Chapter 22 Chapter 21

There was constant noise in the hallway.Someone was screaming, someone was yelling, someone was cursing.The prisoner who read the scriptures began humming a Spanish song in praise of the Revelator.Immediately, several people responded with hoarse voices.But the two guards still stood motionless outside the door, watching them coldly through the iron bars. "I'll go talk to them," Mindy whispered, "and beg them to let us go. Maybe there's not much hope, because they'll value their tradition of loyalty, their loyalty to Kirwan's orders." "If—" Quinn said, turning his head sharply to look at them, "they've been instructed to take me to Jason Cowan as soon as I agree to say where the ship is.

Just tell them I agree! "Quin saw Mindy touch the sun mark on her face, and knew that she was a bit timid. But she went to the door immediately and negotiated something eagerly in a language he didn't understand. After a while, the guard frowned and spoke in a half-baked English asked him: "Sir, have you agreed to Admiral Kirwan's conditions now? " "yes." "Okay!" The guard grimaced, nodded and sighed, "It's just that you've been thinking about it for too long." He opened the door and led them down the corridor.Those people were still singing and cursing, and some crazy people stretched out their hands from the cells to grab them and make them kneel down and pray to the Trinity God.The night outside the prison was very cold.They walked through the deserted courtyard into a brightly lit street.Quinn wondered if Jason had escaped with Thorsen's engine?Sirens blared ahead.A line of police cars with yellow tape came oncoming and quickly left them behind.The guard stopped to look, and yelled something to Mindy uneasily.

"Sir—" he turned to Quinn and said, "I think Admiral Jason is gone, we won't be too late!" "No, no!" Mindy said hastily, "Admiral Jason will never leave, he must still be in the Sun Tower." "Okay." Although the guard was full of complaints, there was still some respect in his words, "let's go to Sun Company." They continued to walk slowly on the rustling snow. The Sun Company is surrounded by a high stone wall with large sharp iron nails on it.On the street outside the wall, there was an abandoned chariot, which was burning. Yellow flames spewed out into the night sky, and explosions could be heard from inside the car from time to time.Quinn felt a wave of heat as he passed by the car.

The gate of the Sun Company has been blown open, and the thick fence was deformed and flew to the other side.Quinn was thinking that not far from his feet, the timed detonator of the nuclear bomb device was "tick-tick". The guard ordered them to stop.At this time a small group of Sikh soldiers came out from inside.One of the leaders briefly confessed to the guard, who nodded and said to Min Di with a more serious expression: "The big thing is bad, Kewan was killed." The warden turned sharply to Quinn like a black beast. "You! You son of a bitch, you're the murderer!" He spat into the snow. "We're going to punish you now."

"Don't mess around!" Mindy hurriedly stopped, "Listen to me." She raised her voice a little. "I know the truth of the matter. Dern is of a giant—a kinship of a giant, he is of pure sun blood, though he has no sun mark, he is innocent, did not kill, I swear—" The guard was indifferent to what she said, and still reached out to grab Quinn.Mindy rushed over, yelling something in the Sikh language. "You devil's bastard!" he sighed, cursing helplessly, "maybe we don't need your dirty blood to nourish our souls. I leave you to the Revelator, let his bombs kill you Blast to death!" After speaking, he and his companions left in a hurry with the group of soldiers.

Quinn followed Mindy through the shattered door. Inside is a large courtyard.The Sun Company was a large yellow and black building, the spire of which was now covered with snow.A steel armored vehicle was parked at the entrance of the building, and two dead bodies were lying near the vehicle.A little bit of blood sprinkled on the snow, especially eye-catching.A woman leaned over them. The woman stood up when she heard someone approaching.From her thin and charming face, it can be seen that she is in pain.Her cheeks were stained with blood, as if covering the sun mark.Her white space suit and her black and bright shawl hair were covered with blood.In her clenched hands was a thin knife dripping with blood.

"That's Jason!" Mindy pointed to a dead body and exclaimed.Quinn saw one of them with a blond beard and a yellow spacesuit, the snow beneath him black with blood. The woman turned around.The other body Quinn saw was a thin young man lying in a pool of blood with his long hair on his head.He has a golden pistol by his side.He used a strong cologne, and the perfume hung in the cold air and smelled weird. A red light flashed in the air. It turned out that the woman threw the knife out of her hand. She yelled at Jason's body, "You just want to escape by yourself, but leave me to be slaughtered by those lunatics, and leave me alone. !"

The armored car rang loudly, and a tall man slowly walked out of the house.Quinn noticed he was unarmed.He walked out in a calm and unhurried manner, seemingly ignoring the people around him. "Olaf!" Mindy ran towards the person, exclaiming as he ran, "Olaf Thorsen!" Quinn ran after him.This man is his mother's husband!He'd seen him in the picture her mother had sent Jannott to him.In contrast, Thorsen's blond hair was much thinner, and a yellow beard grew on his face.The sunmark on his face shone like fresh gold.Thorsen made a face at Mindy, and pulled her into his arms.

"Quinn—" Mindy was breathless in Olaf's embrace, and finally introduced Quinn's name. "He's Quinn Durn." "Are you Naya's child?" Suo Sen let go of Mindy, looked at Quinn tremblingly and asked, "Are you from the aperture?" "From Jarnut—" Quinn was incoherent with excitement, "I'm here to get it—I want to ask you about the technology of the fission engine so that we can continue to survive there." "Can you pilot a spaceship?" Thorsen turned around abruptly, frowned and sized up Mindy and asked, "Is Baraka's spaceship nearby?"

Mindy nodded.Thorsen then asked Quinn, "Jason sent someone to look for it, do you think it will be absolutely safe?" "I think so. I kept it hidden and no one was around when—" "Oh," Thorson nodded, and said to Mindy, "I've already guessed where he's going to be. Kirwan's Space Fleet reported that they found it, and we have to go as soon as possible—" He casually introduced the woman covered in blood. "Miss Estrena Rafaro, Jason Cowan's personal physician until—" "Until I kill him," the woman said sharply, "you tell me, say I'm his vicious mistress! Even if I kill them a thousand times, ten thousand times, I won't let go of my hatred!"

"Sir——" Quinn asked, holding Thorson's shoulder, "Do you have a fission engine? Without it, how can the spaceship take off?" "Oh," Thorsen pointed to the chariot, "it's in there, Jason wants to pretend to run away together." "Will we be in time?" Mindy asked, taking Thorson's other arm, "The nuke is about to—" Thorson shrugged and said, "Maybe there are no nukes." "The guard said—" "I know all about it." Thorsen nodded, not panicking at all. "Maybe it was Baraka's conspiracy. He claimed to be the enlightener, and said he had placed a nuclear bomb device in the underground drainage pipe." "Said it was going to explode at midnight." Mindy checked his watch. "The guard seems to believe—" "Jason didn't quite believe it. He ordered the people who spread the news to be killed. But he still sent someone to look for a nuclear bomb, but the nuclear bomb was not found, and the panic caused by the rumor was even worse. His troops One after another abandoned their weapons and surrendered or fled, and finally there were only a few loyal Sikh soldiers left. Kewan had no choice but to flee in a hurry and find the spaceship." "Can we start the ship?" Quinn asked. "Maybe!" Thorsen said calmly, "Although there may be no nuclear bombs here, we still have to leave as soon as possible." He led them towards the chariot.Quinn looked back and saw Estrena kneeling beside Jason's head on the snow. He felt a numb sadness.He wasn't grieving over the death of his half-brother, even though he didn't feel any hatred for Jason until now, but instead, his grief stemmed from a sense of fatal loss, for his father's death, for the Cowan family The demise of the world is the overthrow of the greatest empire of mankind.This sense of loss is indeed sad and eschatological. They followed Thorsen into the chariot.The chariot drove to the side of the two dead bodies, Suo Sen turned off the engine, opened the door and went out.Quinn didn't hear what he said to Estrena, but saw Estrena wipe the blood off her fingers with the snow, and silently followed behind into the car. "What a lovely girl she was," Thorson whispered to Quinn. "A good doctor. To be honest, she saved my life. I just escaped here from the space lab, and Claudio took me Hiding in the cellar, I contracted various viruses and nearly died." "Without her—" He shook his head and got into the driver's seat.Quinn sat beside him and led the way.Mindy climbed into the rear battery.Quinn looked back at Estrena. She was sitting on the back seat, huddled up, her hands tied in her cascading hair, and her body was shaking with violent sobs. They drove through the empty streets.A full moon hangs in the sky, and the bright moonlight shines brighter on the snow.There were many dead bodies lying in the streets, and many burnt-out vehicles.The living have already fled for their lives. Their car drove silently through the snow, save for the occasional click of gear shifting and the sound of the car being slammed into the trash.Thorson has put his engine on. "With the engine, we don't need any fuel, just a spoonful of snow," Thorson said.Thorsen also brought Jason's map with him, which marked the main buildings and place names in Azteca. There is a red line across the city, extending to a blank area marked "Gravity Terminal", passing a bridge in the middle, which is the bombed Santos Bridge that Quinn saw.Quinn found another path on the map, taking the Sari Bridge south of the city. They pick their way, zigzagging among the abandoned vehicles.After walking for about two kilometers, I encountered many fleeing people, surrounded by sporadic fires.Most of the people just looked at them coldly. Occasionally, a few bullets hit the steel wall of the chariot, making a clanging sound, but Quinn felt that the journey was quite safe.Suddenly, he heard Thorsen curse. There was a thud in the street ahead, and flames spewed out of the ground like lightning, followed by several deafening explosions.Their cars lurched, crashing into a hail of bricks and mud, and stopped at the edge of the smoking crater. "Fucking mines," Quinn's ears buzzed, and only a few words Thorsen could hear clearly, "exploded too fast." They took the car to another road.There are farmers living here, relying on a small piece of land to survive, and now many people have fled, leaving only a burned-out village.Mindy suddenly reminded that it would be twelve midnight in a few minutes.Suo Sen hurriedly parked the car in a gully formed by sand erosion. "Hold your head in your hands! Close your eyes! Just in case a nuclear bomb actually goes off." Quinn closed his eyes and waited quietly.Mindy is counting down, the voice is very soft, almost breathless.Just when Mimin finished counting, Quinn suddenly felt his muscles go stiff, but there was still silence all around. "It turned out to be a bluff," Thorson said to himself, "let's go on our way." "Don't panic!" Mindy counted another minute, two minutes, three minutes, still no explosion.Sosen started the engine, and the car had just climbed up the hill when he suddenly heard Mindy yell. "Get down—" Quinn had no time to close his eyes, only to see that the dark night sky suddenly brightened like day.When his eyes, stung by the white light, could see again, he found that they had returned to the valley, which became a natural barrier to protect them from the catastrophe.He curled up in the car trembling, watching the mushroom cloud formed after the explosion expand and rise rapidly behind him. After they drove the car out of the valley, they felt the impact of the nuclear explosion.The earth is like a boat bumping up and down in the wind and waves, and the thunder that comes rolling pierces Jinlieshi.A gust of hot wind hit with choking dust, and the whole sky was pitch black again. "It looks like it's really moving." Suo Sen muttered. "Claudio Baraka is insane. No one can stop him. Thousands of people will die from the radiation in this explosion. I think he did it himself, and he can't survive." "us--" "Won't you die from nuclear radiation, will you?" Thorsen shrugged resignedly. "Maybe, maybe not, maybe the strong wind will blow the radiation dust that falls into the air in other directions." Fortunately, the Sari Bridge has not collapsed.Crossing the bridge, they crashed into the Sun Company's hunting zone.There is also a warning sign hanging on the high fence, indicating that this area is only open to members of the Kirwan family and VIPs, and trespassers will die.The hunting grounds were empty, and they hadn't expected it to be so easy to navigate. Thorson talks about his fission engine. "Can the fission engine be used on Jannot?" Quinn asked. "Yeah!" Thorson nodded. "Actually, you take what I gave you back to the aperture station, and it performs better than using it on Earth, because the single-molecule fiber material used by the main magnet is easier to anneal in a non-gravity environment, thereby forming a stable insulating shell. A stable superconducting core. "I have gone through a lot of painstaking efforts to design this simple engine." Thorsen continued angrily. "My experiment caused panic in the Sun Corporation, because they thought that my engine, which works without gravity, threatened their life. monopoly rule." Thorsen also talked about Quinn's mother, about the years when she was experimenting with Skyfish. "Naya——Naya loves you very much." He put his arm around Quinn's shoulder. "She has been very sad that she had to leave you. I think, she is eager to learn something from the Skyfish, so as to open up the vast world of human beings to space, and to bring you into the Empire of the Sun." He drove through a small snow-covered ditch. "It's too late," he said with a sigh. "You're too late." It was already a frosty morning when they walked out of the hunting restricted area.The car began to drive into a straight white valley formed between two endless mountains. At this time, the pale cold sun jumped out, but on the northern horizon, a thick black cloud was slowly rising. It was smoke from burning cities mixed with fallout from nuclear bomb explosions.This black cloud, like the shadow of death, followed closely the thousands of refugees.They raced northward against time, and when they finally found the ship, the cold sun was still in the sky. The heavy snow around the spacecraft indicated that no one had been there.Quinn rushed into the spaceship and found that Tianyu was still lying on the pilot seat, his whole body was cold and dull.The gravitational pull of the earth had exhausted her. "She's alive—I'm sure she's alive," he told Mindy. "I think—I hope she'll recover once we're back in space.” Thorsen was surprised by the small size of the engine. He told Quinn to set it up and gave him some technical instructions. After the engine started working, life came to life in the spaceship.The lights came on, the ventilators started to turn, and a red signal flashed on the monitor. Thorsen opened the cargo compartment and took out all the things Jason had packed in the car; food, water, weapons and a suitcase with the word "Kewan" printed on it. Seeing those tempting foods, Quinn felt that he was already hungry.However, when he saw the black cloud overhead approaching, he didn't dare to ask to stop for something to eat or to rest for a while. They got some snow to put in the tank.Estrena followed Thorson up the steep hill and rolled the snowball down.As the icy sun hides behind black clouds, the fuel tank fills up with snow. They are ready to fly into space! Quinn was tired and hungry, eager to take off at once, but Thorsen stayed outside, frowning at the black cloud rising higher and higher toward the north. "There's a wind blowing," he said, "but I think we'll have time. Say goodbye to Earth!" In the cabin, they ate something hastily.Thorsen opened a bottle of champagne brought by Jason, raised his glass and proposed a toast. "Cheers to the future of mankind! No matter where mankind goes—" He turned his head to Quinn with a serious face and said, "Estrena and I have decided to stay on Earth." "Olaf, you are crazy Lah!" Mindy begged in a low voice, "Don't stay here, it's so scary, you can see the shadow of death everywhere." She looked at Sosen's bright sun mark and said, "The holy people will kill you." "Perhaps you are right," Thorsen shrugged helplessly, and said to Quinn, "but space is not much safer than here, and besides, it's hard to say whether you can escape." "Don't we have a spaceship, we can take off soon—" "But it hasn't been tested yet. The food, water and life-saving supplies in the spaceship are only enough for the two of you to fly to Jannot, but not enough for the four of you." Thorsen smiled at Estrena , said seriously, "We don't want to be buried in the sharp jaws of space monsters." "We have weapons," Quinn roared, "in a spaceship of the Newlyn tribe. If we are lucky, we can use weapons to stop it." "Stop talking!" Suo Sen looked at Estrena with a smile, "I have already agreed with her—" Estrena nodded towards Mindy and Quinn, with sad tears in her eyes. "You guys go! Go! I'm crazy, I've idolized Jason since I was a kid, because he's the man of my dreams, because he looks—looks amazing!" Tears obscured her vision as she reached out to pull Thorsen. "Olaf—" Thorson took her in his arms. "We'll just stay here," Thorsen said, touching the sun mark, "Estrena will take it off, and maybe—maybe we'll still have a chance." He stood up and continued, " There's going to be a strong wind, and you'd better go now." "I'm worried about you," Quinn shook his head painfully, "the whole world is going crazy—" "Whether we can survive is indeed a question," Thorson shrugged, "but we will take care of ourselves. Maybe Baraka and the others are crazy, but the others are not. They need someone as good as Estrena." Doctor, need me too, my fission engine." "Goodbye!" Estena Reina got into the car behind Sosen, turned around and solemnly waved to them, wishing, "Best trip!" The queen was surprised and delighted by the behavior of the mosquitoes. Their outposts at the edge of the aperture were destroyed; their little barriers on the equator were pulled out; their little cobwebs around the planet were torn; A lazy little spaceship is flying towards her lair! The violence in her chest began to burn. She waited alone for the ship to arrive, ready to jump up and give it a fatal blow.However, she couldn't fly.She sacrificed half her body to feed the soon-to-be prince and princess.She felt alive only in the reverberation of heroic hymns.She pinned her hopes on the future, and the lair she built would bring her infinite glory. The desire to fight burned in his chest like a piece of hot metal.If the childish and ridiculous mosquitoes dared to attack her nest, it would undoubtedly add another comedy movement. She was so excited that she couldn't help singing an ancient and majestic war song. Revolutions in the way of living: In the course of human history, there have been two revolutions in the way of living.The first time was from the sea to the land; the second time was from the earth to space.The second revolution in the way of living is because the living mode of the earth has been surpassed and replaced, which is reflected in the accumulation of knowledge, the advancement of science and technology, the understanding of the space environment, and the mastery of the intelligent circle of life in space, and many other aspects.