Send the video of your abnormal behavior from last night. The high-ups needed to study it.

The young⁠⁠‍​​‌‍‌‌‍‍​‍‍​⁠‌‍⁠‍⁠‌​‌ girl on the video screen had a face as white as paper, and her breathing was short. Although the police officer had repeatedly and gently advised her to drink some juice and calm down, she still struggled to overcome her panic.

She tremblingly said, “We grew up together. Two years ago, the Main City raised the genetic entropy threshold. He was eliminated and sent to a Bait City. He was insistent on breaking up… What’s ironic is that, not long after, the Main City expanded, and the threshold was lowered for two consecutive years, but we never contacted each other again. Last night, he suddenly came looking for me… Can you understand? Someone I hadn’t contacted in two years, someone we had both sworn we’d never see again, suddenly knocking on my door at night…”

The police officer said gently, “So you were very scared?”

“Scared?” The girl paused, then slowly shook her head. “I wasn’t scared… I wouldn’t be scared of him. I just… I just felt it was too sudden.”

She suddenly calmed down a bit. She put her feet up on the stool, hugged her knees, and said softly, “He suddenly reappeared in front of me, said he missed me terribly, and wanted to hug me again… My mind went blank. I couldn’t say a word. I just shut the door… I was so awful. If I had just been a little kinder, maybe he wouldn’t have been at the downstairs bar drinking all night, and he wouldn’t have seen me crossing the street at five in the morning, and he certainly wouldn’t have…”

The officer prompted gently, “If none of that had happened, the one who would have died in the car crash would be you.”

“That would have been my fate!” the girl suddenly became agitated, choking back sobs. “What right did he have to die for me?”

Sobbing echoed in the interview room. The officer watched her for a while. “You didn’t hate each other, did you?”

Tears streamed down the girl’s face. She buried her face in her hands, but it couldn’t stop her whimpers. “That’s right,” she said. “We were very in love.”

The video screening ended.

“That’s footage Black Tower has just received. You should have already seen the news about the car crash,” Qin Zhilu said grimly. “What do you think?”

A room full of unfamiliar faces stared at An Yu. The high-ups looked serious, waiting for his answer.

“A bloody love story,” An Yu assessed. He paused. “Is this a test of my socialization level?”

The faces looked blank.

Qin Zhilu played the next clip. It was a live broadcast recording from social media in the middle of the previous night.

“Friends, my mom has actually gone crazy. It’s two-thirty in the morning, and I was woken up by noises from the kitchen. She’s actually cooking.”

The camera shook in the dark as it moved toward the door. It pulled the door open a crack, letting the light from outside seep in. A middle-aged woman was placing a plate of fruit on the table and ladling out a large bowl of congee. On the table were several plates of golden-brown pancakes. The tools for mixing the dough and filling were still sitting to the side, not yet cleaned up.

A bullet comment drifted by: She has insomnia, so she just got up to make you breakfast. Don’t ask me how I know.

“Impossible. I hate oranges. I always had bread and milk for breakfast, and no one in my family drank congee, let alone these pancakes she made.” She shivered as she spoke. “At first, I thought she was just hungry. But thinking about it, congee and pancakes have never appeared on our table. Look, she’s just smiling foolishly by the table. She isn’t eating any herself, right? And my mom never wore an apron before. Putting one on suddenly aged her ten years.”

The video ended, the frame freezing on the woman’s face as she smiled at the table full of food.

An Yu frowned in thought for a moment. “A bizarre family story.”

Qin Zhilu finally glanced at him and said, “This isn’t a test for you. These were all the strange incidents Black Tower had monitored since last night.”

An Yu was surprised. “Black Tower monitors trivial matters like these?”

“Yes.” A high-up replied. “Black Tower’s anomaly monitoring network is vast, especially for the Main City. The instant an ant crosses the dome and crawls into this city, the Spire will receive an alert. In addition to that, all cases large and small within the city, as well as memes circulating on the network, are also monitored 24/7.”

As he explained, a city heat map appeared on the screen. Red represented the frequency of anomalous organisms. Outside the dome, there was a large, dense patch of bright red— that was the Spire’s Protectors. But in Black Tower, at the city center, there was a dot of deep crimson, so dark it was black, which was more frightening than the Spire’s entire red patch.

It took An Yu a moment to process this. He suddenly realized that dot was the man right next to him, his dear Commander.

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“A mental-control type Super-Aberrant?” An Yu looked at the screen. “There are no abnormal biological wave frequencies. Does the Black Tower suspect it’s a Super-Aberrant from a non-biological aberration?”

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A university student woke up, opened her computer, and suddenly discovered her thesis document was filled with scathing critiques— all from her own account.

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…

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No one in Black Tower had expected Qin Zhilu to have such an indulgent style with his supervision subject.

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An Yu shook his head. “I can’t feel anything.”

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“Tang Feng speaking. Is there an emergency mission?”

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Qin Zhilu glanced at An Yu. An Yu pointed to a book on the corner of the table. Qin Zhilu understood and asked, “Did you go to the 194th floor to look for Codex?”

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While he was on the call, An Yu had been staring down at his terminal. He now said, “The octopus chibi sent a few mass messages imitating my tone. Zhu Tao, Flame, and Lumen are all normal. Bo and Xi De are on fieldwork. But Chao Wu said that Commander Shen Yang had been very bad-tempered during breakfast, though only for a short while. She was fine after she snapped out of it. Mmm… the more serious one was An.”

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The high-ups’ faces grew grave. One person asked, “And now…”

“An has recovered.” An Yu poked the octopus chibi, carefully looking at the timeline he had analyzed for him. “People generally get up between five and six in the morning. The few people who had experienced abnormalities all successively returned to normal around six o’ clock.”

A Brain researcher immediately reported, “Among the several hundred cases, the latest time the anomaly disappeared has been 6:08.”

The High Peak on the line said thoughtfully, “Brain’s previous assessment said your IQ was high, but you weren’t good at analysis.”

“He just isn’t used to saying it out loud.” Qin Zhilu spoke for An Yu. “Just as having poor chatting skills isn’t the same as having poor expression skills. They are two different things.”

An Yu looked up at the camera on the big screen and poked his terminal again. “The octopus chibi analyzed it.”

High Peak hesitated. “Octopus chibi?”

“It’s an AI that had learned the Commander’s words and actions.” An Yu said, puzzled. “I’ve been raising it for a long time. You guys didn’t know?”

A high-up reminded him, “Qin Zhilu had already forbidden us from monitoring your private terminal.”

An Yu paused. “I see…”

“Let’s get back to the case.” Qin Zhilu waved his hand. “An’s mental stability wa indeed poor. But Tang Feng and Shen Yang were very good, yet they still hadn’t been spared. As for Zhu Tao, Flame, and Lumen, either the Super-Aberrant hadn’t picked them, or people who inherently possesses mental-type abilities have natural resistance. My theory leans toward the latter.”

The high-ups began to discuss. An Yu looked up and continued watching the big screen—several hundred videos of anomalies were displayed in a matrix, replaying silently. Those blank, shocked, and bizarre expressions played simultaneously. It was a portrait of humanity, yet all of it possessed a strange, skin-crawling quality.

In a lull when everyone was quiet, he suddenly asked, “Are Bait Cities really fine?”

“It’s still being investigated. Monitoring trivial matters in Bait Cities is very difficult, because—” The high-up who was answering suddenly paused, observing An Yu’s expression. An Yu nodded calmly. “Because the people in Bait Cities don’t pay attention to their surroundings, and there are enough madmen. Strange people and strange things happened every day.”

“Yes. Apologies for mentioning your past life experience. I hope it won’t affect your mood,” the other party immediately said.

An Yu completely didn’t understand why Black Tower would think mentioning his past would affect his mood, but he had already gotten used to the Black Tower people’s strange way of thinking and silently ignored it.

He thought for a moment, poked open his chat with Jiang Xiao, and projected it onto the big screen.

-You there?

A few seconds later, Jiang Xiao replied with a smiley face: I am. Good morning. How can I help you?

An Yu typed seriously: Just checking in. Have you experienced any abnormalities from last night to this morning?

The chat went quiet.

Qin Zhilu raised an eyebrow. “I almost forgot the guy with the worst mental stability in the entire Spire is still wandering outside. It seems it really isn’t limited to the Main City.”

After a long time, Jiang Xiao replied with a voice message.

He said, somewhat dejected and helpless, “Mis sent you that surveillance video? Sorry, I really drunk a bit too much last night, but I hadn’t expected to get drunk, or even black out… Actually, I always held my liquor well, I rarely act strangely… Maybe the severe cold of the arctic makes people lose their minds when drunk. I hope that video doesn’t affect your evaluation of me. I’m very much looking forward to returning to the Main City and becoming your bound support.”

An Yu immediately replied: What video? Send it over.

Jiang Xiao: …Please don’t.

Qin Zhilu calmly sent Jiang Xiao a message: Send the video of your abnormal behavior from last night. The high-ups needed to study it.

Jiang Xiao: …