“They… really still have their own consciousness…”
The alloy door opened at her voice, and Wendy walked inside.
A middle-aged woman with an imposing presence sat behind a large sandalwood-colored desk, working on official business. Hearing the sound, she looked up. The sternness on her face softened imperceptibly when she saw who had arrived.
“What brings you here?”
As she spoke, she lowered her head and continued handling her work.
Wendy’s gaze quickly swept over her.
Good. Liao Chengyu hadn’t been infected.
“Captain Liao, I’d like to request access to the surveillance footage of the drainage compartment after 00:12 last night.”
Liao Chengyu’s hand holding the pen paused. She frowned and looked at the student standing before her.
“Why do you want the surveillance footage of the drainage compartment? Didn’t Team A repair it last night?” She paused. “Besides, for something like surveillance footage, couldn’t you just request it from 028?”
A trace of confusion flashed through Liao Chengyu’s eyes.
Why had Jiang Qiao specifically come to her over something like this?
“Captain, I passed through the drainage compartment during my patrol, and the barrier on the drainage pipe was open.” Wendy met Liao Chengyu’s puzzled gaze.
“After Team A finished repairing the drainage pipe, the barrier should definitely have been closed. So someone must have opened the drainage pipe without authorization after Team A left.”
“I tried to retrieve the surveillance footage through 028, but 028 seems to have malfunctioned. It can’t execute my commands.”
The young guard frowned slightly, seemingly unaware of how serious the problem was and merely puzzled as to why the AI had malfunctioned.
But Liao Chengyu suddenly froze.
The steel pen in her hand scratched across the document with a sharp screech, leaving a mark on the surface.
“Captain, what’s wrong?”
The short-haired girl exclaimed in surprise.
Liao Chengyu quickly steadied herself, concealing the unusual expression in her eyes.
“Nothing. Unauthorized use of critical facilities aboard the ship is a serious matter. You reported it at exactly the right time.”
As she spoke, she operated the crystal screen embedded on the right side of her desk several times.
A moment later, a huge projection screen descended, displaying the surveillance footage from the previous night.
00:12. Team A descended the stairs and entered the drainage compartment on Level B3.
A figure quietly followed behind them.
Liao Chengyu frowned and enlarged the image. Although the picture became blurry due to the stretching of the pixels, the person could still be identified as Wang Tianci.
The footage continued.
Team A began their work while Wang Tianci hid behind a metal tank in the corner.
He thought he had hidden himself well, completely unaware that the cameras had recorded him from every angle.
But for some unknown reason, the malfunctioning AI had failed to report the footage.
Liao Chengyu took a deep breath.
She had originally still held out a sliver of hope that Jiang Qiao’s claim about 028 malfunctioning was simply a young person’s mistaken judgment.
But now…
Such obvious abnormal information should have triggered a warning from 028 immediately.
00:38. Team A finished their work. The drainage pipe was successfully sealed, and the guards removed their tightly sealed protective suits before leaving.
Several minutes later, Wang Tianci crawled out from behind the metal tank and approached the drainage pipe.
He looked at the now-closed pipe, his face twisted with anger as he muttered under his breath, seemingly thinking about something.
00:46. Wang Tianci pressed the button on the cabin wall to open the drainage pipe.
Liao Chengyu covered her forehead and closed her eyes, feeling her blood pressure rise.
Him again.
What karma had 028 accumulated by rescuing this family?
“Wait, Captain. Go back one frame. Look here.”
Suddenly, Jiang Qiao’s voice pulled her out of her irritated thoughts.
Liao Chengyu focused and followed the direction her student was pointing.
After Wang Tianci opened the drainage pipe, it seemed as though something had bitten or stung him. He bent down and rolled up his pant leg.
There was a tiny but conspicuous bloody wound on his ankle.
Liao Chengyu’s pupils suddenly contracted.
She no longer cared about anything else and repeatedly replayed the footage frame by frame.
It was true.
Before Wang Tianci opened the drainage pipe, there had been no wound on his ankle.
And 56 seconds after the drainage pipe was opened, he had clearly reacted in pain.
Liao Chengyu stared intently at the surveillance footage, her lips pressed into a thin line.
For a moment, the entire office became heavy with tension.
She repeatedly rewound the footage.
Finally, she spotted something abnormal in one of the frames.
The moment she paused it, the image was enlarged to its maximum.
00:46:53.
A slender-bodied insect leaped into the air from the half-open barrier.
The creature had clearly segmented limbs, a dark-brown body, chewing mouthparts on its head, and antennae growing from either side.
Its enlarged appearance was enough to make one’s skin crawl.
It wriggled vertically as it leaped out of the drainage pipe.
In an instant, it bit through Wang Tianci’s ankle and crawled into his body through the wound.
A parasitic variant.
Liao Chengyu remembered the reports about parasitic variants that had come from Huaijiang, Chaozhou, and other areas back when 028 had still been connected to the outside.
These things…
Appeared in swarms.
And after Wang Tianci opened the drainage pipe, a full ten hours had passed before Jiang Qiao finally closed it.
Liao Chengyu felt as though she could no longer think.
She braced herself and stood up, then activated the escape ship’s highest-level emergency alert.
As the combat wristbands emitted a loud buzzing, the entire escape ship was flooded with flashing red lights.
“Warning! Unknown… attack!”
“Warning! Unknown… biological attack!”
Unlike the warning issued automatically by 028 when the Abyssal Giant Spider attacked, this emergency alert, personally issued by Liao Chengyu, was mixed with intermittent static and distorted electrical noise.
Combined with the constantly flashing red lights, the atmosphere became even more urgent.
In an instant, all the guards aboard the escape ship mobilized.
Following the orders, they put on their protective suits, took their firearms, and began checking every cabin one by one for infected individuals.
Wendy wore a protective suit and carried her firearm as she followed the squad of guards led by Liao Chengyu.
Their destination was the Wang family’s cabin.
As the first person aboard the ship to become infected, Wang Tianci was undoubtedly the “mother host.”
Their mission was to restrain the “mother host” and isolate him.
More than a dozen people hurried forward with solemn expressions.
Wendy blended in among them, the goggles concealing the amused glint in her eyes.
Knock, knock, knock.
Every so often, guards hurried past through the corridor carrying suspected infected people on stretchers.
Red warning lights continued flashing along the cabin walls.
Yet even as the entire escape ship was placed under emergency lockdown and subjected to an infection screening, the Wang family’s cabin remained tightly shut.
There wasn’t a sound from inside.
The guard at the front knocked symbolically on the door, but received no response.
He turned toward Liao Chengyu.
After receiving her silent permission, he forcibly used his authority to break open the cabin door.
The cabin was pitch-black.
The moment the door opened, an intensely pungent smell of rust burst out.
The guards immediately formed a defensive formation and entered with their guns raised.
The instant the lights came on, everyone sucked in a sharp breath.
Three people were slumped inside the cabin.
The two on either side were Wang Guangzong and Mu Yan.
When they had left the confinement room yesterday, both of them had still looked completely normal.
Now, however, their faces were waxen and yellow, their eye bags dark and swollen.
They were trembling as they felt around in the darkness, wiping down the body of Wang Tianci in the middle.
The moment the guards entered, both of them shuddered violently and shifted their bodies, attempting to hide their son behind them.
But the person in the middle was far too conspicuous to conceal.
Wendy’s gaze fell upon Wang Tianci.
It was now 12:30 in the afternoon.
In just over ten hours, the man who had still possessed enough strength to beat someone yesterday had become skin and bones, looking like a completely different person.
His skin had already begun to ulcerate.
Large handfuls of his hair had fallen out.
Yellow mucus continuously poured from his mouth, accompanied by an overpowering smell of rust.
It was an extraordinarily shocking sight.
“Take them away.”
Liao Chengyu forcibly suppressed the nausea rising in her stomach and ordered the three of them restrained.
“Let go of me… We aren’t sick…”
Mu Yan struggled in terror, but her weakened body made her resistance completely futile.
Another strange movement suddenly came from inside her body.
Mu Yan desperately turned her head toward her son, who had become almost unrecognizable, and her equally emaciated husband.
How… how had things become like this?
She knew that something had entered their bodies.
She could feel it.
Those things…
Those things seemed to be growing inside her abdomen.
The sensation of the foreign objects moving inside her abdomen made her hair stand on end. She wished she could cut open her own stomach and remove every single one of them.
But whenever that thought arose, another thought would always suppress it with overwhelming force.
No… perhaps, perhaps…
Perhaps that thought was the correct one. Perhaps that was what she truly wanted.
They were growing inside her abdomen.
Weren’t they… her children?
Wendy watched from the side as Mu Yan’s expression changed from terror to despair, and then into a strange kind of… maternal affection.
Her brows furrowed slightly.
The three members of the Wang family were taken to the medical department, where eight people were already lying inside.
Three guards and five evacuees.
Huang Jieshu was among them.
The eight people lay on hospital beds. Other than having their hands temporarily restrained, there were no additional containment measures.
When the three members of the Wang family were brought in, the five resident doctors aboard the ship hurried forward. They restrained Wang Guangzong and Mu Yan’s hands and placed them on hospital beds.
Wang Tianci, whose symptoms were the most severe, was escorted by the guards into the ultrasound room at the innermost part of the medical department.
Wendy frowned and looked at Liao Chengyu, who was standing beside the hospital beds, deep in thought.
“Captain Liao, is this your decision? You’re going to treat them?”
After witnessing the mutations caused by Fish-Scale Disease, Wendy believed that once someone was parasitized by a variant, they were already a variant rather than a human.
At any moment, they could lose their sanity and completely transform into variants.
Therefore, eliminating them before they fully mutated, preventing future trouble, was the decision most beneficial to the 028 escape ship at this point.
How could Liao Chengyu, who had managed to rise to her current position, make such a basic mistake?
“No, Lieutenant Jiang. This was my decision.”
Before Liao Chengyu could answer, a man’s voice came from the ultrasound room.
Wendy turned toward the voice and saw a young man wearing square-framed glasses.
He had a rather refined appearance and walked toward them with a confident, faint smile.
“If I haven’t misunderstood, Lieutenant Jiang, it sounds like you’re suggesting that we simply kill these patients to eliminate the potential threat, correct?”
Through his square-framed glasses, the man’s eyes landed on her with a faintly amused expression, as though he believed he had already seen through everything and was mocking the recklessness of the person before him.
Patients.
Wendy noticed that word.
“Allow me to introduce myself, Lieutenant Xiao Jiang. I’m Han Jianhong, the resident doctor aboard the ship.”
The man smiled and extended his hand.
“These things aren’t actually as difficult to deal with as you imagine. They’re no different from parasites. I’ve conducted tests, and the infected still retain their own consciousness.”
Wendy looked at the hand he extended, then at Mu Yan lying on the hospital bed nearby.
The woman was gazing strangely at her lower abdomen, like a mother waiting to give birth.
Did they really still possess their own consciousness?