Chapter 405 - Astral Catalyst

“Ackerman already publicized it?”

Bruno felt his heart drop when he saw this and he quickly pleaded for mercy, “This only has to do with Ackerman All I did was take several pictures of the medical records, I don’t have anything else. You can look at my phone if you don’t believe me.”

He presented his phone to the old man when he said this, “You can take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me. Ackerman has these exact pictures as well, there’s no need to come for me, believe me!”

“Ahem ahem, hack.. Hack hack!”

The old man went into another coughing fit, he quickly produced a handkerchief and placed it over his mouth for him to cough loudly into.

Bruno felt what may be a sense of pity when he saw this old man in such a sickly state.

“It’s alright… Ahem.”

After what seemed like forever, the old man took the phone from Bruno’s hand and turned it off right away. “It doesn’t matter whether you have it saved in the cloud or some drive somewhere. I’m sure you’ll remember where you put it after we put you through a round of torture.”

“This…”

Bruno’s heart sank when he heard this. His body collapsed weightlessly under him.

Half an hour later, they parked at the entrance of a large private estate.

Bruno stepped out of the car with a depressing gloom cast over his head. Two more men in black quickly trailed after him.

“Hold on, what about Ackerman?”

When he saw how the group of men in black seemed to have the slightest intention of untying Ackerman or carrying him out of the car, he turned to look at the car suspiciously.

Bruno turned around just in time to see a gun mounted with a silencer pointed at Ackerman’s temple.

“Poof!”

There was a muffled sound of a gunshot, immediately followed by Ackerman’s head bursting like a flower dyed red. Bruno’s eyes became so widened it felt like his eyeballs were going to roll out of their sockets any second. He thought he was going to collapse onto the ground because his feet could no longer support his weight.

Ackerman was dead.

Bruno’s legs trembled endlessly, his mind was blank.

Bruno could hardly remember how he managed to walk into the estate on his two feet, nor could he remember when he told them the password to his phone’s storage. When he came to his senses, he found himself in a room built with metal, completely isolated from mobile signals.

The room was drowned in darkness but he could still make out the outline of a large collection of tools meant for torturing. He already spilled everything he knew before any of the tools could be put to use.

The pictures in his phone had been exported and printed, all put together in an album.

It was around this point when a middle-aged man with blond hair, blue eyes, and sporting a beard with tied-back ponytail stepped into the room.

The old man in charge of supervising immediately stepped forward. “Ahem… Young master, we’ve obtained all of James Watson’s medical records. Should we delete the online digital copy?”

“Delete them. This medical record is extremely invaluable and may very well contain the blueprint for mankind’s future biological sciences development, we cannot risk having it leaked.”

The middle-aged man ordered before turning to Bruno. “Have you searched him for anything resembling a tracker or wire? Is there anything suspicious in his phone?”

“We inspected everything thoroughly, he’s clean.”

The old man answered confidently, “Don’t worry, young master. It doesn’t matter how broad Blackwatch’s online presence is, they still can’t bypass a physical Faraday cage principle.”

“Very well then.”

The middle-aged man nodded contently before he took a look at the medical records. “Use the government’s emergency encrypted transportation network to deliver this to Yellowstone Park and into the hands of my father. It’s up to him to decide where we go from here.”

Before leaving, the man they called young master turned to look at Bruno and grinned, revealing a row of pearly-white teeth.

After he left, the old man coughed several times again before giving a signal and exited the room as well.

After that, the only thing that could be heard from inside the room was the muffled wailing of Bruno followed by faint gunshots.

…

“Bruno is dead.”

In the Spire Laboratory, a huge, semi-transparent map of North America appeared in front of Little X. The map that hung mid-air was a projection created by the holographic environment simulator.

On top of the map were densely packed tiny white dots numbering up to tens of thousands. These white dots took up nearly the entirety of the North American region. Among this collection of white dots, three yellow dots distinctly stood out.

The yellow dots were at least ten times larger than the white dots and were more noticeable.

Just as Little X finished saying this, one of the three yellow dots packed closely to one another suddenly vanished as if a spark of flame had been put out.

“Fascinating indeed.”

When he saw the phenomenon observed on the holographic projection, Chen Chen rubbed his Chen and remarked, “To be able to detect a target’s position at all times, even updated accordingly in the event of death.”

“Yes, this is the latest product created from my recent study of E Language.”

Little X stated, “The Astro Catalyst made into watermark is also a Basilisk pattern and belongs to a class of meme catalysts. Unlike the previous ‘Eye’ and ‘Filth’ Basilisk patterns, it’s not dangerous and only serves to ‘mark’ its target.

“Although its functionalities are considered very basic as far as memes go, its usage is also considered the most practical. No matter where the target escapes to, whether the target vacates to the Moon or Mars, the effect of the meme remains undisrupted by spatial factors. Anyone infected by the ‘Astro’ meme can be easily detected by me.”

Chen Chen nodded and turned to the holographic projection again.

The white dots on the holographic projection represented the first type of “Astro”. When Bruno sent the first few pages of the medical records to a media firm, that media firm immediately distributed them to gain traction to their network.

This was how hundreds of thousands of people in North America came to be infected by the “Astro” meme.

Chen Chen specifically considered this factor and made it so that there were three variants of this Basilisk pattern in the medical record. The first tint of the infection was white, the next tint was yellow while the ones in the last few pages came in red color.

Most common civilians would only get a glimpse of the first few pages, therefore displayed as white color. The crucial information was located in the middle to ending sections of the document. The ones infected by this variant of “Astro” were marked as either yellow or red.

This meant that only the ones who got a glimpse of the important, central information were labeled as yellow or red color, also making them the higher ranking officials among Blacklight Biotechnology’s rivals.

“But Sir Godfather…”

There was a hint of hesitation in Little X’s voice. “Will this approach of ours allow us to maneuver around the quantum machine’s predictive abilities?”

“Of course.”

Chen Chen nodded and started to explain, “Keep in mind that our target isn’t the quantum machine itself but the higher-ups that make direct contact with the quantum machine.

“The federation’s quantum machine is set up to protect humanity from any upcoming disasters. It’s extremely invaluable, but apart from being able to foresee upcoming disasters, it’s only built with self-defensive mechanisms. How was it supposed to do anything about the high-ranking officials?

“As long as the quantum machine itself isn’t our direct target, we shouldn’t have to be concerned about being discovered by its predictive calculations.”

Chen Chen smirked coyly as he said this, “Now that we’ve intentionally set off this heavy-weight cannon that’s the brain restoration technique, chances are our enemies who have eyes everywhere will be notified of it almost immediately. If they realize this is a trap set up by us, then what? Are they going to choose to not go through this crucial medical record anyway?

“Even if they pull all of their tricks out their pockets, would they ever expect our method of tracking them is something that surpasses common laws of physics?”

“I see.”

Little X nodded. “That’s true, our actions are next to impossible to be traced as long as we play around the quantum computer. But then… Why are you downloading this movie?”

The display of the computer in front of Chen Chen suddenly turned on. A movie was placed on the desktop in MP4 format.

The title of the movie was — Spectral.