abyss rose

About meeting again, Chai Yuening had fantasies more than once.

The scene she thought about the most was that one day, she received a message to join the military in the Floating Void City, and came to the airport or elevator in advance, waiting for Chu Ci to be sent to her by the research institute.

It must have been a long time since they hadn't seen each other at that time, and she would hide the thoughts that rushed in her heart in the past, and reunite with her as if nothing had happened.

She has a lot to say to her, but she shouldn't be sad, or it will make her sad together.

Chai Yuening thought that she would not ask her if she was doing well, she didn't want to listen to a person who obviously didn't know how to lie, and chose to lie in order not to worry her.

She wanted to express her decision, the decision to stay in the floating city forever.

She can use countless long waits in exchange for sharing weal and woe with her overnight.

Of course, she hopes to wait until the research is successful and the day when humans are no longer afraid of mutations.

If that day can come, they must all be free.

but……

"How could I see you in this situation?" Chai Yuening asked softly, choked with sobs, "What does it mean that the will of human beings is disappearing...Are you leaving? I just made up my mind to stay here forever and wait for you , are you leaving?"

No one responded to her words.

In the blue water tank, the sample that was no longer regarded as a human being was so pale that it seemed to dissipate like smoke at any moment.

"That night, you stood downstairs to see me off, what were you thinking? Did you feel sad because I chose to leave again?"

"I said, if you want to say something, I will listen to it, and if you don't want to say it, I won't force you. I thought I had enough time to get to know you slowly, and make you trust me slowly...but you always have nothing to say. Don't say anything, make up your mind to say goodbye to me, and still don't say anything to me."

"You always ask me to guess by myself. I'm not a very smart person. I guess so slowly...so slow that when I realize it, you're already gone."

Chai Yuening leaned forward a little, pressing her cheek against the cold glass wall.

"I didn't even have time to tell you that the train drove away that night, and I regretted it from the moment I couldn't see you."

"I'm back, I'll be back the next day, did anyone tell you?"

"I miss you very much, I miss you every day, I want to tell you when we meet next time, but I am afraid that you will be sad when you hear this, so I have been thinking, when I see you, I must pretend that nothing happened .”

"But now how can I act like nothing happened... Do you want me to watch you mutate and watch you leave?"

The samples in the glass jar gradually lost their human appearance, as if saying goodbye silently.

Chai Yuening's voice was very soft, choked with sobs, and she seemed dissatisfied in her words, but her tone was so gentle that there was no harshness, it was just the most common confession.

"The black vines in the base grow so fast, are they all listening to you?"

"They didn't hurt anyone, they just grew freely towards the outside, so that's what you yearn for, right?"

"I saw it, I saw everything you wanted to say..."

A line of tears slowly fell from the corners of Chai Yuening's eyes.

She closed her eyes: "But I want to hear you tell me..."

Yi Shuyun stood by the door of the laboratory, looking at the scene in front of him with wandering eyes.

Her eyes were gradually clouded with mist.

The scientific system of mankind has collapsed.

They tried their best, but they couldn't blow away the fog of the new ecology.

The appearance of a child once brought them a glimmer of hope, but such hope was close to despair.

More than ten years ago, Yi Shuyun took over the child from the previous guardian. Since that day, she has shouldered the responsibility of the base's top secret.

She has always known that this very young girl has been imprisoned in this laboratory for more than 50 years, and she really tried to treat her as an experimental sample like everyone else, without any compassion.

Because of this, in the past ten years, she has always maintained a sufficiently indifferent distance in communication with this girl, and she has never tolerated harshness or gentleness.

This girl also does everything a sample should.

She is quiet and sensible, her eyes are so calm that she doesn't look like a living thing, she doesn't make noise, she doesn't cry out for pain, she does what she is asked to do, she never asks questions, she seems to have no thoughts of her own at all, she is really a girl who can play around at will of samples.

But suddenly one day, this sample changed.

Those eyes, which were once calm in the ancient well, seemed to have fallen into a cold pool, filled with silent sadness.

Later, she heard the word "pain" for the first time from that sample.

On that day, Yi Shuyun walked into the laboratory as usual to conduct a routine check on the physical condition of sample A0027.

She saw those red eyes staring at her hesitantly.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

The girl hesitated for a moment, then said softly: "Doctor, yesterday's experiment was very painful, it feels like something is tearing my body."

"It hurts?" She looked back at the girl with some surprise.

There seemed to be a loss in the girl's eyes.

Apart from that person, there will be no other person in this world who will tell her that pain can be expressed.

After a brief silence, she lowered her eyes, responding mechanically as before.

The emotional monitoring on the big screen betrayed her calmness.

A sample with human emotions.

It seems that from that moment on, all the values ​​of the sample lost their former absolute stability.

In a trance, Yi Shuyun seemed to have touched the boundary of truth.

Human emotions may really be the biggest obstacle for human beings to integrate into the new ecology.

But the reason why human beings are called human beings, and they want to continue human civilization by any means is precisely because of this innate emotion.

They cannot give up, they must persevere.

Every item of data on the big screen showed that the sample was about to completely lose all human sexual characteristics.

Yi Shuyun couldn't help thinking, if this unavoidable "weakness" of human beings can lead to the extinction of sample A0027, then the future of human beings is no longer worth looking forward to.

Boundless despair invaded Yi Shuyun's remaining sanity inch by inch.

She leaned against the cold wall, smelling the faint fragrance of the black vines, her seemingly calm eyes reflected the thin figure in the dark blue potion.

It is like a hopeless person drowning in the deep sea, buried in the dead silence with all hope.

At that moment, Yi Shuyun couldn't even tell whether it was hope that abandoned human beings, or human beings killed hope.

She slowly closed her eyes, letting a desolation hit her heart.

In the laboratory, there were people whispering all the time, as if unwilling to accept their fate.

Yi Shuyun listened quietly for a long time, but finally decided to tell the person in front of him the cruel facts displayed on the big screen data.

But when she opened her eyes, what she saw was in the experimental water tank, thin vine branches suspended in the water one by one, approaching Chai Yuening as if consciously, touching the human finger lightly through the thick glass.

Someone knocked on the door of the laboratory.

She turned around and pressed the switch, only to see Ye Qing holding the communicator she had thrown in the office, his eyes glistening with joy.

"Doctor, all the black vines have stopped growing wildly!"

After being stunned for a moment, Yi Shuyun asked: "Do you believe that after the mutation begins, there is still a possibility of recovery?"

"According to common sense, once the mutation starts, it can only be stopped forcibly at the cost of death, and there is no possibility of recovery." Ye Qing replied seriously.

"Yes." Yi Shuyun said, "But our common sense is gradually collapsing along with the world."

As Yi Shuyun said, he subconsciously looked at the big screen.

Sample mood, stable.

The degree of mutation stopped at 84.41%

The system preliminarily judges that it is out of the human category, but still retains some human will.

"It's a miracle."

***

After that day, Chai Yuening stayed in the base research institute.

The main city didn't trust her, and was afraid that she would speak badly, so she restricted her personal freedom.

In this regard, she did not resist at all, but was very happy.

In order not to worry everyone who followed her all the way, she asked Ye Qing to send a few words back.

Although the black vine stopped growing abnormally, the sample that caused and ended this strange phenomenon did not return to normal as everyone imagined.

In order to prevent the accident from happening again and cause irreversible consequences, the research institute suspended the fusion experiment on sample A0027, and only regularly took samples for daily analysis.

No one came to do the experiment, so Chai Yuening stayed by Chu Ci's side every day and night, reluctant to leave for half a step.

The base quickly cleaned up those black vines that grew wildly out of bounds, and made up a seemingly outrageous reason for the abnormal growth of black vines, but it sounded much more reasonable than the truth.

They announced the life of the old man, and attributed the mutation to the field sampling more than 20 years ago.

"Since the catastrophe broke out, our human scholars have always firmly believed that black vines will not cause any infection to any living beings, but in fact, everyone knows that long before the catastrophe broke out, humans in the old world have already been able to get rid of black vines. Extract energy from it and inject it into the body of the creature, causing some kind of terrible mutation."

"Scholars at the base believe that this researcher must have encountered some kind of accident on the ground, and thus accidentally obtained the energy body of the black vine. Because it is difficult to absorb and cannot be released, there has been a mutation incubation period of more than 20 years. "

"Fortunately, although this mutation accident caused some losses to the property of the base, it did not cause any infection mutations and casualties. Black vines are still black vines that will not harm humans."

Listening to this serious nonsense on the radio, Chai Yuening couldn't help laughing.

"Hey." She bent her index finger and tapped the glass wall lightly, "I was the one who was fooled by these words before, but this time I can be regarded as standing in the center of lies, seeing how those people are struggling That's a lie."

The thin black vine branches, like a little black fish glowing red, swim in the blue glass tank.

Hearing the sound at this moment, he turned around leisurely, bumped into the tank wall with a "bang", and then limply clung to the glass, I don't know if it hurts.

Strange to say, it was clear that there was still a full tank before.

In the past few days, it has suddenly become so small, as if it has shrunk, and it is no bigger than half an arm when it is rolled up.

At the beginning, Chai Yuening was worried that it would disappear if it shrinks, but now it seems that there is a minimum limit so that it will not really shrink.

There is just one thing, it seems to have become clumsy...

"Don't hit the glass, it will hurt."

Hei Teng curled up and stuck the whole thing on the glass wall, looking like a fool.

When Chai Yuening moved his finger to the left, it moved to the left; when Chai Yuening moved his finger to the right, it moved to the right.

The door of the laboratory was pushed open from the outside.

Yi Shuyun walked in with a boxed lunch: "Your lunch."

After speaking, he looked up at the large data display screen.

The degree of mutation is slowly decreasing. In the past few days, it has dropped from 80.00% four to 80.00% one.

Yi Shuyun: "She is very happy."

Chai Yuening: "When will she recover?"

Yi Shuyun shook his head: "I don't know, I've never seen a reverse mutation before."

She thought for a while and explained: "I only know that if ordinary humans mutate, when the degree of mutation reaches 30.00%, there will be slight abnormalities in the body, and emotions will easily lose control; when the degree of mutation reaches 50.00%, there will be With different degrees of physical changes, self-awareness begins to be confused, sanity degenerates, and the wildness in the body recovers; when the degree of mutation exceeds 70.00%, it is basically equivalent to losing human characteristics and emotions, while the memory and will that belong to humans will be in the last 30.00%. It completely disappeared during the mutation time."

"So... in most cases, when mutants who have just lost their human characteristics start hurting people, do they still retain certain memories?"

"At least this is the result of the research." Yi Shuyun said, "They often remember everything, but they can no longer control their bodies."

Chai Yuening was dumbfounded for a moment.

Yi Shuyun picked up his box lunch and took two bites, raised his eyes and said, "Your base must have never released these data, because once it is released, people will have to suffer more when killing mutants, especially in the face of the ones they are familiar with. People, this is not conducive to the law enforcement of the base... However, judging from the current situation, there is not much difference between publicity and non-publicity. Anyway, once people show signs of infection, they will be killed immediately."

Chai Yuening clenched the chopsticks in her hand, and asked in a low voice, "Even if you are a senior military officer, wouldn't you know?"

Yi Shuyun: "That's not true, at least in Floating Void City, all officers above the school level know about it."

Chai Yuening couldn't help sighing softly.

"There are still many things you don't know." Yi Shuyun said lightly, "The new ecology brought by Hei Teng has been constantly evolving. As those strange beasts become stronger and stronger, their ability to absorb genes will also become more and more powerful." The stronger it is, it will be a matter of time before humanoid highly intelligent beasts appear on the ground. If human beings are still unable to break through the limitations of their fragile bodies and integrate into this brand new ecology, then it will only be a matter of time before human civilization completely disappears on this planet."

"Dr. Ge said the same thing as me." Chai Yuening said in a low voice.

"He actually said this to you. It seems that you are indeed very popular in the dungeon." Yi Shuyun added, "But you certainly don't know. We conduct research through various ground samples and initially judge if the ground ecology can still survive. If the evolution continues at this speed, within a year, or even sooner, there will be strange beasts capable of flying at high altitude for a long time in the base."

Yi Shuyun said with a smile: "The height of the Floating Void City was not so high at the beginning. In order to avoid the height that the flying beasts can reach, we have risen to the height that consumes the most energy."

When she said this, her tone was as calm as if she had already resigned to her fate: "Now we can't go any higher, but they are still evolving."

Chai Yuening took a few mouthfuls of rice in silence.

She glanced at the black vine in the water tank that was staring at her eagerly, and couldn't help asking: "You have taken samples many times, have you analyzed anything?"

Yi Shuyun shook his head helplessly: "She is still disappointing as always. She has obviously lost absolute stability, but she is still unpredictable like a copper wall."

Chai Yuening: "..."

Yi Shuyun: "I really don't want to study her, but I'm sorry, unless she is dead, the base will not allow us to give up the research."

Chai Yuening: "I understand."

Yi Shuyun: "Perhaps with you by my side, she will not suffer so much."

Chai Yuening: "I will always be with her."

Her tone was very firm, and she believed that Chu Ci could understand.

"Dr. Yi."

"Ok?"

"If the end really comes, will the base give her a day of freedom?"

"..."

"Or, until the last moment, you still have to guard her, looking forward to seeing the future of mankind from her?"

"I do not know."

Yi Shuyun spoke softly, with a deep sense of bewilderment and helplessness suppressed in his words.

***

For Chai Yuening, guarding the little black vine is much faster than waiting outside.

She made a bed on the floor in the laboratory, and slept next to the glass water tank every day. Whenever she woke up from her sleep, she would definitely take a look at the large display screen with faint green light.

After staying here for so long, she failed to learn anything else, but learned how to read the degree of mutation and emotional index.

Chai Yuening pours nutrient solution into the water tank every day. Yi Shuyun said that once a day is enough, but she just divides the daily amount into three parts and pours it according to the standard of three meals a day.

Three meals a day is a unique sense of ritual for human beings.

She didn't want to treat Chu Ci as an experimental sample as long as she didn't die like the researchers in the research institute.

Little Hei Teng has grown up a bit recently, and he doesn't like hitting glass as much as he did at the beginning, and the degree of mutation has slowly dropped to around 60.00%, which makes Chai Yuening very pleased.

One afternoon at the end of June, she was lying on the side of the water tank as usual, teasing the vines that could spread out in all directions.

Suddenly, a message came from the radio on the side.

"At noon today, the third district of the outer city encountered an unknown flying beast. The sudden attack of the beast caused some casualties. The military has now killed it. Residents in this area are currently being tested for infection. Now, let us Let’s interview what the city defense office of the third district thinks about this.”

"Please stay calm and don't panic." On the radio, an unfamiliar voice said in a very powerful voice, "The alien beast that can fly to the base's floating altitude is the only one case in more than 50 years. The base research institute will deal with it as soon as possible." It conducts research and analysis, finds its weaknesses as quickly as possible, and launches key defenses."

While he was saying these words, several gunshots seemed to ring out behind him.

The relentless gunfire is the harshest irony of these words.

Chai Yuening sighed softly: "If I don't know the truth, after a while, when the doomsday comes, I should die in a confused way like many people, right?"

"Do you think human beings will come to an end?" Chai Yuening asked, "If human beings come to an end, will you be free?"

As soon as the words fell, she was stunned for a moment, pursed her lips unconsciously, her palms lightly covered the cold glass, and a trace of struggle flashed in her eyes.

"The day you are free, where will I be? Am I already gone? Before that day comes, can you still talk to me like before?"

The black vine in the water tank did not respond to her, but quietly clung to the glass wall, approaching her palm almost instinctively.

"Actually, that's fine, they won't hurt you like this..." Chai Yuening sighed softly and smiled wryly, "I wish I could take you away sometime."

It's a pity that she doesn't have the ability to sneak away with the most important sample of Floating Void City.

So she can only stay in this place, and accompany this sample day after day.

Time flies, and it is already August in a blink of an eye.

Chu Ci's degree of mutation has dropped to 40.00%[-], but she is still a vine, except that she is a little bigger and more lively, and there is no change.

Since the Floating Void City was attacked by flying beasts for the first time, the frequency of such flying beasts has gradually increased.

These strange beasts sometimes attacked alone, sometimes in groups of three or four.

No matter the outer city or the main city, as long as they are attacked by alien beasts, they are destined to end an extraordinary day amid bursts of gunfire against their own people.

Yi Shuyun said that all this is still within the controllable range for the time being, but no one can say how long this "temporary" will last.

On a rainy afternoon, the research institute, which was usually very quiet most of the time, suddenly heard countless exclamations.

Chai Yuening stood up and ran towards the source of the turmoil. Before he arrived at the scene, he heard bursts of gunfire and silenced everyone.

A researcher mutated. Before she mutated, she ran to the rooftop of the institute. The mutated process was captured by a drone patrolling here. The military arrived in time, so no casualties were caused.

Chai Yuening has seen her before, and she is also qualified to enter the secret laboratory.

It can be seen that the researcher did not have time to complete his mutation.

A pair of furless fleshy wings grew out of her distorted body, which was obviously infected by the flying beasts that appeared in the base in recent days.

But many people can prove that in the recent days, she has never been close to any place that has been attacked by alien beasts.

In order to find out the cause of this person's mutation, the military searched her assigned housing, as well as the office and laboratory where she often stayed.

What's ridiculous is that in the researcher's independent laboratory, they dug out a needle tube that was hidden deeply and still had injections left in it.

After testing by the research institute, the injection left in the needle was the gene fusion reagent extracted from the flying beast.

It's so hopeless here, and the more you know, the more hopeless you become.

Unfortunately, the wings born of despair failed to take her out of this cage.

Looking at the surveillance on the screen, Chai Yuening felt a little uncomfortable: "Maybe before she lost consciousness, she just wanted to get out of here..."

"It's not necessarily the case after losing consciousness." Yi Shuyun said, "It is the instinct of every strange beast to hunt and eat humans."

After all, he turned and left the dimly lit monitoring room.

Chai Yuening was silent for a long time, and followed her footsteps.

The world seems to be rotten, and everyone is waiting for the final judgment.

Perhaps, only her waiting is different from everyone else.

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The author has something to say:

It's late, but it's six thousand!This world cannot be broken or built.