Chapter 1042 - Living Hell

If there were any weaknesses in the ‘Lightning’ exoskeleton designed by Krupp Group, EMP was one of them. Although Celestial Trade only provided a small number of EMP grenades to these militant forces, it was enough for them to win this battle.

When Jeff heard the static noise, his heart sank. The stiffness from his joints allowed him to confirm one thing—the exoskeleton covering his entire body had completely shut down.

With both hands pressed against the ground, he gritted his teeth and desperately wanted to get up. But a hundred pounds of alloy steel plates on his body wasn’t easy to lift without the force of the exoskeleton.

Just like that, Jeff could only watch the militant soldier walking toward him. The soldier first kicked him down then pulled off his helmet before sending him to sleep with a strike to his face.

In the blink of an eye, the only four mercenaries in the room lost their combat abilities. Carol desperately tried to escape to the corner while watching in horror.

“Don’t-don’t come close to me… I beg you, let me go. I’m just a researcher. I-I have a wife and a three-year-old daughter. They’re still waiting for me to go home. You can’t—”

The leader of the militants grabbed his collar and lifted him as he stared at his frightened eyes.

“Sample room, go and open the door.”

“Yes, yes…”

Carol nodded while shivering. His feet returned to the ground, but he stumbled in fear.

With a gun pointed to his head, Carol didn’t dare to drag things on. He took the soldiers to the underground sample room.

The door of the sample room was already sprayed-painted with the militants’ logo and various slogans. As he was pushed to a metal door, several soldiers were already waiting. Under watch of several pairs of eyes, Carol typed the password with his trembling fingers. With a clunking noise, he was rudely pushed aside.

As the soldiers entered the sample room, the leader of the militants took off his gas mask and looked at everything in the sample room, muttering to himself.

“God… What did we find?”

Countless body bags, like dried fish on a production line, were neatly hung with hooks. Through the plastic on top of each body bag, he could even clearly identify the facial structure of each “sample” and the number attached to the body bag.

“Sir, we’re going to… do.” The soldier’s throat next to him felt dry and he squeezed out a few words.

The militant leader silently took out his phone and gave it to the soldier.

“Go take some photos. Remember, they have to be clear.”

After making the order, he put the rifle behind him, took out another USB from his pocket, and inserted it into the lab server according to the agreement with Celestial Trade.

After waiting for the data transfer to finalize, he grabbed the USB. The soldier who was taking photos had returned. With an ugly expression, he forced out a few words.

“Done.”

The militant leader didn’t say anything. He just nodded then ordered a retreat.

As he passed by the door, a soldier stepped forward and poked the head of the director with a gun.

“How are we going to deal with this guy?”

Looking at Carol’s horrified and pleading eyes, the militant leader scoffed and looked away.

“Tie him up and leave him here.”

After hearing this sentence, ecstasy suddenly appeared on his face. However, the ecstasy didn’t last two seconds and his heart sank to the bottom again with the next sentence.

“There has to be someone to explain to the protesters and reporters outside what these body bags are for.”

“It seems that we’ve found something incredible.”

Through the holographic screen, Jiang Chen, who was in Future Building, was looking at the photos sent by the militants. The hanging bodies were daunting. While he was mentally prepared about the use of living people as materials for the Golden Apple Project, he didn’t expect that the Freemasonry would place such a low value on life.

If he remembered correctly, this was the modern world, not the apocalypse.

Sitting on the other side of the office was Xie Lei. Compared to when he first met Jiang Chen, the boy had now matured. With Jiang Chen’s support, his sister regained her vision. As agreed, after he returned to Xin from university, he swore his allegiance to Jiang Chen. He was mainly responsible for maintaining the network security for Celestial Trade and occasionally working part-time as a hacker for Jiang Chen to deal with things that must remain hidden.

For example, like the current operation.

Jiang Chen got up and walked to the other side of the office. He patted Xie Lei’s backrest and looked at the data stream flashing inside the computer. “How’s it going? Are you done?”

“Database deciphering is now completed, and a total of 197 gigabytes of experimental data has been copied…. To be honest, deleting their originals doesn’t make any sense. As long as they aren’t stupid, they probably periodically back up the lab’s data to a specific location on the hard disk.”

Despite this, Xie Lei also pressed a few buttons, following Jiang Chen’s request, and deleted all the research data on the Golden Apple Project in the 7th Research Institute.

“I understand that the purpose of deleting the information here is just to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Russians. You don’t have to worry about these things; concentrate on your work.”

Information related to Golden Apple definitely shouldn’t fall into the hands of the Russians, including information related to brainwashing technology. This kind of technology was useless to Jiang Chen but not for other countries.

“Okay, you’re the boss. The Russians won’t find any information related to the Golden Apple Project.” Xie Lei yawned, but his typing motions didn’t stop at all. The network security engineers at the institute were tied up. With the help of a quantum computer, the server was pretty much undefended to him.

“Got it!” Xie Lei’s hands left the keyboard and he snapped his fingers.

Everything was going as planned, and Jiang Chen couldn’t stop smiling.

“Remember to wipe your footprints.”

“Understand.” Xie Lei grinned and tapped the enter key on the touch panel. At the same time, the screen began to load. “It’s the Freemasonry who destroyed the data when they retreated. As long as we leave misleading traces then erase records of us breaking into the server…”