Chapter 400: Meeting Peter Again

However, as long as the group of killers remained at large, there would be a persistent roadblock standing in the path of Adam's campaign.

Soon, another incident took place, and this time, the middle class had been targeted.

One of the things that middle-class citizens were most concerned about were their insurance and superannuation accounts. This time, a targeted attack had been launched against an insurance company. The adapter killers had stolen the memories of the insurance company's managers and data keepers, then infiltrated the company's databases to implant a never-before-seen virus.

As a result, all of the accounts were plunged into complete chaos, and after that, they had destroyed the hard copies of the data in the company's warehouse, spreading fear and panic among all of the company's clients.

"How many accounts have they destroyed?"

"Hundreds of thousands. Here's part of the footage from the site of the incident. We can't make out the features of the suspects, and many of the tasks were carried out by the company's employees," Toshiyuki Matsumara said as he handed the file over to Adam. "Before they committed these acts, all of the people involved displayed clear signs of suffering mental breakdowns."

"Hold on, I seem to have spotted a familiar face." Adam paused the surveillance footage, then zoomed into the image. "It really is him! Where is he right now?"

"He's in the interrogation room of the police station that you're responsible for. Some of the suspects were taken by the police officers under the southern congress, but this man is among the group of suspects that we were able to keep."

"Good. I'll go pay him a visit."

Adam arrived at the police station that he belonged to, and he quickly spotted an old acquaintance in one of the interrogation rooms.

"Hello, Peter!"

Adam made his way into the room and turned to the man before him with a hint of a smile on his face.

The man was none other than Adam's second patient during the time that he had spent as a psychotherapist, and their interaction at the time had left a very sour taste in Adam's mouth.

Adam recalled that at the time, Peter had requested a psychic cleanse, which was a psychic maintenance procedure that many wealthy individuals liked to get done.

They would periodically seek out adapters to cleanse their psychic worlds of negative emotional baggage and aberrations, thereby ensuring that they were able to maintain the best level of mental health possible.

Generally speaking, each treatment would cost somewhere between 100,000 to several hundred thousand dollars.

At the time, Adam was in dire need of money, so he had offered a relatively cheap price of 120,000 to 150,000, depending on the difficulty of the cleanse.

It was no exaggeration to say that Peter's psychic world at the time had been utterly filthy. There were all types of negative emotions piled up in it, so 150,000 was a very low price.

After all, there were very few adapters to begin with, and adapter psychotherapists were even rarer. High-level adapters didn't want to engage in this line of work, while newbie adapters could easily perish during jobs.

"Do you still remember me?"

Peter was quite lost and dazed to begin with, and the sight of Adam in his special psychic police officer uniform seemed to have caused his brain to short circuit, and he was rooted to the spot, staring blankly at Adam.

"Let me give you a reminder: I performed a psychotherapeutic treatment on you once. According to the contract, you should've given us 150,000 for the job, but in the end, you went back on our agreement and insisted that I didn't do a good job, so you were only willing to give us 120,000.

“I bet you would've never imagined that in all of Sandrise City, you would fall into my hands. So tell me why you changed jobs. I recall that you were working in the finance sector last time we met, are you working in insurance now?"

"I changed jobs not long ago. The finance and insurance sectors have always been interconnected," Peter sighed, and he finally recalled who Adam was. "I was in the wrong last time. Sorry."

"Do people like you always wait until moments like this before you finally apologize?" Adam took a seat, then looked straight into Peter's eyes as he said, "Don't you frequently get psychic cleanses performed on you? Theoretically speaking, someone like you shouldn't suffer a mental breakdown and do something so extreme. Can you tell me about what happened?"

"I... I don't know what happened myself. I feel like I was framed."

"What type of people did you meet before you burned those files?"

"Can you tell me what my sentence will be first?"

This was something that Peter was very concerned about.

𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"You and your accomplices destroyed the superannuation accounts of hundreds of thousands of people. Given the huge number of victims and the enormous sum of money lost, you'll probably receive a sentence of over 100 years. You may even get thrown into Darvaza Prison. Have you heard of Darvaza Prison?"

"I've seen some information about it on the internet."

"Well, I can tell you now that I was locked up in there for a while, and a guy like you wouldn't even last three days in there before your internal organs are all dug out! Those people will devour your flesh, then use your brains to create artwork. I'm sure you know that I'm not exaggerating."

Peter began to tremble uncontrollably from fear upon hearing this, and in this instant, the emotion of fear quickly began to pile up in his psychic world.

"Don't be so scared. If you give in to your fear, it won't be long before you develop an anomaly, and your fear will slowly consume you. As you currently are, you won't have anyone to administer psychotherapeutic treatments for you."

"Save me! I didn't do anything, I was framed!" Peter insisted in a desperate voice. "I want a lawyer! Get me a lawyer!"

"A lawyer isn't going to help you. There's concrete evidence that you burned all of those files. This is something that happened in the psychic world, so only an adapter can help you. Think back to all of the people that you met near the time of the incident and consolidate your memories. Otherwise, when I go in there, your memories will be nothing more than a blurry mess."

"Who did I meet at the time? There's no one special. Oh, I remember I was going to the bar to have some drinks that day after work, and I had only had a few drinks before someone tapped me on the shoulder and said that he wanted to buy me some drinks."

"What happened after that?"

"After that, I felt like I was in a daze for a short while, and the time didn't seem to match up, but at the time, I didn't think anything of it. I thought I had merely become disoriented from drinking, and that was what affected my perception of time, but now that I think back, that guy was definitely an adapter. I've had many psychotherapeutic treatments done on me, and it was a very similar feeling to when those adapter psychotherapists entered my psychic world!"

"Was it a young man of a medium build?"

Adam felt like Raven had to have been the one responsible for this, but Peter denied the notion.

"No, it was a muscular middle-aged man."

So there’s someone other than Raven that can manipulate someone's actions? Looks like I have another annoying opponent to deal with! This group of killers really is full of talent!