Chapter 199: The Secret Inside the Chip [Part 2]
When Cillin came back from his thoughts, he couldn’t help but sigh at Shelt’s madness: to think that he would hide all these important information in his own mtDNA!!
Looking at the data comparison and mitochondrial sequence profile analysis, it was obvious that Shelt’s current mtDNA didn’t follow its original sequence. His current mtDNA sequence contained many flaws, and the illnesses they caused meant that he had to rely on medical instruments often to function in daily life.
This also meant that Shelt had modified his own mtDNA in order to preserve these data in secret, even if the modification caused him a physical defect. What kind of madness was this?!
There was no doubt that Shelt was a pretty extreme person. He reminded Cillin of Horay. Back then, Horay had worked underground all year and employed a convoluted and primitive method in his research to avoid the planet judiciary’s investigation. He had even modified himself to have an inhuman appearance.
One must never underestimate the madness of researchers such as them. They were ruthless towards others, and they were even more ruthless towards themselves.
When he had decoded this segment of Shelt’s mtDNA and read all of the data inside, the last piece of information shocked Cillin greatly.
Not only did Shelt modify his own mtDNA, he had even modified his own genetic material. The modification was made to conceal data rather than to improve his genes. As a result, the modification caused his constitution and genotype rank to drop several ranks lower than their initial state. Currently Shelt’s genotype rank was rank C, and his initial genotype rank have might very well been rank A. A man who could modify his own genotype to drop from rank A to rank C had to be unusually ruthless.
“Czedow, have you collected all of Shelt’s genetic information?” Cillin asked.
“I did. Just in case, I’ve also collected some tissues samples and preserved them, including his somatic cells and gonadotropic cells.”
Cillin’s eyes twitched at his answer. Gonadotropic cells… how on earth did he get that?
“However… I discovered that his gonadotropic tissue samples contained two different sets of DNA. One of them was similar to his somatic tissue samples, but the other one was different.”
Cillin was astonished. It was true that there were some other races in GAL who were born this way, but such circumstances rarely happened among normal human beings, and there was no doubt that Shelt was a normal human being.
“If that’s the case, then the amount of information stored at the latter half of the chip is double what I’d initially imagined.”
All this time he thought that Shelt was just one of the many important researchers in ‘Miracle’, but now it would appear that Shelt possessed a wealth of information that far exceeded what he should have had for his post. But if he were to rate Shelt’s status in ‘Miracle’ based on the amount of information he possessed, then it didn’t make sense for ‘Miracle’s’ higher up to bomb the research base with Shelt in it so carelessly.
Suddenly Cillin thought of ‘Aier’, the AI system Juno had gifted to Shelt.
It would appear that most of these information had been gathered by ‘Aier’.
Cillin recalled Shelt’s final words, the meaning behind them and the hatred in his eyes. His hatred had not been directed at Cillin, but at the manager Kedwell who had ordered the destruction of the research base. Shelt had given up the chip to Cillin in order to take revenge against Kedwell.
He put away the chip safely and told Czedow to keep this record a secret. He contacted Knight after comforting Tang Qiuqiu and inspecting the condition of Snowball and Scarlet Wind for a bit.
At first, he was prepared to discuss the next grueling battle they were about to face with Knight. However, Knight had brought him some good news. The military’s reinforcements would be arriving six hours later, so they would survive as long as they could hold on for six hours.
Since the army would be showing up in six hours, Cillin decided against releasing the remaining parasite eggs.
Once the sandstorm had passed, there was no doubt Cillin and the others would be facing Kedwell’s killers sent over to perform their ‘cleanup’ duties.
The environment slowly brightened as the sand covering the sky thinned over time. The wind was slowing down too.
“What do we do with Snowball and Scarlet Wind?” Tang Qiuqiu asked.
“The drugs could suppress the excitation drugs inside their system temporarily for twenty hours. I’ll inject them with a different kind of drug later so they’d be awake for what comes next. With the excitation drugs temporarily suppressed, they wouldn’t go crazy like before.” Cillin answered.
Ten minutes later, Cillin received the action signal from Knight and gave Scarlet Wind and Snowball an injection.
After they woke up, both Scarlet Wind and Snowball felt as if there was a blank period in their memories. However, Cillin didn’t give them the time to recollect their memories. They mobilised after he had informed everyone about the things to pay attention and their route.
If the sandstorm were to come to a complete stop, they would be completely exposed. If that happened they would be put on the defensive, so they might as well leave this place sooner, find a new place to hide in and engage in sniper and counter-sniper warfare.
Cillin and Knight had worked together in Seven Lights before. Although there was a lull of almost four years, the duo still worked pretty smoothly with each other. A hand gesture was all that’s needed for either party to know which path they should advance stealthily into next.
Cillin produced a map of the nearby city and terrain after scanning their surroundings. Cillin informed Tang Qiuqiu and the rest of the gang of their planned route.
The gray cat opened its blurry eyes and let out a yawn. It threw a glance at the city covered up by the sandstorm while still crouched at the edge of the wall and said quietly, “Actually, there’s a safer way than this.”
“What way?”
Both Cillin and Tang Qiuqiu turned to look at the gray cat.
The gray cat licked its paws and said calmly, “We dig a hole.”
Cillin: “…”
“Our main objective is to delay until the military’s support troops show up and not attack them anyway. So as long as we hide underground and do a little bit of ‘surgery’ to their underground detection devices, six hours is not a problem.”
The truth is that you’re too lazy to move, aren’t you? Cillin complained on the inside.
“You can dig underground, sure, but what about the rest of us?”
The gray cat looked at Czedow, “This guy here is an excavator.”
Cillin cast a glance at Czedow. That actually makes… a bit of sense.
“Where will we be more hidden?” Cillin asked.
The killers might pay attention to the ground surface while they were ‘cleaning’. Wouldn’t it be obvious that something’s off if they saw a hole on the ground?
The gray cat looked at their surroundings once before declaring affirmatively with a whisker shake, “We will hide right under the goddess statue’s skirt!”
“…”
Two minutes later, Knight looked up from beside the goddess’ leg. At a corner where the skirt had hidden it from view, there was a hole that was just wide enough for one people to pass through. He was tongue-tied for a very, very long time.
In reality, they were prepared to fight a tough six-hours war. However, Yue Lou agreed with Cillin’s plan and insisted that the most important thing in a mission was the results and not the process. Their mission was to protect the evidence and turn it in to the support troops once they showed up, and they would do just that.
The hole on the ground surface was a little tight because it was necessary to keep themselves hidden. However, once they’d gone underground the hole was widened a little for easier and more comfortable access. The tunnel stretched all the way to the bottom of a certain tall building inside the city.
Once the hole entrance beneath the goddess statue’s skirt was covered up, it would be very difficult for anyone to find it unless they scanned it using an instrument or looked at it closely.
The remaining scent and minor tracks they left at the goddess statue were also blown away by the sandstorm.
“This isn’t a bad place.” Yue Lou nodded in satisfaction after he passed through the temporary underground tunnel and entered their temporary underground hideout.
They’d all carried a portable oxygen equipment with them for their operation. Therefore, they were in no danger of suffocation even if this place was sealed.
“We may have shielded ourselves from their scans, but we still don’t know what’s happening up there.” Feng Haicao frowned and said.
They were all a little worried because they couldn’t get a grip on the situation.
“Czedow, head up and see how things are going.” Cillin said.
“Don’t you think that’s a little unsafe?” Someone in Knight’s operation team disagreed.
They didn’t know that Czedow was a robot, and they were worried that his presence up there would expose all of them.
“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”
After looking at Cillin once, Knight stopped the two people inside his team that were about to speak up, “Let’s do it this way then. Czedow, please.”
As usual, Czedow gave him a slightly gentlemanly nod and began digging a hole through the ground.
They couldn’t see his hand movements. The stones and soils just parted to Czedow’s left and right sides as he dug forwards and maintained a walking pace. So little noise was generated throughout the process that it didn’t sound like he was digging at all.
Everyone in the army acknowledged those people who possessed real abilities, much less a comrade whom they had gone through thick and thin together. Czedow’s image among Knight’s team was instantly improved to a new level.
They hadn’t noticed how he dug through the ground when they were following behind Czedow earlier, but now that they saw his handiwork they couldn’t help but sigh in astonishment and admiration. At first, they thought that Czedow was working with a high tech digging machine, but now they realized that all Czedow did was putting his hands into the soil and pulling it apart.
He sure doesn’t look like it. This guy’s pretty good!
After Czedow had gone up, he avoided the security cameras at a secluded corner at the basement of the building and transformed his body. He then stuck himself close to the surrounding metallic objects. If someone were to walk in and look around, they wouldn’t notice at all that there was an invader inside.
Czedow began transmitting what was happening around the building through the security network to Cillin.
Some of the polluted gas had swept into the city after the research base was destroyed. As a result, some people’s nervous system were affected, and a number of manpower had to be split out to take care of these people. There weren’t many remaining parasites, and they were quickly taken out by Kedwell’s men.
Some of the research base’s security guards that managed to escape were all sniped and killed. The people, beasts and other creatures that managed to escape the lab were also killed after they were distributed accordingly around the city.
However, Kedwell was extremely angry at a certain tall building inside the city because he still hadn’t found those infiltrators. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that they were blown to dust along with the research base.
“Increase the amount of people and keep searching! Comb through every inch of the place and investigate every guard thoroughly! We cannot let anyone suspicious people live even if it turns out to be a mistake later!” Kedwell roared angrily.
The army would show up in just a few hours. If those little rats managed to produce some unsavory evidences when that happens, then his future would be very dim.
However, one hour passed, two hours passed, three hours…
There was more and more sweat on Kedwell’s forehead. His communicator rang, and a person clad in military uniform and wearing a rear admiral’s badge stood on the other side of the communicator.
“Mr. Kedwell, long time no see.”