After Being Parasiticized By A Monster - Chapter 48

Chapter 48: “I Love You.”

The Secret of Lab 40

At the same time, on the 211th floor.

The 40 Laboratory was located in the most secluded, secure part of the building, wrapped in thick, complex walls that kept light and sound from passing in or out—a place of total isolation.

Cheng Ming was unaware of the chaotic Level 1 Defense State outside. The intrusion had been surprisingly smooth; the surveillance cameras automatically avoided the area, leaving her to only bypass the exterior cameras before reaching her destination.

She crossed several safety valves and found herself in a dimly lit, silent environment. The surrounding lab area was simple, resembling an oversized culture room, filled with large glass containers bathed in a faint, cold blue light.

After putting on a protective suit and scanning Jiang Dexin’s ID card (she couldn’t risk her own card failing and triggering an alarm), she was faced with the final barrier.

The large biological hazard sign and the “Unauthorized Personnel Prohibited” warning seemed to glare at her. The dark red light pulsed, and a feeling of both fear and excitement made the bl00d under her chest lightly simmer.

The metallic door did not open. A digital screen flashed, demanding a password.

Cheng Ming focused her mind, recalling Professor Jin Xia’s note, and entered the sequence of numbers.

Ding.

The red light turned white. Password Correct.

The silver-grey metal door hissed and slid open. Cheng Ming stepped inside. The door closed behind her. A notification sounded, confirming that Jiang Dexin was likely alerted, but it was too late to stop.

The internal lights automatically powered on, illuminating one section after another: Deng, deng, deng!

The scene was completely transformed.

An overwhelming amount of information assaulted her vision. Lab 40 had been renovated into an exhibition space, and she was the long-awaited visitor.

“Project 1 Incubation Site…” “First Fusion Failed…” “Fifty-seventh Fusion Failed, increasing Flotage-Flower Algal Fungus concentration…” “Fusion Success, MM1 is born…” “First Personality Test Failed…” “Twenty-third Personality Test Failed, increasing inhibitor dose…” “Test Success, awaiting approval…”

Cheng Ming moved, reading the display screens, her steps quickening as questions multiplied, until she reached the end of the circular corridor.

Chii. The overhead light turned on. She stopped instantly.

In a massive glass containment tank before her, a highly decomposed corpse was suspended. Though the liquid was clear, the reddish-brown remains—sloughing skin and exposed bone—still maintained the recognizable form of a creature that was half-human, half-fish.

Mermaid… She stood below, the refracted light of the water casting a shimmering pattern across her face.

“Little Ming,” she whispered, speaking to the silent partner within. “Are you sure you have nothing to say? Doesn’t any of this look familiar?”

Dead silence. The fish-fungus was deliberately ignoring her, expressing its fury at her rash decision. Cheng Ming didn’t care.

She walked towards the final compartment, which contained complex exposed cables and an electronic screen—the Experiment Database. After a two-second pause, she walked in. The room was oddly welcoming, with no visible restrictions.

Despite the chaos in her mind, she quickly found the file named MM1 Sequence among the vast electronic archives, based on the external signs and years she had seen.

She plugged in her drive, initiating a full copy, and simultaneously uploaded her own DNA data for a sequence comparison.

She had mentally prepared herself for the result. The final panel on the wall, labeled “Test Success,” was dated 2155. And in the old group photo of the researchers, she easily recognized Cheng Ran at the front.

This was indeed Little Ming’s birthplace.

The black progress bar moved. She hugged her arms—an instinctively insecure posture. Her fingers, protected by the suit, dug into her own flesh. She was counting down not just to a truth, but to the potential destruction of her life.

Ding. The progress bar vanished. The comparison was complete.

Match Rate: 100%.

The fish-fungus came from here. No surprise.

But the thought stopped. She stared at the screen, her movements paralyzed.

100%. A seamless, absolute number.

Wait. She had uploaded her own sequencing result, which already contained Little Ming’s DNA. This database held the sequence of the original MM1 experimental subject.

The two sequences were a perfect match.

…

The truth was enormous. It was terrifying. It robbed her of speech and scattered her thoughts into fragments.

No, no, no… It’s wrong!

She yanked the disk out and plugged it back in, forcing a re-run. Her vision was unfocused, but she desperately needed time to breathe.

The result did not change.

Boom! A storm seemed to erupt in her ears. Cheng Ming stumbled, bracing herself against the metallic console. She stared at the number, her nerves agonizingly stretched. She pressed her hand to her forehead, convulsing as she gasped for breath.

“Little Ming…” she ground out, her voice a low, terrifying hiss. “Stop pretending to be dead.”

“Do you know this?” “You know, don’t you!”

Of course. What mother would do that to her daughter?

Because she wasn’t her daughter.

She was the experiment.

She was the experiment.

The world was silent as a mental tsunami roared inside her skull. Little Ming’s prolonged silence hadn’t been anger; it was guilt.

It had obstructed her not because there was a threat outside, but because the threat was the truth itself.

Ha, a liar.

She recalled its insistence that they were one, its refusal when she asked it to call her “Mama,” and its strange hostility towards Professor Jin Xia. Every word, every detail, was now tainted with deception.

She wasn’t its host. She was it.

She was merely the aspect of it that looked human, thought human, and preferred to be human.

“Speak! Answer me!”

What else did it know? What else was it hiding?

Facing her frantic barrage, she felt the other consciousness in her mind shrink and resist, trying to retreat. But she was the host. She was the one in control. She sent a command, and her neural tendrils surged, like iron clamps prying open a clam shell. Their consciousnesses abruptly collided and entangled.

Zzzzzz!

Information flooded her brain like a breached dam. Her mind became a rapidly overheating CPU. Cheng Ming collapsed to the floor.

Intense vertigo and a sharp ringing in her ears accompanied a cascade of fragmented images. Her body felt heavy and wet, dragging her into the abyss of memory—

…

“Finally, a success. We’ll start with her, our Project No. 1.” In the flickering light, “she” saw Cheng Ran’s back. When Cheng Ran turned, “she” saw the black-on-white code on her clipboard: MM1.

…

“No, she’s a monster! She has no humanity!” A fearful voice cried. “Forget it, report a failure. She’s going to kill us!”

“Why is she like this? She seems so compliant, then suddenly loses control… Does she have multiple personalities?”

“Give me time. The inhibitor is being developed,” Cheng Ran said, looking at “her” through the glass. “Maybe it can suppress it.”

…

Cheng Ran leaned against the glass, crying. Liquid dripped onto her phone screen. “My baby…” “She” reached out a small hand, struggling to speak. “Ma… ma.” Cheng Ran’s face twisted with a complex expression.

…

The experiment was successful. “She” was moved to an open area, and people cheered. Cheng Ran looked at “her,” her expression subtle and profound.

…

A massive explosion. White smoke enveloped “her.” But “she” wasn’t afraid. Mama was here. Cheng Ran picked “her” up, wrapping “her” in an unknown material. “She” peacefully lost consciousness.

…

The monstrous side was suppressed. She grew up with her parents like any normal human child. Her mother loved her. Her father, even if he didn’t, acquiesced. She lived the most peaceful 13 years of her “life.”

…

She opened her eyes again. Cheng Ran was holding her, just as she had when they left the lab—but this time, she was about to throw her into the ocean.

She didn’t know why her mother wanted to kill her. Perhaps the hormone-driven motherly love had faded, and Cheng Ran saw her as a massive, potential threat, not a daughter.

Her body’s self-preservation instinct erupted.

The rest was a silent film. Her sharp claws tore the protective suit, easily killing her attackers and pushing them into the sea. Through a cracked mask, she saw Cheng Ran’s eyes—shocked, mournful, and sorrowful. They cried for a long, long time.

She watched it all: the radiating blue seawater, the blurred sky, the whole world a dream.

Then, her brain’s defense mechanism activated, and upon awakening, she forgot everything. She became a pathetic clown, seeking a truth she already knew, self-deceptively searching for the mother she had killed with her own hands.

Cheng Ran must be laughing at me. How could such a hypocritical, grasping, treacherous ‘daughter’ exist?

The memory rewound to the very beginning. How clever and cunning the little thing was. Among all the researchers, “she” instantly fixed on Cheng Ran, begging for affection. She spoke the sound “Mama,” which was universally understood, and Cheng Ran heard it.

From that one sound, their relationship changed.

When Cheng Ran risked everything to take her out of the lab, her parasitism was complete. She had usurped the position of Cheng Ran’s real daughter, taking all the love and the perfect life the other girl deserved—a shameless cuckoo chick displacing the original.

From a biological perspective, it was just survival. But she had been educated in human morality. She believed she was human. Therefore, her actions were utterly malicious.

Mama, Mama, Mama… From birth to death and rebirth. That single address had completely drained the life force of the role of “mother.”

She had been nothing but a monster using any means necessary for survival.

…

“Cheng Ming, Cheng Ming! CHENG MING—”

She surfaced from the memory-drowning, gasping for air. Each breath was an agonizing stab.

“Cough… cough, cough!” The taste of iron filled her mouth. She lay on the floor, feeling like she might vomit her internal organs.

“Cheng Ming…” In the brief lull, the voice was her own, but it was Little Ming speaking through her mouth.

Her ears were ringing, filled with the frantic drumming of her own heart.

What a terrible monster.

Killing her parents, “she” had calmly dealt with the bodies, stripped off a dead person’s protective suit, and collapsed into a coma, successfully faking an uninfected state—and then simply forgotten everything.

She couldn’t separate her memory from the “parasite’s,” but the fact remained: Cheng Ran and Cheng Jin were killed by this body. And the conscious part of her, Little Ming, had knowingly hidden the truth.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded, a terrible, smiling mask on her face. “When did you know?”

“…”

Little Ming spoke softly, “Since I gained enough energy. I remembered everything after the virus infection.” The drug had suppressed her abilities and her memory, which gradually returned after the infection.

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” Cheng Ming laughed bitterly. “Tell me! Why didn’t you tell me?!”

She could rationalize the act as self-preservation, but she couldn’t face the self stained with her mother’s bl00d, or the fact that her mother had tried to kill her. So, she turned the gun on herself—on Little Ming, the so-called “real monster” within her.

“…” Little Ming, sensing her desperate mental state, was brief: “For your own good.”

The amnesia of those critical sixteen hours had been a defensive wall built by her own brain. With that wall collapsed, the guilt, even after thousands of days, crushed her. She was a hair’s breadth from a complete mental breakdown.

“You think you were protecting me?” Cheng Ming looked up at the harsh overhead light, trembling violently. “Haha, how noble.”

All lies!

It was foolish to expect humanity or morality from a monster. For them, survival was the only law.

“I just wanted you to live,” it said, with no trace of shame.

“I want you to die,” Cheng Ming muttered. “I want to take you with me.”

“…” Little Ming sounded helpless. “Don’t hurt yourself. I might mistake it for you wanting to die with me.”

Cheng Ming curled up against the cold metal equipment. “Why are you still alive…? Why haven’t you died yet…?”

“I want you to live.”

“I don’t! I hate you, I hate you!”

For every word of hatred she uttered, a sincere, childish voice countered her.

“I like you.”

“I hate you!”

“I love you.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Cheng Ming was on the verge of collapsing.

“…”

It was like an AI programmed with a fundamental directive. Even as its creator begged for its destruction, it simply repeated its final command to the world:

“I love you.”

I love you, and I want you to live, so I eliminate anything that might pose a threat to you, even the people you love.

A cruel, savage, and irrational love. Given their unity, this “love” could only be defined by one word: selfishness.

Biology is governed by genes. Love is the selfishness etched into the DNA.