Chapter 265: Prison

Xia Xue stared at the culture chamber through the bulletproof glass. The long hair floating in the pale blue nutrient solution reminded her of jellyfish in the sea.

Suddenly, the girl's eyelashes in the chamber twitched, and intense eye movement appeared under her closed eyelids—she was dreaming!

"The EEG spectrum shows β waves are exceptionally active," the technician adjusted the oscilloscope, "These girls are being forced to engage in high-intensity thinking."

The screen suddenly flickered, and the monitor's waveform formed a perfect overlap with the voiceprint analysis curve of the interrogation room next door.

When Luo Fei pushed open the lab door, he brought in a salty sea breeze. The tablet he held was playing a synchronized Interpol feed: in a container intercepted by Malaysian police at Port Klang, thirty culture chambers were uploading data packets via the internet.

"They are living servers." Xia Xue projected the spectral analysis chart onto the glass, the β-wave peaks perfectly synchronized with the data packet transmission times, "The criminal organization is using human brains for cryptocurrency mining while processing real-time live stream data flows from the Dark Web."

Forensic doctor Lin Xiaoman walked in wearing double-layered gloves, the metal ring held by her tweezers still dripping blood: "There are 192 micro-electrodes inside each neck ring, piercing directly into the medulla oblongata. We found chronic puncture wounds on the back of the necks of three girls," she pulled up the autopsy photos, "The earliest surgical scars are over seven years old."

As soon as she finished speaking, the lab suddenly lost power. The moment the emergency lights in the corner lit up, the warning lights of all culture chambers turned red simultaneously.

Xia Xue lunged for the console, discovering that a remote command was formatting the storage unit. She decisively unplugged the main power, only to hear the sound of mechanical locks opening one after another.

"Careful!" Luo Fei shouted, grabbing her and pulling her back.

At this moment, the girl in Culture Chamber No. 1 sat up abruptly, her pupils dilated to the point of almost occupying the entire iris. Her right hand accurately grabbed Lin Xiaoman's scalpel, the tip stopping just two millimeters from her own carotid artery.

"Kill... kill... me..." the girl's throat emitted a sound like electronic synthesis, but the hand holding the knife stabbed backward toward Lin Xiaoman.

Xia Xue grabbed the fire extinguisher beside her and smashed it down decisively! This hit her elbow joint, and the sound of metal breaking mixed with bone dislocation exploded in the confined space.

Other culture chambers were opened one after another, and the girls crawled out of the chambers in strange postures.

Xia Xue noticed that they all had newly stitched wounds on their temples. Tearing off the gauze, behind them were brain-computer interfaces the size of coins.

The girl rushing at the front suddenly fell to the ground twitching, and a wisp of blue smoke rose from the back of her neck—it turned out that Luo Fei had hit the charging contact of her neck ring with a Taser.

"Attack the metal ring!" Xia Xue shouted, knocking over the console and throwing a spare power cord to Lin Xiaoman, "Give them a reverse charge!"

In the chaos, she caught a glimpse of the destruction progress bar of the main control computer stuck at 97%. In the residual files, there was an encrypted folder named "Rose Garden."

Just as she was about to insert the decryption key, the entire glass curtain wall suddenly shattered, and commandos wearing night-vision goggles rappelled in.

"Interpol Special Action Group." When the leader showed her ID, Xia Xue noticed the blood-red rose tattooed on the side of her neck—the number of petals was exactly seventeen!

———

At four o'clock in the morning, the temporary command center was filled with the burnt smell of instant coffee.

Xia Xue imported the cracked EEG data into the map, and seven red dots were moving in the East China Sea. When she compared the coordinates with the Ship Identification System, cold sweat instantly seeped out of her back—these were actually warships from various countries participating in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise.

"They are eavesdropping on military frequency bands." The technician in the communications section's voice trembled, "One girl's brainwave spectrum was cracked to be 'Aegis system failure code'."

Luo Fei adjusted his holster to a position convenient for quick drawing: "Three hours ago, the radar system of a destroyer at the Yokosuka base suddenly restarted." He pulled up the satellite map, and the warship's track showed a 17-degree abnormal deflection at a certain moment.

Xia Xue suddenly remembered something and pulled up the medical file of the rescued girl. When she saw the 3D reconstruction of the third girl's brain CT, her breathing stopped—the micro-chip implanted in the hippocampus was consistent with the tattoo pigment composition found by the police on the back of Mao Wei's neck.

"This isn't trafficking," she magnified the chip to pixel level, "They are manufacturing biological antennas." The screen showed that the chip surface had a nano-scale spiral structure, perfectly matching the resonant frequency of 5G millimeter waves.

Lin Xiaoman kicked open the door, her white lab coat stained with cerebrospinal fluid: "A prion variant was found in the girl's thalamus, which can keep the human brain in a high-metabolic state..." She held up a petri dish, and gray-white tissue was crawling on the glass, "This thing is building new neural synapses while devouring neurons."

At this time, a harsh alarm interrupted her, and the command center's big screen jumped to a Dark Web live broadcast. Seventeen girls wearing warship models were locked in virtual chambers with iron chains, and the bullet screen area was filled with coordinates of military ports around the world. The top user ID on the reward list was "17_Annihilator," and the avatar was a combination of a blood-red rose and an atomic symbol.

"@Tokyo Bay, Pearl Harbor, Busan..." Xia Xue recorded the locations mentioned in the bullet screen, "They are going to paralyze the Rim of the Pacific early warning system."

The sea chart suddenly flashed red, and Interpol sent an emergency notification: the intercepted culture chambers were sending high-power microwave pulses. Luo Fei's hand holding the satellite phone froze in mid-air, because the brainwave monitor on the screen showed that Xia Xue's β-wave frequency was overlapping with the criminal organization's control frequency band.

"When did you hurt the back of your neck?" Lin Xiaoman's tweezers hovered above Xia Xue's collar, where there was a scabbed abrasion. ===== CHAPTER 266 =====