The entire design of the space prison—Scott Harris could draw it with his eyes closed. Things had been chaotic before, and he hadn’t quite caught up, but now that he’d calmed down, he matched the disk to the blueprint in his mind and remembered everything.

　　Inside this disk, the east side held a row of special detention cells, with Monitoring Center No. 2 outside. On the west side were the guards’ duty room and Fuel Bay No. 4. None of that mattered to Scott Harris right now. The most important thing was that at the very center of this disk was a cafeteria.

　　Cafeteria—what a wonderful word.

　　At this moment, it might as well be called paradise.

　　From the moment he stepped out of the cryo capsule, Scott Harris had been so hungry he could eat a person. Unfortunately, he couldn’t bring himself to eat either of the Masons, and he was afraid Eric Bennett-Young would give him indigestion.

　　He claimed he was searching for something useful, but in truth, that was just an excuse—filling his stomach came first.

　　The five-layer metal door finally opened completely.

　　If all went as expected, they would see the corridor to the guards’ duty room, and maybe there were still some bewildered guards inside who hadn’t figured out what was going on. But by standard procedure, before this disk was blasted off, they should have all evacuated in an emergency.

　　However, as soon as Scott Harris stepped through the main door, he frowned deeply.

　　His position required him to deal with all kinds of danger year-round, giving him a heightened sensitivity to certain things—

　　Something was very wrong with this corridor!

　　A row of eight guard rest rooms, all with their doors tightly shut, even the little windows sealed up tight. Scott Harris glanced over each door in turn, but didn’t stop walking. He tried one of the doorknobs, and faintly heard a descending electronic tone from inside.

　　That only happened when the smart system had locked the doors.

　　“Why is it so dark? I thought it would be brightly lit. Wasn’t this area in use before it got blasted off?” Mason sounded puzzled, his voice a little tense.

　　Eric Bennett-Young, following behind Scott Harris, seemed quite interested in the guards’ quarters, his gaze sweeping up and down each door. “All locked? What a shame, I was hoping to borrow a rest room for a shower.”

　　In this kind of environment, Scott Harris’s attention always unconsciously tightened, picking up every tiny movement around him—except for voices.

　　Especially the kind of utterly useless, deliberately annoying remarks from Eric Bennett-Young, which he filtered out completely.

　　The eight guard rest rooms were soon behind them. Leading the way, Scott Harris reached the end of the corridor. Just around the corner and through another door, and they’d see the cafeteria.

　　Scott Harris didn’t rush to open the door. He stood at the end of the corridor, looking around—

　　“What do we do now?” Mason asked, seeing that Scott Harris hadn’t moved.

　　Scott Harris replied, “Eat.”

　　Mason was taken aback. “But something’s off here. Shouldn’t we check the place first and make sure it’s safe?”

　　Scott Harris withdrew his gaze from the passageways behind them. “Eat first.”

　　Mason: “……” All right, it’s clear you’re starving too.

　　In fact, as they spoke, Scott Harris had already checked all the possible hiding spots behind them. They were empty—at least, there was no immediate threat.

　　“Unless it’s the kind of danger where your head gets blown off by a cannon in the next second, nothing can stop our Officer Harris from eating.” Eric Bennett-Young drawled, leaning sideways and reaching past Scott Harris to push open the door to the cafeteria. “Right, darling?”

　　This door wasn’t locked; it swung open with a push.

　　It slammed into the wall with a bang that made everyone jump.

　　At the same time, there was a clatter of banging and rattling, like the sudden swirl of dust when you open an old wooden chest—chaotic and noisy.

　　The cafeteria Scott Harris had pictured should have been empty, the tables and chairs maybe knocked askew in the emergency evacuation, perhaps a pair of slippers left on the floor by some careless fool.

　　But the wall of self-serve food behind the bar should have been untouched.

　　Well, maybe a few plates would have been knocked to the floor.

　　But no matter what, it should never have looked like this—

　　Tables and chairs were stacked haphazardly against the wall, leaving a huge open space in the middle, filled with cages. In each cage, a person lay sprawled like a dead dog. Black-gold rings clamped their arms, their faces were grimy, and messy hair stuck out of the cages like ruffled chickens.

　　Just by looking, it was clear they’d been locked in those cages for quite some time.

　　Caught off guard by the door opening, they suddenly sprang to life, desperately banging their shackles against the smart retractable metal bars of the cages.

　　“Well, well—” Eric Bennett-Young sniffed, “When did the cafeteria turn into a chicken farm? No shortage of ingredients, though they’re a bit spoiled.”

　　The people in the cages were stunned at first, but after hearing this, they grew even more agitated, rattling the cages so hard the noise was deafening.

　　Scott Harris chose to ignore the cages that shouldn’t have been there, and instead glanced at the shelves behind the bar where the food should have been.

　　But all he saw was emptiness—not a scrap of fresh food, not even a single blade of grass!