Free Web NovelChapter 375: Chapter 375: The Synchronized Agony
After a rare night of sound sleep, Julian Sterling’s spirit seemed to have recovered significantly. The early morning sunlight flooded through the window frame, gilding a thin layer of gold upon his inherently pale face, making it appear remarkably more vibrant with life. His complexion began to show a hint of rosy color, and his lips were no longer as ashen as they had been in the past few days.
Julian Sterling was even in the mood to take the initiative and tease Ethan Caldwell with a few playful words. Seeing the man still maintaining a stern expression as if he wanted to confront the entire world, he chuckled softly, his voice carrying a rarely seen gentle melody: "If you keep frowning like that forever, wrinkles will appear early. By then, people might mistakenly think I am staying beside a grumpy old uncle."
Ethan Caldwell paused slightly, looking at the faint smile on Julian Sterling’s lips, and the heavy boulder pressing down upon his heart seemed to lighten a fraction. He did not reply, but his gaze softened noticeably as he reached out a hand to help Julian Sterling adjust the cuffs of his dress shirt.
However, at that exact moment, Ethan Caldwell’s movements suddenly froze entirely.
The smile on Julian Sterling’s lips also gradually faded away when he noticed the abrupt change from the other party. He looked down, following Ethan Caldwell’s line of sight.
The faint indentation on the left wrist not only failed to vanish after a night’s sleep, but it had grown significantly darker, bearing a spine chilling purplish red hue. More terrifyingly, instead of merely being a blurry ring, distinct bruises had now vaguely appeared completely around his wrist, forming the perfect shape of a metallic shackle, as if a pair of invisible chains had just forcefully constricted his flesh from the sheer void of nothingness.
The atmosphere within the room instantly transformed, the fleeting warmth evaporating as swiftly as a mere illusion.
Julian Sterling fearfully reached out a trembling finger to touch the bruise. This time, it was no longer a state of numbness or a hallucination. A piercing, burning agony transmitted directly to his brain.
He was truly in pain.
Kieran Talbot was summoned over immediately. As the person who best understood Julian Sterling’s physiological condition, his expression became exceptionally grim upon laying eyes on the wound on Julian Sterling’s wrist.
After a thorough period of careful examination, Kieran Talbot put down his medical instruments, his voice dropping low, fraught with a sense of helplessness: "There are absolutely no signs of trauma caused by external physical impact. The capillaries beneath the skin are unnaturally congested with blood, yet the structural formation of the bruise is... it feels almost like a work of art, utterly flawless."
He hesitated for a fleeting moment, then uttered a conclusion that plunged the entire room into a suffocating, breathless silence: "This injury was not self generated by Julian Sterling’s body. It is as though it is being reflected over from somewhere else. His consciousness and that of the other entity are overlapping far too intensely."
Kieran Talbot looked at Ethan Caldwell, continuing in a hushed tone: "If this continues, Julian Sterling’s physical body might begin to truly synchronize. It will not just be emotions or memories, but physical traumas as well. Whatever that entity has to endure, Julian Sterling will also have to experience correspondingly."
There was no need for far fetched science fiction terminology; the phrase synchronize alone was more than enough to manifest into a living, breathing nightmare.
After Kieran Talbot departed, Ethan Caldwell stood silently within the study. His back cast a long shadow across the floorboards, exuding an aura so frigid it pierced straight to the bone. In the past, he had always utilized pure logic and reason to confront every unexpected ordeal, but at this precise moment, that composure had completely and utterly collapsed.
He picked up the phone, placing a call to Helen Lloyd. His voice no longer possessed its usual steady calmness, but was instead replaced by an incredibly terrifying ruthlessness and absolute decisiveness:
"Helen Lloyd, mobilize the entirety of the intelligence team’s manpower. Investigate at all costs, dig deep into every conceivable nook and cranny of the underground network, and find the exact location of experimental subject B-00."
The other end of the line went silent for a brief second before acknowledging the command. This time, Ethan Caldwell’s objective had fundamentally shifted. He no longer merely wished to eradicate a potential threat. He understood that if he did not find a way to sever this source of resonance right from its very roots, Julian Sterling would be dragged down alongside that monstrous creature into an endless abyss of excruciating agony.
Meanwhile, Julian Sterling was sitting in the living room, holding a glass of warm water in his hands. However, the moment the rim of the glass touched his lips, his movements came to an abrupt, screeching halt.
Julian Sterling’s pupils lost their focus for a few agonizing seconds, and the glass in his hand nearly slipped down onto the carpet. A violently searing, scorching pain akin to being burned by a raging fire suddenly flared up within his throat.
Julian Sterling coughed violently, every single cough threatening to rip his chest apart. When he brought a paper tissue up to cover his mouth, a brilliantly vivid shade of crimson manifested upon the pristine white background of the paper.
It was blood, a sight that caused Ethan Caldwell, who had just stepped out from the study, to instantaneously lose all color in his face. He lunged forward to tightly grip Julian Sterling’s shoulders, clearly in a state of sheer, unadulterated panic.
Julian Sterling stared at the bloodstain in his hand, his breathing heavy and rapid. He did not feel terrified for his own sake; on the contrary, an overwhelming sense of profound bitterness surged up within him.
"It is not me..." Julian Sterling whispered softly, his gaze fixed upon the empty void, "That other one... it just got injured."
This sensation of agony did not belong to him; it was merely a reflection from another emaciated, fleshless chest that was being mercilessly tortured deep beneath the earth’s surface.
At the underground facility of CORE.
The containment sector housing B-00 was descending into an unprecedented state of absolute chaos. The researchers were frantically running back and forth in front of the radar screens and the wildly spiking brainwave charts.
Experimental subject B-00, which had fundamentally always been in a constant state of self destruction and loss of control, suddenly underwent a drastic transformation today. It no longer shrieked or violently smashed its heavy chains against the stone walls. The rhythm of its brainwaves began to stabilize in a bizarrely peculiar manner, and most notably, it had begun to exhibit a distinct reaction to external sounds, a phenomenon that had never once occurred throughout the entire past ten years.
"It is no longer merely a creature operating on primal instinctual reflexes." A researcher exclaimed while trembling as he jotted down notes, "It is... awakening. It is developing a will. No, to be more precise, it is recovering its sanity, just like when it was a child."
In an observation room situated directly above, peering through the reinforced tempered glass and an array of surveillance cameras, an elderly yet deeply authoritative silhouette stood in utter silence. He did not look at the barrage of technical parameters; instead, he merely focused intently on the image of B-00 lifting its head on the camera feed.
His voice rang out, remarkably deep and carrying a profoundly sickening sense of satisfaction: "At long last, A-01 has ultimately fulfilled its designated role. Twin Signals always know how to find their way to one another, no matter how vast the distance may be."
From the very beginning, CORE had intimately known that the awakening of Julian Sterling’s mental waves would serve as the singular, absolute key to perfecting B-00. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
That night, a tranquil, silent expanse fully enveloped the Caldwell family’s grand estate.
Julian Sterling lay sleeping, yet his slumber was not the least bit peaceful. Ethan Caldwell remained wide awake; he hugged his beloved tightly in his arms as if desperately wanting to use his own vital warmth to shield Julian Sterling from those invisible strikes of torment.
But right in the dead of the night, Julian Sterling suddenly bolted upright.
There were no screams, there were no haunting nightmares. It was a purely physical, synchronized reflex directly from the body. He brought his hands up to frantically clutch at his own throat, his face flushed crimson, his breathing hissing through clenched teeth as if the surrounding oxygen had just vanished entirely. He was in so much agonizing pain that he trembled violently, cold sweat breaking out and drenching him completely.
At that exact same moment, within the solitary confinement cell belonging to CORE.
The freezing, mechanical beeping of the equipment rang out as medical personnel clad in hazmat suits forcibly pinned down B-00’s gaunt, emaciated limbs. A long, piercingly sharp needle stabbed cleanly through the fragile layer of skin, driving straight into the vein to furiously pump a dark green chemical substance directly into its bloodstream.
On one side, Julian Sterling convulsed violently within Ethan Caldwell’s embrace, suffering from unparalleled, extreme agony. freёwebnovel.com
On the other side, B-00 was writhing upon the freezing stone floor, forcibly accepting the brutal invasion of the venomous drug into its fragile body.
Through the surveillance camera that was currently glitching due to the overwhelmingly massive surge of mental energy, B-00 slowly opened its eyes. For the very first time, it did not look at the tormentors who were mercilessly abusing it. It lifted its head, its gaze piercing straight through the thick, dense concrete ceiling, staring directly toward an indeterminate direction in the pitch black night sky.
It was exactly as if it knew... out there in some distant place, there was a person who was sharing every single breath of this excruciating agony with it.
