Chapter 300: You’re Lying Again! [Part 1]
The underground shelter was about fifty square meters wide, and there were a dozen or so patients inside it. But unlike the woman and her sister, their disease had progressed far enough that their mobility had been robbed away from them. Their muscles were clearly softening or hardening in a stripy pattern, and their eyes reflected the state of their minds.
Some people’s eyes were deathly still. They allowed themselves to be injected with drugs that helped alleviate their symptoms, but didn’t try to speak or do anything. Some people’s eyes were full of rage and sorrow. It was clear that they were still attached to this world. There were also some who seemed to have accepted the fact that they were going to die and decided to spend their last moments calmly reminiscing about the past.
The ones who wished to cling to the living were mostly youngsters, and the ones who accepted that they were going to die were mostly elderly people. When faced with a life threatening situation, a person’s reaction could be drastically different depending on their age and experience.
There were some people who could still move like the woman and her sister. These people helped to clean the patients and renew their medicines.
Still, the doom and gloom that filled the underground shelter subsided a little due to the new arrivals, Wheeze and Cillin. It had been a while since they saw an animal this lively since the pandemic began, and its presence was like a light that they were almost hesitant to accept. It had been too long since they were trapped in this darkness.
There was a mother and her two-year-old child sitting at a corner of the underground shelter. Before Wheeze showed up, the child was feeling sleepy and weak. Now, he was extending a hand to Wheeze and crying out happily, “Mum, look! It’s a kitten that’s moves!”
The mother’s eyes turned a little wet. Caressing her child’s turned hair and feeling the abnormal sensation under her skin, she echoed softly, “Yes, it’s a kitten that moves.”
The pandemic was so terrible that most of them had forgotten the last time they saw a living creature that was as lively and energetic as Wheeze. Up until now, all they could remember were the stripes, the cannons, the smokes, and the corpses. Human, animal, buildings. Everything was dyed black by the stripes.
Wheeze was still running circles around Cillin’s sick bed. His bleeding hadn’t stopped even now. Although his wounds weren’t serious, and he wasn’t losing blood at a rapid rate, there was only so much blood a human could lose before they died.
The woman sighed at Wheeze’s panicked reaction and said, “I don’t know why he wouldn’t stop bleeding either. The equipment we have here is limited, so a more in-depth inspection is impossible.”
Wheeze’s ears turned downwards the moment it heard this. The look in its eyes made the woman feel so bad and guilty that she avoided its gaze.
Wheeze jumped onto the sick bed and nestled itself in Cillin’s elbow. Then, it checked Cillin’s condition again. He was faring even worse than before.
What should I do!?
Wheeze hit Cillin for a reaction, but the young man had none to give. So it tried again, and again, again…
Everyone fell quieter when they saw Wheeze’s reaction. They had seen too many people who fell asleep and never woke up already, and every time it happened they couldn’t help but wonder if they were the next one in line.
Cillin couldn’t give Wheeze a response because he was currently fighting the unknown substance with all he got. He couldn’t even spare the energy to recover his wounds. Even his body fluid was warped by the battle between the biochips and the virus.
Cillin was hoping that the biochips that had attached themselves to his chromosomes would be able to fight the unknown substance and the new influx of viruses, but he soon discovered that all he accomplished was exhausting his energy reserves with little to no chance of actually forcing the unknown substance out of his body.
The viruses that were already present inside him had become incredibly active after the unknown substance had invaded his body. Like soldiers who had suddenly found their commander, they attacked his body with unprecedented ferocity and were slowly but surely defeating his defenses. The fact that the stripes on his skin were deepening in color was a clear sign of the virus’ unusual activity.
The balance between the virus and the biochips was going to collapse at any moment, and Cillin had no idea if he could recover once he had passed the point of no return. All he knew was that the biochips was slowly but surely faltering under the onslaught.
Would he have a better shot at surviving this if he used the threat that was the unknown substance to fully activate the biochips?
No. According to Horay Hanson’s equipment, the chances that the host’s body would collapse due to excessive rejection was over fifty percent.
What about that method then? It was still pretty risky, but it had a higher success rate than forcefully activating the biochips.
Cillin changed his tactics and stopped attacking the virus by force, giving the biochips time to recollect themselves. After the threat of the biochips collapsing on their own was gone, he ordered them to break down the virus.
Wheeze’s ears stood up as it opened its eyes and stared at Cillin. That unusual energy that greatly hindered its senses earlier had appeared inside Cillin again, but it seemed to be a tad different from before. Moreover, Cillin suddenly lost a tonne of weight; all that energy seemingly consumed during a certain process. His skin turned wrinkly for a moment, but it quickly turned back to normal. Then, the epidermis started declining and turning into dust, falling away from his body. It was almost as if Cillin was shedding his skin.
What the hell happened?
Wheeze watched Cillin closely. It had never seen anything like this.
But it looked like Wheeze had nothing to worry about. The stripes on Cillin’s body grew blurrier, and after sneaking a glance at the surroundings Wheeze dimmed the light a little so that no one would notice the unusual change. Thankfully, no one noticed the sudden change inlighting or the unusual flashes of the instruments when Wheeze did its thing. Most of the people in the shelter had fallen asleep, including the two women and the patient next to Cillin’s sick bed. Even if they did, they would probably think that it was a lingering malfunction caused by the earlier chaos.
Wheeze looked at Cillin again and pulled up his sleeves. It was the same for the stripes around his elbow area. The blood around the wounds still hadn’t coagulated yet, but at least the bleeding had finally stopped.
Half an hour later, Wheeze blew gently at Cillin, and entire layer of “dust”—dead cells caused by whatever Cillin was doing earlier—left his body.
Cillin’s condition seemed to have stabilized for the moment, but the blurry black-and-white stripes suddenly turned clearer again. What was going on?
After lifting its ears and listening closely to Cillin’s heartbeat, Wheeze relaxed slightly and lay back down on its feet again, watching.
Another hour passed, and the sky turned bright again. The underground shelter was still as silent as death, however.
Cillin opened his eyes. The first thing he saw after looking sideways was a pair of round cat eyes.
He had trouble moving his fingers at first, but it wasn’t long before he regained control of himself. He gave Wheeze’s ear a pinch before speaking to it using the invisible machine language, “Where is this place?”