Chapter 50: No Damn Way to Quit!

The mech’s hyperspace jump test had reached its critical trial phase, and the lab was thick with suffocating tension.

“Shao Ye! We’ve got magnetic interference at the jump point!” a panicked researcher hollered, eyes glued to the erratic data feeds.

Shao Ye’s eyes locked onto the chaotic mess on the big screen, heart slamming against his ribs like it was trying to bail.

“If this keeps up, Thomas’ wife… she’s not coming back!” His voice cracked, the words spilling out as if they barely made it through the chokehold of his nerves.

He launched himself at the control panel, fingers flying across the interface, tweaking, recalibrating, rerouting—anything to bypass the interference zone. But every adjustment was a dud. Every fix sank like dead weight in the ocean.

Panic clawed at him. He snatched the comms, his voice jagged and loud, breaking like a live wire: “Abort the test! Mrs. Thomas, shut it down manually—right now! Do you copy? Respond!”

A calm, almost eerie reply filtered through. “Copy that.”

Relief flirted at the edge of his nerves—but seconds ticked by, dragging into an agonizing eternity, and the test?

Still going.

“What the hell’s going on? Why hasn’t the jump stopped?” Beads of sweat broke loose, rolling down his temples as he barked into the comms again. “Mrs. Thomas, respond! Do you hear me?”

Nothing. Just static. A sickening, ghostly hiss filled the line.

“We’ve lost the mech connection,” someone muttered behind him, their voice heavy with defeat.

Shao Ye froze, his face draining of every ounce of color until it matched the stark, sterile lab walls. His lips cracked open, dry and bloodless. They all knew what this meant.

The mech was gone. The jump test had failed.

And Mrs. Thomas? She wasn’t coming back.

The lab felt like it had been gutted, swallowed whole by a pitch-black void. The crimson warning lights pulsed relentlessly, throwing splashes of despair across every face. The air was filled with the grating buzz of machinery, useless now, a cruel symphony of malfunction.

Shao Ye’s chest heaved like he was drowning, the weight of failure crushing him into the floor. His hands flailed for the main console, desperate to claw back control, to find something. He hammered the virtual keys, his desperation like raw electricity, wild and unchecked.

But the screen gave him nothing. Not a damn thing.

Hyperspace accidents didn’t leave trails. They didn’t leave chances. They swallowed you whole and spat out nothing but silence.

No wreckage. No body. No closure.

The realization hit like a gut punch. They couldn’t even bring her home—no wreck, no damn corpse to bury. Just the cruel, gaping maw of the unknown swallowing her memory.

The weight of that failure pulled the entire room under. The fragile high of their ambition—months of effort, breakthroughs, pride—shattered, reduced to dust. The team stood scattered, slumped, defeated, their dreams crushed beneath the weight of cold, relentless reality.

When Shao Ye finally staggered back to his quarters, he was nothing but a hollow shell, dragging his body like it was a broken mech of its own. The fire that had driven him, the fire that had made him burn so bright, was gone—extinguished, leaving only the smoke of failure behind.

Flat on his back, sprawled across the bed like a broken puppet, his eyes were blank, dead, as if all the life had been wrung out of him. Guilt clung to him like a second skin, choking him, gnawing at his insides until there was nothing left but an ache so deep it felt bottomless.

“Sir,” came the clinical, detached voice of Ye Li, the AI that ran his godforsaken life now. “Your emotional levels are critically low. Heart rate unstable. Immediate sedation and rest are advised to prevent irreversible damage to your emotional cortex.”

The sterile hiss of the emergency medkit opening broke the silence, and there they were—those tiny, life-saving, soul-destroying vials of calm. Sedatives. Sleeping pills. Tools to numb the storm raging inside.

Shao Ye sucked in deep, labored breaths, his chest heaving like a drowning man clawing for air. After what felt like an eternity, he croaked, “Ye Li, notify the team. Scrap the mech’s warp jump experiments. Rebuild it from the previous tested model.”

“Understood, sir,” Ye Li replied evenly. Then, a pointed pause. “But if you refuse the sedatives, I am authorized to summon the medical team for forced intervention.”

Shao Ye’s eyes stayed dull, his voice low and flat, like a distant echo. “Don’t bother. I’m fine.”

Fine? He was anything but. He knew it. His body knew it. Yet his hand brushed against his abdomen—a subconscious, protective gesture. He couldn’t risk it. The pills, the chemicals—they’d poison the life inside him. He’d already destroyed so much; he couldn’t let his unborn child pay for his sins too.

The weight of it all pressed him into the mattress, made him feel like a goddamn stone—heavy, cold, useless. Visitors came. Alice and the rest of the research team. Well-meaning faces he didn’t want to see, voices he couldn’t stand to hear. He locked them all out, drowning in the murk of his regret.

Days passed. Time blurred. When he finally woke, the maid’s voice pierced the fog. Two days, she said. He’d been out cold for two whole days.

But he didn’t have the luxury of falling apart. Tomorrow was the scheduled vid-call with Lu Zhanxing.

What the hell was he supposed to do, show up like this?

A hollow shell of a man?

A walking corpse?

Dragging himself out of bed was like wading through quicksand, every movement slow, excruciating. He stumbled to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and glanced up at the mirror.

The sight made his stomach turn. Pale skin, sunken eyes, the faintest tremble in his jaw. He looked like hell warmed over. His gaze dropped lower, catching on the small curve of his abdomen. Three months now. Three months since he’d last caught even a trace of Lu Zhanxing’s scent.

The memory of those calls burned fresh in his mind—the way Lu Zhanxing’s face grew thinner with each one, the way he tried to hide the bruises and cuts, as if Shao Ye wouldn’t notice. But he did. Every time. And every time, it ate away at him just a little more.

Hands gripping the edge of the sink so tight his knuckles went white, Shao Ye stared at his reflection. His eyes hardened, filled with something fierce and unrelenting.

“No,” he snarled. “I’m not giving up. I can’t let the people who believe in me down. I won’t let my kid grow up without a father. This fucking war ends with me. And that fourth-gen mech? It’ll be perfect if it’s the last thing I do.”

Without another thought, he shoved his head under the icy blast of the faucet, letting the cold jolt him back to reality. When he emerged, dripping and shivering, his mind was razor-sharp.

He stormed out of the room, heading straight for the lab. The space was eerily quiet, empty, but the weight of what it represented was suffocating. His gaze locked onto the central control panel.

His legs shook, his breath caught, but he forced himself to move. Each step felt like he was walking into the jaws of a beast, but he couldn’t stop. Responsibility, crushing and relentless, waited for him there.

And Shao Ye was terrified. But he kept walking anyway.

Shao Ye stepped forward, slow and deliberate, like a man walking into the lion’s den with his head held high. His eyes burned with unshakable determination, a kind of raw defiance that dared failure to take its best shot. The total control panel loomed ahead, but he wasn’t hesitating—not now, not ever.

A real fighter doesn’t shun fear. Hell no. A real fighter stares it down, knowing damn well the odds are stacked and the fall could kill you. Courage isn’t about winning; it’s about taking the leap when losing feels like a guarantee. Without risk, there’s no shot at glory. None.

And Shao Ye? He wasn’t about to leave success sitting on the table.

He pulled up the data from the last mech warp test, his eyes scanning through the numbers like a hawk locking onto prey. Every calculation, every anomaly, every detail was dissected. Hours passed, the world outside the lab forgotten, and Shao Ye, like a man possessed, worked nonstop. No food, no water, no breaks. Just him, the data, and the crushing weight of what had to be done.

Luck? No, this wasn’t luck. This was grit, obsession, the kind of insanity that turns failure into breakthroughs. Finally, the answer clicked.

"The ratio between the interference factor and magnetic field frequency..." he muttered, staring at the dense web of calculations. His heart pounded, caught between the thrill of discovery and the dread of what came next.

"To nail the most stable frequency, the mech has to warp N+7F times under a magnetic field interference environment." He whispered the numbers like they were a curse, his eyes flicking to the second mech in the lab.

Identical to the one Thomas’ wife piloted to her doom. Identical, and just as deadly.

The truth hit him like a gut punch: someone had to fly it again. Someone had to go back into the storm, warp after warp, chasing the same phantom data.

And the chances of coming back? Slim to none. Just like her.

Shao Ye didn’t flinch. No hesitation. He was already moving, logging every detail of the fourth-gen mech, fine-tuning the data recovery program, locking down everything the team would need if—no, when—he didn’t make it back. Alice and the others could finish what he started. They’d have to.

He placed a hand on his stomach, his fingers brushing over the faint curve of new life inside. His lips twisted into a bittersweet grin, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. "Alright, kid. Looks like it’s you and me this time. Don’t worry. I’ve got you."

He left behind a farewell video for Lu Zhanxing, congratulating him on a victory Shao Ye wouldn’t be around to see. Another message was recorded for Shao Lan, though he wasn’t sure if it would ever reach its intended eyes.

The prep was done. The stage was set. Shao Ye climbed into the mech’s cockpit, sealing himself inside with the unshakable finality of a man who’d already made his peace.

[Mech fully equipped.]

[Powering up...]

[System activated.]

“Update the mech’s program,” he commanded, voice sharp and unyielding. “Revert it to the exact state of the last test before contact was lost.”

[Program updating...]

[Anomalous data detected!]

[Unsent transmission found. Attempt recovery?]

Shao Ye froze, his breath catching as he stared at the timestamp. That signal—it had been sent ten minutes after they lost contact with Thomas’ wife. Ten minutes in the dark. Ten minutes too late.

“Recover it,” he growled, his hands tightening on the controls, his eyes blazing with equal parts fury and desperation. Whatever the hell that data was, it was going to give him answers—or take him down trying.

In those ten-odd minutes… Could it be—?

Shao Ye’s mind reeled, disbelief etched across his face. His gut twisted as realization sank in. Eyes blazing with urgency, he barked, “Recover the damn data. Now!”

He knew damn well what those minutes meant. That was the exact timeframe it took for the mech to complete an N+7F consecutive warp jump. If the corrupted transmission could be salvaged, it might just reveal the interference factors and magnetic field frequency ratios that had been screwing with the jump trajectory.

But no. Hell no.

Was that what Mrs. Thomas had been betting on?

Had she seen this coming, realized the stakes, and gone all-in like that—riding the edge of madness instead of aborting the jump?

Did she gamble her life for a shred of experimental data?

Shao Ye clamped down on the thought before it could shred him whole. The hot sting of tears blurred his vision, but he didn’t give a damn. All that mattered now was the progress bar inching its way across the screen.

[Data Recovery: 75%... 80%... 90%...]

[95%... 100%...]

[Data Recovery Successful!]

“Pull up the relevant files right now!” Shao Ye’s voice cracked, rough with emotion, the demand erupting from his throat like a shot.

And there it was. The entire dataset from Mrs. Thomas’s last warp test, unspooling across the virtual screen in excruciating clarity. Every last calculation, every overlooked variable, everything she had risked it all for.

Shao Ye stood there, mouth slightly open, the air vibrating with his pulse. He couldn’t speak; the sheer magnitude of it left him trembling, his fingers curled tight to keep from shaking.

Then he saw it. At the bottom of the data file was a single video, its name scrawled with one character: “Shao.”

For him. She’d left it for him.

His heart slammed against his ribs like a war drum. He swallowed hard, throat raw from holding back the storm of emotion threatening to rip him apart. “Play the video,” he rasped, his voice barely above a growl.