The group walked along the corridor, passed countless cabins with their doors wide open, and finally stopped in a hall that was obviously similar to an activity room.
The light from the cabin to the corridor was very dim, but here, the light was very bright.
Moreover, Lin Xi was very sensitive to notice that the light here was not the special red color used in emergency situations, but ordinary white light.
This is enough to prove that the system here has been separated from the main system on the Apollo.
What Lin Xi was concerned about were the people in this hall.
The people here were clearly divided into two groups - one group was the mercenaries pointing guns at them. It was not obvious in the dark living cabin before, but now that they had walked into the brightly lit area, the paleness, haggardness and panic of these people were clearly visible under the light.
Each of them was so thin that they looked less like space mercenaries and more like starving people in the slums of some colonized planet.
They must be starving, Lin Xi couldn't help thinking, these people may have noticed something wrong with the food bags at the beginning and therefore controlled their diet - well, this may be what distinguishes them from the other people in the hall.
Yes, those other people.
Lin Xi could feel that Alyssa and Bryce's eyes were also on the other people in the hall. Although, it is somewhat debatable whether the word "people" can be used to describe them now.
This hall was originally supposed to be used to store equipment, but now all the weapons and equipment have been cleared out, and the metal railings that were originally used to secure the heavy shelves have been retained.
Long ropes hung down from above, and were then tied into noose and tightly bound around those strange-looking insect-like bodies.
Most of them still maintain a basic human shape, but they are just "basic".
Elytra, antennae, chewing mouthparts, segmented body - they have more or less all of these obvious insect characteristics, and some even have a complete head. They mumble incoherently, and there is no light in their cloudy eyes.
A thin mercenary seemed to have heard the noise, and he walked out from the depths of the hall, holding a rope in his hand. Behind him came a sound like a needle scratching a blackboard.
"Hey, Sorian."
He raised his head and said hello to Sulian. It was not until this time that Lin Xi realized that the other end of the rope he was holding was tied with a woman's body.
However, the woman had almost completed her insect transformation. She had compound eyes and feathery antennae, and there was blood on her sickle-like forelimbs. A small piece of stretched flesh dragged limply under her elbow. There was a deep, black hole in the middle of her forehead, and a trickle of blood flowed out of the hole. The woman was killed when she was about to complete her final transformation.
"Hal—"
Sorian simply greeted the man, his eyes fell on the woman's body, his brows slightly frowned, and a trace of pity flashed across his eyes.
"I'm so sorry, Annie..."
"It doesn't matter. At least I killed her before she was completely transformed into this monster. I think she still had human will at that time." Hal murmured, "My wife died as a human being."
Then, Hal turned his gaze to the three people behind Sorian. He glanced past Alyssa and Bryce and fixed his eyes on Lin Xi.
"Oh, it's you. You are the mother of these monsters... The summoner of doom..."
Hal, who had seemed a little indifferent, suddenly became excited. He suddenly loosened the rope, took out a laser gun from his waist and aimed it at Lin Xi.
Before he could even fire his gun, something strange happened—
An alien species next to him was originally gasping for breath with its head down, looking almost dying. But the moment Hal pointed the gun at Lin Xi, it became excited. It suddenly arched its body, jumped heavily, and its sharp mouthparts rushed out of its throat and bit Hal's wrist directly.
Hal let out a scream, blood splattered, and the laser gun fell to the ground with a thud.
"Damn it—Hal—"
"Hal! Are you okay—"
…
The mercenaries rushed towards Hal and chopped off the monster's mouthparts in a hurry to separate Hal from the monster. During this process, a young mercenary could not control his emotions and directly raised his gun and fired more than ten shots at the monster that bit Hal. The monster's head was quickly blown to pieces, but the young mercenary's move was a bit redundant because it was already dead before the shooting - its esophagus connected to part of its internal organs connected to the mouthparts and was directly dragged out from the body.
The bite it gave to Hal was an attack that exhausted its life.
Such a tragic scene happened right in front of Lin Xi and the others. So fast, so cruel, and so bloody.
Bryce's face was as white as starched linen, and Lin Xi heard him make two consecutive strange inhalation sounds.
—He suspected that Bryce was really about to vomit.
Well, he felt a little sick when he saw with his own eyes the monster's entrails being pulled out, wet and bloody, from its deformed jaw.
"Oh my God." As for Alyssa, she had already turned her head away the moment the smell of blood came out, not daring to look again.
However, this extremely shocking scene seemed to be just a common thing to Sorian. He did not even look touched at all, and even his expression did not change.
Lin Xi swallowed his saliva, his throat felt a little dry.
Sorian was not a cold-hearted person. On the contrary, Lin Xi knew very well that he had a kind of concern and care for his companions that should not appear in mercenaries.
The only reason why he could remain so calm in the face of such a cruel and horrific thing was that similar things had happened too many times.
"You're very lucky."
Sorian lifted the half-human, half-insect monster on the ground to one side, and then he whispered to Lin Xi.
"These disgusting monsters you created saved your life—"
Lin Xi pursed her lips.
He didn't say anything because he sensitively felt that something seemed to tremble slightly behind Sorian.
"Huh..."
He was sure that it was not his illusion, because Bryce and Alyssa seemed to have noticed something was wrong, and their breathing suddenly became faster.
Lin Xi turned his head and exchanged glances with them.
At the same time, Sorian was completely unaware that he had just escaped a disaster. He commanded his small number of companions to lead Hal out of the hall, and then drove Lin Xi and others to another corner of the hall.
Here, Lin Xi and the other two were tied up with special ropes.
Lin Xi could feel Sorian walking behind him and pulling hard on the ropes that bound him. The ropes made of aramid fibers were extremely strong, and Sorian even tied a knot that almost cut into his flesh. Only after doing all this did Sorian seem to breathe a sigh of relief.
He stepped back a few steps, folded his arms across his chest, and stared at Lin Xi for a long time before speaking.
"You said you wanted to talk to me, so you can talk now." He pointed to his personal terminal. "Of course, you'd better pray that you don't say any nonsense. My patience is not very good right now."
He paused, then looked at Lin Xi, with a vicious and cruel look in his eyes.
"As you saw just now, my teammates are probably even less patient than I am - just like you claimed before, a lot of things have happened during this period."
He said in a low voice.
Lin Xi was still looking at the "people" tied to the fixed frame. He should have told Sorian his intention directly and concisely, but when he opened his mouth, the words he said became something else.
"Those who were tied up... were your companions, right? You brought the crew members with problems out of the cabin and tied them up here. However, they were still gradually alienated... After things became irreversible, you had no choice but to kill them."
As soon as Lin Xi finished speaking, the muscles on Sorian's face twitched slightly, and then he raised the gun and pressed it directly against Lin Xi's forehead.
"I reminded you not to talk nonsense."
"Sorian!"
"We are here because of the alienation of the crew members!"
Alyssa and Bryce shouted at the same time on both sides of Lin Xi.
Compared with the two of them, Lin Xi, who was actually pointed at by the gun, was the calmest one.
"You are sad..." Lin Xi said softly, "You still think it's my fault? No, you have been shaken, right? Otherwise, you would have shot me when you saw me in the cabin. You want to know what happened, and you also want to know why I came to you."
Lin Xi paused for a moment, then continued: "… What did John Bronson tell you at the beginning? Why are you so determined to believe that I am the culprit of everything?"
"boom-"
Sorian suddenly fired a shot, and the bullet grazed Lin Xi's cheek and hit the ground directly, leaving a scorch mark there.
Lin Xi's eyes trembled slightly.
"I thought you were the one answering me instead of me answering you."
Sorian said with a hint of anger.
"I've met Ando Shizuo before." At this moment, Lin Xi whispered without thinking, "At that time, Ando Shizuo suddenly behaved very strangely..."
Lin Xi calmly narrated the strange things that happened to Shizuo Anten, while he was observing Sorian's every move.
He was not surprised - after hearing the ghost of the captain of the Providence three hundred years ago, Sorian's expression changed.