156: Chapter 156 A Horrifying Shell, Hidden Moth Plot

Rockefeller III endured the inexplicable sense of discomfort in his heart, walked to the front of the nearest container, and lowered his head to look at the bottom.

A metal tag was embedded in the base of the container.

The font on it was monospaced, typed by an old-fashioned typewriter, and the ink had long since dried into a dark brown.

The label read:

January 1950, First Batch of Reverse-Engineered Vessel Containers.

Donor Source:

Army John Does, IDs KC-001 to KC-014.

Samuel followed closely behind him and also bent down to read the text on the tag clearly.

When he straightened up, his brows were already knitted together. He pointed to the corpse inside the container in front of him—a human body topped with a cockroach head—and his tone carried undisguised confusion:

"Vessel containers? Vessels prepared for whom?"

"What is supposed to be put inside this body?"

Rockefeller III did not answer.

He stood with his hands behind his back in front of this row of glass containers, his gaze moving slowly line by line across the label, lost in thought.

Just then,

from the other end of the corridor, the screams of another group of armed personnel came.

This time it was more urgent than before, mixed with the sound of a young team member's boots skidding on the floor as he was dragged out the door by his companions.

Rockefeller III and Samuel turned around at the same time, walked quickly through the corridor corner, and entered the room from which the screams originated.

What was displayed in this room was also a row of corpses soaked in pale yellow preservation fluid, each in an independent glass container.

But the corpses here were different from the first batch:

Their heads were no longer in human form but had completely turned into a cockroach style,

on both sides of the shoulder blades, small, underdeveloped membrane-like wing buds extended outward,

the arms had also become longer and thinner than a normal human's, and the ends of the fingers were no longer palms with five distinct fingers, but an intermediate form gradually transitioning into some kind of claw-like appendage adapted for hunting.

Only the legs and torso barely maintained a human outline.

Rockefeller III walked quickly to the tag at the base, bent down, and read:

"February 1953, Second Batch of Reverse-Engineered Vessel Containers."

"Donor Source: Federal Death Row Inmates, IDs KC-015 to KC-026."

When he stood up, his gaze lingered for a moment longer on those corpses that had already begun to lose their human form, his tone still maintaining a forced calm:

"They are advancing step by step."

"From the first batch where only the head was replaced, to the second batch where the head and arms were replaced, the shape is getting closer and closer to those two cockroach corpses."

Samuel stood behind him without replying,

just watching the outlines of those strange creatures in the row of glass containers in front of him, which were walking further and further in one direction, his jaw muscles twitching.

Screams came from outside again.

Rockefeller III and Samuel did not wait for the armed squad to come and report; they followed the direction of the sound, passed through the corridor corner, and pushed open the door to the third room.

The glass containers here were filled with even more bizarre corpses:

Except for the torso, which still retained a vague human outline, the head, arms, and legs had all turned into a cockroach form.

The wing membranes were spread out in the preservation fluid, the compound eyes reflected faint refracted light under the cold lights, and the claw-like lower limbs were curled at the bottom of the container.

The label read:

May 1956, Third Batch of Reverse-Engineered Vessel Containers.

Donor Source:

Federal Felons, IDs KC-027 to KC-040.

Without waiting for another armed squad to cry out, Rockefeller III had already taken the initiative to walk quickly to the next room.

When he pushed open the fourth door,

inside the room, a team of armed personnel who were searching were all pale-faced,

someone had their mouth open, preparing to shout,

but seeing Rockefeller III and Samuel burst in at the same time, they immediately stopped, pointed their fingers to the last row of glass containers neatly arranged in the depths of the room.

In this room, the corpses soaked in all the glass containers no longer showed any trace of human form.

The head had completely turned into a cockroach form, with compound eyes occupying most of the face and mouthparts slightly open;

the arms had transformed into black forelimbs with sharp claw-like appendages;

the legs had also become curved hind limbs covered with dense barbs;

the torso was covered by a layer of dark brown shiny carapace, and two complete, thin-as-cicada-wing wing membranes extended behind the shoulder blades.

The whole person looked like an upright cockroach scaled up to human size.

Rockefeller III walked to the base of the last container, looked down at the label, and the font on it was still monospaced characters typed by an old-fashioned typewriter:

August 1958, Fourth Batch of Reverse-Engineered Vessel Containers.

Donor Source: Federal First-Degree Murderers, IDs KC-041 to KC-050.

Behind the ID, two words were typed with extra force:

Failure.

As Rockefeller III straightened his back, he tilted his head slightly, looking at the failed experimental specimen in the glass container in front of him, which had almost completely alienated into an alien creature form but was still soaked in pale yellow liquid, and did not speak.

Samuel stood beside him, read the text on the tag from beginning to end again silently, raised his face in silence, and finally just sighed.

"Vessel containers... reverse-engineered from the alien corpses of the Mothmen."

"They stuffed living people into these containers batch by batch, transforming them into the form of Mothmen step by step."

"The agents of the Mothmen... from beginning to end, were not Solomon, but these vessels that had not yet fully formed."

"But why would they do this?"

"Those Mothmen, more than two thousand light-years away, can't even reach Earth. Who are they making these empty shells for?"

Isabelle DuPont, Jacob Rothschild, and William Vanderbilt V also arrived at the door of this room at this time.

Isabelle seeing the complete alien vessels on the wall of glass containers, hesitated at the inside of the door frame and did not step in immediately.

Jacob slowly pulled his hands out of the pockets of his overcoat, looked at the static vessels with complete wing membranes in the containers, and his lips moved silently several times.

William stood at the door for a moment, then placed his whiskey flask in the arms of a commando next to him, walked to Rockefeller III's side himself, and silently looked up at the completely alienated vessel specimen soaking in the pale yellow liquid.

"Is there a possibility..."

Rockefeller III stood in front of the label marked "Failure," his voice not loud, but in this closed room with pale lights and filled with alienated vessels, every word was exceptionally clear,

"They don't need the person to be there in person."

"The individual consciousness of any creature is, in the end, just a piece of information."

"The stored data in the brain, the connection patterns of neural circuits, can all be parsed into information."

"If the Mothmen possess the technology to convert individual consciousness into an information stream, and send this information to Earth via some faster-than-light communication method from two thousand six hundred and sixteen light-years away, and load it directly into these vessels..."