245: The Silent Enigma

Chen Wang's finger hovered over the confirm button of the kindling system.

He didn't press it.

The Jellyfish-like Organism sank into the crack in the dome, and the blue light vanished.

The green "plants" also stopped flickering.

Everything around them quieted down, but no one relaxed.

The ice surface suddenly began to vibrate.

It wasn't coming from underground; it was the sound of footsteps.

Very uniform, very rhythmic.

A group of people walked over from the other side of the crystal dome.

They were wearing old-fashioned, off-white protective suits with faded barcode numbers on their shoulders.

Each person held a laser pointer in their hand, with the tip pointing downward.

They stopped twenty meters away from the wuling type 100 and crouched down together.

The laser pointers lit up, projecting strings of red dots onto the ice.

That was binary code.

"They're communicating," Amy whispered.

Her financial terminal was pressed against her leg, its screen rapidly decoding the signals.

"What's the content?" Su Ling asked.

His hand was already on the grip of his gun, his eyes scanning the surroundings.

"I can't read it," Amy shook her head. "The format is wrong; it looks like encrypted system commands."

Star Pupil opened her eyes.

The mechanical parrot's tail twitched slightly.

She raised her hand, pressing her fingers to her temples.

"Let me try," she said.

Her mental energy slowly extended outward, like a thread, connecting to the nearest resident.

As soon as it made contact, her body jolted violently.

Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

She collapsed back onto the stretcher, breathing rapidly, her fingers twitching.

"Don't touch them!" she gasped, "Their consciousness... isn't dead, it's locked away. The state is very strange; I can't read it, and I can't wake them up."

Su Wan immediately ran over to check on her.

Low blood pressure, chaotic brain waves, but the brain wasn't injured.

"She disconnected just in time," she said. "Two seconds later, and she might not have woken up."

Chen Wang watched the group.

They were still writing code, their movements identical, the angle of their raised hands exactly the same.

He turned and walked toward the rear cabin.

A few minutes later, he dragged out a long black device—the spare speaker for the wuling type 100.

This was something he had salvaged from a scrapped car before the apocalypse and had kept as an emergency tool.

He connected the speaker to the car's audio system and opened the audio library.

His fingers slid across the screen, selecting a song.

"The Most Dazzling Folk Style."

But he had altered the tempo, boosting the drum beats to make the rhythm closer to a heartbeat.

He pressed play.

When the first drum beat echoed out, everyone looked up simultaneously.

The next second, they began to move.

Not walking, not running, but dancing.

Their movements were stiff, like machines, every step and every arm swing perfectly synchronized.

"They're responding to the music," Lin Wei stared at the console data. "The sound frequency triggered the underlying commands of the protective suits! This isn't voluntary; it's a built-in reaction mode of the system!"

Chen Wang narrowed his eyes.

The music continued, the drum beats growing stronger.

Suddenly, a red light flashed from an interface on the back of one of the residents.

The chest plate popped open, revealing a translucent keyboard.

His fingers began to tap, but only repeated one action: pressing F5 to refresh.

The others reacted as well.

Three people popped out keyboards, two just flashed red lights, and one started smoking directly.

"The protective suits have an operating system," Lin Wei recorded the data. "The music interfered with the sleep protocol, briefly unlocking control permissions!"

Before she could finish, a bell tolled in the distance.

Low, slow, seven times in total.

Each toll made the shell of the wuling type 100 vibrate slightly.

The kindling interface flickered, and the coordinate data was briefly scrambled.

The people who were dancing all stopped.

Their movements reset to zero.

Arms dropped, heels together, heads bowed.

Their eyes were vacant, like dolls that had lost power.

A line of small text appeared on the surface of the protective suits: "Cleaning program starting."

Blue light seeped out from the gaps, beginning to clear the ice dust.

Some picked up ice shards and placed them back in their original spots, while others straightened their companions' crooked collars.

Everything was orderly, devoid of emotion.

Chen Wang immediately turned off the audio system.

The speaker lost power, and the sound vanished.

"This bell toll is a command," Su Ling raised his gun, aiming in the direction of the sound. "It's not natural; it's being broadcast."

"There are commands in the frequency," Amy said, looking at the financial terminal. "It's 83% similar to the startup sound wave of the kindling system. It's not a coincidence."

"They are test subjects," Lin Wei said. "They have control systems in their brains. They usually sleep, receive periodic instructions, and clear any abnormal behavior."

"Then why could the music activate them?" Su Wan asked.

"Because those are memories of the old world," Chen Wang said. "Pop culture from before the apocalypse, group behaviors. Their systems likely stored these templates as part of 'human behavior simulation'."

"But why don't they speak?" Star Pupil leaned against the stretcher, her voice weak.

"It's not that they don't want to," Chen Wang looked at the bowed figures. "It's that they can't. The language function has been turned off, or perhaps it was never enabled in the first place."

Su Wan took out the scanner and aimed it at an older resident.

The data came out quickly.

"Physiological age is around sixty," she said. "DNA activity stopped in 2124. There are many nanobots in their bodies sustaining their lives. This isn't living naturally; it's artificially maintained."

"They are scientists," Amy flipped through the files. "There's a record in the Ark Project, batch 0927, with the goal of uploading consciousness into the quantum network to achieve immortality."

"It failed," Lin Wei said. "The consciousness was trapped, and the bodies became automated machines."

"So they write binary," Chen Wang said. "That's the only language they can use. It's not communication; it's reporting their status."

Star Pupil closed her eyes and whispered: "When I was hit by the backlash earlier, I saw three images—a laboratory door, a child's hand, and a photo with the words 'Restart Family Project' written on it."

No one spoke.

The residents were still cleaning. Wiping goggles, adjusting backpack straps, their movements as standardized as an instructional video.

Chen Wang crouched down and picked up a piece of ice.

He walked to within five meters of the nearest resident and reached out his hand.

"We are not enemies," he said. "You can stop."

The person didn't react.

He continued to wipe his goggles.

He stepped forward half a step.

The cannon on the other person's shoulder immediately charged, emitting a low hum.

He stopped and stepped back to his original position.

"Can't get close," Su Ling said. "Any abnormality will trigger their defenses."

"But we must get the information," Lin Wei said. "The holographic keyboard appeared, which means the system has a vulnerability. As long as we find another trigger condition..."

"The music can only be used once," Chen Wang said. "Next time, it might go straight into alert mode."

"Then we change the sound," Amy said. "The bell controls them; can we create a stronger one?"

"The problem is, who is ringing the bell?" Su Ling asked. "Where is the control center?"

"Not outside," Star Pupil said. "Inside the dome. I feel many voices mixed together, like many people talking, but I can't hear them clearly."

Chen Wang looked toward the crystal dome.

The crack had closed.

The Jellyfish-like Organism was gone.

"They are not guardians," he said. "They are prisoners."

"Prisoners that are periodically reset," Lin Wei added.

"What happens after the cleaning ends?" Su Wan asked.

"Return to sleep," Amy said. "Waiting for the next command."

"Then when does the next one come?"

"I don't know," Amy looked at the financial terminal. "But I can try to predict the timing of the bell. If it's a scheduled broadcast, there will be a pattern."

"Wait for it to come again," Chen Wang said. "We'll observe the changes and look for a breakthrough."

He ordered everyone to retreat five meters and shut down high-energy equipment.

The wuling type 100 went silent, leaving only the life support system running.

The team spread out, maintaining vigilance.

Lin Wei sat at the console, repeatedly replaying the frequency fluctuations when the keyboard appeared.

She was trying to replicate that signal.

Su Ling guarded the flank, his gun pointed in the direction of the bell.

His finger was outside the trigger guard, ready to respond to any emergency at any time.

Su Wan returned to the medical pod to organize the scan data.

Her expression was heavy, as if she had discovered something she shouldn't have known.

Star Pupil lay on the stretcher, the mechanical parrot's tail twitching occasionally.

She intermittently received fragments of emotions—fear, oblivion, waiting.

Chen Wang stood by the vehicle, still holding the speaker's cable in his hand.

He looked at those bowed people and suddenly remembered something.

The style of these protective suits was the same as in a video he had seen before the apocalypse.

It was the winter of 2124, the last live broadcast from the Northern Polar Research Base.

In the last few seconds of the broadcast, the host said: "We are about to open a new chapter for human civilization."

Then the signal cut off.

Now he knew the truth.

The new chapter began with silence.

A resident suddenly looked up.

His movements were different from the others.

He looked at Chen Wang, his lips moving.

There was no sound.

But Chen Wang understood.

Two words.

Save me.