Chapitre 3632: Chapter 2761: Star Core Rescue (12)

Shiller froze in place, and could not help but check again, but Aux was very certain when he said, "There is no window across from the Photovoltaic Integrated Device."

That was actually impossible. The Photovoltaic Integrated Device was an energy device mounted on the exterior of the Space Station, and it was huge, so it couldn't possibly be placed above the corridor of the Space Station; it had to be above the main area with the energy hub below it.

And in the room's layout, apart from the side with the passage they had come through, the remaining three sides were all windows.

That meant no matter from which side Aux had climbed to another, he must have encountered a window.

"Are you sure you looked down?" Shiller asked this to rule out the possibility that Aux had gone to the side with the passage.

"Yes, I looked down, it's sealed off, there's nothing below," Aux said.

His tone was so confident that Shiller started to doubt himself. After confirming with the Gray Mist again, Shiller was sure that the building structure where the Photovoltaic Integrated Device was located had windows on all three sides.

That meant that at that time Aux must have been hallucinating. This wasn't a typical symptom of bipolar disorder. Could it be that he had made a misjudgment?

"Then what did you do?" Shiller asked.

"I, I wanted someone to rescue me, I was waiting, wait..."

"Waiting for what?"

"Repair team," Aux struggled to get the word out, saying, "They make several rounds around the Space Station, they could have seen me..."

Once again, Shiller was surprised. Aux had also thought of waiting for a spacecraft to pass by and see him. So why hadn't he done it?

"There were monsters," Aux said. "I saw the sun's flames gradually approaching me, and from within some black shadows, monsters with tentacles were born. They kept attacking me, I floundered on the ground, but I couldn't extinguish the flames..."

My God, these were not ordinary illusions, Shiller thought. Are these really just hallucinations? Or could it be that actual monsters had damaged the Photovoltaic Integrated Device?

The thing about the Marvel World is that it's not as simple. In the original world, if a patient told Shiller this, he would be one hundred percent certain that the patient was hallucinating because that ordinary world didn't have so many demons and ghosts. But in the Marvel World, that was not necessarily the case.

Earlier, there had been a patient who sought help everywhere and finally came to Shiller. He said he would always see a guy with goat hooves in his dreams, talking incessantly, and sometimes he would see him during the day too. Other mental health professionals had no way to deal with his symptoms and could only diagnose him with schizophrenia.

It was later discovered that it was indeed Mephisto who had visited him in his dreams. At that time, an employee at The Sanctum had changed a phone number, and Mephisto didn't know. He dialed the wrong number and harassed the poor guy for half a month, nearly driving him mad.

Shiller tried to get Aux to describe the monsters he saw more precisely, but Aux couldn't say much more. It boiled down to two points. First, they seemed to come from the direction of the sun, and second, they were engulfed in flames which ultimately burned down the Photovoltaic Integrated Device.

Since he had not seen the exact condition, Shiller did not know what it had been burned to look like, but it could have burned down the entire half of the energy hub, considering the scale of the outage it had caused.

Then, Shiller asked Aux another key question, which was how he had managed to return.

Since it was known that Aux hadn't carried a safety rope and had definitely had the idea of damaging the Photovoltaic Integrated Device so that someone would come to find him, if those monsters were an illusion, it was possible that he actually had done that. So, in the end, was he really rescued by someone?

Or, in the event of such a large-scale outage, would anyone have spared the time to save him?

"I don't know," Aux gave an obvious answer. "Wasn't it you guys who rescued me?"

Seeing that he was becoming more logical, Shiller knew he had to stop the hypnosis there, or else it would be too easy to be discovered. He had no choice but to terminate his hypnosis and began looking for clues around him.

At this moment, someone was peering curiously outside the dormitory—probably Aux's roommate returning. Shiller caught him and asked, "How did Aux get back?"

The other man was taken aback and then said, "Get back? He just suddenly appeared lying on his bed, like always."

"Has he been sleepwalking recently?"

"Of course, he always sits up in the middle of the night making some noise, waking everyone up. We've tolerated him for a long time."

Shiller nodded, seemingly coming up with some ideas. As he quickly walked back, Aux's roommate grabbed him and asked, "Which department are you from? You seem somewhat unfamiliar, are you his friend?"

"I'm from the medical department," Shiller made up on the spot, and then said, "You're rather healthy, so of course, you haven't seen me before. Now, I have to get back to my office..."

"Don't you all think your plan is kind of...overcomplicating things?" Natasha looked at the people in front of her and said, "Can't I just take a fighter jet up there to have a look or snap some photos for you? Do we really have to use those damned surveillance cameras?"

"Actually, we were hoping to try and retrieve the surveillance footage from that time," the Chinese scientist said, "If the perpetrator wasn't that clever, they might not have been able to delete all four backups. Although we can deduce some clues from the current situation, it would be better if we could see the process of the incident."

Natasha pursed her lips. Seeing her hesitance, Ben Parker said, "If possible, you first go up and take some photos. If we can analyze the problem from the current status, that would be great. But if not, we might really have to take a trip to the main control room."

"It's not that I don't want to go to the other half of the space station that's hanging in space, but the situation over there is also very sensitive. After all, its antigravity device is broken. Any object getting close to it might affect its status. It's better not to approach it unless absolutely necessary," Natasha said with concern.

"We certainly understand these concerns," the female scientist said. "But since it has been mysteriously suspended in mid-air, it proves there must be an external force ensuring its safety. I don't believe that this force would disappear simply because a small airplane approached. If we must, we'll have to take the risk."

After discussing for a while, Natasha still set off. She was an expert at piloting such small spacecraft and soon arrived above the space station, hovering there.

She saw the charred Photovoltaic Integrated Device. Strangely, the space station's ceiling nearby didn't have any traces of smoke or scorch marks, just a lone chunk of carbon.

Natasha may not have been a scientist, but she at least had common sense. First, starting a fire in a vacuum was bizarre. Second, if there could be a fire, how could it only burn such a single object? Lastly, how had the oxygen not escaped from the hole burned through the ceiling?

Unable to figure it out, Natasha decided to leave the professional matters to professionals. She took photos and flew back, only to find that the experts were also astonished.

"My goodness, wasn't it supposed to be damaged by impact???" The Chinese scientist who had been involved in the construction of the Photovoltaic Integrated Device was dumbfounded. He said, "How could it be a fire? How could it possibly be a fire? Does physics not exist anymore???"

The others, looking at the photos, were left speechless too. If Aux could accomplish this on its own, then the Nobel Prize might as well be renamed the Aux Prize this year.

"Don't tell me there's been a small-scale nuclear fusion event here." The Black scientist blinked furiously, his mind racing, but not a single piece of his vast knowledge could explain the phenomenon. He said, "Apart from that, I can think of no other possibility."

"Photovoltaic, the sun, fire..." the Chinese scientist scratched his head and said, "Don't you find it strange? This device is used for collecting solar energy, so it seems like it was burned by the sun. Did the culprit do this on purpose?"

If Shiller were here, he would have immediately made some connections, but those present were materialistic warriors, uninterested in such mystical imagery.

"There's another issue," Natasha pointed out. "Look here, isn't there a hole burned through? How come the oxygen hasn't escaped from here?"

The group gathered to look where she was pointing and also felt amazed. In the cosmos, many races' spacecraft have oxygen recycling systems that could prevent oxygen loss even when the ship is damaged. But humans couldn't do that.

So far, the best way for humans to prevent oxygen loss in space was sealing everything up tight. Every airlock was secured with multiple gates. It was a crude method, but effective.

But judging from this hole, the lost oxygen wouldn't be a trivial matter. If it were really possible for oxygen to escape here, the oxygen level gauge would have hit rock bottom long ago.

"I'll go there and take a look," Ben Parker said.

"That area is blackout zone!" The female scientist said surprise, "Moreover, if there really is oxygen escaping, you could suffocate going there."

"I'll take a flashlight, and we brought a few small portable oxygen bottles when we came. They should last one person about half an hour. Anyway, I have to go and see what's really going on."

"I'll go with him," Natasha said. "After all, I am an agent from S.H.I.E.L.D. If we encounter any danger, I can protect him."

"But we need someone to pilot the ship to the other half of the space station," the Black man said. "Only you know how to fly the spacecraft here."

"No, not just me. There are quite a few pilots in the space station who can operate small spacecraft. Otherwise, how would they have transported the sick before?"

After thinking it over, the female scientist said, "The storage department should know where the pilots are now. I have an old classmate there. I'll go ask."

Dividing into two groups, Ben Parker and Natasha prepared to head to the energy core room to check the damaged ceiling, while the scientists set out to find the pilots capable of flying the spacecraft. The two teams parted ways at the office door.

Meanwhile, Shiller, following the office door number mentioned by Ben Parker, steadily made his way to the deputy chief engineer's office. When he knocked, the portly middle-aged man inside was smoking.

Washington time: 11:00 PM, two hours left until oxygen depletion in the space station.

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