Chapter 492: Killer Virus! Wallfacer Plan! Information Gap!
At first, Guo Zhengming worried he might be driving too fast and that Paul couldn't keep up. After all, the underground city's traffic network was as complex as a forest, and if one wasn't careful, a crash could happen at any moment.
What's more, his police hovercar was far superior to the average civilian model—Paul's group might very well get left behind.
But when he glanced back, he realized his worry was unnecessary. Paul's seemingly odd hovercar was, in fact, incredibly powerful, apparently even equipped with military-grade weapons.
That only made Guo Zhengming more curious about Paul's true identity. Could they really be special agents sent by the Fleet International?
At that moment, the built-in AI of the morphing ship was continuously simulating and planning new routes. Fortunately, when AI Red Queen had been gathering intelligence, she had also recorded the map of the underground city.
With the Red Queen's data, the morphing ship could weave smoothly through the chaos below.
Before long, Guo Zhengming finally led Paul and the others to another exit—this one wasn't an elevator shaft, but a long sloping tunnel that led straight to the surface.
At this point, nothing could realistically stop Paul from leaving. Even if Sophon tried to collapse the passage, it wouldn't happen in the short time they needed.
By the time Paul returned to the surface, the trauma team dispatched from the hornet was already waiting in their hover ambulance.
Paul quickly handed Agent Leon over to the medics, feeling a weight lift from his heart.
After watching Leon depart, Paul and the others stayed behind to continue the mission—but soon, Guo Zhengming and a cluster of police hovercars surrounded them.
It was obvious: after the string of strange accidents and the unbelievable technology and craft Paul's team displayed, the police now considered them highly dangerous.
Until Paul's true identity could be confirmed, they weren't about to relax their guard.
Agent K raised his weapon warily, but Paul quickly pushed it down, signaling there was no need. If these people meant them harm, they would have already opened fire.
Guo Zhengming stepped forward, reintroducing himself:
"I'm Guo Zhengming from the City Public Security Bureau's Digital Reality Division. As you've seen for yourselves, you're in very serious trouble. From this point on, you'll need our help if you want to survive."
Paul studied the policemen behind him, then turned back and asked, "Do you know what it was that attacked us?"
Guo Zhengming nodded.
"Killer virus, version 5.2. ETO spread it a century ago. Since then it's mutated and been upgraded many times.
"It's a highly targeted assassination virus. It identifies victims by personal data, then commandeers every available external device to kill them.
"As you've already seen, it's as if the entire world is conspiring to murder you—like an inescapable curse.
"What we didn't expect was that the virus had advanced to this degree. Our underground city is utterly defenseless before the Trisolarans."
He gave a self-mocking laugh.
"Wasn't ETO wiped out ages ago? Why are they suddenly back again?" Paul frowned. On second thought, ETO might only have been eliminated on the surface. As long as the Trisolarans willed it, they could always prop up another ETO.
"ETO is gone," Guo Zhengming shrugged, "but who can say whether groups like them ever truly disappear?
"What's more, the killer virus is quite popular on the black market. Many people buy it to assassinate personal enemies. So yes—there are still plenty of killer strains lurking online."
"A hundred-year-old virus still runs smoothly? What are your defense systems even for?" Luke muttered.
Guo Zhengming shot him a doubtful look, the kind one gives a clueless child.
"You really don't know? Our computing technology stopped advancing ages ago. Software from more than a century back still runs perfectly today.
"When the killer virus first appeared, it killed plenty of people—including a head of state—before antivirus software and firewalls suppressed it enough to prevent mass outbreaks.
"But after the Sophons froze humanity's fundamental sciences, even computer science stagnated. Our tech tree is warped beyond recognition. We all suffer for it."
"You're unusual. We've never seen this variant of the killer virus before. We had no idea its destructive power would be this terrifying."
That explained why Paul's group had suffered so much bad luck. Sophon had activated its hidden trump card, turning the underground city itself into their executioner.
Without Guo Zhengming's intervention, the virus might have plunged the city into chaos until Paul and the others were dead.
"And another thing…"
Guo Zhengming glanced at the medevac hovercar carrying Leon away.
"Your friend was hit with a gene missile. That was another assassination method ETO deployed a century ago.
"For ordinary people, it only causes mild flu-like symptoms. But against specific genetic groups, the viral activation program produces lethal toxins—extremely fast, extremely fatal."
At that, Paul recalled the Manticore Virus often used by the Universal Megacorp—an engineered plague that had once exterminated an entire species.
If the Trisolarans simply wanted humanity gone, they had Infinity methods to make it so.
But they hadn't. Which meant they didn't want extermination, but enslavement—like how humans treat rare animals on the brink of extinction.
"We once believed gene missiles and killer viruses had been destroyed or fully contained," Guo Zhengming sighed. "But clearly, some of the deadliest ones survived in hiding.
"This seemingly peaceful society is riddled with dangers that could topple everything in an instant. All we can do is live from day to day."
Paul nodded thoughtfully. No wonder the surface Sleepers refused to live in the underground city.
They had witnessed the terror of ETO's killer viruses and gene missiles.
In a hyper-dense metropolis, rogue machines and a fast-moving virus could wipe out over 90% of the population in a single day.
Living in wide-open lands with fewer people at least gave them a chance to flee, to struggle for a little longer.
"The one thing we can be glad of," Guo Zhengming said, "is that ETO is completely gone. They haven't appeared in over a hundred years. Even if some other groups spring up, they won't make any real waves.
"The Trisolarans abandoned them. They're no longer needed."
Paul lifted his gaze to the gray clouds above. A troubling thought struck him: how had the Sophons obtained their genetic data in the first place? They couldn't have directly extracted material from their bodies, could they?
When Paul voiced his suspicion, Guo Zhengming turned the same unsettled look back on the three of them.
Because logically, if Sophon had marked them, it should never have targeted only one of them with a gene missile.
A sophon capable of unfolding its perspective into eleven dimensions could peer into every strand of a person's genetic code as if it were child's play, and in minutes cobble together a virus attack tailored specifically to that individual.
Yet the problem was that only Agent Leon was hit. The other three were completely unharmed.
Before Guo Zhengming could even say he wasn't sure what went wrong, Paul had already worked it out on his own.
His genes had long been reshaped by spice and diazine into patterns the Trisolarans couldn't comprehend. Luke carried the mysterious protozoan inside his body—something else beyond the Trisolarans' understanding.
And Agent K was a replicant. A genetic missile meant nothing against a synthetic.
After gathering enough information from Guo Zhengming, Paul was just about to leave when the man stopped him: "Now I need you to come clean about some things. This is a necessary procedure."
Guo Zhengming fixed his gaze on him, a mind already racing with possibilities.
"What is it you want to know?" Paul knew this moment would come eventually. His group was far too conspicuous; exposure was inevitable.
"Who exactly are you? Which unit do you belong to? What is your mission? The more specific, the better."
Guo Zhengming's voice hardened, like an interrogation of criminals. His calm yet razor-sharp eyes seemed intent on piercing into Paul's heart.
"Don't bother hiding. I can tell when someone's lying. The Trisolarans wouldn't go to such lengths to kill an ordinary man—unless your existence posed a serious enough threat to them."
Seeing him speak this way, Paul waved his hand, signaling Luke and K to stay alert. He might as well sit down for a proper chat with this policeman.
"From the sound of it, the Trisolarans haven't only used these methods against us," Paul counter-probed.
"Yes."
Guo Zhengming nodded. "Two centuries ago, the United Nations put forward a Wallfacer Plan, granting several human elites extraordinary authority to devise strategies of deception against the Trisolaran civilization.
"With the opacity of human thought, they sought to win advantages. Those Wallfacers wielded immense power, free to draw on all of humanity's resources.
"Among the four Wallfacers were national leaders, brilliant scientists, politicians—and one ordinary university lecturer.
"But unexpectedly, the Trisolarans kept hunting down that seemingly ordinary lecturer. His name was Luo Ji. I just sent him up to the surface for protection, and now it seems it's your turn."
As he spoke, Guo Zhengming kept studying Paul, wondering if he might be another hidden Wallfacer. After all, who could guarantee that there were only four? Perhaps a fifth, sixth—even a seventh—existed.
Although Guo Zhengming never figured out what made Luo Ji so special, one thing was certain: anyone the Trisolarans hunted had to be extraordinary.
Perhaps Luo Ji was the very key to defeating them.
And since Paul's group had suffered attacks even more vicious than Luo Ji's, that could only mean they posed an even greater threat to the Trisolarans.
At least, that was Guo Zhengming's conclusion.
"So you think we're Wallfacers?" Paul chuckled. He had thought his cover was blown—yet instead the other party had handed him a convenient false identity.
That certainly saved him a lot of trouble.
"I hope you are."
Guo Zhengming blinked. "I've checked your files. Whether they're forged or not, I can't be sure. But on the surface, they say you're hibernators.
"If, like Luo Ji, you're Wallfacers awakened from hibernation, then I regret to inform you: the Wallfacer Plan has already been vetoed by Fleet International.
"They believe humanity has no need for schemes. A vast interstellar fleet alone will be enough to crush the Trisolaran civilization."
A vast… interstellar fleet. Did he mean those escorts out by Jupiter?
Paul almost laughed. A civilization whose basic science was locked down, already thrown into chaos by gene missiles and killer viruses, and under two centuries of uninterrupted sophon surveillance…
And they still thought they could defeat the Trisolarans with that?
"If those warships really posed a threat to the Trisolarans, why wouldn't they just use sophons to sabotage their construction? Why let humanity build two thousand of them unimpeded?"
Paul knew too well the lethal state humanity was in: total asymmetry of information, a gaping technological divide. Sheer numbers of warships could never bridge that.
Information gaps always decide the outcome.
That was why the Universal Megacorp sent advance teams into every new multiverse—because only by gathering as much intelligence as possible could they make the right strategic deployments.
If they relied only on brute-force frontal assaults, no matter how deep The Megacorp's coffers ran, they would eventually burn themselves out.
The arrogant will always pay the price.
"Of course I've thought about that," Guo Zhengming replied with a dry smile. "But what good does it do? I'm hardly the only one to see the problem. Still, apart from this path, what else can humanity do?"
He was just a policeman. He had no power to sway the decisions made at the top.
"Now will you tell me who you really are?" Guo Zhengming steered the conversation back to his original demand.
Paul silently locked eyes with him. He knew sophons were surrounding him with seamless surveillance. Even the faintest twitch of his lips could be caught by the Trisolarans.
He was turning it over in his mind—how could he win the man's trust without exposing his true identity?
It was a near-impossible question.
As Paul wavered, considering whether he should first report back to Consul Li Ang before deciding, Agent K gave him a subtle nod.
A message had come through from Li Ang. It was a single word: "Go."
Yes, it might lead the sophons to back-trace and pinpoint the location of the War Moon. But Li Ang didn't care. The final war was about to erupt. Sooner or later they would be exposed to the Trisolarans anyway.
Now Li Ang needed Paul to seize upon the Wallfacer cover, win humanity's trust quickly, and pave the way for The Megacorp to take over this world.
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