15: Chapter 15 analyzes Chen Mushang

In a conference room on the second basement level of the White House, a massive screen hung on the wall. The left side of the screen displayed real-time data from the stationary fleet in the Kuiper Belt.

Each screen on the right showed Chen Mu—Chen Mu from different angles, and even Chen Mu at different times.

Every place captured by surveillance cameras—including the interrogation room, the meeting room, and the hallways—was aggregated onto this screen.

Seventeen people were seated in the room.

In the very center sat President Trump. He was in a swivel chair slightly higher than the others, elbows propped on the armrests, fingers interlaced against his chin.

To his right sat a succession of high-ranking officials, including the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Advisor.

To his left sat a series of experts, including psychologists, astrophysicists, and sociologists.

Directly opposite President Trump sat the two detectives, Thompson and Maya.

The two felt like students who had been suddenly called into the principal's office. Even an experienced veteran detective like Thompson felt restless and uneasy.

"Your Excellency, the alien fleet has been confirmed to have stopped moving!" Hoffman's excited voice reached everyone's ears, and they all couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

With his fingers still interlaced, President Trump gestured with his eyes for Advisor Cole, who was next to Thompson, to begin the questioning.

Advisor Cole turned her swivel chair slightly to face Maya and Thompson.

She asked in a steady voice, "Officer Maya, Officer Thompson. I need you to recount every detail, from the first second you made contact with this person until the moment you left the interrogation room."

"Do not omit anything, even if you think it's unimportant."

Thompson lifted his hands from his knees, wiped a layer of cold sweat from his face, and began his account: "It was roughly yesterday afternoon when we received the call."

"We were patrolling nearby after the Times Square fountain incident."

"At the time, he made a strange movement. After blowing up the fountain, he didn't run; he just stood there. He was wearing that same grayish-green coat he has on now, looking no different from a normal homeless person."

"Oh, right, a flashlight also fell out of his coat back then," Maya suddenly added.

Cole interrupted her: "A flashlight?"

Maya recalled, "It was just an ordinary flashlight with a plastic casing. The tail cap was wrapped in tape—the kind worth two dollars at a mall. The scene was chaotic then, so the flashlight was just left there."

Cole didn't follow up, but her eyes narrowed slightly behind her rimless glasses.

Thompson continued: "We brought him back to the station. The first thing he said was, 'I am not from this planet.'"

"I thought he was a junkie at the time. In New York, six out of ten homeless people are on drugs, and the other four are drunks."

"I told Maya to come out with me, intending to leave him alone for a few hours. As we reached the door, he said something from behind us: 'You have less than forty-eight hours left.'"

The room fell silent for a moment. On the screen, Chen Mu rolled over in his sleep.

"Forty-eight hours?" Hoffman frowned. "Your Excellency, thirty-two hours have passed since this Chen Mu was arrested. I think he meant that we would observe their fleet within forty-eight hours."

"But in reality, he didn't expect that our United States would observe it in only eight hours."

President Trump looked at him in confusion: "And so?"

Hoffman nodded solemnly: "This proves that these aliens do not fully understand our Blue Planet's cutting-edge technology. There's an old saying from the East: 'Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated.' They don't even know our trump cards, which shows we've already won half the battle!"

Everyone present, including President Trump, was speechless. Although they usually 'won big' in the news, what was the point of this nonsense now?

President Trump gave an awkward cough. "Save that for the news. Officer Thompson, please continue."

Thompson went on: "I didn't believe him. Later, I sat with him in the interrogation room and let his stomach growl with hunger. Finally, Maya treated him to a burger combo."

"Wait!" Elena Morales, the Deputy Attorney General, interrupted him.

"I recall in the NYPD Interrogation Procedures Manual, Chapter Three, Section Seventeen: Any detainee has the right to receive sufficient drinking water and food at reasonable intervals during their detention."

"Officer Thompson, this action of yours will face at least three independent violations."

"But he's not human! The Constitution doesn't apply to him," Thompson argued nervously.

But clearly, he was no match for Elena, who specialized in the law.

"Correct, he is not human, Officer Thompson. So for the past twenty-three hours, you treated a being we don't understand at all—one who might decide the fate of this planet—the same way you treat a Brooklyn junkie."

"You starved him for nearly thirteen hours and pointed a gun at his head."

Elena pointed at the sleeping Chen Mu on the screen. "If tomorrow the President sits across from him and the first thing he says is: 'Your people starved me for thirteen hours in an interrogation room, pointed a gun at my head, and mocked my peaceful intentions'—"

"Officer Thompson, how do you think the President should respond?"

"I..."

Thompson was left speechless, beads of cold sweat rolling down his forehead. If his actions truly caused the final negotiations to collapse, he would be directly guilty of crimes against humanity.

"Ms. Elena," Maya interjected, "I bought the burger. Thompson didn't stop me. He just said the cafeteria was closed and that I'd have to pay out of my own pocket."

"We are partners, a single unit. This is enough to prove that Thompson didn't intentionally use hunger to punish him."

"Enough!" President Trump interrupted their argument in time. "We are here to discuss an alien crisis, not whether the Constitution applies to aliens. Officer Thompson's issue will be handled by NYPD Internal Affairs later."

"Psychological expert, you've watched all the recordings. What are your thoughts?"

Sitting to Cole's left was a man in his fifties.

His name was Lawrence Fish, a senior supervisor of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. He specialized in micro-expressions and deception detection and had taught at Quantico for fifteen years.

His students were spread across law enforcement agencies all over the country, including Thompson, who was currently sitting by the door.

A stack of high-definition printed screenshots was spread out in front of Fish, every single one of them showing Chen Mu's face.

"Your Excellency, everyone." Fish's voice sounded like he was lecturing in a classroom.

"I have repeatedly watched all the facial footage we could obtain. From the interrogation room, the meeting room, the hallway, and the bathroom door—a total of about four hours of effective material."

He pushed the top screenshot to the center of the table. It showed the interrogation room, with Thompson's gun barrel pressed against Chen Mu's forehead.

"Under normal circumstances, when a human has a gun barrel pressed against their forehead, their facial muscles undergo a series of movements beyond their conscious control."

"For example, the frontalis muscle contracts, the eyebrows rise, the levator palpebrae superioris muscle contracts, and the pupils dilate. This is the startle reflex, driven directly by the amygdala, bypassing the conscious control of the cerebral cortex."

"No human—I repeat, no human—can completely suppress this reflex, including special agents engaged in specialized work."

His finger pointed to Chen Mu's eyebrow.

"But he didn't. His frontalis muscle didn't contract. His eyebrows didn't rise. His levator palpebrae superioris remained in a state of complete relaxation."

"Regarding his pupils, we even performed frame-by-frame magnification measurements. Within 0.3 seconds after the gun barrel touched his skin, the change in his pupil diameter was less than 0.1 millimeters."

"0.1 millimeters. This is even less than the range of pupil fluctuation in a human under normal light changes."

Fish looked up, his gaze sweeping from Cole's face to President Trump's, and then to the calm face on the screen wall.

"He wasn't controlling his fear; he simply had no fear at all."

Cole's fingers lightly rubbed the cuff of her cashmere cardigan.

"Is it possible he felt that the handgun couldn't hurt him at all?"

Fish nodded. "That is a possibility, but it is not my field of study."

Fish gathered the three screenshots, stacked them neatly, and put them back in the folder. "Therefore, my conclusion, Ms. Cole, is that the central nervous system corresponding to this face either does not belong to the human species, or it belongs to a being that has completely transcended the human emotional framework."

"In the subsequent images, this Chen Mu's micro-expressions were also near-perfect. I couldn't read any valid information at all."

"Or rather, I could only read the information he wanted to release."