Chapter 237: Chapter 237: Zoe Becomes a Target
The Alpha Officer in charge explained, "Her treatment just finished. She needs to wake up on her own, so we won’t be waking her artificially. Rest assured, she should be physically fine."
"Your guy, Nathan Lockwood, is in there with her now."
Come to think of it, they’d never seen a squad get along so well with their Omega.
Even in The Military, it was rare for an Omega to fight side-by-side with their squad as many times as Zoe Pierce had.
Given the choice between resting in their pods or going to see Zoe Pierce, Aaron Xavier and Miles Sherman didn’t hesitate to choose the latter.
When the two arrived at the medical bay, they saw Zoe Pierce lying on a bed, already changed into clean, blood-free clothes.
Nearby, besides Nathan Lockwood, who was still awake, Chase Shaw was also lying on a bed.
Both he and Zoe Pierce had been unlucky. They were in a part of the ship that was easily breached, so they had taken the brunt of the impact.
Nathan Lockwood wasn’t surprised to see Miles Sherman and Aaron Xavier. He leaned back in his chair and asked, "You told them?"
Miles Sherman hummed. "We couldn’t hide it."
"Yeah, let’s wait and see. It probably won’t be that bad," Nathan Lockwood said.
After all, they had speaking engagements after their leave, and there was no way Zoe Pierce could miss them.
Besides, now that they were the targets of an attack, the authorities would undoubtedly focus their crackdown on this group.
Staging a terrorist attack on home territory...
He had no idea if those people were insane or not.
Then again, people who weren’t crazy probably wouldn’t be conducting Xenobeast experiments in the first place.
’But something doesn’t add up,’ Nathan Lockwood thought.
’This move... it was like they wanted us all dead.’
’It was a far cry from the simple "lesson" I was expecting.’
’Could discovering their Xenobeast research have created such a deep-seated grudge?’
’Or could there be something else going on?’
The image of the Beta who had died silently on an operating table in that dim cave flashed through Nathan Lockwood’s mind. His brow furrowed. "Miles, do you think it’s possible... that the people from Planet B36 are the same group?"
They were all experiments centered around spiritual power.
One on Betas, one on Xenobeasts.
At first glance, the two seemed unrelated, but on closer inspection, they appeared to be intricately connected.
Miles Sherman’s expression grew much more serious. If Nathan Lockwood’s theory was correct, it wasn’t out of the question.
"So that’s why Arthur White showed up?" Aaron Xavier added.
His appearance was too much of a coincidence.
They were the fish, and Arthur White was the bait, waiting for them to take the hook.
"Arthur White is the key figure from Planet B36." Following the thread, Nathan Lockwood felt like everything was falling into place.
They had foiled this group’s plans time and time again.
Now they were settling the score for all three incidents at once.
No wonder they’d escalated to trying to kill them.
Thinking about it more, if Zoe Pierce hadn’t had a Mecha this time, she would have certainly died. For them, it would have been a way to eliminate a troublesome person.
That cave, in the beginning, was discovered by Zoe Pierce...
And the subsequent trip to Planet B36 was to investigate the deaths of Zoe’s parents.
Of the three incidents, except for the last one, which was a matter of being in a specific location, the other two were more or less connected to Zoe Pierce.
"I suspect... there are other Starships nearby, Miles." Nathan Lockwood had studied psychology. In a situation like this, the enemy would most likely want someone to personally confirm their deaths.
Miles Sherman looked up at him.
"There’s one possibility," Nathan Lockwood said, a thought he was reluctant to dwell on. "They might have also discovered that Zoe Pierce can pilot a Mecha."
If the same group was behind all three incidents...
Clearly, Zoe Pierce would become their new target.
The moment he said it, the expressions on Miles Sherman’s and Aaron Xavier’s faces grew even darker.
After discovering that an Omega could pilot a Mecha just like an Alpha, they couldn’t imagine what insane lengths that group would go to.
But without a doubt, it meant danger.
Zoe Pierce would become their target, to be used to further perfect their human experiments.
*
Jasper Quinn now knew exactly what it felt like to be in space and suddenly receive news that your child was hiding a massive bombshell.
The situation was urgent. He had already pulled all available resources and requested a jump-gate channel, but it would still take a full day to reach Miles Sherman and the others.
Having just come through the jump, his face was an impassive mask, but his grim complexion betrayed the anxiety that consumed him.
Ryan Jacobs, who had come along to handle things, wore the same expression—brows furrowed, lips pressed into a thin line.
Then he saw Director Quinn take a comms call.
The rapidly shifting expressions on the Director’s face made it impossible for him to guess what was being said.
First, the Director’s entire body relaxed. Then he heard something else, and his brow knitted together as he shot back a question in disbelief. The person on the other end must have confirmed it, because his shock didn’t lessen, but rather twisted into an even more baffling expression.
His final expression was a complex mix: serious yet questioning, more relaxed than before but laced with an almost absurd tension.
It was too complicated.
He asked directly, "Director, are Zoe Pierce and the others okay?"
The conversation was encrypted; he could only read his lips, but even the sound was blocked. It was absurd.
’Are the kids alright or not?’
Director Quinn looked back at the still-worried Ryan Jacobs and shook his head. "They’re fine for now. They’ve all been brought aboard a military vessel."
Hearing this, Ryan Jacobs let out a huge sigh of relief. "That’s good. As long as they’re all okay."
But then he recalled Director Quinn’s expression from a moment ago. "Then why did you look so... conflicted?"
Even he couldn’t figure it out.
Jasper Quinn’s expression remained complex. After a moment of deliberation, he said, "It was discovered that Zoe Pierce has spiritual power."
’Isn’t it normal for Zoe Pierce to have spiritual power? What’s so surprising about that?’
The thought flashed through Ryan Jacobs’s mind, but he immediately realized that if it were something so simple, Jasper Quinn wouldn’t have been this shocked.
He thought of Zoe Pierce’s previous mutation and looked at Jasper Quinn in astonishment. "Did her Spiritual Power Level increase again?"
’Did it go from S-rank to something even higher?’
Jasper Quinn’s brow was tightly knitted as he shook his head. "No. They said she has the spiritual power of an Alpha."
The moment Ryan Jacobs heard it, his first reaction was that it was impossible.
He even suspected he’d misheard.
Uncertainly, he asked again, "The spiritual power of an Alpha? What does that mean? Zoe Pierce can use spiritual power like an Alpha now?"
’Good heavens.’
’How does she get an upgrade every time she goes through something traumatic? It’s enough to make a guy jealous.’
’Although, this is a bit too outrageous.’
’Okay, this is beyond outrageous; it’s just plain unscientific.’
His expression shifted through a series of changes, mirroring Jasper Quinn’s own look of utter, uncomprehending shock.
His face was doing a complete one-eighty.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Jasper Quinn added, "She’s been hiding the fact that she can use her spirit sea like an Alpha. Miles Sherman and her entire squad knew about it."
’Great.’
Ryan Jacobs figured the expression on his face must be absolutely comical by now.
He was losing control of his features. That single sentence contained so much information it had stunned even a seasoned veteran like him.
