"Don't... don't act rashly…"
"I... is there anything else you want to know?"
Vanessa couldn't penetrate Qin Mo's mind, so she had no idea what to say to calm him down at this moment.
Qin Mo remained silent. His hand grew intensely hot, waves of scorching air distorting the space around them.
"The Gene... Warlord... its psionic power... I interfered with it…"
With a burst of quick thinking, Vanessa managed to utter a few words that made Qin Mo loosen his grip, allowing her to collapse onto the ground.
"You interfered with the Warlord's psionics? Who are you?" Qin Mo asked, as if he'd just heard a joke. That was the Warlord of the Gene Stealers, after all.
Yet, the fact that Qin Mo didn't continue attacking indicated his curiosity for a more detailed explanation.
Vanessa, coughing for a moment, steadied herself and began explaining, "You and your guards carried out a decapitation strike. I was hiding nearby at the time. I used my psionics to disrupt the Warlord's powers, preventing it from launching its psionic attack on you."
She proceeded to recount the events of the battlefield in astonishing detail, even describing exactly how Qin Mo fought, hoping to prove that it was indeed her interference that neutralized the Warlord's power.
Listening to these intricacies, some of which even he couldn't have known, Qin Mo was startled. However, he still harbored doubts, wondering if Vanessa had simply used her psionic abilities to observe the battlefield. After all, psionic sight did exist, and some psykers could even foresee the future.
Pointing outside the fortress, Qin Mo said, "There are ten tanks stationed outside right now. Crush them, and I'll believe you."
"I can't do that," Vanessa shook her head. "My psionic abilities aren't tools to be wielded at will. They don't work like that."
"Fine, let's assume you did help me that day. But you're still a psyker. Have you been certified by the Empire? Do you even realize how dangerous you are? Someone like you must be at least Zeta-class. I'm afraid of you losing control."
Qin Mo's tone carried a sharp malice towards psykers. Although he himself had once suffered due to being mistaken for a psyker, this didn't instill in him any sympathy for them.
Psykers were walking bombs. If they merely had difficulty controlling their powers, that would be one thing—destroying a few buildings, killing some people—but the true danger lay in them becoming gateways for Chaos gods from the warp to invade the material universe.
Should Vanessa open such a portal, the entire Tyrone Hive and star system would be at the mercy of demonic slaughter.
"I can help you fight the rebels," Vanessa offered.
"No, I'd rather you sit tight. I'm terrified you'll lose control on the battlefield," Qin Mo shook his head quickly.
"Then try to kill me. Use your strength," Vanessa suddenly adopted a fearless demeanor, placing Qin Mo's hand back on her throat. "Suppose you're faced with a bomb. Would you risk damaging it violently, hoping it won't explode, or would you buy yourself some time to live a little longer?"
Qin Mo pondered this carefully, caught in a dilemma. There was no guarantee that killing Vanessa in one blow wouldn't provoke a catastrophic backlash, causing her to lose control.
The best course of action, Qin Mo thought, would be to hand Vanessa over to the Black Ships, so the Empire's specialists could deal with her. But how would he summon them?
After a long pause, Qin Mo finally responded, "I would place the bomb in a stasis field, study it, and seek the best possible way to disarm it. That way, I could make sure I'd know how to handle the next one."
Vanessa blinked, taken aback by his answer.
Qin Mo turned and walked out of the room, commanding the soldiers outside, "Fit her with every psionic suppression device we have in stock."
"Do we really have to do this, Commander?" One soldier hesitated, glancing at Vanessa with uncertainty, trying to dissuade Qin Mo from his decision.
"Until I find a way to defuse the bomb? Yes, we do," Qin Mo affirmed with a nod.
"Understood," the soldier sighed, then turned back toward Vanessa. "The Commander is always right… This is for your own safety, miss."
...
While Qin Mo indeed intended to study Vanessa in hopes of developing a psionic dampener, that wasn't his immediate focus. His current research was on weapons to combat the Gene Stealers.
The results of that research had borne fruit. He had devised a liquid weapon, designed to be sprayed onto any area where Gene Stealers might hide. Once in contact with this liquid, their bodies would begin to dissolve, reducing them to puddles over the course of one or two weeks.
This dissolution would spread like a contagion among the Gene Stealers. Furthermore, Qin Mo had twisted the laws governing the weapon, ensuring that the dissolution would spread without fail, becoming an absolute, unalterable principle.
Even if an individual Gene Stealer, for some reason, were sent to the other end of the galaxy, far from its kin, as long as any of its kind began to dissolve, that lone Gene Stealer would also meet the same fate, no matter the distance.
This weapon was named "Tyrone's Special Insecticide."
Its only drawback? Qin Mo had to manufacture it himself.
He immediately began working on a prototype, starting with the dissolving liquid and the equipment needed to contain and disperse it.
"I read from Grot's mind that you're developing a weapon against the Gene Stealers."
"And you made this... thing, a weapon that sprays a liquid that kills Gene Stealers. Why not just make a flamethrower?" Vanessa asked, standing behind him, having approached without Qin Mo noticing.
The psionic dampener worked—otherwise, Qin Mo would have sensed her presence much sooner.
"Do you even know who you're talking to about weapons?" Qin Mo countered, turning toward her.
"I'm talking to someone making a liquid flamethrower. Care to guess who that is?" Vanessa replied, with an air of indifference and mild exasperation.
"Fire and poison cause collateral damage. It's hard to ensure they don't harm our own forces. But my weapon? No collateral damage. It precisely targets every enemy that needs to die," Qin Mo defended his invention.
In his view, Vanessa simply didn't grasp the intricacies of his weapon. She mistook the delivery mechanism for the weapon itself.
The method of dispersing the "insecticide" wasn't the key. The key was that once deployed, it would neutralize the Gene Stealers without fail.
"I still don't see how that's different from building a flamethrower… You'd be better off letting me help you with psionics."
"Help me with psionics? Don't push me into dismantling this bomb by force."
Qin Mo stood, ushering Vanessa out of the cave. As they reached the hallway, he gestured toward a nearby soldier. "See that soldier? Walk over and tell her you're a prisoner, not a guest. Then go to where you're supposed to be."