Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 73

Chapter 73 – Death Never Forgets Its Prey

The chaotic underground chamber in the old factory went silent.

From the busy soldiers of the Ninth Squadron to the crying patients, it was as if everyone was paralyzed at the same moment. Only the alarming red light on the medical capsule continued to flash in the dark chamber.

The Rainbow Virus–a virus that should’ve already been eradicated in theory has a mutation? Is this purely an accident or an intentional creation? What kind of conspiracy is behind this? Who–

Lin Jingheng had no time to ponder these situational questions, and before he could process what he should logically be doing next, he instinctively grabbed onto Lu Bixing standing beside him. Due to the slippery surface of the isolation suit, he didn’t manage to get a secure grip; the helplessness that came with his hand slipping was like a gunshot right into his head that froze his bloodstream.

How did the new virus spread?

What about the pathogenicity and mortality rate?

If the old antibody is ineffective now, what would happen to Lu Bixing?

A sea of questions and thoughts swallowed his mind and exploded inside his head, yet none of these jumbled up thoughts were anything positive.

Lu Bixing’s mind was still floating elsewhere when he finally noticed that he was pinned down beside a medical capsule.

“Check…” Lin Jingheng almost felt his voice crack the moment he opened his mouth, and continued on blankly without a second thought. “Check if he’s already been infected.”

The medical capsule calmly responded: “Invalid instruction.”

Lin Jingheng could feel his vein popping: “I said to check if he got infected with the mutant Rainbow Virus!”

Unfortunately the medical capsule didn’t understand human emotions and only continued to respond blankly: “Invalid instruction.”

The medical capsules were equipped with very limited artificial intelligence. In this situation, the correct procedure would be to request the medical capsule to collect and record information regarding the new Rainbow Virus and then analyze the characteristics of the virus with a more powerful computer. In some cases, it might even require human medical experts to join in the analysis process. When the computer fully understood the nature of the virus and the way to break it, the medical capsule could then create a set of viral testing based on this information and carry out the order when it saved the information to its database.

Yet nobody was sure how long this will take, and just how long was the incubation period of the mutated virus?

Would it be too late?

Lin Jingheng could feel his ears buzzing; Turan’s voice was clearly coming from the headphones inside the isolation suit but felt like it was coming from the outside: “…Commander, Commander…..”

Lu Bixing grabbed his shoulders: “Lin!”

Lin Jingheng held up a hand to quiet down the crowd. He only stood in silence for a moment before he opened his mouth again, with no signs of panic and unreasonable requests like before: “Elizabeth.”

Turan: “Here.”

“First, inform the people outside the factory to set up a quarantine zone according to the Union’s highest standard for disease-infected areas and order anyone coming near the place to wear isolation suits. Set up a double layer for disinfection at entrances and exits. Capture and kill all animals in the area–birds, insects, especially ones that eat rotten flesh. I’d rather kill the wrong ones than let any one go; disinfect all the corpses and dispose of them when you’re done. Second, there’s a river nearby the area; send two teams up and downstream to find the source and end point of the river. Keep a strict eye on all plants, living animals, quality of soil and water around the river, and quarantine the area for 72 hours. Anyone that comes in contact with the water and soil must be isolated and thoroughly checked. If the stream enters an underground water system, I need the entire Milky Way City locked down, cut down the water supply for three hours and fully sterilize the area. Third, a patient had left the factory twice within 48 hours and entered the busy packing district within the Milky Way City. Even though he had been injected with a stopper, we can’t be sure that the old stopper will be effective on the new mutant virus; try and isolate everyone he’s come in contact with to the best of your abilities.”

Turan responded truthfully: “Commander, this will be difficult to do.”

Lu Bixing interrupted: “This person’s corpse is just outside the factory, you guys can just give me the energy field he carries around. The field should have records of his positional coordinates with times and locations; I can hack into the internal network of the city and search up the personal devices of people that were around the same area as the patient at the same time.”

Lin Jingheng: “What do you need?”

Lu Bixing: “If the amount of information is too much for me to process on my own, I will need a supercomputer.”

“Okay,” Lin Jingheng nodded imemdiately. “Call Zhanlu over.”

Turan: “Commander, I don’t think we have enough people to carry this out.”

“Go find Saturday,” Lu Bixing said. “If we’re still short on people then call the base and summon the rest of the self-defense squad.”

“Also,” Lin Jingheng added, “Mobilize all medical resources of the Eighth Galaxy and prepare for a viral outbreak. Superintendent, are you still awake? If not, I can let the medical capsule wake you up.”

William was still living in this nightmare throughout this time and subconsciously sat up straight when he got appointed.

“I need you to tell me everything about how you all got infected with the virus, including all the details.” Lin Jingheng said to him, then turned to Turan. “Leave the capsules here, let everyone else leave. Keep in contact and make sure the factory has sufficient energy supplies. Use AIs to deliver resources and avoid letting people in and out of the area…if the Hawk yells at me, let him vent however he wants, but make sure he doesn’t come in.”

Turan nodded, then as if she suddenly remembered something, asked one last question: “Commander, should we consider contacting the ‘central’ under extreme circumstances?”

Lin Jingheng paused for two seconds before making a clear decision: “No. Go out and tell Zhanlu to hurry up.”

Under the face mask, Turan’s eyebrows lifted slightly in confusion; yet despite having concerns, she didn’t voice any of them out and left promptly after giving Lin Jingheng a salute. The Captain raised her hand and took all the soldiers of the Ninth Squadron out.

Lu Bixing was completely awed by this exchange: “She…just left like that and won’t even stop to cry a little? At least have a few words to console people, are the Silver Ten all cold and stoic like you?”

Lin Jingheng let out a long and cold sigh under the heavy isolation clothing and mask. For a moment, he remembered Lu Bixing’s hands that had touched him, seemingly tirelessly. Perhaps because he was constantly playing around with mechs, his nails were cut cleanly; his fingers were long and shaped nicely, his palm dry but warm. The warmth in his hand was also due to temperature, a kind of heat that was young and powerful, a kind that burned Lin Jingheng into a corner.

But right now at this moment, Lin Jingheng only wanted to hold that hand again.

To check the warmth of that hand once again.

These thoughts were like an overflowing stream running down a river inside Lin Jingheng’s mind, rushing down faraway to an invisible horizon.

If he hadn’t agreed to come out with Lu Bixing, if he hadn’t chosen to land on Qiming, if he hadn’t called Lu Bixing out from the space station, and if Lin Jingheng hadn’t even come to the Eighth Galaxy in the first place…if he had been more decisive instead of choosing to hide underground, and revolted more sternly by attacking Wolto while he took the Silver Fortress Hostage…

If only…everything could be turned back to where nothing happened, he wouldn’t even mind if it meant that he would be destroyed along the way, to leave his corpse to rot and float in the endless sea of space.

Yet these were all just his own wishful thinking and delusions.

“Are you scared?” Lin Jingheng asked softly. Perhaps he’d never spoken this softly all his life, he almost felt his tone tremble.

“What kind of dumb question is this?” Lu Bixing glanced at him and smiled. The slight awkwardness between them was completely wiped away by his normal tone of voice. “If I said I wasn’t scared, I’d either be a dumbass or have emotional disorder. But if I said I was scared…isn’t that kind of embarrassing? A man’s pride can’t just be thrown down the ground like that before his crush, Commander, are you teasing me? I haven’t even asked you, are you scared?”

Lin Jingheng thought: “Scared out of my wits.”

Yet he didn’t say anything and returned to his normal business tone of voice and asked: “How are you with biochemistry?”

“Nope, sorry.” Despite being all talk about pride earlier, Lu Bixing wasn’t ashamed to admit to his shortcomings. “If it’s a biochip, I can probably help analyze it, but my knowledge of viruses is only average. I don’t have the skills and knowledge to run independent research, let alone something as complex as the Rainbow Virus.”

Lin Jingheng nodded cordially as he hadn’t really expected too much. Lu Bixing was clearly more interested in artificial intelligence than humans; you could depend on him for computer viruses but maybe not human viruses.

“Then record for me.” Lin Jingheng made a small order without looking at him and walked right towards the superintendent.

The Prime Minister was clearly unable to speak; he was lying inside the medical capsule half-unconscious, unclear whether he had heard this bad news or not.

William sat down hopelessly by a dirty bed as if his soul had been sucked out of his body and stared dumbly at Lin Jingheng. After a short moment, he desperately covered his face with his hands.

“Mutation,” he repeated mechanically, “how…if…if the stopper really didn’t work, then what did Webster die for….he even….”

“Who’s Webster?” Lu Bixing asked softly. “Is he the one that died inside the energy field?”

A small whimper came out of William’s mouth.

“He didn’t die in vain.” Lu Bixing walked over and sat beside him. “If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have come nor found you all here. The worst case scenario would be if the mutated virus had spread without anyone knowing.”

The isolation suit made for a virus such as the Rainbow Virus was extremely heavy and affected mobility quite substantially. Lu Bixing struggled multiple times and couldn’t even bend his knees, until he finally had to just sit with his legs straight like a zombie. He almost had the thought of taking off that heavy isolation suit but was scared that he would get infected due to this whim, which would be almost ironic if he hadn’t already been infected before putting the suit on.

‘If’ he didn’t get infected…

Lu Bixing thought about his own choice of words and almost felt like his legs were becoming numb, so he gave up and found a comfortable position to lean beside the wall. He looked towards Lin Jingheng, only to see the latter was completely covered in the heavy layers of the isolation suit and didn’t even reveal a face through it all. He greedily kept his eyes on Lin Jingheng like a puppy, but could only peek under the face mask, unable to make out Lin’s expression.

Lin Jingheng walked in front of William and said without any sentiment: “Do you plan on creating more corpses in memory of the dead?”

William Yu trembled in fear and looked up helplessly at the cold grey eyes behind the isolation mask. Surprisingly, this aggressive man under the influence of the virus forcefully calmed himself down at the provocation.

He sat wordlessly for a while before he spoke up with his voice still trembling: “We all know we’ve been infected, so we’ve been very careful. We don’t have a lot of stoppers, and aside from Webster, I don’t think any of us had made contact with the outside.”

“When the Cayley fleet invaded, I was on an escort mission for the Prime Minister.” William paused, and started from the beginning. “It was right at the time when the Union council summoned an intergalactic conference at Wolto. We didn’t make it for a few reasons: first, the conference notice came in too late and we weren’t given enough time to prepare travel funds. Second, everyone knew that the purpose of this conference was probably military autonomy again and had nothing to do with us.The Prime Minister didn’t want to watch the livestream of the conference, so he organized a galactic inspection last minute to check up on the malfunctioning climate control systems on numerous planets. If we left it alone, it might cost lives, so we wanted to fix this problem before it was too late…and just as we left planet Cayley, we ran into the pirate fleet. We were using business spaceships and only had five escort mechs; after a desperate chase by the pirates we were only left with one mech, which was mine. The Prime Minister abandoned the spaceship and had everyone go onto the mech, and we made an emergency warp to land on satellite planet 3 Ema.”

“Prior to the war, the three satellite planets on Qiming were all business satellites with very few workers on there,” Lu Bixing said. “Satellite 3 Ema must be a spacecraft supply station, right?”

William Yu laughed in distress: “Before we landed, we thought we were pretty lucky. But before the mech could land safely, we were blocked by another fleet, probably the AUS. I don’t think they were targeting the Prime Minister…you should know that the Prime Minister of the Eighth Galaxy probably has less authority than an arms dealer on Cayley. At that time, the pirate fleet was roaming lawlessly around the galaxy, so many spaceships, merchant ships and travel spacecraft that landed around Ema were all captured. There were about 20 or so other colleagues that were with us at the time, and we were all separated by the AUS and locked inside a lab. The labs were fairly big, I’d say there were about 100 people in one. I’m guessing the labs were separated by age and sex because all the female colleagues and an elderly official that were with us were all taken in to a different lab. Our lab was only filled with adult men under the age of 220; food and water supplies were regularly delivered through a wall. At first, some people were thinking there was a chance for us to escape, but the chief engineer with us said this place was called a ‘vacuum terminal’ and was impossible to escape from.”

Lu Bixing explained kindly: “The ‘vacuum terminal’ is the work of Reinberg–which was the name of the infamous human experiment lab that the late king of Cayley had.”

Lin Jingheng questioned: “You said the AUS rebuilt a Reinberg lab, but are you sure this is the AUS and not something by Ares Von?”

How could an anti-technology nature-obsessed cult that would rather live in ancient society be doing human viral experiments?

Why? What’s the purpose?

“The symbols inside and outside the building were all from the AUS, there was nothing from the Cayley pirates. When those people that captured us greeted each other, they would also say all the things the AUS would say; stuff like ‘for nature’ and things.” William paused, “Right, there was also a mini symbol beside the AUS logo, it was a woman with the body of a snake.”

Lin Jingheng turned his gaze up suddenly—human head and snake body, Nuwa!

“Someone got taken away on the first day and returned after three hours. He came back unconscious, and the doctor that followed the Prime Minister did a quick checkup and said he didn’t find anything abnormal, so he concluded that the person might have just been injected with sedative. He woke up in about an hour and returned back to normal. He told us that he was shot with anesthetics the moment he’d been taken out so he didn’t know what happened, and didn’t feel anything strange with his body. However, just in case, the doctor suggested that we leave a small space and let him remain isolated for a while. He also suggested that we keep our alcoholic beverages from dinner every night and extracted the alcohol to make a temporary sterilizer around the person.” William took in a deep breath and continued, “But about…about a day later, he started developing a fever and extreme fatigue. He…he began developing symptoms of the Rainbow Virus.”

Lin Jingheng and Lu Bixing exchanged a quick glance–the mutated virus’ incubation period is still 24 hours, and if the Prime Minister’s personal doctor couldn’t even notice, meant that the symptoms of the mutated virus are almost the same as the original; close enough to at least fool the eyes of a professional.

Lin Jingheng: “How does it spread?”

“Probably air.” William said. “With the doctor, we’ve always been careful and never touched anything from the patient.”

Lin Jingheng’s heart sank.

“Starting the second day, the virus began to spread among us. The people that evacuated to Ema were all intergalactic travelers, and only a few were able to afford traveling on a comfortable spaceship. Most of them came from merchant ships or even mechs and were healthy and strong young men. At first, while feeling despair, everyone still felt confident that they could survive with their immune system as long as they were careful.”

But Death never forgets its prey.