Can Ci Pin - - - Chapter 77

Chapter 77 – Body Temperature Currently 37.9 ℃

Lin Jingheng already had his suspicions from Monoeyed Hawk’s reaction and Lu Bixing’s strange genes, but the cruel reality was still beyond his imagination. He thought Lu Bixing had been well-cared for all these years in the Eighth Galaxy; he was like a child with endless energy, carefree of the world. He thought whatever had happened in the past was already in the past, regardless if they were good or bad memories.

He thought…

For a split second, he suddenly remembered the time when he took Penny out to deliver a mech to Lu Bixing back on Beijing-β. When he’d passed by the window of the classroom and overheard the lecture Lu Bixing was giving on genetically engineered pets–

“Have you ever seen a snake with a human head?”

“Someone gifted one to my father. I snuck into the underground chamber and found her, a little girl…”

“Then I shot her dead with a gun.”

Fifteen years meant it hadn’t been a smooth treatment process that happened over night; it would have had to go through countless failures, countless trials, and countless breakdowns.

And just how tough and fragile should human life be?

A little boy’s biggest dream was for it to snow on Cayley so that he could finally get the permission to go outside and play. When he dragged his disabled body down and found Monoeyed Hawk’s underground chamber on accident, only to see a scene similar to Primal Alien’s human laboratory, what had he thought?

Monoeyed Hawk wouldn’t personally get involved with experiments of genetically engineered pets, but if he was willing to dish out the money that also means another madman would willingly pick up the job.

Was the act of purchasing not another form of covering up?

Those monsters with human heads looked out from their breeding tanks to look at the little boy lifelessly. They were the same as him, but were also here because of him.

And when he first discovered them, when the little boy first raised his gun in panic and shot down that young girl…who did he really want to shoot down?

Lu Bixing was always good at living his life and finding all the fun it had to offer, and could even turn even the simplest act of eating and drinking into an aesthetic value. Sometimes he went overboard and acted like a spoiled rich boy that didn’t follow the common ways of society.

Was it possible that someone like him would once think that living itself was a burden?

And yet as unbearable and harsh as it was to shoulder, his life was like an arrow shot from the bow that could not return. He had to continue to fly out, otherwise how would a coward be able to face a Monoeyed Hawk that kept the virus strain hidden at all costs, how would he face those three billion lives that were lost into the stardust…and how would he face those human-shaped monsters inside the dark and cold underground chamber that were stripped of everything from their lives?

Lin Jingheng didn’t know what to say.

“See,” Lu Bixing forcefully broke the silence and put a hand on Lin Jingheng’s stiff shoulders covered by the isolation suit. “These little things aren’t fun and can’t help the situation right now, so why do you have to ask? Let me put this out there too; now that you’ve heard about it you can just ignore it from now on, you don’t need to console or pity me or I’ll get mad. I’m really vicious when I’m mad.”

Lin Jingheng suddenly felt it was hard to breathe, as if a heavy rock weighing as much as his life was resting on his chest. It also felt like a fishbone was stuck in his throat and he couldn’t speak; he wanted to vomit, perhaps from all the unspeakable words that were stuck inside him. Maybe the heavy isolation suit was pressing against him; he felt like his back was stuck in place, making cracking sounds when he moved.

The next instant, Lin Jingheng realized this wasn’t just a normal muscle stiffness.

He softly pressed on his wrist silently and waited for the headphone to make a mechanical announcement to him: “current body temperature is 37.9℃.”

Low fever.

Lin Jingheng slowly let out a deep breath; the invisible butcher knife above his head had finally sliced down on him. It wasn’t a sharp pain to the bone, but a deep and dull pain that struck deep down into his body along with Lu Bixing’s 30 years of memories.

He didn’t say anything and only stopped Zhanlu from speaking inside the mental network. He then stood up and used the excuse of checking the map to stay away from Lu Bixing, quietly calculating how long they had before they reached the destination that Hope had given them.

When Lu Xin brought the vaccine of the Rainbow Virus to the Eighth Galaxy, he could never have guessed that his own son would be fighting with it for the rest of his life. Just like how Lin Jingheng couldn’t have guessed he wouldn’t die under the hands of the committee or the pirate ambush in the Heart of the Rose, only to live until now without any issues just to find out that he might end up dying from the mutated Rainbow Virus. This twist and turn of events could almost be rewritten into a comedy.

It was a new day in Wolto time.

The Milky Way City on Qiming was just entering dawn as members of the Self-Defense Squad lined up wearing their isolation suits. They had been running around for a whole day without time to rest for food and drinks, and because of how exhausted they were they quickly walked through the streets wordlessly like a group of assassins.

The residents of the city peeked out from their windows in various attempts to figure out what these people were here for. They’d already been living in different extremes and were tired of having to survive; they didn’t want anyone else to disturb their lives regardless if it was the Union or pirates.

Saturday’s footsteps began to feel heavy as he raised his head to look towards the sunrise. The sky was clear blue with soft clouds spreading its wings in the air; it was dry but good weather on the planet. Qiming’s climate was on the better side with a decent average temperature; Milky Way City had a dry and wet season respectively with spring at the end of the year, making it an ideal location for various plants to grow…just not people.

Just as he was jumbling up thoughts within his mind, a sudden scream cried out from the crowded residential area.

It was a woman screaming from the bottom of her heart for a full half minute; the spectators around her all held their breaths until she paused for a few seconds before changing into a loud cry as she attempted to say something.

A bad feeling rose inside Saturday’s heart and gestured for his team to follow him. Just as he was about to walk inside the building of the resident, a man ran down from the stairs before he could even get to the first flight, running headfirst into Saturday. He fell back onto the ground, and without any apology or complaint, the man frantically ran off with all fours on the ground as if he had just seen a ghost before him.

The person was wearing a navy blue dress shirt with some pharmacy name embroidered on his collar. Saturday quickly took notice–he knew that some poor people on the Eighth Galaxy were like this; they wouldn’t go to the hospital when they got sick, nor would they be able to afford a medical capsule,only able to rely on friends in local pharmacies they knew. The pharmacy employees usually had some basic medical knowledge and could diagnose common illnesses before they bring out expired medicine to sell to those poor people.

Saturday wrenched him up by the collar: “What are you running for!?”

The person’s legs were like noodles and couldn’t even keep him upright. He trembled and blurted out: “R-rainbow…”

Saturday’s eyes widened as he felt his sweat inside the isolation suit turn cold. He pulled out a medical scanner and ran up the stairs to see a woman with a perm kneeling on the floor of the hallway. She was carrying an unconscious little girl in her arms; the little girl’s face was completely red from high fever, a strange cut on her hand already rotting her flesh.

The alert from the scan indicated that this was an infected patient.

Yet this little girl wasn’t on their search list.

January 15th, year NSC 276, a 6-year-old girl named Angela was confirmed to contract the mutated Rainbow Virus without ever stepping out of her house nor coming close to the main area of infection. As the captain of the Self-Defense Squad and supervisor of the patrol, Saturday immediately quarantined the entire residential area and, in desperation, asked someone to bring a vaccine of the Rainbow Virus.

The old vaccine didn’t work, as expected, so he could only contact Turan as he watched the virus destroy the little girl’s immune system. She was too young and fragile, so her symptoms began showing up much faster than in a grown adult. The rotting of her skin was almost visible to the human eye as it engulfed her whole hand; before the virus could even begin spreading throughout the rest of her body, she died of organ failure.

A security camera three blocks down recorded the course of events that occurred 48 hours before the girl contracted the virus.

After a quick investigation, it was determined that the only other living creatures the little girl came in contact with aside from her own family were a few sparrows. One of the sparrows pecked her finger.

From previous known methods of spread for the traditional Rainbow Virus, aside from animals that had eaten rotten flesh and corpses, no other animals were able to carry the virus. And animals that have contracted the virus would be affected much faster than humans, so they wouldn’t be able to travel while carrying the virus.

In other words, the mutated Rainbow Virus could now be carried on any living creatures and be spread without anyone noticing.

And yet this was only just the start.

Within the next two hours, Turan received five suspected cases of the mutated Rainbow Virus and stiffened up in alarm—the virus may already be spreading.

And spreading faster than the virus were people’s fears.

Since encountering the infected patient in the night market, rumors started spreading throughout Milky Way City. Lu Bixing managed to settle the situation at the time and calmed the crowd, but little did they know that other contractors of the virus began to show up one by one within the following two days. Under immense panic and horror, the air within the city began to thin out; the sole public hospital of the city was completely blocked off at the entrance. People were all wearing gloves and masks in desperation to cover themselves up as they demanded the hospital to explain the source of the virus and give out vaccines.

Under the barricade of the angry civilians, the hospital had to forcefully close its door. Foucault personally led a group of Self-Defense Squad members in an attempt to maintain order, which ended up becoming a futile effort when they were blocked inside the hospital by the crowd.

“Captain, we can’t go on like this,” Weasel rushed to ask Turan. “Do you plan on giving them an explanation or put down the riot by force? We have to make a decision soon. Either way, we can’t let them crowd around like this; if anyone in the crowd is infected, we can’t control the virus if it ends up spreading.”

White was checking the inventory of the remaining medical supplies for Turan: “Why don’t we just tell them the truth? Just say this is a mutated virus and we don’t have the vaccine on hand.”

Turan and Weasel both responded at the same time.

Turan: “No.”

Weasel: “Don’t be stupid.”

Turan: “The trauma of the Rainbow Virus in the Eighth Galaxy is still too fresh in their memories; we don’t even know what’s going on with the mutated virus, so announcing the truth will only create more panic within the crowd. We don’t have credibility with our words here and no authority to control the city, so if anything were to happen we’ll end up becoming the passive observers.”

“Not even just passive. You see, these people in the Eighth Galaxy might look like they don’t give a shit about life most of the time, but when it comes to times where their lives are put on the line, they’ll do anything to make sure they stay alive. There were people that had thrown patients and suspected cases who had been close to those patients into the fire while they were still alive back then; countless lives were lost because of that paranoia, do you really think it’s an act by those pirates?” Weasel let out a sigh, “as for the people that were already infected, those that hid their symptoms were considered decent, but some people would purposely barge into residential areas and throw their blood into crowds. You kids don’t understand, I lived through the Rainbow Virus pandemic back then; over half the people didn’t die from the virus, and were instead killed by other people. One pandemic can really turn unrelated people into two camps that fight to the death against each other.”

White couldn’t comment on that.

“If I were to say,” Weasel held out his rough and yellowish hand for a cigarette from the soldier beside him. He lit the cigarette up and walked up towards Turan after a deep inhale of the smoke. “Captain, when you have to manipulate and play the underhand, don’t hold too tightly on your morals. Listen to me and put all those people that contracted the virus into the hospital and quarantine them. Then find some carrot, glucose, salt water, or whatever and give it out to console the people outside. This might sound morally wrong, but buying an extra minute is still an extra minute for us. We’ll just have to wait and see if Monoeyed Hawk and Professor Lu can help out.”

Turan had no other choice and could only nod in agreement as she swiftly reported to Lin Jingheng the situation on Qiming.

The rising body temperature caused sweat to roll down Lin Jingheng’s face and his blood ran cold even at its current state; he quickly responded in a lower tone: “‘Mobilize the armed mobiles and lock down Milky Way City. Remember to release energy field disruptional signals in case civilians…Zhanlu, what happened?”

Before he could finish, Turan’s signal disappeared.

“Sir, there’s an extreme energy reaction half a sailing day away. We’re about to enter the active zone of unknown armed forces, if we don’t cut off the connection here there’s a 75% chance that the long-distance signal will be exposed.”

Just as Zhanlu finished, the silhouette of the enemy could be seen on the giant navigation screen–it was an armed fleet made up of about a few hundred small mechs patrolling around the ‘AUS Homebase’ that Hope had told them about. They were waiting grandly around their base as if they were ready to welcome prey into their nest.

Both Lin Jingheng and Lu Bixing’s hearts sank at this sight.

Hope didn’t have good intentions to help out.

Turan stood dumbfounded for two seconds after the connection got cut off and immediately realized what happened. She turned and howled in anger: “Where’s Hope? I’m going to fucking rip him apart!”

And yet whether Hope got roasted or burned, Lin Jingheng had no escape anymore.

“Back when the Rainbow Virus of Reinberg took over the Eighth Galaxy, within a span of a month it spread even into the Union. The Rainbow Virus from the lab on Ema spread within 72 hours with no survivors. Now that we look at it, if every animal that came in contact with a patient can potentially carry the virus, sparrows, rats…insects flying around, then the worst case scenario is that it would be too late to lock down Milky Way City.” Lin Jingheng’s throat began to grow inflamed as if a rusty knife was cutting his flesh inside. He cleared his throat quietly and tasted blood in his mouth.

Lu Bixing felt something off out of instinct; Zhanln had been strangely quiet as if his chatterbox function had been completely turned off and completely transformed into a navigational AI that only responds when prompted. Yet he wasn’t sure because it was pretty normal for Zhanlu to be silenced by his bossy master for no reason.

“Lin, are you okay?”

“For now, yes.” Lin Jingheng answered without a change of expression, “Zhanlu, retract your mental network and make sure to keep a camouflage.”

Lu Bixing: “If they can’t control the spread of the virus when Turan can’t reach you, what would they do?

Lin Jingheng didn’t answer–if the pandemic couldn’t be contained, Turan would recollect her fleet and retreat outside Milky Way City as fast as she could. At the same time, in order to block off the spread of the virus, she might consider a missile.

And yet after hearing Lu Bixing’s “I was born in debt to this place”, Lin Jingheng couldn’t bring himself to say this out loud anymore.

“I remember back when we were in the factory, Captain Turan had asked if you would consider contacting the ‘central’ under extreme circumstance,” Lu Bixing continued to ask, “what is the central? What’s considered an extreme circumstance?”

At this point, it was pointless to keep it a secret before anyone. Lin Jingheng broke open the last of his can of worms without any care of what impression he might give Lu Bixing and spilled the beans on the big conspiracy game he left in the Union: “Before I left the Union, I arranged various places to relocate the Silver Ten. Among them, besides the Ninth Squadron that I left on standby for immediate orders, everyone else was placed throughout the seven galaxies by Lu Xin’s old subordinates–these subordinates were personally appointed by me into the central militia of their designated galaxies. In the original plan, when the time came after these central militias had gained significant control of their territories, the Silver Ten’s job would be to light the last torch and supply arms for the central militia in order to join in a siege to force the Eden Committee to their knees. During this time, in order to maintain a smooth communication between myself and the Silver Ten, I set up a ‘three factor’ communication network for us.”

Lu Bixing was a well-read scholar and immediately realized what the ‘three factor’ meant—the long distance code, central, and backup central.

The long distance code is the communication network created through the known transfer portals throughout the seven galaxies; as long as the Union isn’t completely destroyed and the Silver Ten didn’t get forced out of their positions, even if Lin Jingheng went out to the extraterritorial area, he could still maintain a hand on the situation within the Union in real-time.

And in the rare case that the communication network broke down, they could resort to the second option–to use the ‘central’ that they previously decided on as the main signal transfer point to rebuild the communication. In the case that the first ‘central’ point also lost contact, there was also a ‘backup central’ that could be used as double security.

“The Union faced a sudden pirate invasion, Eden is completely destroyed, and my long-distance communication with the Silver Ten is completely cut off.” Lin Jingheng said, “our central transfer point was on Wolto–but Wolto is completely out of control now.”

Lu Bixing had no idea what to say; he just suddenly feel like Lin Jingheng should probably avoid gambling for the rest of his life, otherwise even gambling with all the worst luck in the universe probably can’t negate his awful luck: “What’s your backup central then?”

“Someone I trust greatly,” Lin Jingheng said. “The Third Squadron is the technology division and would have quit the Silver Fortress when I left. I left them a letter of recommendation to let them stay beside that person….the head commander in chief of the Union’s Military Council, Chief Woolf.”

Lu Bixing’s eyes lit up: “Isn’t Commander Woolf in charge of the City of Angels right now?”

If they really end up walking into a dead end, could they use this connection to request help from the Union?

Lin Jingheng’s gaze shot past the isolation mask as he slowly shook his head.

“Ever since I saw the Model 3,” he said quietly, “I can’t bring myself to trust anyone in the City of Angels anymore.”