Basel, Switzerland.
The International Supervision General Administration.
“Shenhai has lifted level-one alert across the entire city. There’s no need to worry. This was only an accident…”
Fritsch Nielsen stood before the conference room window, a cigarette pinched between two fingers. He slowly exhaled a thin, pale-white stream of smoke and looked up at the sky with his phone in hand.
His meticulous silver-gray hair was combed fully back, and his gray-blue eyes were like wind and snow over the icefields of Northern Europe. Then a smile surfaced on his handsome, sharply carved profile, and he cut off the report from the other end of the phone.
“I know. As long as you’re all right.”
No one could have imagined that the world’s top-ranked evolutionist, Odin’s Wolf, could have such a gentle side. He was almost a different person from the powerful dictator he usually appeared to be. “Yue Yang called from the Central District Supervision Office and told me you were not seriously injured, but I was still extremely worried. I’ve been waiting for you to call me back in person. Now that I know you’re awake, I can relax. Every other loss can be disregarded.”
Shen Zhuo’s rather apologetic voice came from the other end of the phone. “I didn’t expect an accident like this to suddenly happen in my jurisdiction. Actually, this time it was thanks to Mr. Bai lending a hand…”
“Even on a global scale, this assassination attempt ranks among the most serious. In any other jurisdiction, it might already have caused catastrophic consequences, but the Shenhai City Supervision Office responded perfectly. That is because of your outstanding day-to-day supervision.”
Nielsen interrupted Shen Zhuo, his tone full of approval and impossible to contradict. “As an S-Class evolutionist, assisting from the side was Mr. Bai’s duty. Once all matters here at the General Administration are handled, I will personally go to Shenhai and thank him.”
There was a brief silence from the other end of the phone, its meaning unclear.
“Then I’ll have to trouble you.” Shen Zhuo stood in the hospital restroom with the phone in hand, narrowing his eyes at the mirror. On the inner corner of his lower lip, a tiny spot of vivid red was plainly visible—his skin had been broken by a certain Bai’s canine tooth in the chaos.
His skin had always been thin by nature. And the physical strength of an S-Class evolutionist was simply too great, so great that controlling the weight of his own movements was nearly impossible.
Over the phone, Shen Zhuo sounded as though he was smiling. No one could hear the faint trace of gritted teeth hidden at the end of his words. “After all, Mr. Bai and I… are not close.”
“Rest well, Shen Zhuo. I’ll follow up on that evolutionist named Rong Qi.” Nielsen smiled. “Don’t worry. I will always stand on your side.”
Shen Zhuo said, “I understand.”
The call ended. Nielsen lowered his phone and turned around.
Behind him, the conference room was full of people.
In truth, none of those seated there were present in person. They were all three-dimensional holograms of United Nations Security Council officials. Everyone wore an odd expression, but not one person said a word. The air was filled with an indescribable atmosphere.
“What’s the matter?” Nielsen curved his mouth, graceful, elegant, and brimming with mockery. “I thought that after hearing the news that Shen Zhuo was safe and sound, all you gentlemen would be moved to tears and rise to embrace one another in thanks to God.”
“…”
“Are you not pleased, Cameron?” Nielsen turned his head toward the conference seats and smiled.
Cameron was probably sitting in his official residence in New York, thousands of miles away, his long legs crossed and his ten fingers loosely interlaced. No matter the occasion, the man always carried a diplomat’s courteous yet mocking air. “I have always had confidence in Shen Zhuo’s tenacious vitality and inexplicable luck. Rather than worry about him being assassinated, I would rather worry whether that rusted brain of his can go back to continuing research on the HRG Plan. After all, that is his only value.”
“Allow me to correct you on one point, Mr. Cameron,” Nielsen said mildly. “Shen Zhuo is now our evolutionists’ Chief Supervisor. In this life, there is not the slightest possibility that he will return to researching your HRG Plan…”
“You discarded him long ago, and he fell into our hands.”
The room went dead silent.
Fortunately, everyone present was a three-dimensional projection. Otherwise, some official might not have been able to resist lunging over to strangle him.
“Oh, is that so?” Cameron replied smoothly, patting the cuff of his sapphire-blue suit.
“Since we have confirmed that Shen Zhuo is not dead, today’s objective has at least been achieved.” He looked around the conference table and smiled. “Gentlemen, meeting adjourned.”
The holograms on both sides of the long table disappeared one after another. Cameron pressed the exit key, and in the next instant, he returned to the garden of his official residence.
The salty, fishy moisture unique to the rainy season rushed toward his face.
He sat in an armchair beneath the corridor. Rain poured from the sky in torrents, tree branches swaying back and forth under the wind, and the fountain’s surface burst into countless ripples beneath the downpour.
His assistant bent down with documents in his arms and respectfully changed his tea for a fresh cup. “Mr. Cameron.”
Cameron’s face always carried a smile that was three parts false and affected, but his eyes were a cold gray-green. Whenever he stopped smiling, that icy quality surfaced from behind the mask, faintly revealing his cold-blooded true nature.
“Shen Zhuo has been completely controlled by Fritsch Nielsen.” He gazed at the heavy rain beyond the covered walkway and said softly, “We must find a way to put Nielsen to death. Otherwise, we will never take back the lifeline of the HRG Plan.”
The assistant looked somewhat worried. “But… are we certain it’s that serious? Doctor Shen is exceptionally intelligent, after all, and his personality is extremely strong…”
“Strong?” Cameron gave a scoff, as though he had heard something absurdly stupid.
“You don’t understand Shen Zhuo. He is weak, sentimental, and easily subjugated. By nature, he attracts control freaks. That is why people like Fu Chen, Nielsen… and that recent Bai Sheng are always drawn to his side. If not for the Human Regeneration Plan, he would simply be an unbearable burden and a useless—”
Cameron’s voice stopped. He looked down.
His arm rested on the arm of the chair. Perhaps because of the damp weather, an ant had crawled up along the chair and onto the back of his hand, bringing with it an itch so faint it was almost negligible.
So humble and tiny.
So utterly fragile.
“…”
Cameron’s gray-green eyes stared at it, at its vulnerable body and the antennae waving about in confusion. For a long time, he did not move. There was not even a trace of expression on his face.
“…Rain… melts it. Molecular heat. Diffusion…”
He heard that little boy stammering and gesturing, crouched on the mud before the storm arrived, using melted honey candy to lure the ants. On his childish face was a kind of pale, futile determination.
The six-year-old child was drenched through by the heavy rain. Then, gradually, the rainwater turned into blood, dripping from the corners of his wide, blank eyes, seeping into the hospital bed. Countless medical instruments gave off faint ticking sounds.
“…He already had a language-development impairment to begin with, and because this accident exposed him to unknown radiation, it may cause irreversible genetic damage…”
“Both parents died tragically before his eyes, causing immense psychological trauma. Judging from the current situation, it should have affected his brain and nervous-system development…”
“Perhaps he will remain a vegetative patient like this for the rest of his life, with his eyes open. The family should prepare themselves…”
The special-care ward was silent. The polished floor reflected pale light.
Cameron half-crouched and stared into the pupils of the little boy lying on the hospital bed. Softly, he said,
“You know this world is survival of the fittest. The weak ought to be abandoned. Right?”
Those eyes did not react.
Like inorganic glass slides, they stared motionlessly at a point floating in the air.
Young Cameron also had bandages wrapped around his forehead and hands, with faint traces of savage bloodstains showing through them. He straightened and looked down at that small, soulless little doll. He seemed to want to say something, but after opening his mouth, he stopped. After a moment, he exhaled lightly.
The tail end of that sigh vanished into the quiet air in an instant.
“Goodbye, little brother,” he whispered.
—Never to meet again.
He turned and walked out of the ward. At the instant the door closed, he seemed to see the little boy on the hospital bed move, as though trying to reach a hand in his direction. But when he fixed his eyes on him, there was nothing.
The hospital room was quiet and empty. Only that thin, small figure sat there, like a statue.
An illusion, maybe? Cameron thought.
The metal door slid shut without a sound. He did not look back again. He turned and walked outward, and the oncoming white light stretched his shadow long behind him, gradually melting it into another, brand-new world.
That was the last intersection between the two of them.
From that moment on, they completely turned their backs on each other, walking toward different distances.
…
The heavy rain roared, as though it had never stopped for even a second. Cameron opened his eyes.
Raindrops fell in strings from the eaves of the flower corridor. The assistant maintained the posture he had been standing in a moment earlier, not daring to move.
Without saying a word, Cameron reached into the rosebush and plucked a leaf. He gently scraped the ant off the back of his hand, then set it down beneath a dry windowsill not far away, letting that tiny black speck rapidly crawl toward a crack.
“If you give ants too much honey, they will not be grateful. They will only become greedy, vicious, reckless, and in the end, they will swarm together and drown in the honey…”
The assistant stood there at a loss.
Cameron stared ahead in a daze. His gaze seemed to pierce through everything, through the curtain of torrential rain and the roaring of time and space, toward that lonely, small figure in the distant garden.
“Those humans and evolutionists are all ants, Shen Zhuo,” he murmured softly.
“Do not become the savior of ants. Do not become a saint nailed to the cross.”
Time spiraled upward, passing through the vast, boundless sky.
Beneath red and green traffic lights, cars and people flowed endlessly. The countless masses surged like ant colonies, swept along by the flood of evolution, rushing toward some tiny, unknown distance.