121: Chapter 122 Sorry, sir, he didn't swear today.

Less than ten minutes after Hark's emergency report was sent out, the door to the command room was pushed open.

He thought his superior's orders had arrived or reinforcements had come. He pressed his hands on the desk, preparing to stand up, only to see the woman named Martha from yesterday standing outside the door.

She wasn't trembling.

She was wearing the same gray work clothes as yesterday, with sleeves rolled up to her elbows. In her right hand, she held a pipe wrench over thirty centimeters long. A patch of half-dried blood stained the wrench's jaws, dripping down the rusty iron handle.

Her left hand was death-gripping a nylon rope. Tied to the other end was a man's wrist. She dragged him through the door by force; his knees hit the metal threshold with a dull thud, and blood was oozing from his nose and the corners of his mouth.

Hark's fingers brushed against his pistol grip but he didn't draw it. There was no aggression in the woman's eyes, only a sort of near-fanatical excitement.

"Sir, I caught a Xenos," Martha said, slamming the rope down in front of Hark's desk. The pipe wrench let out a piercing screech as it scraped across the metal floor. "He's definitely not human."

Hark leaned back in his chair, his gaze moving from the pipe wrench to the blood-covered man. The man curled up on the floor, moaning; he looked like just an ordinary assembler.

"You beat him?" Hark asked.

"I called Old Tom from downstairs to help pin him down. One hit with the wrench and he behaved," Martha said righteously, even wiping the sweat from her face with her sleeve. "This thing put on a good act, but I could tell at a glance he was a fake."

Hark looked at her.

"Reasoning."

"He lives above me. He's married to a real shrew. Usually, every single morning, he's out in the hallway cursing about fighting over the bathroom. The whole building can hear him; he hits anyone who tries to talk sense into him," Martha stepped forward, the pipe wrench clacking against the desk leg. "This morning, his wife told him to take out the trash. She lost her temper and slapped him."

She paused, staring at Hark with an extremely certain look in her eyes.

"He didn't hit back. He actually lowered his head and said 'I'm sorry'."

Hark said nothing.

"Sir, that bastard wouldn't say sorry even if the sky fell," Martha pointed at the man on the floor, spit flying from her mouth. "He's absolutely an alien mutt!"

The man on the floor tried to prop up his upper body, spitting out a mouthful of bloody foam, his voice muffled and unclear.

"Sir... I really was just in a bad mood today... I didn't want to argue with that crazy woman..."

Hark stood up.

He ignored the man and walked over to Martha. He looked at this middle-aged woman who hadn't even dared to knock yesterday, yet today dared to bash someone's head with a wrench. Her cowardice and cautiousness had been completely washed away by something called "faith." Under the empowerment of the Script System, the stamp of the Imperial Truth had directly rewritten the underlying logic of this neighborhood.

"Good job." Hark patted Martha on the shoulder.

He grabbed the man by the back of his collar with one hand, hoisted him off the floor, and dragged him out of the command room, heading down Corridor 3 toward the T-34 Intersection.

Martha followed behind with her wrench, her footsteps thumping loudly. Several nearby doors opened a crack as people peeked out to watch the commotion. Martha turned and glared at them, shouting loudly that this was a Xenos. Those doors slammed shut instantly.

Reaching the T-34 Intersection, Hark threw the man into the very center.

The man tumbled to the floor and let out a wail.

The overhead lights flickered out decisively and then turned back on.

Hark looked down at the man, pulled out his sidearm, and flicked off the safety.

A loud *bang* exploded in the corridor. The man's head snapped back, the back of his skull hitting the iron plating. He twitched twice and went still. A pool of dark red liquid slowly seeped into the gaps in the floor.

Martha stood by, watching the corpse without even blinking. Instead, a look of relief appeared on her face, as if Hark had just helped her step on a cockroach.

"Go get people," Hark said, holstering his gun and turning to Martha. "Call everyone you know who's brave and usually likes to gossip in the hallways."

Martha gripped her wrench and nodded.

"Tell them, as long as they feel someone around them has changed their habits, tastes, or temper, don't worry about why—just tie them up and drag them to me," Hark pointed at the corpse on the floor. "If they're beaten to death, it's on me."

Two hours later.

The corridor in front of the East District temporary command room had turned into a small-scale combination of a slaughterhouse and a wet market.

The smell of blood in the air was so heavy that even disinfectant couldn't mask it. Hundreds of people crowded the hallway, holding wrenches, kitchen knives, steel pipes, and even fire axes. They cursed as they dragged bound neighbors, colleagues, or relatives toward the command room door.

Hark's six subordinates didn't need to go out on patrol at all now; they had become security guards maintaining order in the queue.

"Don't push! One at a time!" his deputy barked, slamming the butt of his Bolter against the wall, forcing back several residents trying to cut the line.

Hark stood on the threshold, looking at the fanatical crowd of civilians before him.

An old man dragged a young man forward. The young man's face was covered in tears as he struggled desperately.

"Sir! My son started eating cilantro yesterday! He's vomited every time he's touched cilantro since he was a kid! This is absolutely not him!" The old man's beard shook with rage as he pressed his cane firmly against the young man's back.

The young man cried out, "Dad, I just wanted to try something new!" The old man slapped his cane against the boy's back, telling him to shut up.

Hark waved his hand. Two soldiers stepped forward and dragged the young man away, pulling him directly toward T-34.

A minute later, a report came through the communicator.

"Reporting to the Sergeant: the light flickered."

"Execute him," Hark said. "Drag him to the waste chute near the quarantine point. Don't block the way."

Hearing the result, the old man stood frozen for two seconds. His eyes turned red, but he didn't cry. He turned to leave, muttering that he was going to go check on his daughter-in-law too.

The second person dragged up was a fat woman. Her coworker was the one who reported her.

"She usually slacks off at work, but today she actually finished everything on her own and even helped me clean my workbench. This broad must be possessed!" the coworker shouted while clutching the fat woman's hair.

Hark waved his hand, and the soldiers dragged the fat woman toward T-34.

"Reporting to the Sergeant: the light didn't flicker."

Hark glanced at the coworker.

"Lock her in Quarantine Room 2. Check again tomorrow. Next."

The Imperial Truth displayed its most terrifying side under this secluded dome. It didn't need high technology or computing power; it only needed to release the most primitive human instincts of suspicion and fratricide.

As long as these instincts were given a sacred justification, everyone would turn into the sharpest of hounds.

Ten thousand pairs of eyes watched each other's meals, gait, sleep habits, and breathing rates. Any slight deviation from past patterns would be infinitely magnified and then become a reason for violence.

The rate of collateral damage was appallingly high.

In two hours, Hark ordered the execution of sixty-four people and locked up over two hundred in the quarantine rooms. Out of those two hundred, about one hundred and ninety were likely real humans who were sent to hell simply because of a random whim or an unusual act.

But the sixty-four who died were all the real deal.

In this slum completely devoid of high-tech detection equipment, Hark used a pistol, a broken light, and a group of middle-aged women to forcefully crush the Infiltrators' large-scale expansion in its cradle.

At the commentary desk, Isabelle looked at the Blue Side's data panel.

Her brow was knitted into a tight knot.

"The Panic Index is skyrocketing," she said, pointing to a red curve on the screen. "The Blue Side's social order is effectively in a state of collapse. Everyone has fallen into a frenzy of hunting each other. According to the script rules, if the Panic Index breaks the red line of ninety, the system will judge the Blue Side's defense as lost and declare an immediate defeat."

The bullet chat was full of confusion and insults. "What kind of psychotic play is this, killing your own people?" "Is this original-style player's brain full of water? This isn't catching spies, it's a massacre." "The panic value is already at eighty-five, it's about to redline. Take him away, next player please."

Karen crossed his arms, watching the Imperial officer sitting next to the pile of corpses on the screen, not rushing to a conclusion.

"The index has stopped rising," Karen said suddenly.

Isabelle paused and looked down at the panel.

The red curve had stopped dead at eighty-eight, as if hitting an invisible wall, and began to move sideways around that value.

"Why?" Isabelle pulled up the emotional parameter analysis model. "An internal purge of this intensity should inevitably lead to extreme panic. Why hasn't the residents' emotional model completely collapsed?"

Karen looked at the residents queuing with wrenches in the footage.

"Because they found something to do," he said, his voice deep and heavy. "People are most panicked when they are waiting for death. But when they have weapons in their hands, the power to decide the life and death of others, and truly see those monsters' heads blown apart by a single shot, panic turns into something else."

Karen pointed to the old man who had just sent his son to the execution ground.

"Fanaticism."

Isabelle didn't respond. She switched the view to the Cyber Federation's Blue Side area.

The screen was split side-by-side.

On one side was the East District, where blood flowed like a river and middle-aged women were bashing heads with pipe wrenches.

On the other side was the West District Administration Building, bright and clean, with beautiful sunlight and everything in perfect order.

Lynn sat in her office, drinking her third cup of coffee for the day, looking at the lush green data wall before her in a very good mood.

Her assistant pushed open the door and walked in.

The assistant was a young man in his twenties who usually worked very efficiently. Today was no different; he walked to the desk and placed a physical paper document on the surface.

"Director, here are the maintenance sign-off sheets for each district node," the assistant's voice was steady and clear.

"Put it there," Lynn said without looking up, continuing to scan her tablet.

The assistant put the document down, turned, and left, the door closing softly.

Lynn finished her last sip of coffee and reached for the document.

Her hand stopped in mid-air.

The edge of the document was not parallel to the edge of the desk.

It was off by about a finger's width, placed at an angle.

That assistant had OCD. Every time he delivered a document, he would use his fingers to align the document's edge perfectly with the desk's edge. Even if it was only a few millimeters off, he would nudge it again. He had kept this habit for six months without failing once.

Today, he didn't give it that nudge.

Lynn stared at the slanted document. Her heart suddenly skipped a beat, and a sensation like an electric current surged from her spine to her scalp.

She whipped her head around to look at the data wall.

The identity node representing that assistant was glowing quietly on the screen.

Green.

Not just him; the entire wall was green.

Confidence level: 99.5%.

Lynn's finger hovered over the document but didn't touch it. She stared fixedly at that green light, the memory of her personally adjusting the threshold from 2 to 2.3 yesterday flashing through her mind.

"Environmental noise," she heard herself whisper those words in a near-trance.

She didn't touch the document.

She pulled up the underlying login for the administrator interface. Her hands shook so much it took two tries to enter the password correctly. She wanted to adjust the threshold back. Right now, immediately.

She pressed Enter.

A gray warning box popped up on the screen.

"Insufficient permissions. This operation requires Master-level authorization."

Lynn froze.

She *was* the Master. Her account had the highest level of authority.

She slowly moved her gaze from the screen to the closed office door.

It was very quiet outside.

Too quiet.

No footsteps in the hallway, no rustling of cleaning robots passing by—even the sound of the building's ventilation ducts had become faint.

Her hand reached for the emergency alarm button under the desk, which could directly connect to the West District garrison mecha units.

Her finger had just touched the red hard-plastic shell.

From outside the office door came the sound of a card being swiped—a soft *beep*—and then the door handle turned.