Mutants - Chapter 13
Chapter 13: Feigned Death
The live broadcast was, at its core, a marketing campaign by a dark-side entity, using pharmaceutical capital for exorbitant profits. Human lives were the crucial key to triggering public consumption for self-preservation. However, the content of the broadcast couldn't be too simple, nor could it focus too heavily on the drug itself. Otherwise, if some people saw through it, a single wave of criticism would be a severe PR disaster for the corporation. After all, among the teeming masses ripe for the picking, there were always a few clear-headed individuals with a strong capacity for disruption. Therefore, before this corporate operation began, the Tianxi Group's top Think Tank had surely run countless simulations. Thus, another element for the broadcast was proposed.
Human nature.
"Make these viewers realize the terror of human nature. Let them imagine their own weakness and helplessness as ordinary people in a future apocalyptic scenario. Make them fear for their own futures. Make them yearn for a way to avoid mutation and disaster, to grasp at any chance of survival."
"The logic of the human heart is the ultimate rule of the market."
In a massive laboratory, a man in an elegant suit was wiping his glasses, looking at a female researcher in a white lab coat who was currently testing data. She was somewhat dismissive of this theory. "I believe economics is economics. You can market a desire to buy, but getting involved in too many other things will cause the environment to collapse. Humans are a complex group; even their bodies can undergo immense changes, let alone their minds. I advise you to spend less time on these schemes, lest the losses outweigh the gains."
"Also, my teacher believes that anyone who manages to escape in the end should be brought back."
The motion of wiping his glasses didn't pause. It only concerned the survival of pawns, a trivial matter. The man continued his task, speaking slowly, "They aren't truly mutated, so do they still have research value?"
The female researcher turned her head. The test tube in her hand still contained different liquids reacting. She placed it in a reaction flask, allowing the released gas to accumulate and then undergo a secondary reaction with some experimental insects prepared inside the flask.
"He says they do."
"Countless failures are the cornerstone of success. It's very possible that one of those failures is the opportunity. And in that kind of high-pressure, slaughter-filled environment—the influence of the drug, the parasitism of insects and human bodies, the eruption of human potential in moments of crisis, the manifestation of will, the environmental changes, and… all of this is something a normal laboratory cannot provide. It might just be an advertisement for your front-end projects, but for my teacher, it's an experiment. Since you've achieved your goal, there's no reason for him to come away with nothing. So the people must be brought back."
The man said, "The broadcast is public-facing. Too many people already know. If the truth gets out, the situation will become very serious. I don't think this is a good idea. If you really need material, we can just design another one next time."
The female researcher was noncommittal. "You can negotiate with my teacher, but he'll probably mock you: 'Did you not arrange for Adepts to handle the cleanup beforehand? Are the Adepts you arranged not even capable of dealing with the organizations inside the ruins zone?'"
The man finished wiping his glasses, folded the cloth neatly, and held it out to his side. A ferocious mechanical dog that had been lying prone beside him stood up. Its build was robust and terrifying. It opened its mouth, and its sharp teeth clamped down on the glasses cloth without damaging the fabric in the slightest, a testament to its technological sophistication. The man then elegantly put on his glasses and pushed them up with a finger.
He didn't mention that the real enemies were the other consortiums.
It was impossible for other consortiums not to try and intercept the sky-high fortune Tianxi had initiated. But as the instigator, they held the first-mover advantage. If they couldn't even handle the countermeasures of their enemies, it would make Tianxi seem inferior, or it would mean that people like them were just trash.
The woman before him obviously knew this but deliberately didn't say it. Her slender, tall figure leaned against the research bench, the white lab coat unable to conceal her graceful form. Her tone was almost mocking, possessing a kind of bloody and critical air typical of a medical researcher, yet she was blessed with a remarkably superior appearance.
No matter how critical she was, it was matched by her powerful intellect and beauty, making it impossible for anyone to feel ill will towards her.
It had to be said that humans were remarkably tolerant when it came to beauty.
This was true even as the world was about to end.
"The decision cannot be changed. Even though I am from the Carroll Family, the Carrolls are not the only owners of Tianxi. If it's truly necessary, I suggest Professor Phil propose it directly to the decision-making committee."
He straightened up, his tall and handsome frame pulling away from the lab bench, his eyes cold and stern.
"But my feeling is that these frontline, lowly DE-class rabble lack the capacity for refinement. In the future, we could select some high-level prisoners from the cages as test subjects."
He was about to leave when, suddenly.
The insects in the reaction flask let out distorted hisses. He turned to look, and the female researcher was also staring intently.
One of the insects was frantically devouring the others, its body growing continuously as its pitch-black color intensified. After it had eaten all the other insects, it began to convulse in the strong, ethereal blue gas released by the reagent. Its skin continuously hardened and molted…
Finally.
Bang!
It exploded into a gooey mess.
Faced with such a bloody scene, the man merely raised an eyebrow, not paying it much mind, and smiled.
"Special Assistant Lin, your experiment has failed again."
He left, but the female researcher, Lin Sui, sat down, looking at the result in the reaction flask, lost in thought.
The experimental process had been the same before, but never this violent. One possibility was that the cultivation of the insects was gradually maturing. A second was that the intensity of the radiation was stronger than before. And a third was—before this experiment, some of the insects she had selected were larvae obtained from another research department. She suspected that they had already begun using human bodies to cultivate insect larvae before this broadcast. It was different from normally cultivated larvae. It seemed the worm king that had devoured the others in the end was one of them.
So, the human body is truly mysterious, isn't it?
And as a culture medium… Lin Sui frowned slightly and subconsciously turned her head to look at the laboratory display screen hanging in front of her, which was also showing the live broadcast.
She herself wasn't particularly interested in the consortium's front-end department's so-called advertising broadcast plan. But because it involved a pharmaceutical product, it was related to the research lab, and her teacher was paying close attention to this experiment, she had to be concerned as well. So she had been watching the broadcast.
Just a moment ago, she had glimpsed the frail, helpless girl being shot and falling into a pile of medicinal herbs in the dim pharmacy.
She had looked away then, distracted by her conversation with the man. But now, glancing at it again, she suddenly remembered something.
The medicinal herbs over there… they don't seem right.
"Ye Chen!"
Jenny scrambled upwards.
Seeing Sui Xin dealt with, Ye Chen quickly ran out of the main door and, with even greater speed, pressed the door control lock. The door shut rapidly.
He stood there, watching as his former comrade and lover was ensnared by the red worms, her legs trapped in despair.
Did his mood change?
Who knew? In any case, when a person has seen classmates and friends die in life-threatening crises dozens of times over thirty years, then for the N+1st time, he can turn away just as coldly as before.
So, his eyes were cold at this moment, exceptionally cold. In his two hands, one held a gun, ready to kill to protect himself at any moment, while the other touched the high-value medicinal herbs in his bag.
Beyond that, there was no ripple of emotion.
Bang!
The door closed.
In the complete darkness, the audience could only hear Jenny's agonized screams as her legs were… Suddenly, there was a bang.
A gunshot.
Did she find a gun and kill herself?
After that, they heard the rustling sound of the Red Corrosive Ironworms crawling, but soon even that sound vanished.
The people at the consortium were somewhat surprised.
"The Red Corrosive Ironworms can corrode the protective suits, but not the camera buttons. Why is there no sound?"
Sui Xin had been shot and had fallen into the pile of medicinal herbs, so it wasn't strange that her screen went black.
"Jenny is also lying on the ground, so the button is pressed against the floor. After their flesh and blood are corroded by so many Red Corrosive Ironworms, the blood will cover the button, block the sound-capturing holes, and silence it completely once it coagulates. It's just not advanced enough; we haven't been able to use ultrasonic technology yet."
It was just a prop for a live broadcast; it wasn't worth it.
"A pity we couldn't film that thing inside. Otherwise, we could have really made the audience feel how precious the medicine is."
A high-level executive said calmly, his face wearing the benevolent expression of a Bodhisattva, yet his eyes were smiling.
The people in the technology department were just making a casual remark. It wasn't worth using such high-end equipment for these lowly frontline personnel. Besides, the purpose of the broadcast had already been achieved.
The surveillance feed switched directly to other active cameras, such as the situation with Huang Ye and the others.
In the darkness, a searchlight suddenly lit up.
The people watching the broadcast didn't see the light descend upon this sealed and dim pharmacy, nor did they see Jenny, with wide eyes, looking at the person standing before her in her final moments.
She couldn't move her neck; she could only recognize the person's shoe size.
It was small, a woman's size, but a little larger than hers, because the person was taller than her short self.
And it was this person who had just shot her in the darkness.
A single shot that entered her arm, passed through her side ribs under her armpit, and struck her lung.
It had to be said, the marksmanship was decent, but it hadn't hit the heart. Not a professional, after all.
As Jenny lay dying, her eyes were still retaining the visual memory from the darkness.
Perhaps when a person is on the verge of death, their five senses are heightened to the extreme. Or maybe it was just a delusion in her final moments?
She could actually sense someone quietly approaching from the pile of medicinal herbs in this extreme darkness, turning her over, and silently removing a button, disposing of it.
Then the searchlight came on.
It illuminated Jenny on the ground, and it also illuminated the large number of Red Corrosive Ironworms slithering on the floor.
She finally saw clearly.
And was utterly shocked.
Jenny's mouth moved. "Sui…"
When Sui Xin had pretended to be shot and fallen into the pile of medicinal herbs, she had deliberately positioned herself to cover and hide the camera, then removed and destroyed her own button.
Then, after Ye Chen closed the door, plunging the pharmacy into complete darkness, she used her helmet's night vision function to shoot Jenny. She waited a moment for Jenny's camera to capture the sound of the ironworms, giving the people on the other side a logical explanation, then nimbly rolled out of the herb pile, removed the button, and disposed of it.
Step by step, following a logical progression, she freed herself from the external surveillance of the live broadcast.
Freedom was restored.
Only when there were no more cameras in the pharmacy did she turn on the searchlight.
It all happened in a matter of seconds. Jenny, seeing Sui Xin's shoes in her dying state, was utterly shocked and suddenly realized they had been duped.
The previous scenes flashed through her mind, and like unraveling a thread, she understood everything.
Damn it!
They thought she was a book-smart, naive weakling, but she was the real ferocious jackal.
She did it on purpose.
She deliberately separated them and led them here… that worm-mushroom was also something she deliberately led the two of them to.
So vicious!
Jenny was filled with rage, but she could only feel death covering her body. But!
From her angle, she saw that after Sui Xin turned on the searchlight, the pile of medicinal herbs behind her—the mushroom pile—suddenly moved!
The mushroom, covered in worms and dripping with flesh and blood, abruptly sat up.
The mushroom had come to life?
In an instant!
The mushroom monster leaped up. Its body was covered in mushroom-like corrosive plants. At first glance, it looked like a deep-sea creature infested with barnacles and other things, so densely packed it could make someone with trypophobia die on the spot. Moreover, these plants were mostly dark, saprophytic organisms, and a large number of worms were breaking out and hanging from its body, each and every one wriggling, falling off as it moved…
An ironworm mushroom spirit?
It lunged towards Sui Xin's back with incredible agility.
The sound of the medicinal herbs rolling away as its body touched or brushed against them was still relatively quiet.
But as it fiercely pounced towards Sui Xin, in mid-air, it saw the slender back move.
She turned sideways.
The muzzle of the gun was aimed at him.
Crap, she was prepared!
He found it difficult to control his body in mid-air and could only frantically fling the ironworms from his body towards her…
A dense swarm of ironworms and a single bullet met in mid-air like an unequal exchange.
Bang!
He was shot in the chest, tumbled to the ground, shedding a pile of disgusting mucus and mushrooms, and writhed on the ground, retching.
Meanwhile, Sui Xin, seeing a wave of ironworms splashing towards her, wasn't skilled enough to dodge. Some splattered against her helmet and clothes, making her skin crawl with goosebumps. But before she could shake the worms off, they quickly rustled and crawled off her, down to the ground.
As if they didn't dare to linger.
She was cautious, quickly retreating with a backflip into a nearby pile of medicinal herbs, rolling once.
It was the same area where she had feigned death earlier.
This was because the place she had been hiding was a large pile of chinaberry bark.
This stuff was an insect repellent; worms naturally hated and feared it. With such a large pile, she had been aiming for this spot from the beginning. Both times she hid, she avoided the ironworms. She had also stuffed a large handful into her pockets, which was why the Red Corrosive Ironworms didn't dare approach her and quickly crawled away after landing on her due to their biological aversion.
This area also had very few molted husks.
However, just as Sui Xin landed and looked up, she saw that the ugly monster she had shot had already pounced on Jenny. The ironworms on its body were frantically detaching, as if… looking for a new host?
This was a living person, one who hadn't died after being infested by so many ironworms. The mushroom-like plants were actually mucus spat out by the ironworms during their metamorphosis, which cultivated saprophytic spores to serve as a cocoon for incubation.
It was terrifying, and disgusting.
Sui Xin didn't know if this was an accidental creation or something specially cultivated by the consortium, but either way, it disgusted her to the extreme.
And the monster's shot-up body, after the two bodies were connected by the ironworms' blood transfer… wasn't so weak anymore?
Jenny was already on the verge of death, but as a person dies, it's like a lamp going out; the wick still holds some warmth. Her body's cells were still active, her senses perhaps still there. She watched as the ugly creature seemed to transfer these disgusting worms and rotting mushrooms onto her… But through the ironworms' ability to suck flesh and blood with their two-headed plant-like bodies, he was replenished. His somewhat withered muscles bulged, and he became fierce again.
What the hell is this?!
Sui Xin was horrified and quickly raised her hand to fire another shot.
The monster sensed it, quickly dodged to the other side, then scraped the ground to shed a wave of mucus before rapidly bouncing and running.
His movements were swift, but Sui Xin was at a disadvantage due to her lack of speed and strength. For a moment, she couldn't track his speed. Bang!
He pounced, slapping her with a large hand. The gun was knocked from her grasp, and her frail body fell helplessly into the pile of medicinal herbs. Her protective suit seemed to be covered in this mucus and worms. Then, from the top of the chinaberry bark sacks, he pounced again…
Comments
Post a Comment