Adam missed the pungent smell of disinfectant from the hospital so intensely at this moment.
He lay on the floor, assaulted by an indescribably absurd odor, like the salty astringency of sweat mixed with dirt.
Phantom images still flickered on his retina: the swaying IV bag and the Klein bottle-like pendant his mother had given him.
Pale silver mist flowed silently through the dead air, like congealed ghosts.
His right hand lay heavily on something cold and unfamiliar—an old-fashioned revolver engraved with intricate patterns.
The brass cylinder pressed against his palm, radiating a heart-palpitating residual warmth, as if it had just roared.
Against his temple, he felt the distinct, lingering heat unique to metal, emanating from the gun barrel.
Three seconds ago, that menacing muzzle should have been the point of farewell between his consciousness and this world.
And now, the sharp, clean scent of disinfectant, belonging to the past, was silently battling and tearing against the metallic rust smell lingering at the muzzle, belonging to this very moment, within the narrow passage of his nasal cavity.
His existence felt like a drop of ink falling into stagnant water,
spreading a thick, impenetrable stain of agony and... sorrow within this smoke-filled room.
That sorrow did not originate from himself;
it was more like a soundless sigh emitted from deep within the silver mist.
Then, a heart-rending sensation of separation exploded from Adam's tailbone, as if countless glass filaments were being pulled from his marrow.
Adam's body arched violently, a suppressed, beast-like whimper escaping his throat.
His temple throbbed wildly; the piercing coldness of the hospital disinfectant from his memory and the bloody, metallic saltiness of the gun's residue now cruelly overlapped at his nerve endings.
His fingers unconsciously clawed at the cold floor beneath him, the etched metal patterns glaringly distinct—the realness of the sensation made him vaguely capture his mother's distant, faint call deep within his skull...
"Mom...?"
His fingers spasmed violently, digging desperately into the cold metal seams of the floor!
Inside his cranial cavity, his mother's gentle call was instantly torn apart and distorted by sharp, screeching electronic static, like an ancient radio with poor signal.
Simultaneously, an excruciating pain, like a branding iron, seared deep within his wrist bone!
On his retina, holographic codes, crimson as blood, violently erupted:
[Peacekeeper Agent Authentication]
[Name: Adam Jacob]
[ID: NK-2124-03]
Those burning numbers, like scalding brands, seared deeply onto his iris.
"NK-2124-03"—this string of cold symbols, like a ruthless scalpel, precisely dissected the chaotic cocoon of his memories, revealing the bloody, unfamiliar reality beneath.
*'This part should add some introduction about Adam himself'*
"2124... a hundred years later?!" Adam's thoughts struggled futilely in the turbulent whirlpool.
"But just a second ago... I was at my mom's hospital bed! The surgery... the surgery was about to start!" Anxiety and fear of the unknown crept over him like a cold fog, freezing each node of his breath as it spread.
"A Quantico Peacekeeper Agent? This fucking cliché transmigration plot... could it get any more ridiculous?"
The burning sensation from the subcutaneous chip in his wrist bone intensified abruptly, his flesh feeling as if it were truly charring, emitting a faint sizzling sound.
The bloody text on his retina seemed to dissolve and bleed.
So the whispers about the "world a hundred years later" in his mother's hospital room weren't the ravings of a delusional patient.
"Woo——Woo——Woo——"
The piercing wail of sirens, as if premeditated, suddenly tore through the deathly silence indoors!
The sound was pure torture to Adam's eardrums.
Deep in his left ear canal, the regular "beep——beep——" of the ECG monitor from his mother's room stubbornly persisted;
while his right ear was completely inundated by the violently invading, sharp "Woo——Woo——" of the sirens.
Two utterly different sound waves, like two rusted steel needles from different eras,
pierced and twisted madly against his eardrums.
The moment the final, drawn-out "beep————" signifying the end from the ECG monitor was utterly devoured and crushed by the savage sirens,
Adam's hand suddenly felt the lifeless, cold chill of the metal floor beneath him.
There, should have been the soft, body-warmed cotton sheets of his mother's hospital bed.
"Just perfect..." his parched throat squeezed out broken syllables; dizziness assaulted the banks of his consciousness like black tidal waves.
"Hn..." He forced himself to focus his scattered wits, trying to push himself up from the cold floor.
"Someone's coming." Adam seemed to be reminding himself.
A flashlight beam shot out a blinding white light,brusquely dispersing part of the pale silver mist.
Within the light, a strange construct floated closer—a humanoid metallic trash can, covered in dense honeycomb sensors, shimmering with a faint glow, and emitting choking blue smoke from its base.
"Agent Adam... Heart rate 112... Detected...
Abnormal fluctuations bzzzt (screeching metal scrape)...
Suspected... occurrence...loss-of-control incident... Uploading coordinates..."
A mechanically synthesized voice, laden with obvious electromagnetic tremors, issued intermittently from a speaker in its abdominal area.
Long legs clad in black, tailored uniforms stepped into view,
the polished boot toes prodding the barrel of the still-warm revolver on the floor with an air of detached scrutiny.
"Badge registered an abnormally intense energy fluctuation here," a lazy yet sharp female voice sounded,
"Care to explain——" Before she could finish, she suddenly bent down, a face with exquisite makeup but eyes sharp like a hawk's thrust close to Adam's pale, sweat-drenched face,
"My dear little Adam, what performance art is it this time? Using an antique entropy-weapon to blow your brains out, seeking inspiration for advancement?"
Deep within Lena's pupils, the cold blue light of a floating holographic screen was reflected, energy trails outlining the trajectory of the bullet that should have been fired:
"According to residual energy analysis, the firing angle of this old relic should have theoretically painted your brains evenly across that wall over there."
Her cool fingertips lightly traced Adam's completely unharmed temple, leaving behind a slight tremor,
"Yet now, you don't even have a decent concussion... Tsk tsk, this is far more interesting than that idiot who just succeeded in killing himself in the rooftop holographic pool. At least he managed it."
Adam's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty; he tried to make a sound, but the dizziness and intense information overload left his mind blank.
Somewhat dazed, his peripheral vision caught the pale silver mist in the air coalescing and shaping itself in a counter-intuitive manner, silently.
An outline emerged from the mist, cold, sharp, like an unsheathed blade.
A cold monocle, its edges streaming with faint data light, cut through the haze like a scalpel.
One purely mechanical golden cyber-eye, and another ice-blue biological eye that seemed capable of freezing souls, pierced through the mist, landing precisely on Adam.
That gaze held no warmth, only appraisal and calculation.
A face pale like stellar debris, its lines as cold and sharp as glacial ice. As he looked down, a star-track pipe held between his fingers flashed with a silvery cold light. A strand of disinfectant scent mixed with a strange odor of machine oil drifted out, once again pricking painfully at Adam's memory.
"Alright, Lena."
Patrick's voice, much like the man himself, carried a metallic quality, steady and utterly devoid of fluctuation,
"According to Article 13 of the 'Entropic Energy Incident Handling Regulations', I will submit a detailed report to the Director tomorrow. And you,"
his gaze turned to Lena, the data stream on his monocle accelerating slightly, "should go home now and enjoy a cup of hot cocoa."
"Hot cocoa?"
Lena scoffed, her boot toe giving a not-too-gentle kick to the trash can nearby that was still secretly "inhaling" the dissipated energy residue from the air,
"You think the Oversight Department sent us red alert notices for three consecutive weeks to boost Quantico's hot cocoa industry?"
She turned sharply, her coat tails slicing through the silver mist. "Little Adam," her voice carried a teasing warning, fading into the haze,
"tomorrow in the Director's office won't be so easy to bluff your way through. Good luck."
The fading echo of sirens and the low hum of the trash can's engine were gradually swallowed by the coalescing silver mist.
Adam's gaze, however, remained locked on Patrick's silver-grey hair. Those fine, stardust-like crystalline fragments shimmered with a faint light—identical to the pale silver mist that had filled the room when he first awoke.
This face...unfamiliar, yet carrying a trace of eerie familiarity, like a broken familiar face pieced together from shattered mirror fragments, every crack reflecting a semblance of recognition.
Adam tried to dredge up fragments of memory related to this face from the chaos of his mind, only to be rewarded with a sharp, stabbing pain deep within his brain, like rusted gears being forced to turn.
He had to give up, fine beads of cold sweat forming on his temples.
"Thanks for the assist." Adam's voice was hoarse, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty as he swallowed the metallic taste of blood spreading in his mouth.
"Ad... Adam Jacob." He offered the name corresponding to the ID number just branded into his soul.
Patrick slightly raised a hand, adjusting the frame of his monocle. A waterfall of deep blue data instantly streamed across the lens.
"There is indeed a certain resemblance in our appearance." His tone was flat, as if stating an objective experimental result.
"I suspect the Council transferred me to the Peacekeeper Department precisely because of it." He elegantly flicked his pipe, fine ashes like stardust drifting down.
"Patrick Iso. 'Liaison Officer' dispatched by the Council"—the insurance plug specifically assigned to handle 'special cases' like yours." The name "Iso" seemed to have a slight pause, as if cold machinery had briefly experienced emotion.
"'Special cases'?" Adam's heart sank heavily, icy blood seemingly rushing to his head,
"Meaning the time travel? Or nearly blowing my own brains out? The Council... could they possibly know a way back?"
A faint thread of hope flickered within the quagmire of despair.
Patrick seemed not to catch his inner turmoil, or simply didn't care.
His gaze swept over Adam's still-pale face and slightly trembling hands:
"The genetic report indicates you should belong to the Philosophy Sequence... Dionysian aspect?
I suggest you try absorbing some stray particles to recover. For a beginner," a trace of barely perceptible, programmed impatience tinged his tone as his eyes glanced towards a nearby metal table,
"look at that first. It might give you some clues."
Adam followed his gaze. A badge, gleaming with a cold, hard metallic sheen, lay there quietly.
"While I still have the patience to remain here, make haste."
Patrick's voice held a trace of genuine complaint, something beyond programmed parameters.
"The Council this time... really arranged a 'surprise' for me.
A new partner who hasn't even passed the threshold, who nearly executed himself with an antique."
Adam reached out almost instinctively, his fingertips brushing against the cold badge.
The instant they made contact——
Patrick's outline,
like a holographic projection with bad signal,
suddenly exploded into a dense field of snowy static!
His purely inorganic golden cyber-eye flickered madly like a faulty lightbulb.
"Sync... rate... severe... deviation... Core... protocol... overload... Warning... da... ta... over... flow..."
His voice was intermittent, mixed with screeching electronic feedback, like an old tape jammed.
Simultaneously,
the subcutaneous chip deep in Adam's wrist bone erupted with a violent, electric shock-like tremor!
His retina was instantly covered by glaring blood-red warning frames, like splattered blood:
[According to Entropic Energy Management Regulation Article 4]
[Agent NK-2124-03 Emotional Entropy Value has reached critical threshold]
[Please initiate Occupational Anchoring Procedure immediately!]
[Beep! Beep! Beepbeepbeepbeep------!]
[High concentration Dionysian Cognitive Pollution detected!]
[Activating Emergency Anchoring Protocol!]
Eight ancient, twisted Greek characters, like burning runes, suddenly spun and rose within his chaotic mind! The symbol representing "Dionysus" (Διόνυσος) was slowly oozing thick, ominous blood from its edges!
Patrick's voice no longer traveled through the air, but pierced directly into Adam's skull like an icy probe:
"Situation... worse than projected... Grab... the symbol in your mindscape... Grab... that one... bzzzt... Unless... you want... to become... low-tier..."
"Which one?! I see eight! Which one is it?!"
Adam's roar echoed through the vast, cold room, a desperate question hurled into the void.
No response.
Only the eight burning runes in his mindscape, carrying a destructive pressure, spinning faster and faster!
The bleeding "Dionysus" symbol suddenly stopped spinning, then violently reversed, as if time was rewinding, and slammed back into the depths of Adam's mindscape!
"Ugh ah------!" Agony, as if countless neural links were being severed brutally, pierced through his skull!
That familiar smell of disinfectant, carrying the scent of death, ghosted into his nasal cavity once again.
Patrick's final words, mixed with harsh electrical static, sounded intermittently deep within his cochlea:
"Remember... the key... lies in emotion... Go feel... bzzzt... feel yours... feelings..."
This near-nonsensical message,
corresponded with the only feedback projected by the badge in Adam's hand—two lines of icy, glaring blood-red text, like a death countdown:
[Emotional Entropy Concentration]: ■■■■□ (High Risk)
[Neural Overload Risk]: 78% (Approaching Critical)
78%! The cold number clamped around his neck like a shackle, strangling every breath.
Images of failure, dissolution, becoming a monster flashed uncontrollably against the crimson backdrop of 78%.
Patrick's final, static-laden whisper seemed to emit a mocking sneer deep within his ear canal:
"Now... your first... lesson——Don't let the machine... bzzzt... define... your limits..."