Amy frowned and pondered for a while before answering. "Cindy? I didn't notice anything strange about her. But now that you mention it, I'll keep an eye out. Thanks, Jack." After telling Amy about the matter, Jack returned to his rental apartment. That night, he tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep soundly.
The next day, Jack woke up with a start and was horrified to find his soul floating in the air above the rental apartment. He could only watch helplessly as "himself" went through the daily routine of going to work and coming home. He witnessed himself and Amy gradually getting to know each other from strangers and then becoming partners. They worked together to uncover the clues in the case of the legless body. During that period, every step was filled with danger and challenges, but they always supported each other and gradually got closer to the truth.
Until that tunnel explosion, "he" didn't hesitate for a moment and immediately stepped forward to protect Amy from the bomb attack. Then he saw his soul leave his body and slowly merge back together. But to his despair, his body was taken over by the bomb, and the bomb continued to commit murders. The bomb and the mastermind behind it even used a shape-shifting device to imitate Kelly's voice to deceive Police Officer Mark and make him go to another state to look for the missing "him".
Jack was extremely anxious. He followed Amy all the way to a nightclub bar. Inside the bar, Amy seemed to be looking for some important clues, with a very focused expression. Suddenly, Amy rushed out in a hurry, seemingly having found a new clue. Jack was so worried that he instinctively reached out to grab Amy's arm and shouted, "Amy, wait for me!"
To Jack's surprise and joy, Amy actually turned around and saw him. Memories of the past came flooding back to her mind. Her eyes widened in shock and she said, "Jack? How are you here? I just saw... weren't you..."
Jack said excitedly, "Amy, I don't know how this happened. I'm in a soul state now, and only you can see me. We have to stop the bomb. It's still committing evil deeds."
Amy quickly calmed down and asked, "What do you mean? How did you become like this?"
Just as Jack was about to answer, he caught a glimpse of a black shadow following them out of the corner of his eye. Amy seemed to notice it at the same time. They exchanged a glance and, understanding each other, found a brightly lit teahouse with a night market still open and went in to have a good chat.
As soon as they sat down, Jack spoke first. "Amy, I'm telling you, I've traveled back in time. I met a you in the past and also Cindy. I even went specifically to find that past you and reminded her to prevent Cindy from getting into trouble."
After hearing this, Amy was completely stunned and took a while to come to her senses. She asked, "Was the you I met short-haired or long-haired?"
Jack was also stunned by this question and then replied, "Short-haired."
Amy couldn't help but gasp. She said slowly, "In the timeline I experienced, that night I received an urgent call from Tom, and when we were on the phone, you knocked on the door and interrupted us. At that stage, I had long hair all the time."
Jack retorted, "Amy, do you think there are countless parallel universes between us? Then are you still the partner who experienced those things with me right in front of me?"
For a moment, both of them fell silent. Just then, the late-night news broadcast in the teahouse broke the silence. The news announcer said, "Recently, a male police officer was injured. After investigation, the suspect is suspected to be Jack. Steve, a fugitive involved in the recent bar murder case."
Amy's eyes widened, and some strange memories suddenly appeared in her mind. In these new memories, Jack escaped from the hospital and became a rainy-night killer, as if possessed, killing more than a dozen dancers working in the bar and then mysteriously disappearing again.
Amy looked up at Jack's soul in front of her, her eyes full of confusion and worry. Jack said helplessly, "I don't know what method the bomb used to use my body to continue its killing spree. Now we have no evidence at all, and no one will believe that I'm innocent."
Amy looked at him sadly. The surrounding guests noticed her "talking to herself" and all cast strange looks at her....
On the other side, after Amy and her group were sent away from the villa by Tom, who was acting as a butler, Tom began his regular patrol around the villa. Suddenly, a shrill scream came from the direction of the bell tower. Tom's heart tightened, and he quickly rushed towards the bell tower.
When he arrived at the bell tower, the scene in front of him shocked him greatly. The guardian of the bell tower was lying under the big bell, his head smashed to pieces by the bell. The scene was extremely gruesome. However, strangely enough, there were no signs of damage around the big bell, as if the bell had fallen on its own for no reason and killed the guardian.
Tom forced himself to endure the discomfort in his heart and found a piece of paper in the guardian's hand. The paper read, "Darkness is coming, no one can escape."
Tom was filled with confusion. What did this sentence mean? Why did it appear at the scene of these two murder cases at the same time? Just as Tom was staring at this line of words in deep thought, a strange sound suddenly came. Tom instinctively reached out to touch the words, and in an instant, everything spun around him. Tom was taken to a spaceship. This was the scene of a murder case at a scientific research base in the northern hemisphere of Mars.
The interior of the base was in a mess, with various equipment damaged beyond recognition and lying in a disorderly manner on the ground. Multiple scientists were lying in pools of blood, and the bright red blood spread on the white floor, looking extremely The communication equipment on the wall was still flashing with a weak signal. Tom walked closer and saw that this was a distress signal from Earth, but the source of the signal was encrypted.
Tom began to carefully examine the scene to figure out what exactly had happened. At this time, he saw an anxious Ai robot astronomer, A Tiewen, dealing with the scene. A Tiewen was busy checking the equipment while muttering to himself, "What on earth is going on? How could this happen?"
Tom stepped forward and said to A Tiewen, "Hello, I'm Tom. I don't know how I got here. Can you tell me what happened here?"
A Tiewen looked at Tom, frowned, and said, "Well, these scientists were researching a new communication technology that could connect the Earth and Mars' metaverse. They received a distress signal that seemingly came from Earth. During the process of trying to decode it, they accidentally triggered a malicious program hidden in the signal. This program released a virtual creature that actually had physical attack capabilities in the real world and then killed all these scientists."
Tom was shocked and asked, "Then why was this distress signal sent here?"
A Tiewen shook his head, looking extremely worried. "I suspect there's a mastermind behind this. This mastermind might want to stop the development of this cross-planetary metaverse communication technology and maintain his dominance in the metaverse. I'm even worried that Earth might have been swallowed by dark forces, and this virus might spread throughout the entire starry sky."
Tom's eyes widened and he said, "Then what should we do? If it's really as you said, the consequences would be unthinkable."
A Tiewen sighed helplessly and said, "I don't have any ideas right now. I can only try to start from this encrypted distress signal source to see if I can find some clues, hoping to stop all this before the virus spreads further."
Tom and A Tiewen were both deeply worried in the deathly atmosphere of the Mars scientific research base, facing the chaotic equipment and bloody scenes. Tom frowned tightly and paced back and forth in the base. Suddenly, he stopped and said, "A Tiewen, you said this virtual creature released by the malicious program, does it have any special features? Besides having physical attack capabilities in the real world, is it possible to find its weakness?"
A Tiewen looked up, with a tired but firm light in his eyes. "I've just done a preliminary analysis of the remaining data. This virtual creature seems to be constructed according to a certain specific algorithm. If we can find the core algorithm that constructs it, maybe we can find its weakness. But the current problem is that most of the data here has been damaged, and it's extremely difficult to restore the complete algorithm."
Tom looked at the scattered equipment and said, "What if we start from these devices? Maybe we can find some data storage devices that haven't been completely damaged."
A Tiewen nodded. "That's a way, but it will take a lot of time. And we have to be careful. This place might still be hiding other dangers. After all, the mastermind behind this seems to have planned everything very carefully."
So, the two began to carefully rummage through the ruins of the scientific research base. Under a pile of broken instruments, Tom found a data storage disk that was still emitting a faint light. "A Tiewen, look at this!" Tom shouted excitedly.
A Tiewen quickly ran over, took the storage disk, and connected it to his analysis system. During the process of reading the data, A Tiewen's expression kept changing, sometimes nervous and sometimes confused. After a while, A Tiewen looked up at Tom and said, "This storage disk contains some information about the structure of that virtual creature, but it's not complete. However, I found something very strange. The structure of this virtual creature seems to have some kind of connection with the metaverse communication technology we're researching."
Tom looked confused. "What connection? How is that possible?"