amaotonovel Chapter 4368 The Justice League Assembles (6)
Chapter 4368 The Justice League Assembles (6)
Chapter 4368 Justice League: Assemble (Sixteen)
Silas Stone sat in the chair in the interrogation room. He tilted his head back slightly, staring at the light bulb above him. A small insect had flown into the bulb and was helplessly circling the filament. The light dried out his eyes. The discomfort in his body made him almost unable to think, but the more so, the clearer he became.
"Do you still expect the military to come and rescue you?" the agent on the other end said. "They're just using you as a tool. Protecting you is only to prevent us from finding you so they can charge you exorbitant prices. They just didn't realize that times have changed, this isn't like 9/11."
"By the way, you probably don't know this yet, but the car accident that destroyed your family was actually orchestrated by them. They installed a GPS tracker on your wife's phone, then killed her in a car accident and seriously injured your son. You think they were being merciful and used alien technology to save your son, but in reality, they just needed a better tool."
"Use your son to threaten you, and then use you to threaten your son. That way, they'll control everyone, from experts researching alien technology to the world's best hackers. We're here to save you this time."
"The military will only let you use your intelligence to wage war. But we're different. For years, we've ruled this country, manipulating elections to make America great again. Join us, and you and your son will have a better future..."
“What stops humanity from progress is never ignorance, but arrogance,” Dr. Stone said in a hoarse voice. “We can learn and pass on knowledge to overcome our ignorance. But if we have a deep arrogance about things we don’t fully understand, it will ultimately destroy everything.”
He lowered his head slightly and said, "The moment I learned about the car accident, I already guessed who the culprit was. At the time, I thought they wanted to get Victor into the hospital and then use the exorbitant medical bills to force me to do things for them. It was a cruel plan, but from their perspective, it was effective enough. If they had actually done that, I probably wouldn't have been able to resist at all."
"But I never expected that they would dare to take me to the Red Room. Even though I had warned them thousands of times that the box from outer space came from a high-tech civilization that humans could not even imagine, and that just touching it was equivalent to opening Pandora's box, they didn't believe me. They thought I had already cracked the box's secrets but was just unwilling to tell them. So, they made me take the seriously injured Victor in, thinking that only in this way would I use the box willingly and reveal its secrets to them."
“I really had to do it,” Dr. Stone said, taking a deep breath. “They have no idea what kind of monster has emerged from the Pandora’s box they opened. Perhaps even Victor himself doesn’t realize how powerful he is.”
"The officers think that box is just a weapon, just like you think Victor is just a hacker," Dr. Stone said, looking at the agent opposite him with bloodshot eyes. "Soon you will know just how powerful the materialized cosmic truth created by the most advanced civilization in the universe really is."
As soon as he finished speaking, the entire prison began to dissolve.
It wasn't lifted up, nor smashed, but rather dissolved bit by bit from top to bottom, like a model in a virtual world. First, the glass on the top floor, then the thick concrete walls, various signal jamming devices, special alloy railings... all the security measures implemented to suppress superpowers were dissolved at the same time.
This scene didn't seem to be happening in the real world; it was more like a movie. It was as if a film director had painstakingly used special effects to show how something constructed in a virtual world collapsed. Everything was disappearing for no reason.
Little by little, slowly, it was erased from the world. It seemed as if a deletion progress bar appeared above everything; as the bar filled, junk files were deleted one by one, and disk storage space was freed up. The computer operating system remained silent, because this was the operation of a high-privilege user in the real world, detached from the virtual world. The files within the system had no power to resist.
First the walls, then the floors, then all the furniture and items, and finally, all the agents in the entire prison.
Whether it's objects or people, everything fades away slowly from top to bottom. It's like attaching the same fade-out effect to all objects; it looks rather clumsy on a computer, but in the real world, it's incredibly eerie and terrifying.
The agent sitting opposite Dr. Stone didn't even have time to scream before vanishing completely, along with the tables, chairs, and light bulbs in the interrogation room. With a thud, the chair landed on the floor. When Victor, his body gleaming with metallic light, landed in the open space, Dr. Stone recalled the indescribable excitement he felt when he first saw his son outside the delivery room.
Victor was overwhelmed with mixed emotions. He had heard his father's words in the interrogation room and understood why his father had been absent from his life for so long. It wasn't that his father didn't love him; it was just that he had to participate in another, far more arduous war, and he absolutely could not lose in order to protect his mother and son.
But Victor couldn't help but wonder, what had his father done wrong? Dr. Stone was exceptionally talented, with extremely high academic standards; he was an outstanding scientist who would leave his mark on human history. Why did he, after a lifetime of hard work, never even experience the warmth of ordinary family life before his family was destroyed?
“Calm down, Victor,” Dr. Stone stood up and said. “Don’t let anger cloud your judgment.”
Victor finally came to his senses, but took two steps back with a cold expression, and said, "Why can't I be angry? We did nothing wrong, but someone ruined everything!"
A flicker of emotion finally appeared on his face, even on the half covered by machinery, an indescribable sorrow was evident. "My mother was so young. I wanted to use the prize money from that competition to buy her a gold earring. I even picked out the style… but it's all gone, all gone!!!"
By the end, Victor was roaring.
The helicopters in the sky gradually converged, and Dr. Stone looked up. But in that instant, all the helicopters' control systems completely failed, and they plummeted in different directions like shooting stars.
The light in Victor's mechanical eye grew brighter and brighter. And within his field of vision, countless images were flashing.
The cameras in the Capitol building suddenly rotated, the indicator lights on the security cases in the presidential palace began to flash, and the nuclear missile control office suddenly emitted a sharp, piercing alarm bell...
“I know you’ve been donating,” his father’s voice suddenly rang in his ears. “To those poor Black communities, to those single mothers who can’t afford to raise their children. You know how hard it is for them, just like when your mother was raising you all by herself.”
"Even though it's already so difficult, they still want to get through this winter and are doing everything they can to do it. Even though it's very painful, they still want to live. Back then, your mother also felt tired and in pain while taking care of you, but she never gave up. You have no right to choose the end for anyone else."
"If you choose to destroy the world, you will also kill many people's mothers, and in their eyes, you will be no different from the executioner who killed your mother. Never choose to be a terrorist, Victor. Your mother will be very disappointed."
In an instant, all the flashing lights went out. Victor staggered back a few steps, then half-knelt down. He felt a chill run through him, as if he had suddenly found himself in a snowfield. He covered his eyes in pain, unable to believe what he had just done.
Then, he felt his father help him up, and then he heard his father continue, "Losing everything means destroying everything, which will only create more tragedy. What we need to do is take back what we've lost."
“But my mother is not coming back,” Victor said. “She’s dead, and it’s almost the anniversary of her death… She will never see me win the world championship…”
"Yes, what's lost can't be regained. But many more are on the path to loss, and you have the power to prevent these tragedies and save more people like yourself. Isn't that right?"
Victor closed his eyes, and many images flashed before his eyes: one gray high-rise after another, with only lights shining from the low places, sparse firewood in the fireplace, desperate and helpless faces, and the sound of people breaking down and crying.
When he brought them money to buy firewood and milk powder, the surprise and adoration in their eyes pulled him out of the abyss of despair after losing his mother, making him feel alive again. He had thought he was simply enjoying the respect of others, like enjoying the cheers of the audience on a sports field.
The sad and weary faces of those single mothers always overlapped with his memory of his own mother. So when he saw them, he couldn't help but think of himself. Perhaps when he was young, his mother had also aged from overwork and cried from anxiety.
However, his mother was always overjoyed by the money his father sent or his occasional return home.
Freud believed in the concept of "Oedipus complex" or "father-like behavior." This term might sound ambiguous at first, but it actually refers to the fact that if a person is more dependent on their mother, they will observe more closely how their mother's emotions change because of their father—what the father does that makes the mother angry or sad, and what he does that makes her happy.
To manipulate their mother's emotions and change her mood, children may unconsciously imitate their father's actions. In family relationships, if the father consistently causes the mother sadness, and the child excessively imitates this behavior, then later in life, when they form their own families, they will also unconsciously mimic their father's actions to influence their partner's emotions. The reverse is also true.
Victor now recalls that although his father rarely returned home, he sent large sums of money every month, ensuring that he and his mother had no worries about food and clothing. Each time his mother received the remittance, she was overjoyed, constantly praising his father to him, saying he was a capable man, a brilliant scientist, recounting how they met, and stating that she had never misjudged him. Her words were filled with contentment.
Not to mention, when his father occasionally returned home, his mother was completely immersed in happiness. And when his father couldn't attend important moments in his life, she always spoke up for him, even arguing with her own son. His mother's feelings for his father were always filled with love and admiration.
So when Victor felt empty and lost, his first reaction was to donate to people in those impoverished communities. He knew they would be overjoyed and would idolize him as his mother idolized his father. He was imitating his father's behavior.
He thought he hated his father, but in reality, the upbringing he received over the years had taught him to enjoy playing the role of his father—that is, to make others feel happy through giving.
So even though the father and son didn't live together for a long time, they became almost identical. This is the power of "teaching by example" in the context of verbal instruction; sometimes it's far more effective than being present in a child's life in every aspect and constantly educating them with words.