83: Fragments of memory and the unusual movements of the "swarm"

Excellence's awakening was like the first glimmer of light piercing through the clouds after a long polar night, bringing long-awaited, relieved hope to the "Zhulong" base.

However, the light of this hope remained weak and flickering, illuminating a path ahead that was long and filled with unknown thorns.

Under meticulous care for all aspects of his physical functions, his body began to recover slowly and steadily.

His pale cheeks gradually regained a hint of color, and his emaciated frame began to gather weak strength again through nutritional support and moderate rehabilitation exercises.

He could sit up on his own, walk short distances with assistance, and even perform some simple, autonomous daily activities.

However, his conscious world was like a mirror that had been shattered by great force and then barely pieced back together, covered in crisscrossing cracks, only able to reflect fragmented, blurry, and logically disconnected memory shards.

He recognized Su Mu, remembered her name, and would subconsciously show a look of reliance and peace when he saw her.

He could even vaguely recall some daily scenes from his university campus, such as the tall bookshelves in the library and the special odors emitted by instruments in the laboratory.

Yet, regarding the thrilling research before his coma, the tragic high-tech defense battle, the entanglement between The Foundation and the "pandora" fragments, and the details of his own bizarre abilities—which were far beyond those of ordinary people and felt like both a gift and a curse... all these crucial memories were completely erased as if by an invisible hand, sinking into the deepest, darkest fault of his ocean of consciousness, leaving no trace behind.

Any attempt to force a recollection would immediately trigger intense headaches, as if his brain marrow were being scorched, causing him to curl up in agony, drenched in cold sweat.

The base's chief neuroscientist explained this as an extremely typical and crucial self-protection mechanism after the brain suffers a devastating impact.

Those lost memories had not completely disappeared but were buried and sealed to avoid secondary damage to the fragile, newly regenerating neural network.

Recovery required time, patience, and the creation of an absolutely safe, stable, and low-pressure environment, allowing the brain to slowly, bit by bit, rebuild connections at its own rhythm, sort through the fragments, and eventually awaken those sleeping pasts naturally.

Wang Jianguo deeply understood this.

He issued extremely clear instructions: before Excellence's memory and cognitive functions showed significant recovery, it was strictly forbidden to reveal any specific information regarding his special abilities, the conspiracies of The Foundation, or the previous tragic battle.

All personnel in contact with him must be strictly screened and trained, and conversation content must be reviewed to ensure it would not inadvertently trigger his pain or anxiety.

Everything was prioritized for his stable recovery.

Thus, Excellence's life was brought into a strictly protected, nearly isolated, simple, and peaceful orbit.

The medical isolation area where he lived was comfortable and quiet, with soft lighting and constant temperature.

His daily life was filled with various gentle rehabilitation exercises: physical therapists helped him relearn muscle control and coordinate movements; occupational therapists guided him through some fine manual activities, such as puzzles, building blocks, and threading beads, to exercise his hand-eye coordination and focus; speech therapists patiently helped him improve pronunciation, expand vocabulary, and rebuild language logic.

He still retained an instinctive fondness for "tinkering" with things, but this preference was now guided more toward therapeutic directions.

With the full-time accompaniment and assistance of Su Mu, he began to fiddle with some basic electronic components and tools again.

The Emotion-Visualization Device, which had once shone brilliantly and even triggered a series of subsequent ripples, was disassembled and reassembled by him once more.

But this time, its functions were greatly simplified and pacified.

It was no longer that strange creation capable of projecting complex halos and revealing deep conscious connections, but had become a simple auxiliary therapeutic tool used to monitor and provide feedback on his own emotional stability.

The LED lights on the device would only display a simple three-color status based on his heart rate variability (HRV) and galvanic skin response (GSR): soft green represented "calm," gentle blue represented "mild fluctuation," and striking red represented "needs attention and adjustment."

This became a window for him to learn to identify and self-regulate his emotions.

Evelyn Li visited almost every day.

She always meticulously prepared snacks and soups that were easy to digest, light in taste, yet nutritious, and brought some classical music or natural white noise with soothing melodies that had undergone acoustic processing.

In front of Excellence, she was always exceptionally gentle, patient, and restrained.

Excellence had a vague sense of familiarity with her, as if from a distant past, feeling that she was not a stranger, but specific memories were a chaotic mess.

His attitude toward her was polite and gentle, and he would thank her softly, but that sense of distance and subconscious alienation was like an invisible veil, clearly separating the two.

This distance often caused Evelyn to feel a dense, indescribable sourness and sadness in her heart, but she silently suppressed these emotions, only observing his needs more meticulously and preparing every meal more attentively, trying to make up for the guilt deep in her heart in this silent way, while carefully maintaining that fragile connection.

And Su Mu, almost naturally, took on the core role of "full-time caregiver."

She set aside almost all personal affairs, dedicating the vast majority of her time and energy to accompanying and guiding Excellence's recovery.

Her patience seemed endless, guiding him through various boring exercises over and over again, tirelessly answering his questions that seemed childish due to memory loss, whispering stories of the past that had been screened and were full of sunshine, and carefully avoiding all mines that might ignite pain.

Excellence had an almost instinctive, deeply rooted reliance and trust in her.

As long as she was by his side, he seemed to be able to relax more easily, and the lights on the Emotion-Visualization Device more often presented that reassuring, stable light green.

This deep, hard-won bond moved all who witnessed it.

However, beneath this seemingly orderly and warm picture of recovery, cold and dangerous undercurrents never ceased to surge.

On the top floor of that black giant tower of the Free Confederacy, Morpheus Li's patience was gradually being worn away, his gaze becoming sharper and colder.

The failure of the base defense battle and Evelyn's defection caused him considerable pressure and questioning within The Foundation.

But his true frustration did not come from these losses, but from the re-confirmation of the amazing value of the "seed" and... the burning anxiety of being within sight but out of reach.

He absolutely could not tolerate Excellence, this "seed" containing infinite possibilities, growing safely in the opponent's hotbed and eventually being used by others.

He could not wait for Excellence's slow, uncontrollable natural recovery any longer.

He had to take action; he had to get the "treasure" in his brain, no matter what means were used!

Through an extremely secret, one-way special communication channel that existed only at the highest authority level of The Foundation, an order with an encryption level reaching "Underworld" was quietly sent out.

The target of the order was not external personnel, but a "dormant" pawn—codenamed "Deep Shadow"—who had long been deeply embedded within the "Zhulong" base, in a state of absolute silence, with a very high level, and of whom even Evelyn was completely unaware.

After receiving the order, "Deep Shadow" began a silent and efficient startup procedure, like a precisely programmed machine.

His (or her) identity was hidden extremely well, possessing considerable authority and freedom, able to access many core areas and systems of the base, yet never attracting attention.

"Deep Shadow" knew very well that with Excellence being so strictly protected, directly contacting him would be tantamount to suicide.

But the order received was not to storm him, but to... cleverly use the environment to create an "accident."

After meticulous observation and calculation, "Deep Shadow" turned his gaze once again to that seemingly harmless Emotion-Visualization Device that had become Excellence's daily rehabilitation tool.

During a routine equipment maintenance and performance check, "Deep Shadow" used his position to quietly adjust several key capacitor and inductor parameters of an auxiliary audio resonance module inside the device with extremely professional and covert techniques.

This change was negligible and could not be detected in routine functional and safety checks.

Its only effect was—when the device was running at full capacity due to detecting extreme emotions (such as extreme fear, rage, or anxiety nearing a breakdown), the probability of its built-in micro-speaker producing that extremely short, extremely high-frequency activation harmonic at a specific frequency was increased by nearly four hundred percent!

After completing the hardware-level infiltration, "Deep Shadow" began to lie in wait quietly, like the most patient hunter, using the monitoring systems and internal information flows throughout the base to closely monitor Excellence's daily routine and emotional fluctuation patterns, waiting for a perfect opportunity that could naturally trigger Excellence's intense emotional loss of control.

A few days later, the opportunity arrived quietly.

During a routine physical rehabilitation session, Excellence needed to attempt a simple, full-body coordination movement from a sitting to a standing position within the parallel bars.

For an ordinary person, this movement would be effortless, but for Excellence, whose motor neural pathways in the brain were still struggling to rebuild, it was exceptionally difficult.

His body seemed to no longer obey the commands of his consciousness; the sequence of his muscle engagement was incorrect, his sense of balance was extremely poor, and time after time, he tried and failed, collapsing back onto the rehabilitation chair.

Repeated failure, combined with the inherent decline in emotional regulation ability following his brain injury, caused Excellence's sense of frustration and agitation to accumulate rapidly.

His breathing became heavy, sweat seeped from his forehead, and his eyes were filled with anger and impatience toward himself.

The physical therapist beside him patiently encouraged and guided him, but with little effect.

The Emotion-Visualization Device keenly captured the deterioration of his mood; the projected halo gradually shifted from a stable green to an uneasy blue, eventually flashing a dark red vortex representing "High Agitation," while the internal speaker emitted a simulated, low, and unsettling thunderous roar.

Seeing this, Su Mu immediately stepped forward and softly comforted him, "Excellence, it's okay. We're in no rush, take your time. If we can't do it today, we'll try again tomorrow..." She tried to take his hand to calm him down.

However, at this moment, Excellence seemed trapped within his own out-of-control emotions and body; frustration surged within his chest like molten lava, unable to subside for a moment.

He shook off Su Mu's hand (not intentionally, merely an instinctive reaction under his agitation), clutched his head, and let out a painful, agitated low roar.

Just at the moment when Excellence's emotions were pushed to a peak by his own predicament and the thunderous roar from the Emotion-Visualization Device reached a certain intensity—

The dormant "Deep Shadow," like a shark that had smelled blood, decisively launched a remote activation of a miniature infrasound generator, no larger than a matchbox, that had long been hidden deep within the ventilation ducts of the rehabilitation room, disguised as an ordinary air purification module attachment!

A wave of sound, completely imperceptible to the human ear, with an extremely low frequency that could bypass conscious defenses and act directly on the deep limbic system of the brain (which governs emotions and instinctive reactions), silently permeated the room like an invisible toxic fog, precisely enveloping Excellence, who was in the midst of emotional turmoil!

This infrasonic attack had very weak energy itself and would not cause physical harm, but its specific frequency could greatly amplify and distort existing negative emotions, inducing inexplicable and groundless deep fear, anxiety, and a sense of losing control!

The internal frustration and agitation combined with the externally injected infrasound that amplified negative emotions, working from the inside and out to form a lethal synergy!

Excellence's body suddenly stiffened, then began to tremble violently!

He clutched his head, and the sound he let out was no longer a simple agitated roar, but had turned into a screech filled with genuine pain and fear!

The red light on the Emotion-Visualization Device instantly flared to a blinding intensity! The projected dark red vortex spun and twisted frantically, as if it wanted to devour everything! The thunderous roar from the device also became extremely sharp and piercing, its volume climbing rapidly!

"Excellence! What's wrong with you?! Calm down! Look at me!" Su Mu was terrified out of her wits by this sudden, completely out-of-control drastic change, her heart almost stopping! She threw herself forward recklessly, trying to hold him and soothe his violently trembling body.

Just at that critical point where Excellence's emotions were pushed to their peak by the internal and external assault and were on the verge of collapse! The tampered-with resonance module inside the Emotion-Visualization Device was finally pushed to its limit! An extremely sharp harmonic, with a frequency far exceeding the upper limit of human hearing and lasting less than 0.1 seconds, rang out like the funeral bell of hell, suddenly bursting from the device's speaker!

This short harmonic, almost imperceptible to the human ear, acted like a precise and long-awaited activation key, instantly piercing the air and reaching the "Nightmare" nanobot swarm prototype that had been lurking deep in the ventilation grille in the corner of the rehabilitation room, in a state of absolute dormancy!

Hum—

As if a tiny bell of death had been rung, countless nanobots, absolutely invisible to the naked eye, were instantly activated, awakening from their state of suspended animation! They received the instructions contained within that harmonic and immediately locked onto the target whose bio-electric signals and brainwave activity were the most intense, and whose emotional fluctuations best matched the preset attack characteristics—Excellence!

The next moment, these tiny machines of slaughter and theft, like lethal iron sand attracted by an invisible magnetic pole, silently and swiftly surged out from the ventilation duct, turning into an invisible mist of death, spreading toward the painfully curled-up Excellence!

"Ugh, ah—!"

Excellence suddenly let out an extremely shrill scream, his body arching violently, as if struck by an invisible, extremely painful bolt of lightning! He clutched his head tightly with both hands, his fingers digging into his scalp as if he wanted to tear open his own skull!

A violent, indescribable stinging pain emanating from the deepest part of his brain instantly swept through all his Perception! All the muscles in his body uncontrollably spasmed and convulsed, and he rolled off the rehabilitation chair, falling heavily to the ground!

"Excellence!!" Su Mu let out a heart-wrenching cry, threw herself to the ground, and tried in vain to hold down his convulsing body, terrified to the point of freezing, with tears streaming down her face! She frantically tapped the bright red emergency call button on the wall over and over again!

The shrill alarm instantly rang throughout the entire medical area! The medical team rushed in at top speed, and seeing Excellence convulsing on the ground in a semi-conscious state, everyone's expression changed drastically!

"Quick! Sedative! Intravenous push! Hurry!"

"Monitor vital signs! Hurry!"

"EEG! Hook it up! What's going on? Sudden seizure? Or acute intracranial pressure elevation?!"

"Careful! Don't let him bite his tongue!"

The scene instantly fell into a state of extreme chaos and panic! The piercing alarms of various monitoring instruments intertwined, mixed with the anxious shouts of medical staff, hurried footsteps, and the clatter of medical equipment...

Under the effect of the sedative, Excellence's violent convulsions gradually subsided, but his complexion was ashen, his breathing was shallow, his consciousness seemed to have been dragged into a deeper, darker abyss, and his eyes had completely lost focus, becoming hollow and vacant.

In the midst of the chaos, no one noticed that those countless nanobots, like the most insidious virus, were rapidly penetrating into his body through his skin, mucous membranes, and even with his rapid breathing, moving along his blood circulation and neural networks at an astonishing speed, marching madly toward their final target—his brain's central command!

Evelyn, who had rushed over upon hearing the news, dashed to the entrance of the rehabilitation room. Seeing the hellish scene before her and Excellence's lifeless face, she felt the world go black, her heart gripped tightly by an icy hand!

Immense fear and worry made her almost suffocate! Her gaze subconsciously swept around. As a top scientist of The Foundation, her professional instinct allowed her, even in extreme panic, to capture a trace of an extremely faint, discordant detail—the Emotion-Visualization Device that was still flickering and emitting unstable noise... the residual impression of that harmonic, which had been so brief it was almost ignored...

A terrible, desperate conjecture, like a pale bolt of lightning, instantly split her mind open!

Her father's revenge! It was the nanobot swarm! That swarm prototype she thought had been destroyed! It hadn't been destroyed! It had been lurking all along! Waiting for a moment of emotional loss of control like today to be activated! And what activated it... was actually the harmonic emitted by the device Excellence himself had modified?! This was a meticulously planned, cruel trap that used the victim himself as the trigger!

Boundless chill instantly swept through Evelyn's entire body, her blood seemingly freezing in an instant! She turned abruptly, pushing through the crowd recklessly, and ran madly toward the direction of the base's main control room!

She had to find Wang Jianguo immediately! She had to report this discovery immediately! She had to subject Excellence to the highest level of bio-electromagnetic scanning and mandatory quarantine immediately! She had to stop the swarm from completing the information theft! Otherwise... otherwise, Excellence's consciousness might be completely destroyed! Or he might become a hollowed-out walking corpse!

Her heart was filled with unprecedented fear and despair because she knew that she might... already be too late.

Just as she was running with all her might, the vanguard of those nanobots had already broken through the final barrier and entered Excellence's brain domain.

They began to release special signaling molecules, simulating specific neurotransmitters, attempting to establish illegal, predatory connections with his neurons, spying on and transmitting to the outside world those deepest memories and treasures of knowledge concerning "pandora" and countless unsolved mysteries...

Excellence's remaining, weak self-consciousness, amidst the endless, icy stinging pain and void, fell powerlessly toward the dark abyss... falling...