stuffed something into his pocket, then resumed his stern, rigid expression: “This is for you. Look at it after you leave. Remember, once you leave here, you’re no longer a test subject. You have your own name and personality. You can live according to your own wishes and don’t need to obey anyone’s commands.”
Something seemed to surge in his heart, but he couldn’t express it. He simply bowed silently to the doctor.
The doctor waved for him to leave quickly, then returned to the corridor he had come from, his tall figure rapidly disappearing into the smoke and fire.
He silently repeated his name twice in his mind: ‘Chu Junguei…’ Then he ran quickly along the route diagram.
This appeared to be an emergency maintenance corridor, with thick metal walls featuring special reinforced support structures. The edges were painted with prominent yellow diagonal stripes.
He accelerated and reached the end of the corridor. Here stood a heavy blast door. The power supply had been cut off, so it seemed he would need to manually turn the wheel switch on the door.
He grasped the wheel and applied slight force, rotating it, then pushed open the heavy isolation door. Outside was a large hall that seemed divided into several areas, each serving different purposes. At this moment, only emergency lighting remained in the hall, flickering on and off. In the corners, several loose cables floated in the air, occasionally sparking with large bursts of electrical fire.
By now, the hall was completely empty, with research materials scattered carelessly across the floor. Many valuable instruments lay on the ground, ignored. Clearly, the research personnel had left in great haste.
Following the downloaded escape route instructions, he crossed the hall and arrived at an independently partitioned area. This had one-way transparent screen partitions. At the moment, the power supply was unstable, causing the screens to constantly switch between one-way transparency and opacity. Only when power was supplied would the screens activate their one-way observation state.
He looked through the screen into the interior and suddenly froze.
Behind the screen was an apartment, with furnishings and arrangements all too familiar—even the automatic meal preparation machine remained in its state of depleted raw materials.
This was the apartment where he had lived for an unknown length of time.
So his every move had been under the researchers’ observation, with all actions having data collected, organized, and analyzed.
A nameless emotion stirred in his heart, but he quickly suppressed it. As a test subject, he should be accustomed to such things.
Chu Junguei circled around the screen and pulled open a hidden door. The other side of the door was disguised as an equipment panel cover. Passing through the hidden door, he found himself in the corridor outside his apartment. He rushed into his room and took a quick look, feeling there was nothing he needed or worth taking.
Outside the window, the beautiful bay area scenery remained unchanged, showing no signs of warfare. It was now noon, and under the intense direct sunlight, there were far fewer yachts and sailboats on the sea. The beach had more tourists relaxing and playing in the water, with several young people engaged in a beach volleyball match.
According to the escape route, the only exit was on the balcony.
He strode to the floor-to-ceiling window and yanked open the glass door, instantly freezing in shock!
Behind the door was no bay area at all. In his field of vision was only a massive metal framework structure in the near distance, embedded with rows of orderly giant glass portholes. If you ignored the window frames, it was like a floor-to-ceiling window nearly a hundred meters tall.
Outside the window was nothing—only endless deep space!
Even accustomed to mechanically cold programmed thinking, having gained autonomous consciousness and personality for the first time, he stood for a while before recovering from the overwhelming shock.
So there was no bay area, no city—he had always lived in a space station.
Beneath his feet lay a steel walkway leading to another room. At that moment, an attack craft suddenly swept past the window, its wing-mounted cannons continuously spitting fire. Several beams missed their targets and struck the glass outer wall, triggering violent explosions.
Fortunately, the station’s outer wall was exceptionally sturdy. Though the glass was covered with cracks, it hadn’t shattered. However, several fissures began leaking air—clearly it wouldn’t hold much longer.
Chu Junguei ran along the walkway, spiraling upward, and burst into another hall. Here sat a shuttle—the very one he rode to the experimental base each time. The hall floor could descend, and a few levels down was the area where he underwent daily experiments.
The shuttle couldn’t actually fly—it was fixed to the floor and could only perform various rocking and vibrating motions.
Chu Junguei ran past the shuttle and rushed out through a door on the other side of the hall. According to the route map, ahead lay the spaceport area, where a special escape ship awaited. In the route map, the doctor had already provided him with the ship’s activation codes and flight path.
The spaceport area was filled with flames and explosions everywhere, with some bodies scattered on the ground—no living people remained. A still-functioning screen showed that all escape pod berths were empty—all escape pods had already been launched.
Chu Junguei successfully located the inconspicuous hidden door, input the 32-digit password, and gained access to this highest-clearance secret area.
A small spacecraft sat in the berth, appearing to seat only three or four people. He wanted to examine the surrounding environment further, but at that moment another violent explosion occurred in the spaceport area, so he hesitated no longer. He opened the hatch, sat in the pilot’s seat, and placed his hand on the activation area.
A new flight route map was input into the spacecraft through the data interface. The ship immediately started up, and after an extremely long fifteen-second engine warm-up, it finally slid slowly out of the berth, then rapidly accelerated, shooting out of the exit like a cannonball.
Behind the spacecraft, the spaceport area finally exploded completely. A fire dragon erupted from the port’s launch track, along with countless debris and wreckage following the ship’s exhaust. They would eventually become space junk.
The spacecraft had begun accelerating according to its predetermined route. Chu Junguei looked back, wanting to see what the place where he had always lived actually looked like.
He was fleeing from a massive space station, roughly rectangular in shape, resembling a space city. It was evident that after long periods of continuous expansion, it had reached today’s scale.
At this moment, hundreds of fighters circled around the space station like a flock of bloodthirsty raptors, desperately attacking the enormous but gradually weakening prey. Just from their dizzying flight patterns, one could tell they were all the most seasoned pilots.
Fires erupted everywhere on the station, with only a few scattered turrets still returning fire. However, this firepower was utterly inadequate against the numerous elite fighters.
In the distance, some escape pods relied on their own weak propulsion, desperately trying to flee. More than ten fighters weaved back and forth, attacking these escape pods and destroying them in mid-air. Other escape pods transmitted surrender signals, shut down their power, and were being towed away by fighters toward the distance.
A fighter discovered Chu Junguei’s ship, changed course, and rapidly approached. Its cannon muzzle already glowed with dark red light, beginning to lock onto the target.
Chu Junguei gripped the control stick, preparing to turn and engage. In his memory banks lay a complete set of basic space combat tutorial materials. Though this ship was designed for emergency escape, its basic performance shouldn’t be poor. Even if it couldn’t match the elite fighter opposite, it should at least have the ability to fight back.
However, when he moved the control stick, the ship showed no response, continuing to accelerate slowly along its predetermined course. Moreover, the acceleration rate was far below that of a normal escape ship.
“Spacecraft entering space jump preparation phase. Controls locked.”
The notification sound instantly made him want to curse. At this moment, still accelerating so slowly—before the space jump could occur, the enemy would have already turned him into space debris.
The enemy fighter’s acceleration performance was clearly far superior to Chu Junguei’s small ship. It rapidly closed in, entering firing range. Just as it was about to open fire, a fighter suddenly appeared like a ghost. Under a barrage of fierce cannon fire, it instantly tore the enemy craft to pieces.
The disturbance in this airspace alerted a nearby fighter group. Six or seven fighters disengaged from attacking the station and flew toward this area.
The mysterious fighter showed no fear, plunging headfirst into the enemy formation. In an instant, it displayed unmatched aerial combat skills, quickly destroying four enemy fighters in succession. The remaining two, seeing the situation turn dire, fled in panic.
However, their escape was only temporary. The distant fighter groups showed signs of agitation as more fighters disengaged from attacking the station and began forming up.
The mysterious fighter didn’t flee but circled around Chu Junguei’s ship once, then transmitted a signal.
On the control panel before him appeared Dr. Chu’s image.
The pilot of the fighter was actually Dr. Chu? He was truly surprised—the doctor had just demonstrated ace-level combat skills.
Dr. Chu appeared somewhat haggard, still maintaining his steel-like cold seriousness, with several faint wrinkles as hard as knife cuts. He looked deeply at Chu Junguei, ultimately just waving his hand as a greeting, saying nothing.
In the distance, dozens of fighters had formed into a massive combat group, roaring toward them.
The doctor cut the communication, piloted his fighter, and departed in an instant.
Chu Junguei rushed to the porthole and looked out. He saw the doctor’s solitary fighter accelerating toward the massive fighter group ahead.
Like an ancient knight, against the tide.
