Chapter 77: I can save the person you want to save.
The light tore a bright crack in the darkness, and she was the only one left in this space.
The turbid water surface was rippling with fine light, like countless silver nematodes dancing, wriggling and trying to drill into a person’s body.
Following the barely perceptible footprints, Cheng Ming slowly retreated, one step, two steps, three steps…
Until her left foot touched a hard metal object with a different feel, thump.
She cautiously moved her foot away, and the thing swayed up and down slightly. The ripples flickered and swirled into a circle. The accumulated water rapidly descended.
It seemed to be a sewer, and the cover had been flipped over.
The helmet’s communication was blocked, and there was too much static in the earpiece. The sound of a person falling was drowned out.
She squatted down and knocked three times—strong, weak, strong. She waited for a while, and then repeated it.
There was no response.
After thinking for a moment, Cheng Ming took off her helmet, and the mycelia gushed out from her neck like a black tide.
Xiao Ming impatiently released the conidia, which scattered to find food. However, the spores had no senses before they parasitized an animal, and they couldn’t find their way, so they could only try their luck. More mycelia stretched out and went down along the gap of the pipe cover, and fumbled for a while.
There was everything in this dark water: thick blood, rotten flesh, broken glass, metal pieces… Cheng Ming looked at them, and her mysophobia flared up, and she felt a little nauseous. She could only force herself to look away and not to think about how these mycelia would be clinging to her later.
Two minutes later, clang, the iron cover was lifted. After fumbling, it said, “Alright, you can jump.”
Hearing this cheerful sound, Cheng Ming looked at the deep and dark pipe below, which was like the entrance to hell, and hesitated, “You’re not deliberately leading me into a pile of monsters, are you?”
“…No.”
It sounded as if it were reprimanding her for her distrust.
Cheng Ming went down.
This road was longer than she had imagined. Following the passage opened up by the mycelia, after a while, a faint light spread out, and she entered a larger space. With a dull thump, she landed on a pile of damp, hot, and soft miscellaneous items.
The touch was very strange.
Even though she had put on her helmet very quickly, the strange, fishy, and rotten smell and the indescribable smell of medicine rushed to the top of her head. She looked down and shone a light on it. A mountain of dismembered limbs, wet and greasy. When she moved her hands and feet, the tissue fluid mixed with the soft tendons and rotten flesh made a squishing sound. It wasn’t a sewer, it should be a waste pipe, or… a feeding pipe for a large-scale feeding farm.
There were rotten ones, and also fresh ones. What made her whole body turn cold was that there were some familiar, black, inorganic materials inside. They were the equipment of the Security Department.
In the stagnant time and space, a light breeze blew past.
In the instant she had lowered her head, a black shadow had hung down from above, and had pounced on her like an arrow from a bow!
Cheng Ming was caught off guard and ducked down to dodge. The light and shadow dazzled her eyes.
She couldn’t see its specific appearance, but its white, sharp teeth were particularly obvious. Its limbs were slender, and in the blink of an eye, it had pounced on her, and screech—the sound of its nails scraping on the surface protective coating was like chalk scraping on a blackboard, so piercing that it was horrifying.
The monster had missed.
In a life-and-death situation, she couldn’t care about being clean or not. Cheng Ming directly rolled down the messy filth. The searchlight fell off its fixture and fell far away with a thump, but she didn’t dare to go and pick it up immediately.
There was more than one.
This surprise attack was like a horn being blown. Several pairs of faint green pupils lit up in the dark corners, and low and strange roars approached this halo of light.
Rumble! Five minutes later, along with the last explosion, the broken walls and dust were stirred up, and were quickly pressed back to the ground by the splashing blood mist.
The monsters had rushed forward one after another, and the starving mycelia were growing even faster.
She hadn’t seen clearly what species it was the whole time, but she felt that its body shape… was very much like a human.
Fortunately, the protection was in place, and there were no direct wounds. But the taste of hitting various hard objects was not good either.
Calming her chaotic breathing, Cheng Ming squeezed her back shoulder and, after confirming that there were no fractures or bone cracks, she patted off the dirty water stains on her body and stood up.
Leaning against the wall, she turned on the light again, flipped her wrist and shone a light on it, and looked at the blood that had accumulated at her feet, and let out a cold laugh.
The mycelia were like countless small tongues, licking the nutrients clean, and then they retracted into the helmet through the gap of the sealed strip and stopped moving.
Feeling her emotions, the well-fed Xiao Ming was as peaceful and quiet as if it were dead.
There was no trust between herself and herself.
The position below the sixth basement level was a blank on the map, with only a blurry red warning sign, which was a restricted area. The layout here was too chaotic, and she wasn’t sure which floor she had reached. After being disturbed by the monsters, she had completely lost her sense of direction.
Scanning the completely unfamiliar environment around her, her breathing became slightly heavy.
So smart.
They were deliberately luring her down.
The interconnected, dim passages, the flesh and blood garbage everywhere, the messy ruins… this place had a kind of apocalyptic beauty.
There were roads in front and behind, and on both sides were cubicles made of concrete. The surrounding walls were so high that even a flashlight couldn’t illuminate the top. Huge metal pipes climbed up the walls, reflecting a cold, gray light. She was like entering a large maze, a possibly fatal game.
She raised her hand and brought up the virtual drawing, trying to find a suitable path, but there were no road signs here, and she couldn’t match it with the map.
It was not a good habit to just sit and wait for death. She tentatively walked forward.
Thump, thump, thump. Three thuds came from her ears.
Sound waves transmitted through the wall.
Almost thinking that she was having an auditory hallucination, Cheng Ming suddenly held her breath and stood still. After a while, there were another three short sounds.
A signal for help.
Who could it be? Was it Sun Xiangxiao?
She remembered the Security Department uniform she had seen before, but she hadn’t had time to confirm her identity.
After a moment’s hesitation, she also raised her hand and knocked on the wall.
This time, the other side responded faster. She adjusted the sound collection mode and identified the direction with the stronger sound wave.
Thump, thump, thump.
Fifty meters ahead, she encountered a locked iron door. It took her half a minute to open it. The sound wave was affected by the vibration she had created and disappeared.
Thump, thump, thump.
It sounded again. She turned left to the end, a crossroads. The sound source was not obvious. She identified them one by one, and it took her three and a half minutes.
Thump, thump, thump.
This time, the sound came from the right, and she turned a corner.
Thump, thump, thump.
She continued to walk.
Thump, thump, thump.
Thump, thump, thump!
…
The sound was getting louder and more obvious.
This place was too suitable for filming a horror movie.
In an abandoned experimental area deep underground, the other party who was communicating with you by knocking on the wall in the dark, what could it be?
Was it a person, a ghost, or a monster?
Before she reached the end, she would be tormented by doubts, and it would become more and more profound as the distance shortened.
Following this sound, one after another, Cheng Ming used her temporarily raised authority to open one rusty door after another. Finally, she entered a place that looked like a laboratory, with broken glass and twisted and discolored metal all over the floor, and there was no other way out.
She had reached the end.
She had not been attacked on the way, but she had always been on high alert.
The searchlight was a little loose after being dropped. The flickering halo made a round, and finally, she found a back in the right corner.
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump… the other was still hitting the wall.
Cheng Ming slowly walked behind her.
Hearing the sound, this person turned her upper body, and as if in slow motion, a blood-stained face was magnified in her eyes—
“Team leader!”
The light in her hand shook slightly, and Cheng Ming paused.
Han Xuhua.
“Oh my god, you’re finally here,” she had probably suffered a lot. Her combat suit was damaged, and she was so excited that she came up and hugged her. “I almost thought I couldn’t get out!”
The weight was pressing on her, and she was too enthusiastic. Cheng Ming grabbed her arm and pulled her down, and asked, “Are you injured?”
“It’s fine, it’s a minor injury,” she wiped the sticky dirt on her face and looked left and right. “Where are the others? Team leader, do you know the way out?”
“They’re on top.”
Seeing that her movements were still free, Cheng Ming brought up the map, recalled the route she had just passed, and tried to build a route model in her mind and compare it with the lines on the display on her arm.
Her fingertip tapped on the screen, and just as a virtual light spot had landed, Cheng Ming stopped. A very close figure was reflected on the edge of her helmet.
She suddenly froze, turned her head, and looked at the teammate who was looking at her actions with a curious expression, and asked:
“Who are you?”
She turned sideways and pulled away from her.
The other was not wearing a helmet. In this underground experimental site with radiation levels off the charts, she was not wearing a helmet.
And, when Cheng Ming had pulled her just now, she had grabbed her right arm. Han Xuhua had an old injury on her arm, and although it had already healed, when the force was heavy, she would subconsciously rub it. However, the other had not reacted at all.
Hearing this question, the unknown creature with Han Xuhua’s appearance also turned its face to look at her.
Their gazes met, and a certain dangerous signal quietly spread.
Cheng Ming’s gaze was fixed, “You—”
Just as the word came out, the latter smiled at her and called out a name, “Cheng Ming.”
Not team leader, not Yan Li.
It was Cheng Ming.
Cheng Ming’s mind went blank, and her body went numb, as if a long nail had been hammered into the top of her head, nailing her to the spot.
The appearance of the “person” opposite her was slightly changing.
“Want to make a deal? I can save the person you want to save.”
Her voice was lowered, and the face, which was particularly pale against the bloodstains, had a pair of shallow dimples on its cheeks, so sweet that it was cloying. Although her appearance was like an angel, her existence was like a devil.
Meeting Cheng Ming’s icy gaze, which was as if it had been frozen, four words were slowly ground out from between her lips, so light that it was like an illusion—
“My sister.”
…
“Warning, MM221 has lost contact, a dangerous experimental subject has escaped. Please recover it as soon as possible, please recover it as soon as possible—”
Major accidents seemed to always happen at night.
In the early morning hours, a relentless alarm engulfed the dark blue experimental zone, which resembled a massive aquarium.
The six bases of the evolution department were distributed in a dot matrix. Because of their high confidentiality, they were built in an underground bunker near the quarantine line, not far and not near the headquarters, so that they would not be disturbed and could respond in time.
In the past, it was often other departments that needed support, and the mission messages were transferred to the various executors through the command and control center. It was rare for the evolution department itself to issue an alarm.
But after all, it was a confidential place. Even if something like this had happened, there were not many people at the scene.
“Tsk, one after another, they’re not obedient, and they’re giving us more work.”
Next to Qu Ying, another colleague who had arrived in time said with dissatisfaction.
The glass pillar in front of her had a big hole in it, and it had been opened from the inside. The turbid solution was flowing horizontally. The lights on all four sides were on, far and near, and the water was rippling everywhere. It was as if she were walking in an infinite, empty space, with the sky and the ocean inverted.
They were stepping in this water.
Qu Ying was fine in her thick-soled short boots, but the latter was miserable, and she kept kicking her feet—her sneakers were leaking.
“Officer Qu, aren’t you stationed here now? How could you let her run away under your nose?” While she was busy, this person winked at her, and her smile was as if she were teasing, and it seemed to have a different meaning.
Qu Ying said ruthlessly without turning her head, “Stay away from me, don’t splash on me.”
