After Being Parasiticized By A Monster - Chapter 58
Chapter 58: “I Don’t Accept.”
A Grave Discovery
Thump—
A muffled splash erupted.
The combat suit was durable and pressure-resistant, packed with gear, but the cost was weight. In this situation, the equipment was a liability. Cheng Ming sank instantly like a lead ingot.
The cave was pitch black. The stirred sediment clouded her vision, despite the helmet’s floodlight. Only the thermal imaging worked, painting the scene in black and white. Creatures appeared as near-transparent white, and the radiation sensor tagged targets with a red warning. The screen filled with what looked like red-fringed, white-scarved objects floating and twisting: snakes. She had fallen into a nest.
Splash. Something yanked her, pulling her out of the viscous water. Cheng Ming kicked out, not knowing if she hit anything, and scrambled onto a protruding rock wall.
This was a small air pocket chamber in the cave. The helmet showed dense, pale white material filling the crevices. As she shifted, the sensors relayed the squishy, adhesive texture of the rock to her skin. She had crushed a cluster of oval, white objects.
They were sea snake eggs.
The human-faced snake was gone, and Little Ming was silent. It had allowed her to be dragged deep into the cave, out of her team’s sight. What was its plan?
Cheng Ming tensed, reaching for the weapon at her waist. It was gone. The intelligent creature had disarmed her.
She crouched against the wall, readjusted her helmet, and waited three seconds. The monster reappeared, bursting from the water in a flash. It scurried onto the rock with thin limbs, its body twisting like a lizard. But its long, thick, cylindrical body, its flat paddle-like tail from secondary aquatic adaptation, and its wide mouth with cobra-like fangs were undeniable.
“Ah,” Little Ming finally spoke. “This is what you call, ‘gilding the lily?'”
“No time for bad jokes!” Cheng Ming snapped.
Goosebumps rose on her back. The sudden attack had hidden the monster’s most terrifying features: its human-like hands and feet. They emerged from its ventral side, atrophied and small, seemingly no different from a lizard’s, but Cheng Ming recognized them instantly.
A human-sea snake chimera?
The image was so abstractly terrifying that even Cheng Ming, who had seen true horrors, felt faint. And the thing was fast! She drew her last weapon, a tactical dagger, as the creature lunged.
Cheng Ming moved, twisting to dodge, her arm muscles exploding in a strike. Screeech— The metal blade scraped the rock, sparking brightly on the thermal screen.
She missed. The monstrous snake head halted abruptly, mere inches from her face.
She held her breath. As her vision cleared, she realized it hadn’t opened its mouth to bite. It was holding something between its sharp teeth.
It was round and familiar.
Cheng Ming held still. The creature did too. After a prolonged moment, she moved her finger, clicked the low-light floodlight on her helmet, and the cold, white circle of light illuminated the vivid object.
The Red Shell.
Like a persistent curse, the pendant she had thrown into the sea three months ago had returned, appearing before her in this shocking, unguarded moment.
The snake-man monster was perched in a grotesque posture, its head high. The human face beneath the snake’s jaws was stretched into a contorted mask. The mouth curled up, as if smiling.
In an unspoken, monstrous understanding, Cheng Ming confirmed one thing: It meant no harm. It seemed to be expecting something.
She slowly reached out a stiff finger and retrieved the shell from the snake’s mouth. It was cracked slightly, likely from the tsunami, but a small piece of the silver chain remained. It was the pendant she had worn for six years.
In this deep, dark chamber, with the water swirling around the grotesque creature, Cheng Ming stared, utterly bewildered. Had it specifically retrieved this from the ocean floor? Why? Was it a member of the monster organization, recognizing her as kin and performing a ritual of recognition? How did it know the shell was hers?
A crushing weight of questions choked her heart.
The hyphae stirred. A tickle near her ear brought her back. She saw the monster’s abdomen bulging and heard a strange, wheezing sound—a vocal alert on her equipment. It was like the sound from Red Stone Bay.
It was communicating with her.
“What did it say?” she immediately asked Little Ming.
“I can’t hear clearly,” Little Ming replied. “Take off your helmet.”
The helmet was sealed by magnetic and mechanical locks, requiring a password or biometric scan to open. The only reason Yan Li’s was easily removed on the shore was because the suit’s life detection unit judged her unconscious, enabling emergency rescue.
Cheng Ming steadied her hands, unlatched the helmet, and pulled it off.
The moment she was free, the hyphae instantly elongated, swelling out and wrapping around the human-snake chimera, strangling and consuming it in a flash.
Even Cheng Ming was stunned. Clutching the smooth, hard shell, she watched the black fungal tide engulf the creature. Had it not been for the object in her hand, she would have believed the human-faced sea snake had never existed, just a horrifying nightmare.
…
The Broken Weapon
Lanjian Port.
The nearby reconnaissance station had sealed the entire harbor. The core experiment zone was a microbiological iron box. Outside the circular transparent containment dome, countless personnel waited anxiously.
Dr. Chen Ke stood by the massive metal gate, expressionless. The mission had been a failure. They had just received the news that the rare Merfolk specimen they risked everything to retrieve was dead. The line of inquiry was broken.
Worse, while they were reporting and awaiting new instructions, someone had infiltrated the sub-level 3 containment lab and killed the juvenile fish parasite host—the “hound” used for tracking—which was kept in cryostasis.
The one who did it was unique. Very unique.
She was currently trapped inside the glass containment room, showing no sign of escape, sitting calmly on the console. Qu Ying was still the same tall, slender, powerfully feminine figure, her long hair draped over her back, watching them all with a provocative smile. Her eyes, however, were like drawn swords: sharp, cold, and utterly inorganic.
“Doctor, it’s dangerous here. You should leave first—” a nearby officer urged with a trembling voice.
The most powerful weapon the Security Department had ever forged was now uncontrolled, potentially their most terrifying enemy.
Chen Ke shook her head. “Let me talk to her.”
“Talk about what?” Qu Ying’s voice echoed through the comms. She looked amused. “Stalling for time? Just say so. No need for the performance.”
“Let’s discuss the ‘safety catch’ principle, which might interest you,” Chen Ke said, looking at her intently. “It was introduced by the first pioneer leader at the start of the project to ensure that while you gain the monster’s abilities, you retain human self-awareness.”
Grand goals are meaningless to individuals. What drives a person are specific connections: family, friends, lovers. Her team—geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists—were specialists in creating special combatants. They never intended to create emotionless killing machines. If the “weapons” lost all sense of humanity, who could guarantee they wouldn’t turn on mankind?
“Yang Mei was an experiment; we provided her with a mother for her psychological health. It was effective, though something went wrong later,” Chen Ke continued, her voice growing soft. “You have no reason to hate us. We provided you with so many conveniences…”
She moved from one example to another, eventually focusing on Qu Ying.
“I have nothing to discuss with you,” Qu Ying interrupted sharply. “Get the decision-makers here. Or—Dr. Chen Ke, are you willing to let me leave?” She smiled mockingly.
“Don’t be impulsive,” Chen Ke paused with a tone of mournful compassion. “Accidents happen at sea; you’re simply suffering from some contamination. I suggest you accept psychological treatment…”
She was pleading for leniency for a criminal based on a history of mental illness. Qu Ying was their most successful and stable creation. They would not let her go easily. They would destroy her themselves before allowing her to escape.
“I don’t accept,” Qu Ying laughed, looking completely indifferent. “Professor Cheng Ran created me. Why don’t you have her come in and ‘calibrate’ me?”
It was a blatant act of defiance.
Their gazes locked. After a tense pause, perhaps only two or three seconds, Chen Ke spoke: “Fine.”
The word was sudden and absolute. Silence descended upon the containment area.
Qu Ying’s cold, intense gaze, like a bullet shooting from a barrel, fixed on Chen Ke’s face.
Chen Ke met her stare and repeated: “Fine.”