Chapter 18 Chapter Seventeen

Carly sat in the car and heard the iron doors squeak against the armored roof, but the car forced its way through and into the dark streets of the Omega space station.She kept the car in reverse, drove half a street before she stepped on the brakes, turned the steering wheel, and the car made a 540-degree circle. Now their direction has not changed, but anyway, the car is heading forward. They've escaped the warehouse, but the escape isn't over until they escape the Omega station. "Do you have a ship?" she asked the quarians in the crew seats. "Go to Spaceport," he replied, "at the end of the block on the right. Take the third left, then right." His voice came from behind the mask, strained and thin.

Callie turned her attention away from the navigation screen and glanced at his injured leg.The injuries are serious but not life-threatening. "Handel," she called to the backseat, "see if you can find a medical kit in there." "There is a medical kit...in...in my backpack." Lime finally squeezed out the words while enduring the severe pain. Carly dared not stop while they bandaged Rhyme's wound.Fortunately, Handel had received basic field medical training, and it was not particularly difficult to bandage a wounded leg in a bumpy armored vehicle. Following the direction indicated by the Quarians, they quickly passed through the densely packed corridors of buildings and drove to the landing port on the outskirts of the city.The car was advancing on the open ground, and three small spaceships lined up appeared on the navigation screen, all at the far end of the spaceport.

"Lyme, which spaceship is yours?" Carly asked. "It's the one you like to fly." His voice was not as weak as before.Carly noticed that Handel had splinted Lyme's leg and wrapped it tightly in sterile bandages, which minimized exposure to germs.Hemostatics will also reduce pain, heal the wound, and reduce infection. Callie parked the car a few meters from the nearest ship, opened the airlock, and turned back to help the quarians.Rhyme moved carefully from the seat to the door, leaned on Carly for his weight, and walked toward the ship on his remaining good leg.

Handel followed, holding Gillian under his arm and clutching Rhyme's backpack with his other hand. "Damn it." Handel saw the spaceship parked outside from the viewing window of the space station.Carly also saw the spaceship logo that Handel saw, and couldn't help but smile: it was Grayson's spaceship that they were going to steal. The quarians set about hacking the ship's security system.After a few minutes, with a soft click, the airlocks opened and hydraulic bearings lowered the boarding ramp. Inside the ship, Handel placed Gillian in a passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt, while Carly helped Rhyme limping to the cockpit.

"Can you fly this spaceship?" Carly asked. Rhyme studied it and nodded. "I think it's fine. Looks like a standardized operating system." The quarians sat in the pilot's seat and touched the console with a three-fingered, gloved hand.Carly suddenly remembered that although the quarians and humans looked similar in many ways, under the environmental isolation suits and masks, they were completely aliens.And the alien risked his life to save theirs. "Thank you," she said. "You saved our lives." Instead of thanking Carly, Rhyme asked, "Why did they lock you up?"

"They're going to sell us to gatherers." Rhyme shuddered, but said nothing.At this time, the display shows Startup. "I haven't found any sign of anyone following me yet," Rhyme said in a low voice. "Cerberus won't let us go so easily." Handel walked into the cockpit and said. "They didn't work for Cerberus." Carly explained that Handel didn't hear their conversation in Grayson's cell. "Not playing for Cerberus anymore. I guess, they probably consider themselves freelance now." At this time, Carly realized that Handel hadn't talked about why Grayson hadn't followed up.

Handel must have hated Grayson even more than I thought.Looking at everything that has happened, Carly really can't blame Handel. "You're right about Grayson," Carrie said to Handel. "He's a Cerberus agent. He must have been working with Jiro." Rhyme started the engine, and the spaceship trembled slightly and let out a low roar. Knowing Grayson's true identity, Handel didn't look surprised at all.According to his character, Handel didn't say "I said it a long time ago" at this time, but just said: "Did you kill him?" "As far as I know, he's still alive," Kali admitted. "They locked him up too, and I was transferred from his cell, just like us."

"If they end up handing Grayson over to the gatherers, he'd prefer to be killed by you," Rhyme interjected. Carly hadn't considered this question yet, but this topic brought a smile to Handel's mouth. Rhyme made the final adjustments, the thrusters worked at full capacity, and the spacecraft slowly rose to mid-air. "Which course do I want to set?" Rhyme asked. Carly thought it was a good question. "The situation hasn't changed at all," Handel said, anxious in his voice. "Cerberus still wants to go after Gillian, and we still can't risk going back to the Alliance. Grayson and his friends are out of play, but Cerberus has many other agents."

"No matter where we go, sooner or later they will find us." "Then we'll keep running," Carly said, "always one step ahead of them." "Gillian won't be able to bear it." Handel warned. "We don't have much choice. As far as we know, every place in the galaxy where humans operate, whether it's a planet, a colony, or a space station, they have people lurking." "I know a place where you can hide, and it's guaranteed that the Cerberus can't find you." Rem turned the seat and joined the conversation. "It's the Wandering Fleet."

The battle was over, and Grayson searched the warehouse up and down.For a moment he struggled with whether to go down to the garage and follow Gillian in the second car.But he knew the car would be gone by the time he got there.He had to be patient and smart if he wanted to find Gillian. He checked the warehouse floor and found several bodies, including one he had shot in the back.Two were killed by random gunshots, two were run over by fleeing cars, and a woman twisted against a wall with a broken neck.Grayson recognized this as a sign of the legendary psychic's hand.He guessed that Handel did it, and Gillian would not have killed him.

He also found a shotgun on the floor. It looked like it was from a turian arms dealer, but the impromptu augmentation modules were elegant, ingenious and effective, made of a distinct quarian design. features. Knowing the value of the shotgun, he picked it up, carried it with him, left the garage, and continued searching elsewhere in the warehouse.He got lost in the porch several times, but eventually found his way back to a room on the ground floor that had been converted into a barracks. There are twelve bunks here, but only nine beds have been shown to have been slept on.Grayson found only seven bodies in the warehouse, plus the two guards near his cell, which explains why no one else was encountered along the way.After counting all the people in the warehouse, he could finally relax his vigilance. On any other space station or planet, Grayson would have worried that law enforcement would come if they heard the sound of fighting, but there were no police on Omega Station, and the sound of firefights and explosions would just make the neighbors huddle.Maybe someone would eventually come to see what was going on inside the house—perhaps by renting the place to Pell and his men.However, Grayson estimated that no one would come over for a few days. Just down the road from the barracks was a small conference room, where Pell set up a communications and command point.Grayson searched computers and data disks and found the reports they had originally planned.Of course, this is all encrypted, but it's just the basic encryption of Cerberus, and Grayson cracked it without much effort. Cerberus sent Pell to Omega Space Station to find a way to infiltrate the Quary fleet.Unfortunately, the report is not complete.They mentioned that they captured a spaceship called the Sinaiad, and that they took a prisoner for torture, but there is no record of the results of the torture.Apparently, after Pell hooked up with the mysterious forager, he had no interest in keeping records.And he wouldn't be stupid enough to make electronic or written records to prove that he had a plan to betray the Phantom Man. The quarian warship and the captives were mentioned here, plus the shotgun he found modified by the quarians, Grayson already knew who was coming to break the prison.A Qualley rescue party must have come and taken their brethren back, and for some reason they decided to take Gillian, Carly, and Handel as they fought their way back to freedom. Satisfied with the information he had gleaned from the files, he continued to slowly search the house.In another office, closer to the center of the house, he found a small door in the floor.This small door is the original one, but it has only two hinges, which can be opened upwards, and there is no sliding slot.The little door was closed and locked with a latch.Grayson took aim at the door with his new shotgun and sliced ​​the latch with the toe of his boot.He waited for a while and nothing happened.Grayson leaned over and pulled the door open, ready to shoot anyone who showed up. The basement was pitch black except for a rickety wooden ladder leading into the darkness below.Grayson turned on the flashlight mounted on the barrel of the shotgun, and the bright light pierced the haze as he walked slowly down. When Grayson reached the bottom, he turned around quickly, and the light illuminated every corner.The basement is square, about six or seven meters square.The walls are brick and dirt, the floor is bare concrete.It was almost empty except for a motionless figure at the back against the wall. Grayson pointed the beam of the flashlight—and the muzzle of the shotgun—at the man, and moved closer.With a meter or two to go he finally realized who he had found: the Quali prisoner. Grayson scanned him all over with a flashlight and found that his hands and feet were bound and he was completely naked.Grayson had never seen a quarian without an environmental suit and mask before, and he doubted whether the man before him could be called representative of his race.His face was covered with lumps and bruises, and there were cuts and burns - a testament to what he had suffered.Someone had knocked out all his teeth, and one face was slumped and the other was grinning, as if someone had cut the corner of the mouth to the middle of the ear with a knife. One eye was sunken and shut tightly.The upper and lower eyelids of the other eye were gone, and the flesh and blood on the side turned up irregularly, which indicated that the eyelid was ripped off with pliers.Grayson remembered with disgust how Pell took pleasure in torturing people in his own special way--in addition to the unbearable pain caused by the violent tearing, the victim would slowly and painfully become blind because the exposed eyeball Will gradually dry out. Fingers and toes were broken, with several dislodged from their sockets.Every inch of exposed skin was battered, cut, burned or ablated with acid.However, there was something special about him, and Grayson crouched down to get a better look. Gray foam grew from the quarian's wound and spread along the skin.It took Grayson a moment to realize that it was some kind of bacterial colony, and that in addition to the tragic torture, the quarian must have been infected with some strange alien germ. Feeling sick, Grayson took a step back.To his surprise, the quarians cried out in terror. God, the poor fellow is still alive! He actually wanted to say something, repeating the same syllables in a trembling, rough voice.He had lost his teeth, his face was disfigured, and his voice was distorted and unintelligible.Grayson's automatic translator repeated several times before he could hear what he was trying to say. "Frequency 43223...I am facing the distant stars, but my heart is always in the fleet...Frequency 43223...I am facing the distant stars, but my heart is always in the fleet..." He repeated these words over and over again, his voice rising and falling with fear.Grayson crouched closer to him again, but was careful not to touch the infected part. "It's all right," he said softly, trying to silence the frantic captive. "It's all over." His words seemed to have the opposite effect, and the quarian's wrists and ankles began to struggle violently, trying to break free of the straps.He cried out in despair, then began to cough, spitting out a lot of spittle.A big black, foul-smelling pus spurted from his lip and gash, and Grayson jumped back, out of the way. The quarian made the sound of liquid flowing from his mouth, and took a few breaths of dying breath. The convulsions finally stopped, he remained motionless, and the basement was once again dead silent.Fighting back the stench from the corpse, Grayson took a closer look and confirmed that the quarians had stopped breathing. He left the body in the dark basement and climbed the stairs back to the surface.Grayson closed and bolted the door and scoured the house for anything that could be of use to him.Fifteen minutes later, he was behind the wheel of Pell's second car, speeding down the unfamiliar streets of Omega Space Station.The next seat was covered with supplies, and the shotgun. His attention was focused on his real purpose, and the voice of finding a drug dealer to take a dose in his heart was suppressed in the back of his head.Instead, his goal now is to find a teleportation station so he can connect to the hypernet and send the Phantom Man a message telling him what happened. Pell had betrayed Cerberus, but Grayson remained true to the cause...and he knew they would help him get Gillian back.