Chapter 366: Chapter 366: Two-Way Synchronization

The tranquil night descended, darkness enveloping the spacious bedroom. A chilly autumn wind slipped through the window crevices, bringing a hint of desolation from the yellowing foliage outside, only to be blocked by the radiating warmth of the large bed.

Julian Sterling had long since fallen asleep. His breathing was steady, curled up against Ethan Caldwell’s solid chest. The lingering traces of their earlier intimacy remained at the corners of Julian’s eyes and on his pale skin, but the extreme panic in his mind seemed to have been soothed, temporarily sinking into a deep dream.

Ethan did not sleep.

The pale light from the phone screen reflected upon his angular profile, illuminating his sharp eyes. Every decoded line from Helen Lloyd’s classified data file acted like a blade slashing through the quiet void. The hand wrapped around Julian’s waist tightened slightly, as if Ethan was terrified the person in his embrace would simply vanish.

In the quiet space, Ethan’s heartbeat pounded with heavy, rhythmic thuds. His gaze remained pinned on the red-highlighted words within the Eden Project’s report: memory sharing, auto-connection, complete loss of control.

If the records compiled by the lunatic research team of the Central Organization of Ruling Elites (CORE) were true, the very nature of this chess game had changed.

Countless deductions ran through Ethan’s mind. From the beginning, they had maintained a defensive posture, assuming B-00 was a biological weapon, a cold-blooded assassin dispatched to hunt down and eradicate the rough draft A-01, Julian Sterling. However, this report pointed to a truth far more horrifying than death.

If B-00 approached Julian, its ultimate purpose was not to kill. Rather, it was to trigger a resonance.

It sought its synchronized missing puzzle piece to initiate a cognitive convergence. The element that chilled Ethan to the bone was not the guns, ammunition, or CORE’s underworld power. It was the fact that B-00 could directly influence Julian’s consciousness.

The invasion of the mind, the theft of memories, the dissolution of the soul, it was a catastrophic devastation that no perimeter of bodyguards could prevent.

Ethan took a deep breath. The faint cedar fragrance on his body intermingled with Julian’s scent, helping him regain his composure. He locked the screen, sealing away the lethal document. His fingers rapidly typed an encrypted command sequence, sending it to Helen Lloyd: Extract all data concerning Eden phase 2, and at all costs, track down the whereabouts of specimen B-00 after it departed the laboratory.

Message sent, he set the phone aside and pressed a deep kiss to Julian’s forehead. His gaze darkened, carrying a frantic possessiveness and a silent vow of protection. Whether it was CORE or B-00, anyone who dared touch Julian’s consciousness would pay the ultimate price.

The following morning, the pale autumn light crept through the double-layered curtains. The atmosphere was so silent that one could hear the rustle of dry leaves falling on the balcony outside.

Julian slowly opened his eyes. Unlike mornings where he would act spoiled and bury himself in the blankets, his first reaction upon waking was an eerie stillness. The bewilderment and disorientation from the previous night had not entirely dissipated, hovering in his mind like a dense fog.

He needed something tangible to anchor himself back to reality.

Julian’s hand reached out from beneath the blanket to touch the bare chest of the man beside him. His fingertips traced the warm skin. He pressed his palm down, silently listening to the steady, powerful thud of Ethan’s beating heart.

This warmth was real; this heartbeat was undeniably real. The sheer existence of Ethan right beside him served as an anchor to reality, dragging Julian out of the hallucination of a lifeless laboratory.

Ethan had been awake for a long time. He could feel every insecure, probing movement from Julian, yet he chose not to speak. He neither pressed with questions nor voiced a sound to shatter the fragile moment, opting instead to tighten his embrace, using his own body to envelop and warm Julian, indulging the unconscious, reality-confirming actions.

Once Julian’s breathing returned to a tranquil rhythm, Ethan slowly sat up, picking up a robe to drape over Julian’s shoulders. The affectionate atmosphere of the early dawn was swiftly replaced by a stark solemnity.

Ethan had no intention of hiding anything. He knew perfectly well that when confronting matters of Julian’s existence and memories, pure honesty was the best protection. He retrieved his phone, opened the decoded data file, and presented it to Julian.

"Helen Lloyd uncovered this intelligence yesterday. Have a look."

Julian accepted the phone. His gaze quickly skimmed the frigid scientific report, the synchronization metrics, the theories on brainwave resonance, and the glaring red warnings left by the chief researcher.

Contrary to Ethan’s expectation of agitation or terror, Julian’s reaction was a prolonged silence.

His hand remained exceptionally steady; only his dark eyes drooped, masking the turbulent waves surging deep within. He pondered for a long time, the silence rendering the atmosphere heavy.

A moment later, Julian slowly raised his head.

"Ethan..." Julian’s voice grew hoarse, deliberately uttering each word: "If two individuals can share memories... does it mean... I’ve seen the exact things it was looking at?"

Ethan’s chest tightened. His eyes darkened, his voice stretching as taut as a bowstring: "Or the exact opposite."

The phrase struck like a boulder tossed into a placid lake. It implied B-00 could be witnessing the exact things Julian saw, feeling the precise sensations he felt. There were no secrets, zero distance, just a flawless mental intrusion.

However, Julian’s thoughts took a massive leap, formulating a crucial judgment that reversed the entire situation. His eyes lit up as he stared directly at Ethan.

"If it comes looking for me..." Julian pursed his lips, emphasizing each syllable: "It might not be because it wants to kill me."

It wasn’t a straightforward assassination. It wasn’t a dynamic of predator and prey. Rather, it was a case of two magnets on the exact same frequency, forcibly pulled together by a primal instinct.

This was a decisive shift. The pure dread towards an invisible assassin transformed into wariness of an incomprehensible force of science and the mind.

Julian let out a heavy sigh, lifting the blankets to step out of bed. He wanted a glass of warm water to soothe his parched throat.

But unforeseen events always crashed down without warning.

The moment Julian’s hand reached out, brushing against a wooden carving on the edge of the tea table, the world around him distorted.

There was no splitting headache like before. No sensation of rusted metal being pried open.

There was merely a cognitive fracture. All the sounds of the autumn morning, the wind, the warmth from the heater, everything drained away. In those fleeting seconds, Julian’s mind lost all connection with reality.

An image of a room slammed into his retinas. It was blurred, as if hindered by signal interference, yet it blazed with the emotionless white light characteristic of a hospital or laboratory. In the middle of that white expanse stood a person with their back turned.

They were tall, yet so disturbingly emaciated it sent shivers down the spine, clad in baggy, pale clothing.

Julian couldn’t see their face. However, from the depths of his subconscious, an intense sensation surged, compressing his chest. It was not a terrifying sense of unfamiliarity, but an incredibly bizarre, familiar bond.

It’s an acquaintance. Just as the thought flashed past, a deafening ring erupted in his ears.

Simultaneously, dozens of kilometers away in a musty warehouse, a frail, moving figure jolted to a halt, frozen in place. Pallid hands clutched at their head, heartbeat racing madly as if colliding with a high-intensity resonant waveband.

The synchronization was a two-way street.

The blindingly white scenery shattered. Julian’s consciousness was violently yanked back to reality.

He staggered back, eyes wide, chest heaving as he desperately tried to drag air into his lungs. Before his knees could give out, a pair of strong arms wrapped firmly around him from behind. Ethan had stepped up silently; he gripped Julian’s shoulders, pressing his broad chest against Julian’s trembling back, using his own warmth to anchor him to the present.

It took Julian a few agonizing seconds to process the afterimage still burning in his mind. His trembling hand clutched the fabric of Ethan’s shirt. When he spoke, his voice was a mere whisper, yet carried a bone-chilling certainty:

"I just saw... it."

Meanwhile, in a classified underground facility, the air was thick with the scent of ozone and humming machinery.

Rows of massive monitors cast a pale blue glow across the room, displaying thousands of data strings cascading at breakneck speed. Without warning, a brainwave graph on the primary display spiked violently, forming a razor-sharp peak before descending back to a stable baseline.

A figure in a pristine lab coat, an encrypted badge dangling from his neck, clutched a folder to his chest as he hurried into a minimalist room at the end of the corridor. He bowed his head, delivering his report in a deferential tone:

"Sir, an unprecedented anomaly has just occurred. A-01 has shown a reaction."