Star Rank Hunter-Chapter 355: The Virus Descends
The prisoner room were filled with rows and rows of cylindrical, white-glowing cages.
The surroundings were so quiet that the one could hear the sounds of the soldiers knocking on the cage wall clearly. The prisoners’ despairing, beastial howls from inside the one square meter wide cage only added to the hopelessness of the situation.
Unlike the other prisoners, Cillin sat against the wall with his legs curled slightly and kept his eyes closed. He was waiting for something and taking note of the activities outside the cage. He couldn’t see anything outside from inside the cage as a matter of course, but sight wasn’t the only way he could perceive his surroundings. The slight tremors affecting the cage and machine language told him a fair amount as well.
He couldn’t perceive his surroundings without sight perfectly like Czedow and Wheeze, but a rough picture was well within his capabilities. For example, he could sense it when a researcher patrolled the area earlier. He could also tell how long the researcher had lingered around certain cages, their patrol route and so on.
Cillin was also counting the time besides saving his energy and perceiving his surroundings. Suddenly, he picked something that was nigh imperceptible. To give an example, someone outside the cage might not have picked up the activity if they had to rely on their hearing only.
A ripple had appeared on a wall of the prisoner room. Then, a metallic person walked out from the center. He couldn’t perceive the person’s face from where he was, only that he had a humanoid outline. The entire process was almost soundless, and the part where his body was connected to the wall only rippled slightly.
Cillin didn’t know who the person was, but they reminded him of that man he once encountered at the prison of Sector S.
Is it “Mist”? Or “Merciless”?
Regardless of who they belonged to, Cillin was very surprised that they showed up at all. They were the two best killer organizations in the entire GAL, so any move they made would be deserving of scrutiny, especially on a planet like this one.
Why are they here? Is it for the people, or the drugs?
Miracle was most famous for their gene medicine, but there was no need for them to come to the prisoner room if the drugs were their goal, right?
Throughout all this, Cillin kept his head bowed and didn’t move a muscle so that it would look like he was asleep from the outside. Therefore, the newcomer didn’t notice anything amiss with Cillin either. After scanning the room once for whatever it was they were here for, they stepped back into the wall, and the ripples vanished like they never existed in the first place.
There were no researchers in the room, but there were quite the number of security cameras. Long story short, there were no blind spots they hadn’t covered. What this meant was that the security cameras had been tampered with, and that the mysterious person had one or more accomplices in the facility. That was why he wasn’t afraid of being detected at all.
Things were getting complicated, but it didn’t have to be a bad thing. At the very least, he now had a scapegoat to blame the havoc he was soon to wreak on.
Time passed little by little. The researchers went about their business just like every other day.
At a base a slightly father distance away from Cillin’s, two researchers were spending their leisure chatting with each other and complaining about the wall they had bumped into in their recent experiments.
“It’s not working. The side effects of the feedback is too much, and we just couldn’t find a way to increase the stability no matter what we tried. We’ve failed at least 20 times this afternoon alone, and the pressure from the higher-ups is never-ending. It’s so annoying and exhausting,” one of the researchers complained.
They hadn’t come here completely out of their free will. Long story short, Miracle had made various threats and promises that they couldn’t ignore.
At first, they were shocked to learn that the test subjects they were going to experiment on were soldiers. Some were even quite high up in the military ranking. Although soldiers and officers generally made excellent test subjects due to their high constitution, they would never even think to commit such a thing in the past. The army’s vengeance was nothing to scoff at after all. But now? Now the situation was different, and they had gotten used to their new life.
The researcher sitting on his chair nodded in agreement. “I know right? Our department has had quite the amount of failures too. Although the first upgrade was relatively speaking a success, the second upgrade has a fairly low success rate. Even a modified human’s genes has its hard limits.”
“I don’t agree with that saying. The entire point of our research is to exceed the hard limits of our genes. Otherwise, how can you call it an upgrade? Also—”
The speaker suddenly fell silent.
“Also? Go on, I’m listening.” The researcher said while sipping his water, but he still didn’t hear a reply from his colleague. When he turned to look, he saw that the other guy was staring at him in shock and fear.
“What’s wrong?”
“Y… your face is!” The guy jumped away while pointing a finger at him.
“My face?”
The researcher set down his cup and rubbed his face. Then, he let out an exclamation of surprise. He still didn’t know what was going on with his face, but the brown spots growing on his hand was enough to tell him what was going on. He rolled up his sleeves and confirmed that his entire arm was covered in brown spots already.
“You’re covered in them too!” He shouted right as his colleague was about to run out of the break room.
It wasn’t a trick. The other guy’s symptoms were two minutes later than later than his, but he was definitely growing brown spots as well.
The brown spots were nothing like the age spots of an older person. They came in various oval-shaped sizes, and the nerves beneath them felt deadened or unfeeling. They had tried cutting it with a knife and felt no pain at all.
Was this a virus? Or some sort of drug?
They had no idea.
The biosafety system was still completely silent. They themselves couldn’t recall making contact with any drug that might trigger such a symptom.
The onset of fear was as rapid as it was acute.
As people who engaged in biochemical experiments, they were naturally terrified of situations like this. Having witnessed all the terrible things that happened to their test subjects, they more than anyone else didn’t want the same fate to befall them. The safety rules were constantly updated, and the sterilization facilities covered for everything. They themselves had never neglected to protect themselves. There were cases of researchers being injured by the failed test subjects, but not once had there been an outbreak during the two years plus they had worked in this research base.
So why was this happening?!
They had protective suits, sterilization rooms, multi-level buffer rooms and isolation rooms… nothing should’ve happened at all! Maybe it was a drug effect?
Before the duo could come up with the proper response to what was happening to them, an ear-piercing scream broke out from the lab next to the breaker room.
Looks like they weren’t the only two people who were infected by the mysterious affliction.
In fact, the same thing was happening all across the labs. Before longs, the screams of panic had spread to the entire base. They were all afraid that they would suffer the same fates as their test subjects.
At this point, the researchers were certain that it was a virus outbreak. If it was a drug spillage of sorts, it wouldn’t have spread this quickly and widely. The bad news was that it only made their panic worse. If their symptoms were the same as their test subjects, then at least they would have some idea as to how to counteract it. That was one of the reasons they infected some of their test subjects on purpose after all.
But it wasn’t, and that was bad. The unknown was the worst because you couldn’t know where to even begin to save yourself.
While the research base was descending into complete panic, two other bases were starting to show signs of the same virus outbreak as well. The news quickly spread across the whole planet, and all the research bases that hadn’t yet been affected by it entered a state of high alert.
It had been confirmed that the base’s defense system couldn’t detect the virus. It hadn’t been confirmed if the sterilization rooms, germ-free rooms, and multi-level buffer rooms were effective in containing the virus.
The base responsible for virus research had reacted very quickly. They had formed a special task force and begun researching the virus as soon as they got their hands on it. However, the news that leaked just a couple of hours later only increased the panic level. All the high level researchers in the special task force were confirmed to be infected.
The status of the other researchers in the task force were not yet confirmed, but everyone knew that it was just an excuse. If you were in the task force, it was just a matter of time before the symptoms began to show.
Not everyone shared the same incubation period. Some people might show symptoms immediately. Some people looked fine for two to three hours before the symptoms began to surface. Most importantly, the virus mutated at an insane rate. It was to the point where the high level researchers in the task force had no idea how to stop it.
Currently, the only symptom the virus exhibited was numbness. Although there had been no deaths so far, no one showed any sign of relief whatsoever. It was too soon to tell if the virus might be deadly. Maybe it was non-lethal during the beginning stages, but what about later? The numbness was spreading, and the virus had an incredibly high mutation rate. Who could say that it wouldn’t mutate into an absolute killer later?
The research bases that seemed to be unaffected rejected all outsiders and worked to upgrade their defense systems. For obvious reasons, whatever project they were working on at the time had been tossed completely out of their minds. Instead, they shut themselves in closed rooms and prayed that it was enough to keep the virus away from them. They hadn’t come here to die after all.
A gray cat stretched calmly while watching the panicking people. After tilting its head, scratching itself behind the ear for a bit, and shaking its fur a bit, it left to spread the “net” wider.
