Chapter 298: Infected [Part 1]
Cillin put on a protective suit, grabbed his tools and walked out of the spaceplane.
Just as he had predicted earlier, robots weren’t the solution to this problem. If it was they would’ve found a solution a long while ago; Black Viper’s many advanced robots were no joke after all. But the fact was no significant progress had been made thus far, and there were some things that only humans could only perform themselves.
Wheeze lifted its paw for a moment before putting it back down dejectedly when Cillin walked out of the spaceplane. If it could knock him out and take away from this place, it would. This place was far too dangerous and strange, and there was nothing it could do to help Cillin when it came to the Zebra Virus.
It was very quiet outside, but a careful person could probably catch the sounds of distant explosions or even glimpses of orange flashes in the sky. It didn’t take a genius to imagine the terrible riots that were going on in those areas right now.
Cillin walked towards that location slowly and carefully. Every time he took a step, he would observe the numbers on his scanner. He planned to stop the second he noticed anything unusual. But strangely, he didn’t find anything suspicious despite getting real close to the spot the robot malfunctioned. At the very least, his scanner hadn’t detected anything abnormal.
“Wheeze, are you sensing anything?” Cillin looked at Wheeze for answers, but Wheeze shook its head.
“I just feel very uncomfortable and strangely terrified, that’s all. I don’t sense anything besides the Zebra Virus… wait a second. The density of viruses in the air is higher than normal! Don’t move, Cillin. Let me head over and check things out.”
“Be careful.”
Wheeze walked forwards and stood next to the robot. Suddenly, it felt a terrible chill all over its body and puffed up like a porcupine.
“What’s wrong, Wheeze?” The sight of Wheeze’s unusual reaction worried Cillin greatly.
“Don’t… don’t come closer!”
Step by step, Wheeze backed towards Cillin. It was a painful sight to watch Wheeze walk unsteadily like rust had formed over Wheeze’s joints or something.
When Wheeze finally returned to Cillin’s side, it let out a long sigh of relief and said, “That place is too strange, Cillin. I think it’s better if we avoid it entirely.”
“Alright, let’s head back.” Cillin understood that some things couldn’t be rushed. It was already a step forwards to find this place.
He was just about to walk away when he suddenly stopped in his tracks and looked at his own hand. Wheeze was. Wheeze was relieved that Cillin had agreed to return, and it ran towards the spaceplane the moment it shook off the unusual sensation from earlier and loosened the stiff hair on its body. However, it quickly noticed that Cillin was staring blankly at both his hands without moving.
“Cillin, come on, we need to go back!”
Wheeze was really starting to worry as Cillin still wasn’t responding. He couldn’t possibly have crashed just like that robot, could he?
“Cillin!!” Wheeze ran over while shouting. Cillin finally turned to look at it.
“Wheeze.”
“What?”
“I’ve been infected.”
“So wh… WHAT!!” Wheeze jumped into air in shock. “WH-WH-WH-WH-WH-WHAT DID YOU SAY?!”
“I’ve been infected.”
“That’s impossible! You’re wearing a protective suit!” As if to prove its point, Wheeze circled around Cillin once and examined every crook and nanny. There were no tears on the protective suit at all. The breathing mask, the breathing tube and the newly added virus filters were all perfectly intact as well. So how could Cillin be infected? How could he?!
“The suit’s no use.”
“You’re lying! Gu Xin at that Ba Ba guy said that this is the latest protective suit! It’s what the crazies in Black Viper and the old people in the RAS came up with! It can’t be no use! You shouldn’t lie, Cillin, a liar will turn into faeces!” Wheeze was seriously tempted to scratch Cillin’s face if the situation was quite so dire.
“I’m not lying.” Cillin sat down on the ground. When he was ready to leave just now, he suddenly noticed that a kind of substance had passing through the suit and his skin. Later on, the molecules in his body suddenly began taking the form of the Zebra Virus. It was slow, but it was without a doubt transforming into the first variant virus the research teams of RAS and Black Viper were familiar with.
The moment the first variant virus took form completely, it would begin the next stage of its transformation and turn into the middle variant virus.
If Cillin wasn’t a living computer, he would never have noticed this.
Even now, he was still recovering from his shock. He never thought that the so-called “original virus” would be “that”.
“Wheeze, I found the original virus,” Cillin said. He sounded so normal that no one would ever suspect that he was infected.
Wheeze was currently running in circles and panicking, so it eyes immediately lit up when it heard that Cillin had found the original virus. According to the research teams from both sides, discovering the original virus would speed up the creation of an effective vaccine massively.
“Where? What is it?!” Wheeze asked hastily.
Cillin pressed an unassuming part on his communicator and caused a green screen to appear above his wrist. Then, he started typing really quickly. His movement was too fast for a normal person to capture. Even the symbols and characters flashing on the screen was the same.
But Wheeze was not a normal cat or a person. Its eyes started changing as Cillin typed away at his program, and soon its pupils widened so much that it took up the entire eyeball. It looked incredibly eerie amidst the darkness and green lighting.
“I see it!”
Wheeze projected what it saw into the air for Cillin. It was the microscopic image of some flying dots and some ribbons after all other biological substances were filtered.
These ribbons were the so-called Zebra Virus, and the dots swimming around aimlessly was the unknown substance that no one had figured out yet in the molecular map. The sparse dots were the “original virus” everyone was looking for.
No one could’ve imagined that the unknown substance would be the pathogen. Even Cillin was stunned after he became infected and discovered the truth.
He had never seen a virus that was made of one substance alone. It was like a pure, simple atom, except that it was full of mysteries and its internal structure was impossible to define or confirm.
Even if the researchers did discover this, the challenge to create an effective vaccine would only be harder than ever before. It was like the researchers had prepared a tonne of electricity to shock their target, only to discover that the target was really an insulator.
Worse, this substance could penetrate protective suits and infect its victims.
Cillin used this discovery to create a whole new program and scanning method for his sampler. Wheeze also took a share of the burden by tracking all the samplers in real time and updating their scanning methods.
Two hours later, the results came out.