"What are you waiting for?! Get in here right now!" The voice over the communicator sounded exactly like Jason, even ending in a frantic, anxious roar. "Are you deaf?! The tech in here is completely intact, and I can’t carry it alone!"
Marcus was stunned. In all the ti he had known him, the Captain had never sounded this desperate.
Shane forced his face into a calm, unreadable mask. "Captain, fall back first. We’ll regroup with you outside!"
The fake "Jason" instantly fell dead silent.
"Run!"
The squad wasn’t stupid; a collective chill shot through their veins. The situation had completely spiraled out of control. Shane flashed the tactical hand signal for a full retreat. The squad backed out in a tight defensive formation. Even Marcus didn’t argue...
He just clenched his fists, punching his own armored thigh in sheer frustration.
Stepping out of the breach and back into the open cavern, everyone felt an imdiate wave of relief. At that exact mont, their earpieces chid, and an anxious voice broke through the static: "This is Federation Command. I repeat, this is Command! Strike Team, please respond if you receive this transmission!"
"This is Shane." Shane replied instantly.
A faint cheer erupted over the communicator, and Austin’s voice could be heard yelling in the background, "We’ve got a lock! We’re connected..."
The communicator officer hurriedly reported, "Thirty minutes ago, 80% of our vanguard drones suddenly lost signal. We ordered an imdiate evacuation, but we couldn’t reach through because of communicator blackout..."
Before he could finish, Marcus vaulted to his feet, and Shane cursed viciously. "Damn it!"
That confird it. Their headsets had been completely compromised!
"Didn’t the eggheads guarantee that our quantum encryption was unbreakable?!" Marcus roared furiously, every muscle in his body twitching with the urge to charge back inside. "The Captain hasn’t co out yet! Damn it..."
Wait. Jason didn’t make it out?
The entire command center fell dead silent. Even Austin, stationed back at the flagship, went completely quiet. The most important man in the Federation was missing in action. What were they supposed to do?
A wave of sheer desperation washed over the crew. They were completely in the dark.
"Y-yes... quantum entanglent is theoretically impenetrable. We don’t know how it was bypassed. There must be another variable..." a researcher stamred over the radio.
Excuses were useless now. The eight surviving mbers of the strike team stood on the tal platform, consud by heavy silence.
Marcus was on the verge of losing his mind. He was a soldier who respected absolute strength, and he worshipped Jason. He was fully prepared to sacrifice everything even take a bullet for his Captain.
Knowing Jason was missing because he went back to save them was an insult Marcus couldn’t swallow. He desperately wanted to turn around and run back into the dark!
Shane forcibly cald Marcus down and spent a few minutes debriefing Command
The bizarre events finally made sense. When the drones lost contact half an hour ago, that was the exact mont the squad’s headsets were hijacked. Command had never told them the corridor was "safe" or that there was "a computer around the bend."
If that wasn’t Command speaking, then who was it? Sothing had tapped into their communicator , either the ship’s surviving AI or living alien entities!
Whatever it was, it was highly intelligent and had learned their language just by listening. It had deliberately lured them into a trap.
The squad’s expressions grew grim. After racking their brains, they still didn’t have a viable rescue plan. They had no idea what Jason’s status was, or if he was even still alive...
Finally, Calvin spoke up. "Try not to panic. The Captain clearly wasn’t hypnotized; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to throw us out! He might just walk out on his own any minute now."
He paused, thinking. "Plus, the power reserves inside that ship must be critically low. It shouldn’t have any heavy weapon systems online. The fact that its signal jamrs couldn’t even reach us out here on the hull proves its output is severely limited!"
"He’s right. Our periter drones are still online," a technician from Command quickly added. "That ans the jamming field is highly localized..."
The squad remained silent, acutely aware of the terrifying unknown waiting inside. Calvin’s logic was sound, but if he was wrong, they were all dead.
Shane spoke up, his voice steady. "Don’t forget, the Captain figured out our communicator were compromised. That’s why he used his tactical light to signal the evacuation!"
"He’s an Enhanced Superhuman! He operates on a level we can’t even comprehend. He’ll be fine!"
Shane’s words cald the team. Marcus, in particular, managed to reign in his panic. They all shared an unshakeable faith in Jason’s abilities.
But sitting around waiting was pure torture.
"Here’s the new plan," Shane ordered. "Our mission isn’t over. We tie a high-tensile tether to our waists and push back inside to search for the Captain. We tug the line every sixty seconds to signal we’re clear. Marcus, you and the heavy weapons team hold the periter. If you don’t feel that tug, or if anything feels wrong, you activate the winch and physically drag us out. Understood?"
"Stop!" Jason lunged forward, clamped his hand over Henry’s shoulder, and hoisted the man completely off the deck.
Henry thrashed wildly. The young combat dic wasn’t particularly large, just over 1.7 ters tall but the hypnotic trance had driven him to sprint over 100 ters down the corridor. Held suspended in the air, his legs continued to kick chanically as he struggled to break free.
Left with no other option, Jason popped open Henry’s dkit, pulled out a heavy-duty sedative, and jamd the auto-injector into the dic’s thigh. Henry instantly went limp.
Hoisting the unconscious dic over his shoulder, Jason spun around to leave. This eerie corridor was no place to stick around.
But as he marched back toward the entrance, a cold knot ford in his stomach. Where the exit used to be, a massive, solid tal blast door now seamlessly sealed off the corridor!
"What the hell? Is soone remotely controlling the ship?" Jason scowled. That door hadn’t been there when they walked in; it must have deployed the mont he crossed the threshold.
He planted his boots and shoved against the tal with all his superhuman strength, but it didn’t budge a milliter. Dropping Henry safely to the floor, Jason unslung the dic’s standard-issue assault rifle and fired a fully automatic burst into the center of the door.
Sparks flew, but the heavy caliber rounds rely left shallow scratches on the alien alloy.
"Trying to cage ? Or are you trying to take us alive?"
He didn’t know what the entity controlling the ship was planning, but it clearly wasn’t friendly.
Jason focused on the insidious ntal pressure pushing against his mind. His head felt stiff, weighed down by a heavy, narcotic drowsiness.
A strange, invisible current was actively trying to pull him deeper into the ship. He had to constantly exert his willpower just to resist the hypnotic drag and focus on finding an exit.
At least I can resist the mind control, he thought, remaining on high alert.
...Is this so kind of alien biological weapon?
He raised the Gauss Rifle, heavily tempted to blast the door wide open. He raised the weapon, locked his sights on center mass, but ultimately lowered the barrel. The blast door looked incredibly thick and entirely pristine. A particle beam might not penetrate it, and he couldn’t afford to waste his limited ammunition on a gamble.
If the alien crew used Gauss-tier weapons inside their own ship, their security doors were undoubtedly engineered to withstand them.
Instead, he decided to look for a structurally compromised section of the hull. He would save the Gauss Rifle for a weakened bulkhead... This UFO had practically been torn in half; finding a breach shouldn’t be too hard!
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