Chapter 72: The incubation chamber
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
Heinrich nodded slightly at the eerie sound that was approaching. This was not a mechanical or wind-energy sound; it was at least a living thing with vocal cords that breathed. Lin Xu continued by mouthing, “Close the door.”
Heinrich gently closed the door, and the hissing of the monster continued to close in, footsteps echoing in the long, empty corridor. If they were bipedal creatures, judging by the footsteps, there were about four of them.
But the door lock had been destroyed by light energy bullets and could not resist the monsters’ invasion, and this living room did not have any path to the outside except the door.
Lin Xu began to quickly search Yan Yuan’s desk, drawers and closet, putting all the paper products he had written on into his backpack. He no longer cared about the sound made by pulling the drawers and cabinet doors, the zombies had smelled the human smell and would come over anyway, there was little point in continuing to cover up.
Heinrich immediately understood, turned around and used the laser knife to break open the rest of the safe, taking out the documents in the cabinet. The documents were all sealed in kraft paper bags, the cover was in Chinese characters that Heinrich could not read, he did not care about the meaning of the characters, all stuffed into his backpack.
Lin Xu turned his back on Heinrich to check Yan Yuan’s closet, the strange noises in the corridor kept amplifying, but a few pieces of rough white paper interspersed with brown kraft bags suddenly caught Heinrich’s eye.
It was a pen sketch, and Heinrich paused for a moment after pulling the paper out of the file, looking up at Lin Xu, and then down again, as the portrait on the sketch gradually overlapped with Lin Xu’s face. The portrait on the sketch gradually matched Lin Xu’s face.
The standing posture, the sitting posture, the various angles and details were depicted in great detail. A sketch from 3,000 years ago…
Lin Xu could already hear the sound of the zombie’s sharp nails scratching the wall, he quickly turned around Heinrich and pushed Yan Yuan’s desk against the door halfway.
Boom…
The sharp sound of a zombie claw on the door panel sent chills down Lin Xu’s back as countless memories flooded back, and the familiar stench of corpses wafted in along the cavity where the door lock had been damaged, making it sickening.
Heinrich put away all the drawing paper and file folders, and he stepped forward, only to be stopped by Lin Xu behind him.
When Lin Xu’s arm hit Heinrich’s power exoskeleton, he suddenly remembered that Marshal Chu was not a delicate old human from the ancient Earth, and turned his head to say, “What’s out there…”
Lin Xu realized that there was no word for zombies or corpses in the Empire, so he had to replace it with, “The humanoid monsters out there have only attack instincts, are physically strong, and their weakness is their brains. They carry a strong infectious virus that spreads through blood, there is no antidote for the infection, do not get scratched.”
Bang – zombie fist in the door made out a dent, the desk was jolted back a few centimeters, the gap revealed the zombie rotten and blackened skin. Lin Xu stopped talking as he concentrated on the door and gave Heinrich the standard gesture of aiming his gun with his left hand.
In the next moment, Lin Xu took a few steps back and kicked the other half of the door that was not blocked, the metal door pivot broke instantly and the door tumbled down, directly on the zombie who was tapping on the door.
The zombie tried to resist the heavy alloy door plate, Lin Xu stepped on the door plate tilted to 45 ° pressed on the zombie’s head, using his and exoskeleton’s weight to crush the zombie on the ground.
Lin Xu leapt forward, rolled twice to avoid the claws, leaned back on the ground and raised his gun to the zombie’s head, pulled the trigger and the bright blue light energy bullet hit the zombie’s forehead and melted its already decaying skin into blood, but failed to penetrate the skull!
Lin Xu’s gaze sank, quickly rolled up, pulled out the refined steel short knife, raised his hand to slice the claws of the zombie that grabbed at the tip of the nose. “Change the blaster!” Lin Xu shouted at Heinrich.
The light energy bullet’s main killing power was the heat burn, and the impact was weak enough to break the A-Class zombie’s hard skull.
After Heinrich hit the other zombie’s head ineffectively, he quickly used the light energy bullet to pierce the zombie’s knee, weakening the zombie’s mobility, but the zombie could not feel the pain and the upper limbs were still attacking fiercely.
He followed Lin Xu’s words and switched to a blaster gun with strong penetrating bullets, drawing and loading the gun at the moment the zombie hissed and crawled, and without hesitation pulled the trigger, blowing the zombie’s human head into a puddle of blackened blood.
Meanwhile, Lin Xu’s side was not in a good shape. He was holding a short knife and was surrounded by two A-Class zombies. The Imperial Arsenal short knife was so strong and tough that it wouldn’t be popped out by the zombie’s sharp claws and teeth, but it wasn’t sharp enough to cut through the zombie’s skull.
So, his target was the neck of the zombie, the tiny gap where the cervical vertebrae were connected.
Two zombies came at him in a closed circle. Lin Xu stomped on the abdomen of one of them and used the force to get airborne, and with the falling gravity, he precisely cut the cervical vertebrae of the other one and cut off its head.
The corpse he stomped on raised its claws and pressed Lin Xu’s ankles, trying to throw him off!
Bang Bang-
The gun spat out two sparks in quick succession as the blaster rounds smashed the zombie’s head into a bloody mist, and the deafening sound of gunfire echoed infinitely in the corridor, like a giant bell ringing.
Lin Xu kicked away the zombie’s claws and bounced up. Heinrich had just put down his blaster, the smoke from the muzzle had not yet completely dissipated, and the lingering smell of nitrous smoke stained Heinrich’s tiger mouth.
Lin Xu’s foggy gray eyes looked at him, pursed his lips and nodded, then lowered his head and used the tip of his knife to grind the brains of the two A-Class zombies that hadn’t been blown up, turning out the crystal cores. He wasn’t used to facing walkers side by side with people.
“Is this… mutated human?” Heinrich stepped over the corpses and came to Lin Xu’s side.
“That’s right.” Lin Xu explained with a sullen face, “Humans infected with the mutated virus will quickly lose consciousness and vital signs, like a corpse, but can continue to move and their physical qualities are even enhanced. They exist with only one goal – to feed on humans. The viruses of mutated plants and animals do not infect humans, but they also feed on them.”
Lin Xu followed the footprints left by the walkers in the hallway all the way into the darkness, “I too thought these ‘moving corpses’ were extinct.” He looked for a phrase to refer to the zombies.
The hissing and heavy footsteps were absent from the whistling wind for the moment, but the silence of the unknown was even more gut-wrenching. Lin Xu continued, “After checking the rest of the single rooms, I need to go check the source of the walkers.”
“Okay.” Heinrich did not raise any objections. Lin Xu’s aura was completely cold, and his eyes, which were usually careless and casual, were now as sharp as ice, leaving no room for refusal in his posture and language.
But he was not like Marshal Chu in uniform, his face like frost standing with his hands on the bridge, he was more like a hunter in the wilderness, alone, facing the most primitive, the smell of death in front of him.
Lin Xu and Heinrich gathered all the items in the remaining single rooms and took them away, following the rotting footprints of the walkers all the way down.
A flight of stairs between the circular corridors swirled down around the central space. They saw the elevator, but had no intention of trying it, and walked all the way down to the plane where the lectern was located.
Below the plane visible from the upper level there was an even deeper space, completely inaccessible to light, and Heinrich and Lin Xu proceeded cautiously with flashlights in hand.
The four zombies had torn through the metal partitions along the way to escape, which now made it easier for Heinrich and Lin Xu to explore. Without sunlight, the temperature continued to drop. Flashlight beam straight ahead, the narrow tube effect made the wind in the corridor more raging, cold as a knife.
Everything around them was wrapped in darkness except for the road ahead, and the powered exoskeleton was making mechanical sounds as it moved.
For a moment, Lin Xu felt something flash through his vision. He listened to his own and Heinrich’s breathing; beyond that, there was silence. He closes his eyes, recalling the image that has just been reflected on his retina. Eyes, mouth, nose… The human face.
Lin Xu collected his stuck breath as best he could, but his heart was beating wildly. What was the most terrifying thing for a person in a deserted, unknown place? It’s another person. And what’s even scarier? It’s the blurred faces wandering in the darkness.
–Click. He stepped on something soft and wrapped in somewhat brittle contents. Lin Xu held his breath, and the wind around him seemed to be silent to death for a moment. The sound of cracking echoed in his ears. No, the wind just stopped. The air flow slowed down and they entered another, larger space. Lin Xu turned his flashlight to the side to check the situation, and the beam of light slid by, illuminating a human face.
“Oh!” Over-vigilance caused Lin Xu to take an unexpectedly frightening step backwards, his rear end hitting something, a void behind him, and inertia caused him to fall straight backwards and out.
“Lin Xu!” Heinrich rushed forward, but failed to catch the falling hand. He watched as Lin Xu’s back hit the railing and he fell out. The flashlight came out of his hand and flew downward with its light, scattering beams of light that illuminated countless faces and pale limbs.
With a loud bang, the flashlight landed on the ground and the miserable white light flickered and went out.
“Lin Xu…” Heinrich’s voice lagged for a moment. There was another loud thud of metal on metal, and Heinrich felt only a jolt in the plane beneath his feet.
“I’m here.”
The trembling light in Heinrich’s hand shone toward the source of the sound and found Lin Xu with his hands picking at the metal edge of the plane. Lin Xu saw Heinrich’s familiar face in the light and exhaled, flipping upward with his hands. Lin Xu did not struggle, and even half leaned on Heinrich’s shoulder.
The wavering beam of light swept over countless silent faces again, all with their eyes closed. Lin Xu used the light to look at the place where he had just stepped on, a small arm with a dehydrated muscle strip lying there, the bone broken in two by his step.
The place where they were standing seemed to be a flat bridge, the floor was a hollow metal square, and through the gap, the bottom was submerged in darkness.
Just as Lin Xu bowed his head, Heinrich stroked Lin Xu’s hair braid. Feeling his silent reassurance, Lin Xu’s racing heartbeat dropped considerably, “I’m fine.”
“Yeah.” Heinrich’s emotionless, low voice was reassuring at the moment. He handed Lin Xu the flashlight, took out the cryogenic suspension flares, and fired one shot in each direction.
After the gun went off, a dazzling light with stabbing sparks lit up the entire space. Lin Xu finally saw the flickering faces and personal images of where they came from. The flare light illuminated the space a little, outlining the appearance of numerous cylindrical glass culture chambers.
Overlapping section after section filled with green liquid culture module, down to the ground up to the dome, nearly 100 meters high, as the growth of logs like spreading, countless such steel and glass ‘logs’ arranged in space, silent standing, dense with no end in sight, the farthest culture module column could not be touched by light, once again falling into darkness.
Countless metal flat bridges passed through them, as if extending into the fog of the forest road. In each glass culture chamber, there was a human body, floating vertically in the ghostly green liquid, without any cover, with tubes in the spine, arms and back of the head. There were probably tens of thousands of culture chambers.
Lin Xu approached the railing and threw the light on the nearest culture chamber, which was a young male, his eyes closed, his long hair floating like seaweed in the liquid, his face pale but serene, seemingly in some kind of slumber. But Lin Xu subconsciously felt that something was wrong.
The beam moved to the upper metal edge of the culture chamber, dust covered the metal rust, Lin Xu vaguely saw the shape of the machine indicators, but none of these indicators lit up.
The broken glass chamber was empty, and the severed arm had fallen there. The owner of the severed arm was indeed dead. His culture chamber lights also went out, as did all the other culture chambers. Base energy had long been exhausted, no matter what the original purpose of these pods, without energy, they could not be maintained. Soaked in liquid, were white and stiff human bodies.
