Cat and Rose - Cat & Rose - Chapter 2 - From the Deepest Depths of the Whirlpool (2)

Chapter 2 – From the Deepest Depths of the Whirlpool (2)

The repeating sounds of knocking grew louder and quicker.

Lin Si said to Lucia, “Activate the first level of defence.”

But before his words even fell, a thunderous crack erupted from the other side of the wall.

“The sleeping cabin was…broken through?” Seth frowned.

“I’m afraid so.” Lin Si narrowed his eyes. “It’s a strong mutation caused by the black hole radiation. I hope the experiment sample still retains a conscious mind.”

Even if the sleeping cabin used on the ship was not indestructible, it was still made of strong materials difficult to open with only the strength of a human’s bare hands.

—It demonstrated that the strong mutation obtained by the experimental subject had completely strengthened his body in a very short period of time. This matched with Lucia’s evaluation result of “extremely dangerous”.

Lucia said, “Defence system has been activated.”

For the past few years Area 6 had been conducting genetic modification experiments, it was inevitable that they would encounter situations where the experimental subject would go out of control, hence the Area was equipped with a defence system. However, the distribution of high-lethality weapons and robots were strictly controlled by the military; they could not be allocated to scientific research areas. Therefore, the functions of this defence system were limited to blocking doorway access, ejecting the emergency shelter, and calling Area 3—the area in which the military was located.

Lin Si took out a tube of strong sedative from the cold room, sucked it into the injection needle, strode to the door of the laboratory hall, and said to the others, “All of you back away.”

“Is it okay to just bring tranquillisers? What if it’s too aggressive?” said the child worriedly.

—Then he saw Lin Si press a few unknown buttons, and a metal compartment popped up on the wall. Inside was a silver-white pistol, its model indistinguishable.

The child: “…”

A private stash of lethal weapons!

—No wonder his mentor warned him that although Lin Si was the boss of Area 6, he was a genuinely dangerous person, and that he should minimise contact with him if he could.

Lin Si came to a stop in front of the metal door, passed the iris authentication, and the metal door slowly rose.

It was pitch black inside at first, but Lucia promptly turned on the cold white fluorescent lighting on the ceiling.

A graveyard—this was the first impression the vast and lifeless storage hall gave off.

The four walls are filled with various biological specimens, and hundreds of oval-shaped pale silver sleeping cabins were neatly lined up on the ground. Most of which were empty; a few contained animals, and a few, people.

Sleeping cabin No. 97 was located in the deepest depths of the hall.

Lin Si’s footsteps echoed as he walked closer.

The lights could barely reach the deep end. Sleeping cabin No. 97 was broken from the inside, and the deep-sea liquid that aided cryogenic sleep had spilled all over the floor. An irregular gap was opened up on top of the cabin. Blood could be seen on its edges.

Right at this moment, a hand rested itself on the edge of the gap.

Those slender and long fingers were scratched by the edge, bleeding profusely.

Then came the black top of the head soaking wet, and the frail white shoulders.

The mutant stood up from the sleeping cabin. Dark blue liquid rolled down from his body like a mermaid coming ashore from the sea.

Lin Si raised the muzzle of his gun from a distance to prevent a sudden attack.

“Ling Yi.” He called out the name of the mutant.

There was no response.

The side of the sleeping cabin detailed information on each subject:

Name: Ling Yi

Biological age: 15

Affiliated Programme: limitless, phase two

Experiment Progress: Failure

The mutant looked at Lin Si. His black pupils were emotionless and his muscles were slightly tensed, displaying the vigilance of an animal’s precursor to attack.

It wasn’t all that bad. Although he showed aggression, he still possessed a stable mind, rather than acting in a frenzy.

Lin Si slowly lowered his gun and said as calmly and gently as possible, ”Ling Yi, I am Lin Si. Do you remember me?”

Standing within the dim lights, LIng Yi’s eyes did not reveal even a hint of human emotion.

Lin Si continued to ask. ”Do you understand my words?”

There was still no response. Not even a simple nod or shake of the head, let alone a word.

Seeing this, Lin Si gave up communicating with him in a human way, and instead adopted the most primitive mode of behaviour in animals.

He carefully retreated a few steps back amongst the dense sleeping cabins, weakening his presence and setting aside a safe distance for the other party.

Sure enough, after a period of silence, Ling Yi stepped out of his sleeping cabin and onto the ground, treading on the broken fragments as water dripped down from his pale and slender legs. The shards must have cut the soft soles of his feet, but he did not seem to feel any sensations.

Lin Si took a step forward.

Ling Yi immediately looked at Lin Si with vigilance.

“I won’t hurt you.” Lin Si reached out a hand towards him. “Come.”

As he spoke, he walked towards Ling Yi at an extremely slow speed. For every step he took, he observed the changes in his demeanour.

Ling Yi was in a state of high tension and vigilance at all times, like the little stray cats one would encounter at the street corners back on Earth. When approached by strangers, they were always ready to stretch out their claws to attack or flee swiftly in the opposite direction.

Fortunately, Lin Si possessed some knowledge of animal behaviour and knew how to minimise the level of threat he posed. In his student days, there was roughly a very high chance he could successfully pet a stray cat on the street corner—if he had the intention of doing so.

He approached step by step. Ling Yi remained frozen.

Once the deep-sea liquid was exposed to the air, it would soon evaporate. At this moment, Ling Yi’s black hair was already half-dry, draped on his shoulder thick and soft, and he had a pair of beautiful almond-shaped eyes. The entirety of his form gave off a mysterious beauty. This beauty was not only derived from his delicate features—it was a distant, indescribable feeling, as if it came from the depths of the sea.

He was a failure from Lin Si’s experiment. Previously, no stimulation could make him open his eyes after the genetic modification operation—but such failure had finally woken up under the unknown mutation brought about by the black hole radiation.

Mutations were irreversible, so Lin Si could only hope that those uncontrollable unknown mutations had not completely swallowed his consciousness as a human being.

He slowly reached out to the side of the mutant’s head, his fingers touching his hair, and was about to make a caressing gesture intending to soothe him.

Right at this moment, the spaceship shook violently.

The turbulence caused Ling Yi’s tense nerves to explode all at once. In a flash, he grabbed Lin Si’s wrist, twisted it back, and thrusted his knee upwards, hitting the spot behind Lin Si’s knee accurately, while the other arm was used to press Lin Si down to the ground.

He used an immense level of strength. Lin Si clearly heard the sound of his right arm being dislocated.

He—with a muffled “hmph”—endured that sudden burst of pain.

Fortunately, the turbulence only lasted for a short while, subsiding after a dozen seconds or so.

The others who had been paying attention to the situation inside immediately ran over when the situation occurred, letting out a “Dr Lin!”.

Lin Si saw them in his peripheral vision. “…”

—A tranquiliser gun and a scalpel were normal things to hold, but mixed in were two who couldn’t find any and could only grab beaker racks.

“Don’t come here. Stand back,” he said expressionlessly.

With hesitance, the children looked at him, then at Ling Yi.

Lin Si clearly felt Ling Yi increase his strength.

The sharp pain in Lin Si’s shoulder joint made him tremble. He tried his best to keep a steady voice. “Stand back. Get out. I can handle it.”

They retreated, leaving one who aimed a tranquiliser gun at Ling Yi from a concealed angle.

“Don’t be scared.” Lin Si took a gasp of air and relaxed his body that was taut from pain. “We’re your companions.”

Since he could make such standard combat moves, it meant that he still retained some body memory, so it was impossible for him to have completely lost his consciousness.

Lin Si crossed his uninjured left arm over his chest, sighed, and patted Ling Yi on the hand that was twisting his arm.

“Be a good boy now. Let go of me. Ling Yi…Lingling…”

The grip on his arm loosened slightly.

Lin Si grabbed his hand and pulled it off with gentle force. Luckily, Ling Yi didn’t resist. No longer restrained by him at last, Lin Si stood up and continued his previous approach.

Ling Yi’s vigilance was partially gone, but those beautiful eyes were still fixed firmly onto Lin Si.

“Come with me. I’ll take you for an examination.” Lin Si said to Ling Yi in the gentlest tone he could—the same tone one would use to coax a child.

But the moment a trace of hesitation emerged on Ling Yi’s expression, he suddenly frowned, his face lost all colour, and his whole body began to tremble violently.

Unable to support his body, he slumped forward and crashed into Lin Si’s arms.

Lin Si immediately felt his violent trembles. He lifted his left hand to his neck—his pulse was very violent, far exceeding a human’s maximum rate under any circumstances.

He held Ling Yi and patted his back.

Ling Yi was squeezing him hard with his arms. He shut his eyes tightly, his long and thick eyelashes quivering, and buried his head in Lin Si’s chest with all his might.

Finally, he uttered the first syllables of a human language.

“It hurts…”

This time, there was no need for Lin Si to give any orders. The children took it on to divide themselves: two to carry, while the others went to the laboratory to turn on the physical examination equipment. Meanwhile, Seth went to prepare the treatment equipment—after all, Lin Si had broken an arm, so he wouldn’t be better off in any way.

Lucia had assumed control of the medical cabin where full body examination was carried out, but Ling Yi’s hand kept a tight grip on Lin Si. It took a great deal of effort for the children to separate them successfully.

Seth helped Lin Si treat the right arm, while Lin Si focused on the various data figures on Ling Yi’s body on the screen.

“A disruptive mutation. Prepare to sample and analyse.” Lin Si pressed his temples. “The adaptive reaction is also quite violent. I hope he can pull through.”

The few youths who did not previously participate in Lin Si’s programme had applied for information from Lucia and were now furiously studying the follow-up operation of human gene mutation experiments. They were beginning to look quite reliable.

Lin Si left the matter to them and went to check on the ship’s navigation status.

As a system still under test, Lucia hadn’t yet had the time to rehearse complex navigation environments, and yet she showed excellent navigation ability, relying on the gravitational field and angular momentum to analyse the structure of the black hole. Apart from occasional turbulence, the spaceship remained steady the whole time.

Three days had passed. While their voyage was smooth, Ling Yi was in terrible condition.

From the outside, his body didn’t go through many changes—beautiful facial features, a youthful figure, elegant shapes of muscles that were faintly visible—but on the inside was an earth-shattering mutation.

Upon receiving today’s test results, Lin Si frowned slightly and handed them to Seth. “Look at this.”

One of Seth’s main areas of study was anthropology. After reading the pages back and forth and comparing the test results of Lin Si’s subject, he also frowned. “Let’s not talk about the tissues—even the cell shape is different. In a strict sense, he can hardly be considered a human being.”

During the time Ling Yi was comatose, his body had been constantly changing, and at the same time, a strong adaptive reaction had also occurred, to the point where his organs had failed several times. But even so, he still miraculously survived in the end.

His body was also unusually sensitive to foreign matter. The injections used to alleviate the adaptive reactions did not work at all—not even the nutrient fluids for life support—and could even cause a more intense reaction.

“His will to live is very strong.” Standing beside the bed, the corners of Lin Si’s lips raised slightly. “But if he’s still not waking up, he might starve to death.”

He patted the delicate skin on that small face. “It’s time to eat.”

Ling Yi’s eyelashes fluttered, and he slowly opened his eyes.

Seth and the others cried out, “Master Warlock is incredible! Master Warlock is formidable!”

Ling Yi was much calmer than before when he woke up for the first time, but the next moment he saw Lin Si, he immediately tensed up in vigilance. Swiftly distancing himself, he bolted upright, clutched the blanket, and pressed himself against the wall on one side of the bed.

Seeing this little thing—lying on his bed, wearing his own clothes, and staring at him full of hostility and fear—Lin Si made a “tsk” noise and asked Seth, “He doesn’t look right. What’s wrong with him?”

“If I analyse his behaviour with an animalistic approach, he might’ve associated the pain that caused him to faint with physical contact with you.”

Lin Si let out a malicious chuckle.

He took out a tube of nutrient fluid, pulled out the valve, put it into his mouth under Ling Yi’s gaze, sucked a few mouthfuls from the straw, and asked Ling Yi, “Are you hungry?”

Lin Si didn’t know if Ling Yi understood, but at least from those gestures, Ling Yi could understand that this was an action of eating, and immediately glued his eyes to the nutritional supplements—it would be reasonable to say that he was very hungry right now.

After a bout of inner struggle, he opened his mouth and accepted the tube offered by Lin Si.

His soft red lips held the transparent straw, and the white nutrient fluid was sucked in.

—But in the next instant, the nutrient fluids were spit out along with the straw.

Ling Yi’s complexion was very bad. He coughed a few times and even retched for a bit, his face pale.

Lin Si raised his eyebrows. “What’s the matter now?”

Seth looked completely serious. “Doctor, I don’t think this is a physiological reaction. For people who are used to living on Earth, the nutrient fluids are extremely unpleasant and intolerable. I’m guessing that he thinks you’re trying to kill him with poison.”

“…Hm.”

Lin Si only saw the pretty little thing look up at him with a fierce glare—even his eyes were red with anger.

*

The author has something to say:

the little cutie who destroyed the sleeping cabin with his bare hands

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