vol1
Rand thought he might have had a nightmare.
It was a cold and dark room, the floor and walls were made of gray cement, and the floor was covered with layers of tarps. Above the room, faint music and voices came.
basement…
I don't know why, this thought suddenly floated into Rand's mind, and he was inexplicably certain that this was the basement.
A man was curled up in the corner of the basement. His skeleton was large, his hands and feet were wrapped with silver tape, and his joints were twisted at an unusual angle, proving that his limbs had been artificially interrupted. He was tucked into the dog crate used to hold the dogs, and the cramped space provided a comical contrast to his tall stature, his face squeezed out of the fence, his nose and eyes swollen to maroon.
He was clearly tortured... Rand subconsciously wanted to run to him, to save him.
However, in this dream, he was like a corpse that had been dead for many days, motionless, not even moving his eyes.
Although the man in front of him was miserable to the limit, Rand knew that he actually had another look.
He should be a happy and healthy man, working in a very good company, having a lovely son and a beautiful wife. He's handsome in appearance, always clean-shaven, and has a custom suit from Italy every year...
He was staring at Rand sideways with those swollen eyes, his eyes rolling nervously like a lab mouse about to be executed, squeezing muffled words out of his toothless mouth.
"Rand... Sivers... you are... the kid..."
Bloody saliva overflowed from the corner of his mouth.
"I've seen you, I'm friends with your father... Your family's been looking for you, God... You should know who you are! You're not... You're definitely not that woman's child! You're Rand Seaver s... help me... help me..."
In his miserable cry for help that he could almost touch the stone statue, finally, Rand felt that his body seemed to take a step forward.
However, at this moment, the door of the basement was opened a crack.
A boy stuck his head out from behind the door, he put lipstick on his lips very funny, apparently he was stealing her mother's makeup again behind his back. The poor make-up technique looks extra ridiculous alongside his clearly male (even if he's still just a kid) face.
Like a clown, his lips were bright red.
"Hey man, didn't mom tell you to deal with him? God, don't you dare to do it again? What, do you need me to help? Mom is in the banquet, she won't notice that something is wrong."
"… "
The boy ignored Rand's silence, and he walked down happily, a box of razor blades in his hand.
He patted Rand on the shoulder deliberately as he passed Rand.
"No need to say thank you, we are brothers."
…
"Hey, Rand? Rand..."
Someone is calling him.
Rand's consciousness gradually turned from blur to clarity like foam rising from the depths of the ocean.
A hand patted his face lightly.
Rand let out a long breath, opened his eyes, and saw Rogers' face.
This friend of his is leaning down, putting his face in front of him and watching him, looking a little worried, some gold powder glitters on his eyelashes, covering his pupils. By Rand's side, a nurse was removing an empty IV bag from a shelf, then bent down to remove the needle from Rand's arm.
That didn't make Rand feel pain, in fact he just felt his usual bouts of soreness and itchiness. However, at the moment when his eyes touched the pulled needle, Rand completely tried to get up from the chair, and at the same time let out a gaffe shout.
"No—keep that thing away from me..."
There was still some confusion in his head, but the fear that lingered on his body before the coma was still at work.
He almost overturned the IV pole, and the nurse took a step back in a panic.
"Mr. Carlos?! Please calm down..."
she yells, and Rand doesn't even realize it's actually referring to him (to avoid trouble, Rogers uses an identity that is said to be his boyfriend when Rand is admitted).
Finally, Rogers stopped in front of Rand: "Oh, hey hey, man, are you okay? Why didn't I know you were the type who would panic about infusions? Calm down! That's your anti-inflammatory medicine, and you've got it..."
While he was talking, Rand had already sat back in the chair because of his lack of strength. He stared blankly at Rogers, and suddenly interrupted the other party's words.
"The doctor... the doctor... he put something on my wound, oh my god..."
He murmured that the high fever, or the aftereffects of the anaesthetic, still confused his mind.
He tried to tear off the bandage on his right hand.
"Wait, man, really, wait... God, what the hell are you doing?!"
"The doctor put something really disgusting in my wound and he sewed it up and I'm going to get that thing out!"
"Sew it up? What the hell are you talking about?"
"Mr. Carlos! Please don't do this..."
…
Rand insisted on tearing off the bandages despite the efforts of the nurse and Rogers, but to his surprise, there was only a long, narrow wound on his arm. The wound is covered by a translucent flesh-colored film—there are no traces of stitches.
Rand blinked in an attempt to make himself more awake. He confirmed it again and found that he was not mistaken.
"…they didn't give you stitches, Rand, and the doctor who gave you the emergency department fainted before the stitches because of exhaustion, and you had a bad reaction to the anaesthetic, your wound was smooth, and finally they decided to give you Bio-glue is used for bonding.”
Rogers glanced at the nurse, then frowned and explained to Rand.
"Adverse reactions?"
Rand held his forehead, trying to figure out what was going on.
After calming down, he got a more detailed explanation from the repressed nurse. Just like what Rogers said, someone heard a crash outside the emergency room, and when they rushed into the emergency room, they saw the doctor who had collapsed on the ground and did not respond, and Rand had fallen into a coma from the anaesthetic— Theoretically, the anesthetic injected before the suture would only partially cause Rand to lose his sense of the arm. This is also the "adverse reaction" pointed out by the hospital. Rand is very sensitive to anesthetics. What is even more troublesome is that the anesthetics also make him have varying degrees of dizziness, nausea and hallucinogenic effects.
"You've been screaming, 'don't,' 'stop' or something, and I think you must have had a bad hallucination to see bioglue as something alive."
Rogers shrugged his shoulders and said to Rand.
The nurse came over and tried to help Rand rewrap the wound, but Rand couldn't help but avoid her.
"No, I don't think I need to."
Rand said with quivering lips.
It might indeed have been an illusion, and although Rand was still full of horror and doubt, he accepted it.
However, he still resisted covering the wound. The meat slices put into his arm in the previous "illusion" made him full of unease about the wound. He couldn't help but observe the wound on his arm again and again to make sure that it was normal.
Then he and Rogers left the hospital as quickly as possible, and there was still an aura that made him very uncomfortable.
The real, painful stitches, the red eyes under the doctor's bangs, the flesh curled under the tweezers...
Is it really a hallucination
Rand looked at his arm again.
The car started, and Rand vaguely heard some noise in the sound of the engine.
He glanced back unconsciously as the car pulled out of the hospital and saw what seemed to be a commotion there.
What accident happened
The thought flashed through his mind quickly, and then flashed out again at a faster speed. Whatever happened in the hospital had nothing to do with him, Rand thought.
Vol 2
Bart Buckley is a complaining electrician.
Especially when he's been called from vacation by the arrogant hospital admin to fix their damn broken elevator, and his whining gets all the more brazen. "Damn, we only checked that thing last week!"
He grumbled angrily at the other end of the phone.
"I know, but it's still a problem, people are complaining about a nasty smell in the elevator, the lighting is going on and off, and I think there might be a rat crawling into the mezzanine..."
"Okay okay, I'm almost there, I'll get it done."
Bart hung up the phone, spit, and staggered past a transvestite and a pale-faced nerd and walked inside the hospital.
At first he just thought it would be a small problem.
Just as he has done countless repairs, he routinely placed a "maintenance" sign outside the malfunctioning elevator, routinely got on the elevator, and prepared to open the maintenance port. But that goddamn service port just opened a tiny slit and it stuck, like something was pressing on it.
"Oh shit."
Bart cursed that he could even smell the strong stench.
"bump-"
He punched the iron plate in an attempt to free it.
It does turn on.
It was sprayed down with a foul-smelling viscous liquid.
Bart fell off the ladder, the liquid smeared his face, and then a large strip of meat fell from the maintenance port and fell on him.
When Bart wiped the blood from his face in a panic and opened his eyes, the most terrifying scene he had ever seen appeared in his field of vision.
It was the broken body of a woman.
The skin of her limbs and torso, the rich fat under the skin, and the soft muscles were all gnawed clean by something, and there were even clearly visible tooth marks on the pink bones, but those in the abdominal cavity contained foreign bodies, For example, the digestive system and lungs of digested and fecal matter are abandoned above the elevator car like garbage.
The woman's face has been eaten clean, and two eyeballs rolled out of the dark eye sockets and stopped on the cloth that had been dyed dark red with blood - the cloth may be the uniform she wore during her lifetime.
A breastplate was pinned to the top of the pocket as honestly as before.
A bloodstain stuck to the second half of it, and the only word that could be read clearly was - Lola.
As people screamed and gathered at the elevator entrance, a man opened his eyes suddenly in a lounge at the other end of the hospital.
He was the doctor considered "exhausted".
Colleagues did a cursory inspection of him at the time and didn't find too many problems, he looked like he was sleeping... So they moved him into the break room hoping to make him feel better.
But if his colleagues could see him now, they would be shocked by their previous misdiagnosis of this man.
His eyeballs became cloudy and covered with a lot of red blood, and the rupture of capillaries left his skin covered with bright red plaques. The whole lounge was filled with the stench of human excrement. The unfortunate doctor had been incontinent before, but at the moment he woke up, he didn't even notice it.
He stumbled to his feet, swaying like a zombie and walking towards the door.
His friend, another young doctor, just pushed the door and came in.
"Mason? How are you feeling now- oh my God! Mason?!"
The friend screamed when he saw him. He involuntarily took a step back and tried to avoid the doctor, but the other party had already hit him like a fallen stone statue.
The doctor's hand clung to the terrified friend's clothes, his almost bulging eyes fixed on him.
“(*…%￥￥…”
He tried to speak, but his swollen tongue turned all his words into ominous squeaks.
"Mason?! God..."
Mason was panting in pain from the high fever, and he felt pain, excruciating pain.
In the next second, blood and vomit mixed with necrotic internal organs spewed out like a fountain.
In front of his screaming colleagues, he slammed to the ground.
…
Four hours later, horrified doctors determined Mason's cause of death.
Severe infection by a variant of the flesh-phagocytic bacteria.
The germs had corroded almost all of his organs, turning them into something almost slime. It's hard to imagine that less than three hours before Mason's onset, he was almost normal when his colleagues were seeing him.
A severe infection of this magnitude has almost never been encountered in human history, hospitals were immediately locked down, and the US Centers for Disease Control urgently dispatched a medical team from Atlanta to Kansas.
After a secondary examination of Mason's remains, the medical team requested the CIA to assist in the investigation.
At the same time the entire case is marked as a red urgent case and sent to the Ministry of Defense.
"We have reason to suspect that this case may have been the prelude to a premeditated biochemical attack."
On the document, the CDC official wrote.
His judgment was not without reason, as during an autopsy on Mason they found an artificial wound on his abdomen. And it is very likely that the unprecedented flesh-eating bacteria were poured into Mason's body from this wound.
At the same time, the female corpse found in the elevator car and the body of the nurse Lola also detected the existence of flesh-eating bacteria - the only difference from Mason is that the flesh-eating bacteria injected into Lola's body is not developed to the degree of mutation, and it has no effect on Lola. The degree of corrosion of her organs is very low, perhaps because of this, the last assailant used another method to dispose of her body.
Officials declined to say what exactly happened to the tooth marks on the hapless woman's skeleton.
Unbeknownst to the citizens, the entire Kansas City was declared a state of emergency, and agents began to wander the city in search of possible biochemical attackers.
On the other hand, the CIA begins a secret search for a man named "Carlos", the last key person Lola and Mason had contact with before the accident.
Of course, they already knew it was a fake name, a fake identity. This made them more certain it was likely a prelude to a terrorist attack.
What is confusing, however, is that this fake identity is so invulnerable (including "Carlos"'s companion, a disguised person with unusually distinctive features) that they are completely untraceable, so sophisticated that they evade all surveillance Cameras, and a part of the surveillance lines were later determined to be damaged.
So in the end, all cia can get is the information of witnesses.
Of these, the testimony of a nurse was considered the most important.
"…yes, he had a wound on his hand, obviously something very sharp, and we gave him some bio-glue…he's not in a good mood, I think, he's been insisting that Dr. Mason is in his hand. The living creature was released... Name? Oh yeah, I think he had another name, his mates used to call him that name but... God, I gotta think, I was picking up IV bags and didn't really care about them Conversation... I'll have to think about it, I'm sure I did hear it, that name is familiar to me..."
The nurse sat behind the desk with a pale face and looked at the tense agents.
She swears she'll remember the name almost immediately, but, just barely.
Yep, just a little bit...
Vol3
"Rand?"
Rand recovered from his trance.
He was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, next to his knees was the toilet lid, where bandages and tape and potions were placed.
He should have been preparing to change the dressing on the wound on his arm before Munster poked his head and called him.
"Munster... is there something wrong?"
He gave it a forced smile.
Munster crawled in hesitantly. Since that time he injured Rand, he always flinched when facing Rand... Like a beggar holding himself forever Like unaffordable fine jewelry, it always seemed to worry about where it might hurt Rand again.
As it was now, although it tried to keep its apparent composure, its almost standing hair and its scales that gradually turned into a gorgeous silver-blue betrayed its nervousness.
"You… need help?"
It cautiously asked Rand, who had been in the bathroom for quite some time, but the scattered bandages showed that he had not finished the process of applying the medicine, and Munster always felt that it was because he only had one Because only hands can move.
Rand's face became a little subtle, and he shook his head at Munster.
"No, I don't think I need to."
"I, I will be very careful, I will control the power, I will not hurt you."
Munster said urgently.
Rand frowned and turned his gaze back to his arm, he pulled the remaining bandage off his arm.
"I'm not worried about your strength, Munster, I'm just… I'm afraid I don't need medicine anymore."
he said dryly.
There was only a very light, pale pink trace on the arm exposed from the bandage, and the huge wound that had been extremely ferocious two days ago no longer existed like an illusion.
The glue used to hold the wound should theoretically come off after five or six days, when the film was left intact on Rand's arm. Rand frowned and pulled the glue off, touching the healed wound.
A strong unease sprouted in his heart.
The wound seemed to heal a little too quickly, he thought, but wasn't quite sure if it was because of the new skin-bonding method.
After observing that the wound had healed, Munster seemed much relieved. It got closer, then pulled Rand's arm gently to where it was in front of him, exclaiming like a child.
"Rand, how are you!"
The scales on its tail turned back to peacock blue.
Perhaps because it was too happy, it could not help sticking out the tip of its tongue and gently licking Rand's arm according to its habit.
"Munster!?"
Rand jumped in horror at the feeling of being licked, "…I've said it many times, you shouldn't do this!"
He looked at Munster, who retracted his tongue, with a headache, still trying to make him more normal.
But Munster, who was expected to apologize honestly, seemed a little different this time.
Its ear spines splayed open, its hair puffed out behind its back, its cheeks were flushed with a drunken blush, and muscle tension caused horrible-shaped mouthparts to pop out of the folds inside its mouth, quivering like an anemone. The tips rubbed against each other, secreting mucus droplets with a strong smell that tickled to the ground.
"Ran... De..." Its eyes became confused and burning, looking at Rand stubbornly, some inarticulateness when speaking, "You lick... so sweet..."