Chapter 280: The Sink and The Infected
Translator: Pluto Editor: Vermillion
Despite being a world filled with the supernatural, paradoxically, Kisaragi Station was never fully dark during the night.
As the electrical and water supply systems were still functioning normally in most areas, a person standing at a road junction near the Kitty Provincial Hospital would find the road heading toward the hospital interspersed with segments of light and darkness. Some of the street lights weren’t working, so those segments of the road were dark. Under the night sky, with the unique play of light and darkness, Lin Sanjiu’s group headed toward the main entrance of the provincial hospital.
“Three of you can just hide to one side first,” the cat doctor instructed. The light from the hospital lit his glossy fur. “I will try to scout out the situation and see if I can bring you guys in…”
Since the provincial hospital had already become a mutated building, Lin Sanjiu and the siblings would be treated as “contestants” if they stepped into the building on their own accord. It would be a replay of the situation at the library once again. Even though none of them had 108 lives, Lin Sanjiu was too worried about her physical body so she wasn’t in the mood to fight.
Through the large gla.s.s doors, they could see a nurse standing in the main lobby of the hospital on the first floor. The delicate, young lady was wearing a light pink nurse uniform and was glancing around as if she was waiting for someone. Occasionally, however, she would show her highly decomposed face as she looked toward the center of the hospital, yelling something out loudly.
In comparison, Siri was definitely way cuter.
While the others watched him, the bicolor cat moved swiftly to the hospital door in a blink of an eye. The nurse stopped abruptly, without finis.h.i.+ng her sentence, and looked at the cat for a few seconds with her black, rotten face.
“Are you… Dr. Hu?” the nurse said slowly, appearing very hesitant. As she spoke, rotting gas from her body leaked from her chin. Lin Sanjiu noticed the bicolor cat taking a few steps backward, unconsciously.
“It is great that you’re back, Dr. Hu. You can take charge of things now,” the nurse’s voice sounded weird as putrid gas oozed from her body, “I can give you a quick report. There are now 25 visiting family members and 12 patients. We haven’t found Patient Zero.”
The cat doctor waved his paws and interrupted her with a serious tone, “You are doing a good job here, you don’t have to hand over your duties to me. I just brought a few interns with me for an inspection… You can just continue with your work.”
The nursed stared at the cat silently, almost as if she couldn’t comprehend what he meant or as if she wasn’t confident about handling the current situation. The cat doctor did not waste any time. He turned to Lin Sanjiu and the siblings and called them over. Meanwhile, he distracted the nurse by continuing the conversation with her, “Go on, why don’t you tell me what the problem with the current hospital protocol is. Why do you have to find Patient Zero…”
As he spoke, he gestured hastily for Lin Sanjiu and the siblings to head up the stairs. As he couldn’t whisper with his cat mouth, the cat just spoke very softly, “A218, second floor! Wait for me there!”
Lin Sanjiu and the siblings did not dare even to waste a single second. They raced up the stairs, and when they reached the second floor, they could still hear the cat doctor explaining vaguely about them, “They are not, not… experiments. Yes… well, they’re still interns…”
With the cat doctor stalling the nurse, Lin Sanjiu and the siblings managed to infiltrate the hospital without joining the “compet.i.tion”.
The second floor was bright. All the lights were working perfectly. It was clean but messy because there were many medical-related items on the floor in the corridor like thermometers and some doctor’s white coats. The offices of each of the departments were also in a state of disarray as if the staff had escaped in a hurry and were planning to come back at some time.
The hospital was vast so even the second floor was segregated into A, B, C, and D zones. Right now, Lin Sanjiu and the siblings could hear some very soft m.u.f.fled noise coming from some unknown direction—most likely those noises were voices of the posthumans who were trying to gain lives in the hospital.
A218 had a double door entrance and was large. The doors weren’t locked. Being cautious, Lin Sanjiu scanned the room with her higher consciousness and slipped into the room only after confirming that no one else was in it. Reno and Rena followed her into the room soundlessly and then closed the door slowly.
The cat doctor certainly wasn’t lying when he said that he needed the equipment in the hospital to conduct the experiment. The room they were in was about 50 m², and half of the room was filled with all sorts unidentifiable ice-cold machines. There were a few whiteboards, office tables and a sink in the other half of the room.
“Huh?” Rena let out a puzzled quip. “Why is there such a large gla.s.s sink here?”
The large gla.s.s sink was almost the size of a pond. It was half-filled with a green liquid. It was so filthy it seemed as if the liquid had congealed. There wasn’t a single ripple on the surface of the liquid. The thick, yellow dirt stains on the gla.s.s seemed quite out of place in contrast to the modern-looking silver machines.
Rena and Reno, with their youthful rashness, couldn’t help approaching the sink because of their curiosity. Just as they smelt a faint stench of formaldehyde, there was a splash. A large white, water-bloated face knocked the sides of the gla.s.s sink suddenly. The teenagers were so shocked that they gasped and stepped backward. They noticed that the creature was like a large fish. That thing turned away from them and disappeared into the green, dirty water once more.
“Oh, I didn’t think it was still alive after such a long time,” the bicolor cat remarked sounding slightly amused as he entered the room. “This duoluozhong was one of our research subjects. However, we injected him with a somewhat failed product, so it cost me quite a few fish…”
“Are you a doctor or a mad scientist?” Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help questioning inwardly.
“Okay, there is no time to lose. There are many posthumans out there,” the cat jumped up onto a device which was like a surgery table with a tunnel-like covering. “Put your body here. With some bio-sensors, we can see if those invasive cells are still alive…” he urged.
Hearing this, Lin Sanjiu placed her body on the “surgery table”, and the cat doctor immediately worked on the body with a frenzied excitement. Very quickly, Lin Sanjiu watched as the cat doctor pasted many small, round metallic stickers all over her physical body. He stuck a few steel needles, with wires running, on some specific spots. It did look like he was about to experiment.
“Are you ready?” the cat doctor looked at a display screen sounding a little nervous himself, “I—”
Before he could finish his sentence, they heard the hair-raising voice from the nurse on the lower floor suddenly. It was disturbingly clear, “Patient Zero has appeared. Everyone, please take note. Patient Zero is now near A zone, room 20—”