Chapter 365 "He Noticed"

This wasn't how the situation would play out in the past.

Castor's blood was still full of the highest-quality neuroblockers that the fleet had access to. Their density decreased over the past few days, but he was still barred from accessing the details of his memories that led up to the events that took place on the auditor's ship.

Castor could recall why he went there. He remembered what was talked about out there and how it all came to Alice coming to his tiny ship and offering her insane talents to support him.

He could understand all of that. Yet, when it came to a specific part of his memories, the neuroblockers buzzing in his blood showed their full potential.

The selectiveness of cutting his memory proved the insane quality of the blockers. Cheaper alternatives would be hardly any different than having his head struck by a hammer in the oldest method of stealing one's memories.

And yet, despite how gently those blockers worked, when it came to what they were actually supposed to erase, they did a job so great that no matter how much Castor strained his mind, he couldn't get past their blockade.

'I know I shouldn't even try to uncover what memories I lost… but it's like this damn itch,' Castor thought, momentarily distracted away from the matter at hand.

Thankfully, the annoying ringing of the alarm wasn't something that would allow his thoughts to wander for long.

"Don't worry about it," Castor muttered, shaking his head to get rid of all the thoughts related to the blocking procedure he went through back at the auditor's ship.

'Back in the past, this situation would play out differently,' Castor thought once he became aware he couldn't just ignore his own, inner thoughts. Or rather, while he could strain his mind to do so, it would only increase the massive itch he already felt at the back of his soul. 'But it's not something that matters now,' Castor then decided, taking a deep breath before turning his eyes towards the data on Alice's screens. 'Right now, only what's before my very eyes matters.'

Castor didn't get to fully resolve the inner turmoil in his heart. It wasn't something that could go away by filing oneself with determination or by focusing on an important task.

Castor didn't recover from the turmoil in his soul, but at least for the current moment, he put it all aside.

"How bad is it?" Castor asked once he managed to somehow sort his current internal state, giving himself a mind clear enough to focus on the topic at hand.

"Right now, it looks like we might just luck out a little," Alice reported while furiously tapping her fingers against the floating hologram of the keyboard right below her wrists.

Castor couldn't understand a thing of what she was writing, but the speed at which she constructed the code was so damn insane even a complete amateur like him ended up awe-struck by it.

"They are missing just a bit more than a single damn percent of what I set the cost of the third evolution to be," Alice gave the details Castor asked for while managing three other tasks on her side screens and keeping tabs on the events on the main holo-display.

"Then there should be no reason to be in such a hurry, right?" Castor pointed out.

He only knew some basic stuff about coding… but he didn't need to be an expert to connect the dots.

Drops of sweat trickled down Alice's forehead even though the ventilation was one of the only elements of the ship that Castor was quite happy with. Her fingers moved at a speed that went several grades above what a fully flesh human could ever achieve, nearing the perfection only a machine could achieve.

Castor didn't know two things about coding, but he could tell that the girl was in the greatest hurry she could be!

"You told me a few times it might happen," Alice muttered.

Her fingers slowed down by the tiniest margin. Her face twisted a little as a look of self-oriented anger and disappointment flashed in her eyes.

"I'm not going to slack or lose my focus now that the world itself proved my former attitude wrong," she said before slightly shaking her head and putting her entire focus back on the job.

"Didn't you need to solve the problem with the system before you could even attempt to develop a proper third evolution?" Castor pointed out something that made sense through the context of one of the few discussions they had since the girl arrived on the ship.

Alice's fingers stopped. She then slowly turned her head to the side, all the way to the point when Castor could see the full profile of her face. The corner of the girl's lip rose. She then gave Castor a quick wink.

"I'm winging it," she revealed with her small smirk turning into an open smile.

'Ah, that's right,' Castor thought, taken slightly aback by the girl's relatively carefree attitude.

The second she replied to Castor, Alice moved right back to her task, once again molesting the projection of the keyboard with the furious attacks of her nimble fingers.

'Back then…'

"Shit!" Alice cursed out loud. A behavior unfit for the rank she held in the fleet.

'What?' Castor nearly jumped, taken aback by the girl's cursing.

Alice's freeze lasted for but a second, only for her fingers to dance over the keys even faster than before.

'I shouldn't distract her right now,' Castor decided, watching from the back of his ship how the girl fought against the time to finish what she put aside for all this time.

Then, for but a fraction of a second, the girl froze… before slamming her hand hard against the projection of the backspace key.

Alice froze yet again. This time, however, not for a fraction of a second.

This time, Alice froze for three entire seconds.

And then, at an extremely relaxed rate, she typed a few words into the system before pulling her levi-chair's backrest to the back.

"I've fucked up," Alice muttered as she stared blankly at her screens. Then, she turned her head around and looked at Castor with a look of terror behind her eyes. "He noticed."