Mutants - Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Unity!

Ye Chen went around to look and saw Huang Ye, the captain of Car 6, shooting his team members. He frowned.

The latter wasn't flustered upon seeing him. He said calmly, "Since their protective suits weren't activated, even if they were lucky enough to survive, their internal organs are damaged. They won't make it anyway. It's better to give up their resources."

"This isn't the first time. Captain Ye, do you think I'm wrong?"

Ye Chen: "You're not wrong, but I wouldn't do it."

Huang Ye smiled. "I know."

"You're still chatting? Didn't you see the worms?"

What worms?

Jenny loudly reminded everyone. Huang Ye and Ye Chen had keenly started stripping off their clothes as soon as they woke up and hadn't heard Sui Xin's faint voice, so they didn't know about the worms.

The main reason was that with more people waking up, the disturbance on the water's surface concealed the worms' tracks.

By the time the two of them reacted, someone had already been hit.

"What is this thing? It hurts! Fuck!"

Chen Shen from Car 4 yanked off a worm attached to his neck, only to find his neck… Sui Xin had actually stomped a bunch of them to death without being bitten. Although she had seen them covering that corpse, there were so many that she couldn't be sure of their nature.

She wasn't sure of their species or lethality, only that avoiding them was the right move. At this moment, she looked up and saw that after Chen Shen pulled the bloodworm off his neck, his neck hissed… and a line of blood shot out.

It was really like a fountain.

He himself was stunned for a moment. Then, the muscles in his face twitched, and he quickly covered the spot on his neck where the worm had been attached. Blood spurted from between his fingers. His other hand frantically fumbled for the hemostatic pack in his protective suit's pocket, but his blood vessels or perhaps his windpipe had likely been damaged. His breathing became difficult, and his brain was rapidly deprived of oxygen. In his panic, the hemostatic pack fell into the water. He wanted to go somewhere, but he collapsed to his knees in the water with a splash.

"Help… help me…"

He gasped for breath, pleading with a teammate two meters away. However, that person saw the dense swarm of worms and the dwindling number of intact protective suits, took a deep breath, turned, and fled in disarray.

"No!!"

He wailed in agony. At that moment, other worms, drawn by the scent of blood, swarmed him.

The man knelt in the water as the worms surrounded him, burrowing into his nostrils, his ears… His screams were horrifying.

Ye Chen and the others quickly retreated from the water, watching helplessly as an acquaintance, one of their team members, was reduced to a bloody mess… a skeleton?

"Corrosion. It can spit a corrosive mucus that quickly penetrates the skin. Just now, it burrowed into the skin and ruptured his windpipe."

"Retreat!!"

One by one, those who could still move scrambled out of the water. As for the severely injured… it was just like those who had been wounded in the fierce battle with the Red Eye.

Screams, or the sound of a gunshot to end it and snatch the protective suit?

It all happened in a matter of moments.

No one knew what expression Sui Xin wore under her helmet. Ye Chen only caught a glimpse of her trembling fingers as she subconsciously moved away from them.

She was probably terrified.

She had never seen such a naked rule of survival on the front lines.

Just as Ye Chen was about to say something, Sui Xin suddenly spoke: "I just woke up. I remember seeing this canyon in a video before. That means the outpost is over there. I suspect someone deliberately led us here."

"Someone replaced the map route with a wrong one again."

Ye Chen and Jenny exchanged a look impassively, hiding their guilt, but they were even more alarmed. Who was it?

Someone cursed angrily, "Fuck! It's either the Tianxi Group or the enemy occupying the outpost."

Ye Chen's expression was grim.

The armored vehicles definitely had surveillance, and the radios were monitored, but now that the vehicles were destroyed, they were free from the corporation's watch. Naturally, they had to assess the current situation.

Seven vehicles, a total of 63 people. Now, only 25 remained.

Suffering such casualties before even reaching the outpost was nothing short of tragic.

Huang Ye's face was also filled with anger at the casualties. He said grimly, "If it's the latter, that was our objective for coming here anyway, so it's no big deal. But if it's the former, then we can't participate in this operation."

"We have to run. Run for our lives."

How could they be sure if Tianxi was behind this?

Sui Xin did not express her opinion.

They fell into a sullen silence. Jenny thought for a moment and said, "If it were Tianxi, killing us frontline personnel would be as easy as flipping a hand. To put it more simply, all these armored vehicles are wrecked. If that was also their goal, they could have just remotely controlled the Kinetic-01 loaded on each vehicle, and that would have been enough to kill us all."

Indeed, a behemoth like Tianxi didn't need such complicated methods to kill ants like them.

Ruling out that possibility, only one remained.

"This group of enemies got our intel in advance, and this place is already their territory. Whether it's these worms or the corrosive gray mist, they're all methods they use to occupy this area. That seems more logical."

Indeed, everyone basically accepted this logic.

After all, the native Red Eye Organization had managed to replace the GPS to misdirect their route before, let alone the enemy occupying the outpost.

Ye Chen looked at Sui Xin. "Consultant Sui, what do you think?"

Sui Xin was still wearing her helmet, so no one could see her expression or where she was looking. But they heard her voice as she said, "I think that's the only possibility left. We're not even worthy of the corporation spending half a thought on us."

In reality, she was looking at the protective suit two meters away. It was her previous one. Hadn't she taken it off and used it to stomp on the red worms? The red worms were smashed to a pulp, and they had corroded part of the suit's material.

The protective suit itself carried some equipment, including cameras and such.

But… how was it that after the suit's fabric was corroded, the buttons were completely fine?

She had glanced at it inadvertently and then suddenly became suspicious. A strange conjecture flashed through her mind, but she didn't dare show it.

Huang Ye raised an eyebrow and said faintly, "That's not necessarily true. Actually, among us here, only you, Consultant Sui, are of any real value."

"You're in the Think Tank. Don't you think this operation was strange from the start?"

What did this person mean? Did he think she had provoked someone from the corporation to retaliate, and they were caught in the crossfire?

Since he thought so, Sui Xin's eyes glanced at the gun he was holding and his stance—this Huang Ye had been maintaining a constant state of combat readiness.

And he was facing her.

It seemed this incident hadn't just given her a strong sense of crisis; others felt it too.

In that case…

Sui Xin found Huang Ye's hostility baffling, so she said awkwardly, "I thought it was strange, which is why I didn't want to come. But I had to."

A dangerous glint flashed in Huang Ye's eyes. He said coldly, "How come I heard you were sent here because you offended someone? So, who exactly did you offend? Could that person be influencing our operation? It seems like the ability to override map guidance is something our company can do internally. If that person wanted to kill you…"

His step-by-step reasoning was, in fact, leading to the conclusion that she was the one who had brought this deadly crisis upon them.

When the others heard this, their expressions gradually turned strange and fierce.

Logically speaking, something like lashing out in anger after a failed attempt at coercion… it was really possible that person had arranged it.

But was it really necessary?

How much authority would this person need to orchestrate such a massacre?

In other words, if someone had that kind of authority, it would be a simple matter to just force himself on her or secretly hire an outside assassin to kill her.

Why bother?

They didn't understand.

But humans have a habit of assigning blame for everything, especially onto others.

Shua!

Huang Ye suddenly drew his gun and aimed it at Sui Xin.

Sui Xin: "!"

…

Ye Chen's expression changed. He immediately stepped in front of Sui Xin and berated Huang Ye.

Huang Ye, however, said he had no choice.

"If this disaster was really brought upon us because of her, Captain Ye, can you tolerate it? Are our brothers' lives not lives? Are our lives not lives?"

Ye Chen: "Do you think it's that simple?"

While he was speaking up for Sui Xin, Sui Xin, who had been terrified with a gun pointed at her, quickly calmed down. She glanced back and forth between them, a thought flashing through her mind: Huang Ye was in another vehicle; he wouldn't have a reliable source of information. Even if he had some issue with her as a consultant, given that they were already in front of the outpost, he would use her technical skills to reach the outpost and enter the research lab before making any moves, not just lose his temper and try to kill her on a whim.

Besides, if he really wanted to kill her, these frontline guys should know that you only use threats when you need to take a prisoner or interrogate someone. Otherwise, you save time and kill instantly to avoid future trouble.

—So, Huang Ye was doing it on purpose.

On purpose for what?

To coordinate with someone.

She casually glanced at Ye Chen.

She had only mentioned that matter in the S501 vehicle. The other vehicles had no authority to monitor the first one. So it must have been someone in the vehicle, like Ye Chen, who told Huang Ye, stirring up the latter's wariness of her. Then, he colluded with Huang Ye to threaten her, making everyone feel animosity and suspicion toward her. This would weaken her theoretically top-ranking command authority in this operation, allowing Ye Chen to regain complete control as captain.

Of course, his act of playing the good guy was also to gain Sui Xin's trust.

The operation was already fraught with danger, and now this small convoy was pulling these kinds of stunts. So much drama in such a small pond.

So annoying.

And she couldn't beat a single one of them.

Field operations were so unfriendly to a non-combatant academic type.

Sui Xin was annoyed. After some thought, she deliberately muttered, "I understand. If that's really the case, then I really did drag you all into this."

She broke down in an instant.

"I don't want to live anymore! I deserve to die! Go on, shoot me!"

Since they wanted to use her, they obviously wouldn't kill her outright. She'd just see how long they could keep up the act.

Huang Ye: "?"

He was momentarily stunned, and the palm of his hand holding the gun grew slightly sweaty.

Why was this little pushover not playing by the rules?

Ye Chen also frowned, continuing to stand in front of Sui Xin and telling Huang Ye to put the gun down.

Huang Ye took the opportunity to back down. "Fine, I'll give you face, Captain Ye. But she has to give us an explanation and tell us the real situation with this operation."

He smoothly transitioned into a state of analyzing the operation. Ye Chen was also preparing to say some placating words to ease the tension and, in the process, extract some information from this mid-level person, Sui Xin.

However, Sui Xin was not on the same wavelength as them.

She lowered her head, her eyes red, and muttered to herself, "I'm guilty. You can't be with me anymore, or you'll die with me. You'll really die. This operation was dangerous from the start. I said it long ago, everyone is doomed to die. It seems my premonition was right. We're really going to die."

Sui Xin's current goal was to justifiably get out of this operation and separate herself from these ruthless and skilled people.

She was trying every trick to make them run away, to make them bear the risk of desertion.

Anyway, they would most likely die if they went ahead.

Of course, these people might also want her to desert first, so she would take the blame.

So she kept spouting "we'll die, we'll die, we'll die, we'll die," in a melancholic style, full of despair, repeating it over and over. It gave everyone a headache, and they even had to turn around and console her not to be so pessimistic…

Honestly, they all wanted to complain: this type of person was a ticking time bomb on the front lines. It was like she was a mole sent by the enemy, just to mess with people's minds.

There was no need to threaten her; she'd already broken down on her own and was trying to drag a whole group down with her.

Huang Ye frowned. The problem was now his. The enemy was supposed to be the enemy, but now it had become one of their own, and a high-level one they couldn't oppose at that.

Ye Chen had no choice but to say, "Don't overthink it. The probability of that is very low. Besides, we're a team. Unless there's absolutely no other way, we won't abandon any team member."

"That includes you."

His voice was deep. Seeing that Sui Xin seemed moved, he continued, "You were probably scared by our earlier actions, thinking we're really that heartless, abandoning teammates at the drop of a hat?"

"Not to mention we've shared hardships along the way, but just based on your status, we have to protect you."

He reached out and patted Sui Xin's shoulder, continuing to reassure her, "We are a team. I hope you remember that."

"All of us are."

Perhaps influenced by the atmosphere, comrades who had fought through life and death together were indeed the most trustworthy allies.

The survivors gathered around. In their battered state, a bit of courage rose within them. They reached out, stacking their hands to make a pact.

"Team!"

"Team! Let's do this!"

Sui Xin seemed genuinely moved. With the soft, emotional voice unique to an intellectual, she said sincerely, "Yes. The more critical the moment, the more we, as a family, need to be united."

"Only through unity can we overcome difficulties."

Everyone patted the stack of hands, as if their spirits and minds had reached a consensus.

But in the exchange of glances, Huang Ye and the others were already dead set on escaping.

Ye Chen and his group were likely the same, which was why they cooperated so tacitly, planning to use her and Ian Carroll's situation as a reason to convince the others to flee with them.

"Now, let's talk about what to do next. The operation has gone wrong, we've lost signal, and we can't contact the company. The best course of action right now seems to be…"

This was exactly what Sui Xin wanted!

She was originally satisfied with this outcome, but why did her hand sting a little?

She couldn't help but frown, but she wasn't the only one.

It hurts.

Several people couldn't help but clutch their wrists.

What was going on?

Was this a cursed team? Their hands started hurting the moment they clapped to form an alliance?

Divine retribution before they even deserted?

Ye Chen saw several people react this way, even Chucks and Lin Dan from his own team. He was stunned for a moment and subconsciously looked at his own wrist, which had also started to hurt.

They couldn't be bothered with the surrounding gray mist anymore; it was just too painful.

Sui Xin was the same. Her right arm ached, forcing her to roll up the sleeve of her protective suit. When she saw strange red veins popping up on her aching wrist, she was stunned. A closer look sent a chill down her spine.

The red veins were moving!

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