Chapter 300: You’re Lying Again [Part 2]
Wheeze told Cillin what happened before asking about his condition in concern. Should it make an emergency call to Guan Feng right away?
Cillin shook his head and stretched a little. He then pushed himself up to a sitting position and observed his surroundings. There was more than enough lighting for him to look around.
There were a couple of people in the shelter who hadn’t fallen asleep yet, so they saw Cillin pushing himself up on his makeshift sick bed. They didn’t react to it, however. In their minds, he was still an infected person, and it was only a matter of time before he died. What was there to be surprised about?
Cillin saw a puppy lying on top of a nearby operation table. The dog had been treated accordingly, but it couldn’t hardly breathe, much less move around due to the virus.
There was a cup inside a nearby cupboard, and Cillin grabbed it and poured himself a cup of water. Next, he found a pack of compressed biscuits and consumed it right away. The food was frankly poorly made, but it was exactly what he needed right now. He felt like he had lost an entire month of weight after dealing the unknown substance.
At first, Cillin was planning to deal with the unknown substance the “gentle” way: breaking it down into small, less deadly components and flushing it out of his system. However, he encountered an unexpected opportunity later on. The unknown substance became a stabilizing force that embedded itself inside the biochips after it was broken down, transforming them as a result.
Cillin was happy to declare that the biochips had been fully activated during this embedment process. What should’ve been an explosive and probably deadly reaction was surprisingly mild thanks to the broken unusual substance. In other words, Cillin had absorbed the very thing that created the Zebra Virus made it his own. Considering his circumstances, it was the best way to study and understand this new virus.
Most of the time, natural organisms were better than artificial organisms in almost every way, and viruses were no exception. In fact, some of the most dangerous viruses in the world were the natural viruses that weren’t discovered until it was too late, not the bioweapons wicked-minded people researched in their hidden labs.
The unknown substance had been creating the original pathogen of the Zebra Virus non-stop until it had slipped into Cillin’s body. Now that it was gone, no more pathogens would spread in the world.
As for the so-called variants, Cillin could now use the interaction between his biochips and the substance to analyze the best solution.
Now that he had some free time, Cillin checked the data he scanned when he was exploring the underground lab. He quickly discovered that it told the discovery of the unknown substance and the beginning of the Zebra Virus.
The discoverer was a bitter researcher who happened upon the unknown substance clinging to a meteor by accident. Not long after he carried it into his lab for research, he discovered that he had been infected by the virus.
But instead of reporting the situation to his higher-ups immediately, the researcher came up with a monstrous plot. In fact, the five infected bodies the patrols found on the planet were his victims. According to the records, the researcher had made contact with a total of seven people. This meant that there were still two people out there somewhere besides the five dead.
Knowingly or not, these seven people were the carriers who spread the virus from one planet to the other.
This was a revenge case.
“Eh? You’ve awakened,” the woman who carried Cillin in said.
Cillin concealed the scanner without being noticed before giving her a smile. “Thank you for bringing me in.”
“You should thank your cat, not me. We weren’t able to help you at all.” The woman checked Cillin’s wounds and discovered that all of them had healed. Some were even starting to fade already. She didn’t point it out, however. It wasn’t like Cillin was the first unusual person she had met in her life.
Cillin got up to his feet, took a few steps and stretched again. If it wasn’t for the lines on his face, he could be mistaken for a perfectly healthy person.
“Still, thank you for bringing me in.”
The woman gave him a bitter smile. “It’s a habit. I know we’ll all die eventually, but I still can’t help but do a little something. Come, I’ll make you something hot to eat.”
There was a small compartment in the underground shelter where hot water and hot food were made. The woman filled a bowl of porridge and passed it to Cillin. Right now, it was the only type of food they had.
Cillin drank almost everything in the bowl. Although it didn’t fill him up at all—he was still incredibly hungry—he noticed earlier that there weren’t much food supplies left in the underground shelter. So, he stopped the woman from offering him more food after eating for a bit.
It was daytime, but no one dared to take a step outside. Everyone was afraid of being shot.
Wheeze was very hungry itself, but it was a picky eater and would rather starve than eat the porridge. Cillin pinched its ears and promised it to find it some food after they went out.
Cillin spoke a bit with the woman while he was resting in the compartment. The woman was a doctor. She was raised in a normal family, she went to a normal school, and her talents were nothing exceptional. The disaster had taken many people’s lives including her own loved ones, and now the only ones who were left were herself and her younger cousin, the little girl that Wheeze had feigned weakness to to garner her sympathy earlier.
“Don’t lose hope. Things will get better very soon,” Cillin said.
The woman smiled but didn’t say anything. They all said the same thing, but things had not gotten better. In fact, she was disappointed so many times that she had grown numb already. The only reason she was still standing today was because she hadn’t given up on her principles yet. She was a doctor, and she would do her best to extend even a second of her patient’s life.
Cillin gave her a medicine tube he made some time ago after the conversation. It wouldn’t treat the symptoms completely, but it would alleviate them and buy her some time.
“Try this. Every second is precious right now.”
The woman accepted the medicine and thanked him. She didn’t think he would harm her, and at this point she had to try everything.
The woman passed Cillin a gun when he told her that he wished to leave the shelter, but he turned her down. The gun would be more useful to her than it was to him.
After making Cillin promise that he wouldn’t reveal their location to the terrorists, the woman unlocked the door to the underground shelter and sent him away.
The sky was as gray as usual, and there were disgusting smells wherever they went. People with guns could be seen sitting atop some of the rubbles. They were the people who chose madness in the face of despair.
Cillin and Wheeze chose not to confront them. Right now, contacting Guan Feng came first before everything.
After exiting the city and arriving at a secluded spot, Cillin turned on his communicator and contacted Guan Feng.
It took almost no time for the call to go through. When Guan Feng saw the stripes on Cillin’s face, he opened his mouth but couldn’t say a word for a long time.
Cillin told Guan Feng his plan while the latter was still searching for his words. Cillin wanted to research a cure for the Zebra Virus on this planet, so he asked Guan Feng to deliver him a medical synthesizer using the robots. Guan Feng rejected his request.
“We’ve already sent robots to scour the planet, but you showed up first before they were able to find you. I’m not stopping you from doing your research, I just think it would be better if you perform it somewhere else. Follow the robots, the starship I dispatched should be waiting in orbit already. You would have anything you need there to perform your research. But you can’t stay on that planet, do you understand?”
Cillin understood. A planet this badly infected could be abandoned at any moment. If the inevitable were to happen, obviously it would be easier to avoid bombardment on a starship than it would be on the planet.
Cillin accepted the compromise. What he needed to do was experiment and synthesize an effective medicine as soon as possible anyway.
The robots reached Cillin before he was even finished talking with Guan Feng. They had all been rushing over the moment they received the signal. An invisible spaceplane was making its way toward Cillin as well.
Cillin and Wheeze went up the spaceplane after he hung up. As Guan Feng mentioned, there was a starship parked in orbit just outside the planet. It was probably Black Viper’s because there was no way his mentor would have an entire lab of medical synthesizers on his personal starship.
Cillin immediately went into the lab and began his experiments. He didn’t contact anyone else.
Crouching atop a nearby shelf and seeing that they had been alone for the moment, Wheeze asked, “You seem to be doing pretty well. If it wasn’t for the stripes on your skin, no one would’ve thought that you were an infected person.”
Cillin looked away from a working molecule synthesizer to smile at the gray cat. “You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”
Before Wheeze could ask what he meant, the black and white stripes covering Cillin’s skin started fading away until it was gone completely. A while later, they returned exactly as Cillin wanted them to be.
Wheeze’s eyes turned round and wide as it pointed a claw at Cillin indignantly. “Y-y-y-y-y-you’re lying again!”
“It can’t be helped. It was like this at the beginning, but after I woke up I started controlling it consciously. You understand, don’t you? If people figure out what I can do... you want me to be dragged away by Black Viper or the RAS and be researched my whole life?”
Wheeze shook its head rapidly. Who the hell would agree to something like that if they had no other choice? That being said, it no longer has to live with the fear alone since Cillin was in the same situation as it was now. Very nice.
“So, you’re completely fine now?” Wheeze curled its tail happily.
“You can say that.”
“Alright then, you go do your thing. I just ate a full meal so I’m going to sleep.”
“Yeah, you do that.”
Cillin gave Wheeze a rub on the head. The glutton worked really hard this time, and it wasn’t until now that it was able to completely. It definitely earned its rest today.
Half a day went by in the blink of an eye. After synthesizing over a dozen of experimental medicines, he tested three on a couple of lab rats and decided that the effects were acceptable. He then chose the one that worked the fastest and ordered the robots to test it on the planet’s natives. If it worked on human subjects, then his experiment could be considered a success.
It wasn’t even a second after the robot went away, and Cillin sat down when his communicator rang. This time, it was a depressed Bel who called him instead of Guan Feng.