Starting from Zero

Chapter 134: Evolution

Translator: Wolfy Editor: Wolfy

"Rose, find Butterfly and Big K, and, find a pair of sunglasses for me too."

When she’s gone I turned to Zirai. "I'm sorry, can you give me some room? I need to talk with my guards in private."

Zirai nodded and took out her phone. "We’ll leave then. Tell me your number so I can contact you again."

The twins left the hotel room. I also asked Rose to accompany them to their family. I walked into the office area with my bodyguard duo. This place is equipped with soundproof devices.

"Butterfly, you said Big K is a half-werewolf?"

"That’s right." She folded her arms not knowing what I'm trying to do.

"Sit down." I told Big K. The man's too big and I can’t reach his head.

He complied and sat on the office chair. I pulled on his eyelid to check his eye.

Butterfly looks more puzzled now but she didn’t say anything.

"Are your eyes always like this?"

"I...don’t understand, sir."

Butterfly stepped in. "His eyes will become red, with vertical pupils similar to cat eyes, when engaged in any stressed activity, say, combats."

"Do it now." I ordered.

He just gave me an uncertain look.

"He needs 30 minutes to fully transit into combat mode, and 48 hours to return human, only with the help of specialized medication and equipment. If he does it now we'll have trouble leaving the place."

"That's...pretty long. He can’t do it at will?"

Butterfly chuckled. "This is not a movie you know. We use synthetic cells developed by Dragon Fate, which can undergo controllable mutation to suit our needs but, it takes time. 30 minutes is already fast."

She then took out a small syringe. "Also, we need to get this into our bodies before going into combat mode to supplement our energy, or the cell generation will quickly exhaust our own body resource, killing us."

"Really...sounds hard."

"Of course it is. Again, what you see in the movies is just impossible, like how you can create a monster out of one cell. It simply defies the energy conservation law. Even if the cell can hold such energy in it, you still needs external materials for it to grow. The cell cannot fetch all that extra weight out of thin air. Speaking of weight, our bodies will lose some weight after transformation, instead of growing bigger, because we used up lots of energy."

I thought about it for a while, and decided to took off my sunglasses.

Big K and Butterfly both widened their eyes. "Is that..."

"Can you tell me what’s going on? Is this the transformation you're talking about? And, do I have to give myself a shot like you said so I don’t die from energy lost?"

Butterfly hesitated for a while.

"Let me take a look."

She examined my eyes for quite some time. "...I don’t think this is mutated cell we just mentioned."

Big K sniffed around me. "Smells like...B-13."

"What is B-13?" I asked.

"It's a humanoid gene order, or DNA sequence, developed by someone in early years. People called it the Child of God but... I’d rather call it the ‘Demon Seed'."

That made me even more puzzled.

"Let's get back to the HQ as fast as we can."

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We're back in New Nanjing City after 8 hours. We headed straight towards our underground facility instead of getting back to my college as planned.

I’m now lying on a lab chair. Mom and Dad rushed into the lab with a group of old scientists wearing lab coats behind them.

"Are you alright??" Mother is the first to reach me.

"I think I'm ok. But my eyes are--"

Father pulled her away, then one of the scientist came over and checked on me.

"...This is B-13 polymerization reaction. No doubt about it."

All the other researchers became restless for a while. Everyone tried to get a look on me.

"What exactly is going on?" Father asked them.

"We're not sure why this is here. B-13 has been staying stasis inside young master's body for 19 years. It should never become active according to theory, but...it did. I can’t believe this..."

Another researcher continued: "The mistress was contaminated by B-13 during pregnancy. It has absolutely no effect on an adult body. The young master did not show any problem in the early years, which means he should not meet any in the future. We can't explain why B-13 suddenly...woke up! After all these years."

"What will happen to my son?" Father asked, calmly.

"Under normal circumstances...Young master will experience acute calcium loss in 3-5 days, resulting in his bone structure becoming softened. In the end, only collagen tissues will remain in the bones. We should place him inside a constant pressure primary fluid chamber to protect him, or he will die from apnea without the bones to support his body. But we only have chambers designed to maintain infants. You should order for a bigger one, immediately. Young master will lose his ability to breathe in three days!"

"Don’t worry, we have everything ready. The chamber will be here by tomorrow morning. So...my son is going to live inside that thing forever?"

"No, no. Only a few days. When the bones are completely soft, we will inject him with certain heavy metallic salt, enough amino acids and various trace elements. They will help him grow a new bone structure in approximately 5 days. These new bones will be as rigid as high-carbon steel, and lighter than ordinary human bones."

"What happens next?" Mother said.

"Next is...body strengthening. We had an experiment schedule before and according to that, we strengthen his muscles after reconstructing the bones. However we don't know how far we'll get."

"My boy is going to be fine, right?" Mother asked with trembling voice.

"There’s no problem in the early stages but...the final phases can become a little complicated. B-13 is, essentially, gene virus. The consequence is irreversible. It is impossible to cleanse the virus once it enters a human body, unless you destroy this body completely. According to the last research notes left by Dr. King--before he passed away, that is--gene virus usually do not hurt the nerve cells because these cells are highly developed and refined without much room to undergo further mutation. But, B-13 has been engineered otherwise. It will form up a new tissue in between the cerebral and cerebellum. This new tissue was meant to help the infected being think faster, but the original research was halted before they can confirm this so...we're not sure what will happen inside his brain."

"Why was the research halted?" Father asked.

"Dr. Donald proposed a theory that, the new tissue generated by B-13 can possibly take over the function of the original brain and control the infected body. In other words, the subject will no longer be the man he was. There's another reason as why we didn’t continue. We didn’t have enough supply of death rows to be used in the research. You must understand that we must terminate all subjects we experimented on, whether we succeeded or not. We just...didn’t have the bodies to finish the research."

"So my son is going to..."

"Best case, a superman with exceptional intelligence and body strength. Worst case...a monster with a strong body but a degraded brain."

I’m sweating hard after hearing those words.

"...I see. Let’s get that chamber first."

Father has seen enough in his years dealing with all kinds of situations, he can remain calm.

Mother is holding my hand trying to comfort me. To be frank, I only feel a bit scared, and it's manageable. I don’t know what he meant by "becoming a monster". And "unknown" is one of the most scary concept possible for a man.

"Hey dad!" I saw him walking back. "Will I be...gone?"

"No you won’t. Take it easy."

"So why is this...thing, inside me?"

He took mother's hand. "When your mother was pregnant, I took her here to see your grandfather. The old man wanted to speak to me alone so I asked your mom to wait outside."

Mother continued: "You know how curious I can be, so I walked around the place looking at all the things I couldn’t recognize in the least. There was this big room, I went in and couldn’t tell what was in it either, so I left soon. That room happens to be holding a high-pressure cylinder with B-13 in it. The cylinder had a leak at that time, and the whole room was exposed. I was infected."

"Were you okay?"

Father spoke again. "The virus does not affect adults. We called it the ‘Child of God’, which means we hope that it will give birth to godly beings. B-13 was designed to be injected into pregnant women, to create a new generation with supreme body and mind. But you already heard, the experiment wasn’t finished. Your mother was contaminated by air, not injection. We only found this out during the prenatal examination, and you, at that time, wasn't affected at all. We did find traces of B-13 inside your blood. But the virus was inactive, they stayed at a certain quantity and never multiplied. You grew up till now just fine, so we thought the virus would never rise again. But now..."

He covered his eyes. This is the first time I saw this man crying.

"Hey dad. Don’t worry. It didn’t do anything to me before, and it won’t now. Besides it’s used to make me better right? Not a killing virus or something."

"I’m proud of you, son."

My parents stayed with me until night. That liquid chamber is finished before schedule so I can move in there today. It’s basically a giant glass water tank with two metal plates as top and bottom cover. It's empty now. There are several cylinders nearby with the biohazard warning signs written on them. The "liquid" must be in there.

I swallowed a pill given by a scientist and...felt a sudden stomachache. I had to stay on the toilet for an hour before I came out. My legs are numb!

He later told me that it's used to flush out everything in my stomach and intestines, or my waste will be dumped into the liquid where I also will be staying for the coming days. He could have just told me that it's cathartic pill...a really strong one.

After cleaning my "inside", a group of workers washed my body over several times using different kinds of medicinal fluid, to completely eliminate bacteria on my body so they don’t become unwanted guests in my "private room".

When this is all done, they lifted me into the chamber, since I spent all strength on the 1-hour diarrhea. The scientist placed me into position, pulled down several cables from the metal cover above me and affixed them onto my head.

"Brainwave receivers. Use your mind to type words onto that screen over there. We can also send you messages through these things."

"Wait. Can you patch me to the network of [Zero]? I can't stay in here for a week without something to do."

He looked at my father, who nodded.

"Will do."

He worked with the cables for a little longer, then pulled out a pipe in front of me.

"Hold this in your mouth."

I did as told. He then added something to it to fix it inside my mouth. Now I can’t get the pipe out even if I want to.

Two injectors went into my arms. Guess that's for giving me meds from the outside.

Everyone stood clear of the chamber. Glass slowly raised around me, sealing me inside. Someone connected the cylinders nearby to the chamber with three pipelines. They fit perfectly into the three threaded holes on the base.

A man took out a microphone and spoke.

"Testing. Can you hear me?"

I nodded. Can't talk with this...pipe.

"We will now flood the chamber. Stay calm, breathe the liquid in and you'll be fine. It can provide oxygen through your lungs."

I nodded again.

He pressed a button, and I felt wet on my feet. The liquid is pale green, like clear apple juice. It soon reached my head. I felt awfully not good at first but the warm liquid is quite nice once I got used to it.

"How's the temperature?" The scientist asked.

I glanced at the screen, he followed my sight.

"A bit cold, maybe two degrees higher." I typed.

"Alright...What about now?"

I made a thumb-up.

Mother put her hands on the glass and spoke: "Be strong my dear. I'll stay with you."

I pointed at the screen.

"Don’t worry, I’ll play [Zero] to pass time, just go back to your work."

I'm sure that’s what they’re hoping for too. Dragon Fate would lose millions of profit per minute if father isn't there to operate.

Mother is unwilling to leave me at first but finally compiled by my persuasion. I also asked everyone to leave the room and turn off the lights. Now I'm staying in the dark with only the faint light of the machines monitoring my condition. I know none of these senior scientists would have trouble looking at a naked guy soaked in water but...I prefer avoiding it anyway.

Since I no longer need to worry about eating, dumping, or anything for that matter, I can literally play [Zero] twenty four-seven, if not for the system’s playtime restriction.

I successfully logged in and...saw a brick house with no window. It's totally dark in here. I saw the situation thanks to the night vision ability granted by Star Gaze. There are two bed stoves in this room and I'm lying on one of them.

There's nothing else. The ceiling is really low too, because I can reach it when I stood up. I saw two doors on both sides on this small room.

I walked to one and pushed...nope. Something jammed it on the other side.

There’s no handle on the door. I transformed into werewolf and punched through the wooden door with my claw. The door was easily pulled open. What's behind the door however, is...dirt. A solid dirt wall completely blocked the exit. Is this a basement? But basements should have exits!

The marks on the dirt wall suggest that someone sealed it up recently...from this end.

I returned human and walked to the other door (room's too low for werewolf body). This one can be pushed open. It leads to a small dirt tunnel, which means I'm definitely underground now.

The tunnel is even lower than the room so I have to bend down to move ahead.

Suddenly, I felt something sink beneath my foot.

"Ahhhh!"

A round log rushed down from the ceiling in front of me and knocked me away by a good hit on the stomach, emptying all air in my lungs.

I stood back up and coughed. The log trap is still swaying like a swing.

I carefully walked around the log and continued, slowly. I don’t think this is the only trap.

I’m too concentrated on the ground and next, I tripped something over my head. This time a boulder dropped on me before I can run away.

The weight wasn’t enough to crush my armor so I survived. But it still took me some effort to crawl from under the rock.

I kept treading carefully until I reached another door without meeting any more traps. It's a room the same as the one I woke up in. The rooms must be some kind of resting points between the dangerous passageways.

As expected, the tunnel continued after the room. I didn't get far before I felt emptiness under my heel again. The entire ground below me collapsed. I immediately stretched my claw blades and locked myself on the wall.

There are sharpened wooden stakes standing beneath the area, ready to turn anything that falls on them into meat skewers. The blackened tips indicate that they already killed someone before.

My claw blades and the spikes on my boots helped me navigate to safety. I raised my concentration to maximum from this point. But I never ran into anything else.

This tunnel-room-tunnel structure continued for quite a while. I haven’t reached the end, nor any branches. If the room I started from isn’t barred on the other side I’d think I was walking in circles.

This is getting really irritating, until I came across another trap. The long walk already made me drop my guard, I noticed it because I’m walking with my head lowered in thought. It's a trip wire, made from the fiber of some unknown plant. I took out my dagger to dig into the wall where the wire came out, and...found nothing. The mechanic must be on the other side.

I tried the other end and still didn’t find anything because the wire is buried pretty deep, so I gave up and just fixed my dragon cord onto the wire, walked away, and pulled on it.

I waited for the trap to come alive. Nothing happened.

I walked forward carefully, still nothing.

I looked down to check the now broken wire, when I heard something distant. Is that...water?

It sounds like a running river, and it's getting closer. The ground below me also began to tremble. The noise is coming from behind me. But the other exit is blocked, and I don’t remember seeing anything that can release water into the tunnel.

As the water sound draws near, I suddenly recalled a typical trap often seen in movies about Egyptian pyramids. Could it be...

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