Mutants - Chapter 10
Chapter 10: The Button
"Damn it! Is it that worm?"
"It's inside the body."
"Quick, cut open your arm and pick it out!"
Sui Xin had injured her finger earlier. At the time, she thought her protective suit had torn when she fell, but now it seemed the worm had corroded its way in.
But the idea that there was another one inside her body seemed incredible.
Impossible. I was the first to wake up. The suit had no other damage, and I flicked off the Red Corrosive Ironworm wrapped around the wound on my finger. Could one have already crawled inside?
The Red Corrosive Ironworms outside the body were terrifying enough; one could only imagine their destructive power inside. It would basically hold her life in its hands.
Beneath her helmet, her small face paled.
The others also had to cut open their flesh to pick out the worms, but they vanished under the skin in an instant. Based on the pain, it seemed to be moving towards their shoulders…
Ah!
Almost everyone collapsed in agony, clutching different internal organs as they struggled.
The corpses in the pool were nearly covered by the red worms. The people by the pool, who thought they had escaped, had now all fallen.
However, what was different was that before Sui Xin collapsed from the pain, she had quickly pulled off the hair tie binding her hair and, like a flash of lightning, wrapped it around her forearm. She wound it tightly several times. Fortunately, the tie was resilient enough to constrict her arm firmly, obstructing blood flow in the vessels.
She knew that Red Corrosive Ironworms were aquatic creatures that needed moisture to survive. Blood was their fertile ground, so they would surely travel through the bloodstream. By tying off the blood vessels, she could temporarily confine it to the area below her left forearm.
Sure enough, she saw the red worm's outline squirm under her skin a few times. Unable to move up her arm, it was confined to her forearm.
The intense pain persisted, but at least it didn't endanger her vital organs.
After ensuring she could remain conscious for the time being, Sui Xin's fingers traced the squirming outline of the red worm. Her touch was very light as she roughly gauged its depth beneath her skin.
It wasn't directly corroding or gnawing at her flesh, but seemed to be probing something. A sharp, acidic pain followed its path, different from the corrosive burning and draining weakness she felt when her finger was bitten. Was it releasing a different kind of venom?
This time, it wasn't a corrosive liquid, but some other special substance?
No, this is very wrong!
Is this really a Red Corrosive Ironworm?
If it was, such a simple, low-level organism couldn't possibly resist its biological imperative to feed on blood, just as the tamed Sahr Hyenas couldn't control their scavenging nature.
Beneath the helmet, her bright eyes narrowed slightly. She suddenly staggered towards the pool of water.
Ye Chen and the others were still in agony. In their daze, they saw her running towards the water and thought she was seeking death in despair. But they watched as she used the protection of her suit to wade forcefully through the water, then climb onto the hood of the vehicle. Some red worms clung to the fabric, but she rolled around on the hood, and the worms slid off.
Then, she scrambled messily into the vehicle, seemingly rummaging for a medical kit.
In reality, she was pretending to look for a medical kit while surreptitiously glancing at the S501 Desert Crawler's communication dial.
Their vehicle had suffered the fewest casualties, so its body was naturally in the best condition. The communication dial was still functional, and she could see the information on it—it served as an auxiliary to everyone's personal device signals, connecting to their information points. Right now, she could see that all the signal points were extinguished. Because the protective suits were all ruined, the radio and camera equipment had lost their power source and gone dark.
So that was fine; it was normal for nine signal points to be extinguished.
But!
She noticed the energy expenditure on the side was still decreasing slightly—the vehicle was still running, still providing power to related equipment to maintain signal transmission.
Therefore, there must be other communication devices left on the protective suits they had discarded or on their other personal belongings.
But they didn't know!
This was a second layer of surveillance.
The buttons.
Sui Xin suddenly thought of those metal buttons.
Her own suit was torn to shreds, and only those non-corrosive metal buttons could possibly contain micro-surveillance devices.
And working backward, was the specific choice of metal buttons made because they knew in advance about the existence of the Red Corrosive Ironworms and that they could corrode clothing? So, to hide the surveillance equipment, they used metal buttons.
This proved that the consortium knew there were Red Corrosive Ironworms here and what they were about to encounter.
Furthermore, from a logical standpoint, it wasn't just the local organizations that had the ability to alter the route map.
There was also the consortium.
They knew everything, controlled everything.
But what were they after?
Their lives weren't valuable; there was no need to scheme for their lives. It must be for profit.
The core of capitalism is profit.
But with so many people and so many armed resources, the investment was enormous. What kind of return could yield a profit greater than this huge investment?
Four words suddenly popped into Sui Xin's mind—human experimentation.
No, human experimentation was absolutely forbidden by the Federation. It was a bottom line for humanity. No matter how fragmented society had become, no matter how wide the gap between rich and poor, the lower class still constituted the majority. Long before the Federation was established, wise Prophet leaders had made a pact to never break this iron rule, or be deemed a traitor to humanity.
Even the Tianxi Group wouldn't dare to defy it.
But…
As Sui Xin was lost in thought, she happened to glance at the driver's corpse slumped to the side. The information on the ID tag hanging around his neck was noted.
She had glanced at it inadvertently, but suddenly realized something.
It seemed there had been a flaw from the very beginning.
All the personnel participating this time were low-status individuals.
All were of D-class identity or below.
According to regulations, people with a D-class identity had no legal rights, meaning they had no right to sue, unless someone else filed a lawsuit on their behalf. But the family and friends of a D-class person were likely also D-class and lacked this right as well.
And she was the lowest, E-class.
E-class. Not even worth the effort of a lawsuit. Even if murdered and abused, it wouldn't warrant the expenditure of judicial resources for an investigation, even if an A-class person filed a suit on their behalf.
So, as long as the operation was reasonable and the encounters were plausible, even if someone suspected the true nature of this matter, Tianxi had absolutely no fear of legal repercussions.
This was a conspiracy.
Right now, the people from the consortium must be watching them struggle on the brink of life and death. So, what were they doing?
At that very moment, with her scalp tingling, Sui Xin rummaged through the medical kit while her fingers traced the squirming outline of the red worm on her arm. In a casual glance, if the frame were frozen, if her eyes could penetrate the radio waves of the communication signal, allowing her perspective to magnify infinitely, she could probably let her gaze merge with the dense streams of signals, following them through vast and complex spaces, into the ethereal world of signals, traversing endlessly, crossing mountains and seas, ruins, survival fortresses everywhere, graveyards, ruin zones, radiation zones, decaying cities, and chaotic, bustling metropolises.
She could see the alleys she had passed through before, where the surface of the foul water in the gutters and the skyline of the skyscrapers only touched in reflection.
Finally, her perspective would arrive at the computers, televisions, and projection screens of various models in every household.
She would surely mock herself for underestimating the absurdity of reality and the creativity of the people at the consortium headquarters.
Everything about them was so openly exposed to the eyes of some people in the cities of this region.
It wasn't just the people from Tianxi who saw it; it was the entire city, and any resident equipped with the relevant television resources.
They pointed and commented in front of their television sets, and soon saw various consortiums displaying similar advertisements on different broadcast channels.
"A century of disaster, climate mutation, and unending radiation. Humanity has reached a critical juncture of life and death. But our research teams at Tianxi/XX/KK… Consortium have discovered that a new revolution is dawning in the ruin zones. The gods will grant us the opportunity to escape our predicament, but it requires brave explorers!"
"For the fate of humanity, they set out bravely, only to be trapped in the land of ruins, facing certain death. But! They will also carry the hope of humanity and complete their genetic mutation."
"They are the greatest pioneers!"
"Let us like, comment, and share for their fate. One-click triple combo, oh…"
Passionate rhetoric, grand pronouncements, genuine emotions, as if sugar-coated, never mentioning the underlying cause, only presenting all the positive energy on the surface to bewitch people's minds. And the ultimate goal was that enthusiastic cry—the essence of pursuing profit.
By the side of a gutter, on a residential building at the edge of the city, a neon sign for some special kind of salon still hung. Inside the glass sliding door, several scantily clad women sat on plastic stools, watching the television screen with anticipation. Their makeup couldn't hide their pallor, their eyes couldn't conceal their desperation to break free from their miserable lives. They shouted in a strange language, eagerly discussing what they would do once the diseases and hunger that plagued the world disappeared.
Find family, find lovers, go back to their hometowns to farm, get a cat, and so on.
Or go to a hospital for some unmentionable surgery.
Then, with hands stained with a strange, filthy slime that they rarely had time to clean, they tapped on their phones. Ding-dong, ding-dong. They spent Alliance Credits from their pitifully small accounts to support this great adventure.
Striving for humanity!
Jingle. The glass door slid open, and several reeking, pot-bellied smugglers walked in, cursing. The women quickly stood up to greet them, then carefully began to haggle…
The phone screens were still on the successful payment page.
The masses were stirred, as if they had seen hope, as if they had been brainwashed by a master orator. They excitedly liked, tipped… contributing their meager income to these capitalists.
Different consortiums, different ruin zones, different broadcast videos. For a time, at least several hundred to a thousand videos of different teams' ruin adventures were broadcast. First, they were broadcast in the areas controlled by each consortium to harvest initial traffic. Then, based on the click-through rates, the most exciting livestreams were selected and promoted to other regions, expanding the scope of their exploitation…
On Tianxi's side.
Ian Carroll smashed a game console in his office.
Of course, he wasn't angry about Sui Xin's plight. He was angry because he realized—he had no part in the consortium's premeditated plan.
What was his status, Ian Carroll? He used to be a participant in many decisions at the headquarters. Now, after being exiled to this small place, he was completely ignorant of such an important project, and had even been smugly thinking he could use it to control an insignificant little analyst.
Now, this matter only made him seem more foolish and insignificant. In his fury, he contacted his father in the family to question him, but the latter was very cold, only telling him to follow company rules.
"Do the job of your current position. You don't need to worry about anything else. Don't break the rules."
"But can't you just tell me what the real purpose of this plan is…"
He wasn't an idiot. While this matter would certainly bring in huge profits from the livestreaming, enough to make the group's financial reports look much better, he knew the headquarters' style well. There must be other objectives.
For example, what was the origin of the worms in people like Ye Chen? Human experimentation?
"I have more than one son, Ian."
Hearing the cold, hoarse voice on the other end, Ian fell silent abruptly, his throat dry. After the call ended, he stared blankly, then turned his head to see the woman he had regarded as an ant on the screen, already having found the medical kit.
Because of the hair tie, the skin on her left arm was turning purple. The blood was pooling there, unable to circulate. After a while, it would go numb. In fact, her left fingers were completely numb now, unable to move at all.
However, she quickly sliced open her skin with a small knife and used a silver needle to probe.
A flurry of fierce actions.
She missed.
The aim was off.
She had cut herself open and poked a hole for nothing.
She banged her head against the back of the car seat in pain, whimpering.
So miserable. Why make a weak analyst like me do such a technical job!
It hurts so much.
Tears streamed down her face, and she was drenched in sweat, which dripped from her chin. But she continued her rapid operations… After a few more tries, finally, a slender, red, thread-like worm was picked out by her, flying onto the seat back with a splatter of blood.
Sui Xin knew the surveillance on her was definitely active. From the perspective of the button, they could see what her hands were doing.
So… she glanced at the worm, a thought flashing through her mind: It's different. This worm looks very similar to a Red Corrosive Ironworm, but the head at one end is different. Its head is black.
Then, Sui Xin quickly slapped it with someone's nearby clothes, squashing it.
Smashed to a pulp.
The clothes didn't corrode.
It really was different.
The worms inside their bodies came from another source, and they all erupted at the same time, affecting everyone. Considering these two factors, the consortium had few opportunities to act.
She thought of the only possibility.
—The nutrient solution.
When they set out this morning, the equipment distributed by the group's resource department included a free nutrient solution for each person. It must have contained the eggs of this worm.
There was biological data on the Red Corrosive Ironworm, but she had no idea about this new worm.
A newly developed organism, created specifically for this operation?
Then it really was human experimentation, and the goals of human experimentation were usually one of two things.
1. What the worms could do with their hosts' bodies.
2. What their hosts' bodies would become after being implanted with the worms.
Which goal it was depended on whether the consortium wanted the human bodies or the worms.
But she couldn't let the consortium discover that she already knew about this, or even that she was being monitored.
So, next, she had to do three things.
1. Reasonably get rid of the surveillance on her.
2. Leave Ye Chen and the others to avoid the surveillance from their perspectives, without directly turning against them. She was outnumbered.
3. Regardless of the consortium's secrets, an ant doesn't fight a tiger head-on. She had to pretend to know nothing and fake her death to escape.
She was just a slacker office worker, why was this so hard!
Sui Xin's mind was a mess of schemes. She was growing paler from the blood loss, and sweat plastered her hair to her cheeks, but she quickly made a decision.
The consortium was a bunch of old schemers, and these frontline personnel were unreliable. But she couldn't turn on them; she had to play the long game.
Two minutes later, Sui Xin bandaged her wound with the medical kit and excitedly got out of the vehicle.
"Family! I found a way! I'll pick the worms out for you!"
She turned her head and saw—Ye Chen and the others standing or sitting on the ground, completely unharmed.
Nothing was wrong.
They were confused too. It was just suddenly over?
"You guys aren't in pain anymore?"
She had endured so much pain to pick out the worm, and they were fine?
Suddenly, she felt a little upset.
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