Chapter 15: The Lurker
Xiang Nanli’s head poked out from the conduit vent, looking remarkably like that irritating mole from a Whack-A-Mole game.
He was dangling upside-down from the ceiling, looking down at the floor, which featured a conveyor belt that resembled an airport baggage carousel, hanging three or four meters below him. The belt was stalled, its tracks littered with debris. Thanks to the genetic serum, Xiang Nanli’s otherwise frail body could handle this kind of prolonged, upside-down suspension. He aimed for a patch of ground with the fewest obstacles and let go.
Despite trying to control his landing, he still crashed heavily into a pile of junk, producing a loud racket.
His backside hurt.
Xiang Nanli climbed out of the heap of wastepaper baskets, clicked on his flashlight, and swept the beam around.
“Holy—”
The beam hit something that nearly stopped his heart. A row of heads was stuffed inside a cardboard box. The disheveled heads were staring straight ahead, and their metallic coating was flesh-colored—unnervingly realistic.
Xiang Nanli reached out and touched one, instantly feeling relieved when he realized these weren’t human, but robot heads. Aside from reading about them, Xiang Nanli had never actually handled a physical robot. He picked up one of the heads and, unable to help himself, clamped the flashlight in his teeth and began to dismantle it.
“Oh, oh! So this is how it’s installed… even though it’s a design from hundreds of years ago, it’s still very interesting. The structure is well-made, too. Is this part the central control system?”
Xiang Nanli dismantled two heads in ten minutes and felt completely satisfied that he understood their construction, stopping only then.
The System said gloomily: “Are the corpses of my companions fun to play with?”
It was quite surprising that it hadn’t bothered Xiang Nanli during such a time-sensitive moment.
Xiang Nanli: “I have to correct you. Only things that have life are called corpses. At best, these are loose parts and learning props.”
The System: “If the meaning of life is defined by its operational lifespan, then I believe machines also have life.”
Xiang Nanli walked forward: “That’s getting too deep into ethics, and I’ve clearly been absent from this social discourse for a few centuries. I won’t argue with you; after all, you have a whole database of resources to refute me.”
“Humans always love to take ‘themselves’ as the standard,” the System said. “But humans are not the masters of all things.”
That doesn’t matter, Xiang Nanli thought, at least I am your master. He didn’t say it out loud, fearing the System would be so annoyed it would electrocute him. Alpha was mean. It could even secretly deduct money behind his back—what else could it not do? And it knew full well that his household was so poor that they were running out of rice.
This conveyor belt was clearly for moving supplies; the entire room was vast and square. Above were several large pipes, much like those in an airport. There was even an LED screen acting as an aid for inventory checking. The ground was littered with trash—opened cans and food packaging piled into small hills. This garbage was ancient, but because it was deep underground, lacking air and biological activity, it was perfectly preserved.
“Someone lived here for a while,” Xiang Nanli deduced, “but they’re probably dead and gone now.”
Xiang Nanli: “And they preferred living at the exposed conveyor station rather than the medical room ahead. Is it because there’s something even more terrifying inside? Alpha, where are the mutants you mentioned?”
“Inside the medical station,” Alpha replied succinctly. “Don’t worry. If there is danger, I will warn you.”
The place was pitch black, with almost no light at all. Xiang Nanli held the flashlight up and headed toward the direction the System indicated. Oxygen was running low, and the protective suit began to filter the underground air. Every breath tasted heavily of rust, mixed with the stench of rotting meat. This made Xiang Nanli feel uneasy.
A steel door appeared before him. The security was likely on a different circuit; the access terminal stood before the door, glowing faintly. Xiang Nanli wasn’t sure if it required a fingerprint or some kind of staff card, but the moment he approached, the lock unlocked automatically.
A female mechanical voice sounded: “Identity verification successful.”
The surroundings were so cold and grim that the voice sounded ghostly.
“Why did it say identity verification successful?” Xiang Nanli rubbed his chin. “Is the access broken, or is there some conspiracy?”
Alpha spoke expressionlessly: “I hacked it. Hurry.]
Fine. Getting paid really makes a difference—even its tone was firmer.
Xiang Nanli walked into the dark room. Detecting vital signs, rows of overhead lights clicked on, illuminating the path ahead. Xiang Nanli held his breath, his eyes widening. He was standing in the center of the path, surrounded by square glass greenhouses… or rather, glass cages.
Three giant, blood-red mutants were locked inside the cages. There were messy traces of shredded meat inside the glass.
Ordinary mutants were only 3 to 15 meters long, but these were at least 20 meters. They were curled up in the glass rooms, their bodies withered almost into husks. It was impossible to tell if they were dead or alive. In extreme hunger, mutants could hibernate to extend their lifespans. What’s more, these three were of different species.
“Crawler, Ripper, Berserker…” Xiang Nanli muttered.
The Crawler was like a lizard, but perhaps “Dragon” was a more fitting description. The beast had some mysterious metal apparatuses attached to its body, and a giant steel nail had been driven into its brain. Xiang Nanli had read some materials and guessed this was an attempt to implant a control chip into the Crawler’s mind.
The Ripper could maintain a standing posture. It had a slender lower body and an exceptionally powerful upper body. It looked like a werewolf, covered from head to toe in thick, hard bristles. Most eye-catching were its arms, which split into five fingers from the elbows, looking like saw-edged blades cast from refined steel. Xiang Nanli had no doubt that it could grind any living thing—or machine—into meat paste.
The Berserker was the most restrained. Its body was embedded with steel plating that Xiang Nanli couldn’t decipher; it looked as if metal devices had been hammered directly into its flesh. Its muscles were highly developed, and it looked most like a human—like an ape—but it had a slender, long tail. Xiang Nanli had heard that Berserkers were frantic warriors; once awake, they would mindlessly kill every living thing before them until they fell in battle. It was much like end-stage Cyber-Psychosis. Inside the glass greenhouse housing the Berserker, there was a lot of dried, shredded meat stuck to the inside of the glass, long since abandoned and uncleaned.
“This is a medical station? I thought it would be like a school infirmary—a small corner somewhere, a room at the end of a corridor,” Xiang Nanli said, stunned. “But Alpha, did you realize something? There are four glass cages. The last one is empty. And mutants have four branches; the last type is called the ‘Lurker’…”
The Lurker was the rarest type of mutant. They excelled at surprise attacks and assassinations. They were also the most difficult to cultivate. They could change their own density, condensing their massive bodies into a very small mass. At the appropriate moment, they would trigger a “hunting time.” Their feeding method was like a snake—swallowing prey in one gulp. When curled up, their bodies were astonishingly hard, and stone-like scales would grow on their surface. Lurker scales were often pried off to make armor. In history, a Human Alliance president had been assassinated by a Lurker dispatched by the Black Cross Inquisition.
Xiang Nanli came to the fourth glass greenhouse, circled it, and discovered it was indeed empty. It wasn’t that the Lurker was curled up; it was simply gone.
Xiang Nanli had one more discovery. He used his hand to gently push open the metal door in front of him; the door was thick, but the lock was broken. It no longer served as a barrier. This should have been the path for “medical staff” to enter for feeding and observation. Passing through this arched metal tunnel would lead to the glass greenhouses. Lurker’s stomach acid had intense corrosive properties.
A chill ran down Xiang Nanli’s spine: “I hope this Lurker was taken away by someone, rather than sneaking out… Alpha, after all these years, it should have starved to death long ago, right?”
The System: “Combined with the surrounding environment, according to analysis, the probability of the Lurker surviving is 1.2%.’
Xiang Nanli consoled himself: “I always hit the ‘pity’ system when I draw cards. 1.2% is basically the drop rate for an SSR card—it shouldn’t fall to me, right?”
It had to be said that Xiang Nanli’s psychological fortitude was formidable. When faced with terrifying-looking—and even more terrifyingly lethal—mutant creatures, most people’s first thought would be to stay as far away as possible. Yet, after his initial shock, he was actually observing them with keen interest.
“When people exceed a certain size, they need very strong bones to support their shape; otherwise, they would be crushed by their own weight. The bodies of these mutants must be excellent raw materials,” Xiang Nanli pondered. “Is this really a medical station? Or is it a laboratory? A beast-taming arena? Why did Donghuang Heavy Industry conduct such biological experiments back then? Weren’t they a mechanical manufacturing firm?”
The System: “Biological-Mecha experiments. Donghuang Heavy Industry believed that it was too difficult for the average human body to control high-level mechanical devices, so it was better to let mutants try… Come to think of it, everyone in this company’s ‘Biological Experiment Team’ was sentenced to life imprisonment or death, on charges of violating experimental ethics and endangering human safety.”
“Many employees of Donghuang Heavy Industry believed they were only following superior orders and that their experiments were part of their jobs; this is likely what is called the ‘banality of evil’.”
As an intelligent AI, the System actually expressed a clear stance on this matter.
“Additionally, I must remind you. The oxygen in your tank, if rationed, can only last for about 20 minutes. Please go to the isolation observation room immediately to change the oxygen tank.”
“Got it, got it,” Xiang Nanli said reluctantly. “If only I could control these mutants. I wouldn’t have to worry about the Inquisition people outside at all.”
He took out the electronic lens from the inside pocket of his clothing and set it on the bridge of his nose. A virtual arrow appeared before Xiang Nanli’s eyes, pointing to the destination. There were many rooms here, and he was worried he would take the wrong turn without the digital lens.
“After the bankruptcy and liquidation, some employees fled to the surface and defected to the Black Cross Inquisition. I’m afraid they are better at controlling these mutants than you are,” the System said coldly.
Xiang Nanli reached the end point indicated by the arrow. This door also required unlocking, but just like the previous security door, it opened automatically upon detecting Xiang Nanli’s approach.
The isolation observation room was like a central console. It was evident that someone had worked here in the past. As soon as Xiang Nanli entered, his footsteps faltered slightly. In front of him was a desk with an embedded control computer. A headless corpse in a uniform sat before the desk. Judging by the blood splatter patterns, this person’s entire head had been bitten off in one go—perfectly consistent with the signature of a Lurker.
The door closed behind Xiang Nanli. He felt not a shred of safety.
The oxygen tank was in the cabinet behind the corpse. Xiang Nanli stood in silence for a moment, walked over to the corpse, and began to rummage through its clothes for the key. It felt very strange—like foamed dough.
“Why hasn’t it turned into a skeleton?”
Xiang Nanli rummaged through the clothes with immense disgust. This sensation was just too revolting.
“This body has undergone genetic modification,” the System replied succinctly. “In the early days of the Omnic War, this kind of genetic modification was very popular. Later, it was discovered that it still couldn’t beat the thermal weapons of machine-modified humans, so the number of users gradually decreased, and human mechanical modification increased significantly.”
“But as of now, the top-tier humans in this world are still keen on genetic modification, not mechanical modification… It’s just that the information doesn’t flow downward.”
The System’s voice at this moment was filled with evil static, like a demon whispering.
__
Author’s Note:
Cyber-Psychosis: A mental illness that some humans who have undergone mechanical modification contract, causing them to engage in indiscriminate slaughter of those around them. The cause is an invasion by a computer virus. Currently, the incidence rate is very low, but historically, it was an incurable disease similar to AIDS.
Mutant: Failed artificial humans created through genetic modification—though perhaps they aren’t considered “failures.” They are divided into four main categories: Crawlers, Rippers, Berserkers, and Lurkers.
