Lin Xi shivered and almost fell to the ground.
"Dr. Lin Xi!"
Lina screamed and supported him.
"Sorry, I just... need some time to get used to these mummies."
Lin Xi saw her panicked self in Lina's eyes.
He took a deep breath and told himself for the umpteenth time to calm down.
"Also, maybe we, should go take a look at the bridge? Then we can leave."
Schroedreth stammered.
Lin Xi felt that this young man probably preferred to give up the investigation and leave.
"The bridge? Well, that's a good offer. We'll simply take a look and then retreat."
Lin Xi nodded at him, then braced herself and said.
Then, they tiptoed toward the outside of the freezer... as if being a little heavier would wake up the mummies.
However, just as they passed a freezer, a shadow suddenly passed across the corner of Lin Xi's eyes.
He subconsciously turned back to look at the freezer, and then stopped involuntarily.
Those are bloodstains.
Lin Xi stared blankly at the mummy next to him. The mummy and the freezer he was in looked the same as everyone else's, but if you look closely, you will find that the mummy's fingertips are pitted. Yes, you can still vaguely see some white bone stubble.
Inside the freezer, there were several deep scratches, and the gaps between the scratches were inlaid with blood stains that had also turned dark.
The others followed Lin Xi's gaze and looked at the mummy, and then their faces became even paler.
"Heaven."
Lina's voice was even filled with a slightly moist cry.
Although it has been a hundred years, the evidence left by this mummy is too obvious - he woke up, woke up before being trapped by hypothermia, and he had been trying to escape.
He failed.
Suddenly it seemed like a tragic accident, but Lin Xi's instinct made him involuntarily run back into those cold glass coffins.
She hadn't noticed it before, so she hadn't noticed it yet, but once she searched carefully, Lin Xi found that there were quite a few people with the same condition as this mummy...
A terrible idea suddenly appeared in his mind.
"This is not an accident." He said softly, "These people... were forcibly brought here and then... then cryogenically frozen..."
Lin Xi thought of the information scattered in the corridor and the lost shoe.
Is this what the researcher wanted to avoid three hundred years ago? Someone was forcibly brought here to be frozen.
When Lin Xi raised his head and looked around him again, he realized that what he was looking at was not a freezer, but the scene of a large-scale, chronic massacre.
but why
Why would anyone want to do something like this to their fellow man
"This, what is this?"
Lina pointed at a freezer not far away and screamed.
Suddenly looking over, the corpse lying in the freezer was no different from the others. However, if you look closely, you will find that in this glass coffin, besides the mummy with dark and shriveled skin, there are also some strange things. Something that should appear.
It's bugs.
Although it also became dark and broken over a long period of time, Lin Xi would never mistake the matte chitin carapace for the appendages sticking out from under the body. It was huge, almost the size of a baby, and its fly-like wings had turned into several dry fragments scattered on the side of the corpse and in the empty, open abdominal cavity on both sides.
Lin Xi saw no traces of internal organs in the mummy's body. In fact, the corpse seemed to be empty of bones and muscles. It was very likely that it was eaten by the insect in his body.
And when it ate up the host's flesh and blood, it broke through the poor man's thin skin and got out, and was finally trapped and died in the freezer.
"Ugh..."
Lena and Schrodereth were not exploration team members, and naturally they had never seen the scene in Bryce's medical room. Just such a motionless and taxidermied insect was enough to make them retching loudly.
Lin Xi's condition was better than theirs, but his chest was also feeling tight.
With a livid face, he walked around the freezing warehouses and found that about one-tenth of the mummies were in the same miserable condition.
Among them, either large insects have crawled out of the body, or the insects wrapped in them died miserably. After mummification, they became dry and thin, and the skin was completely wrapped outside the bodies of the insects. , highlighting their existence.
"Dr. Lin Xi, these people...the appearance of these people...I heard that similar things happened on the Helios before. You killed those two people in front of the explorers."
Lina suppressed her fear and rolled her eyes to look at Lin Xi.
Lin Xi's face seemed to be covered with a layer of frost.
"I pressed the disinfection button of the treatment chamber before those bugs rushed out." While speaking, his eyes always stayed on those weird and terrifying bugs. It was as if cold water had been injected into his veins. Lin Xi could only It feels like the surrounding environment is getting colder and colder.
Well, maybe in a sense, he is no different from the perpetrators of this massacre three hundred years ago, and even their ideas for solving the "problem" are similar.
There was a voice whispering softly in Lin Xi's heart.
"Well, at least now we know why..."
Schrodreth followed Lin Xi, looking at the corpses that had been ravaged by insects and murmuring.
Perhaps what happened to these people was because they had become hosts to the bugs.
"Who knows."
Lin Xi frowned and replied softly.
In fact, there are more things, some fragments, or conjectures, flying wildly in Lin Xi's mind like snowflakes in the storm. Lin Xi opened his mouth. He vaguely felt that he seemed to have noticed something, but the organization While speaking, I found that the details I had captured before had completely melted away.
In the end, he didn't say anything unnecessary.
Lin Xi's palms were covered in cold sweat, and his exploration suit seemed to have become unprecedentedly heavy and stuffy.
He really wanted to run away, like a child who was scared to tears in a haunted house, and ran out of this damn ghost place.
But Lin Xi's reason still prevailed at the last moment.
This aircraft is rich in material and structurally intact. It is likely to be a replacement for the Helios, which is almost on the verge of being scrapped. And more optimistically... it may be able to take them back to Earth.
Thinking of this, Lin Xi couldn't allow herself to escape.
During a period of silence, Lin Xi and the other three made some notes about the mummy and the bugs around it, and then they fled from there with pale faces.
The silent corpses trapped in the freezer were too terrifying. Even Lin Xi couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief after leaving there.
Relying on the last bit of willpower, they passed through the various rooms and halls along the way and walked directly towards the bridge of the aircraft.
"I hope the center console is there, I think it should still be able to start, and there should be a star map in it. We can use it to get home, right? Doctor, I think we can do it..."
Because she was too panicked, Lina kept chattering on the communication channel all the way.
In the past, Lin Xi might have thought she was a bit noisy and chatty, but at this moment, he was actually grateful for Lina's small thoughts.
Because the silent and cold corridors and passages that appeared in front of them seemed to be becoming more and more gloomy as they gradually went deeper into the interior of the aircraft.
Some ferocious carvings appeared on the walls of the passage, and the further you went forward, the denser these marks became. Even if we look at it 300 years later, the marks on the metal wall, the blood on the ground, and the debris scattered on the corridor floor... can still clearly reflect the brutality of that battle. In some places, even the lighting fixtures located on the ceilings were damaged and malfunctioning.
"This place really has an evil vibe to it."
Schroedreth muttered, rubbing his arms.
"It's almost like a tomb."
Lina immediately agreed.
I think this place is scarier than the grave, Lin Xi thought in his heart, but he didn't say it out loud.
Not long after, they found some clues about the aircraft among the debris on the ground.
"Oh, look, I'm just saying—this is the Providence!"
Schroedreth picked up a damaged sign from the ground. The metal nameplate had some traces of laser burns, but this did not prevent others from clearly seeing the iconic "p" on it.
"Oh, please, please look carefully, there is writing underneath!"
Lena snatched the sign from Schroedreth's hand and said with a frown. The metal piece flipped back and forth on her fingertips, and then she read out the words under the sign: "Providence B-type Galaxy" Internal airship·Emergency rescue aircraft No. 1-v2.”
The three of them exchanged looks.
Schrodereth's cheeks turned slightly red. He had indeed made a stupid mistake. Although this aircraft did indeed look huge, it was only compared to the old Helios. Three hundred years ago, the Providence, which could carry 250,000 people to an alien planet, could not be such an aircraft in any case.
This craft was probably just a lifeboat that was placed inside the Providence at that time. If that terrible accident had not happened, after the basic human cities were built, these airships that could only be used for flying within the galaxy would probably be reused as transportation boats...
“It’s truly an era of great exploration…”
Lina muttered in a daze.
Even on Earth, I have seen many documentaries and movies about the Age of Exploration, but I know that after experiencing the luxurious creations of that prosperous era, three hundred years later, we can only rely on the surviving old aircraft. The people who flew were still shocked.
The girl unconsciously turned the sign over, and there was also a line of small words on it - the number of passengers confirmed is 1,000.
After seeing that line clearly, the three of them fell silent.
Although no one spoke, everyone knew that the only things that came to their minds at this moment were the mummies they had seen before.
"Do you think they're all dead?"
After a long time, Lina lowered her voice and asked tremblingly.
Lin Xi stared at the signboard, and the cold feeling came over him again.
"No-"
He whispered before he knew it.
"I made a rough estimate before. There are only two to three hundred people frozen there..."
"Where did the rest of them go?" Schroedreth asked.
No one answered him.
Deathly silence fell between the three of them instantly.
After a few seconds, the young boy suddenly opened his eyes wide and realized what a terrible question he had asked.
Yes, if the nuclear capacity here is one thousand people...except for those who watched themselves being trapped to death in the freezer, where did the rest of them go
"Maybe, the aircraft took off before the scheduled number of people arrived."
Lina said tremblingly.
Lin Xi did not object or respond - everyone knew that when resources in outer space were extremely tight, no one would be so stupid as to let an aircraft take off with no payload.
And at this moment when the three of them remained silent, Lin Xi suddenly shuddered.
The feeling of extreme uneasiness became stronger and stronger in his heart, so strong that he could no longer suppress it.
"Let's leave," he said decisively.
"What? Why don't we go to the bridge to see if there is a star map there..."
The other two people seemed to have not recovered yet.
Lin Xi shook his head at them.
"Look at the environment here. This ship is not as safe as what we have seen before. Maybe there are still things living here that we cannot deal with at all - let the mercenaries on the Helios come. Deal with them. Now we should go. This nameplate may be here just to remind us."
Lin Xi said.
Then he turned around and walked quickly towards the way he came.
"Yes, but..."
Lina and Schrodres reacted immediately after a brief moment of confusion, and they immediately followed Lin Xi's footsteps, although Lina seemed a little unwilling to do so.
However, Lin Xi's decision to leave seemed a bit late.
rustle…
An entire fine grinding sound echoed from the end of the corridor near the bridge.
Rustle… Rustle…
Lin Xi felt that he had probably never been so fast in his life - he turned around suddenly and fired countless shots in the direction of the sound.
But there was no way to stop that thing from slowly appearing in front of them.
"Great, I think I'll come down and find out where the rest of those are."
Schrodreth stared at it, muttering under his breath in disbelief.
He felt that he already had a pretty clear answer - all the people on the ship who were not so unlucky enough to be trapped alive in the dormant cabin were completely eaten by this thing in front of him.
It was an extremely ugly bug.
It looked as if someone had forcibly grafted a spider and a cockroach together and then magnified it countless times—it could completely block the entire passage without even opening its eight legs that glowed darkly.
It has a long, flat tail covered with brown-red links, and a thick and fat chest that is almost disproportionate to the body. The back of the wings is covered with a thick layer of leather, which is dark brown. The downy face is inlaid with countless blinking eyes. Two slender tentacles were trembling on its head, and some villi at the top of the tentacles were opening and closing, absorbing and analyzing the smell and information belonging to the three outsiders in the atmosphere.
"Ahhhh-"
"Help, ah-"
Lina and Schroedreth both let out deafening screams the moment they saw the thing, and then they quickly hid behind Lin Xi, whose body was completely stiff.
"Fire!"
Lin Xi could only roar at the two of them.
Immediately afterwards, he pulled the trigger in his hand towards the nightmare insect.
The plasma beam hit the bug instantly.
"Zizi—"
Accompanied by the sound of the carapace being burned, a stream of green smoke rose up, and a thick liquid mixed with dark green and yellow, wrapped in something that might be internal organs, slipped from the hole in the thick breastplate of the cockroach spider. out.
Even though Lin Xi's air filter was still working, he could still smell the bold, sweet stench.
But the bad thing is that even if there is a big hole in its body, the huge strange insect does not seem to be affected by you in any way. It still shakes its tentacles and gets closer to Lin Xi and others little by little.
Lin Xi had to hold a gun and shoot at it continuously to barely control it at a slow speed. The walls were full of sparks and scratches caused by the ion beam, but for that monster, Lin Xi The attacks by others seemed to be becoming more and more useless. The thick mucus secreted from its wounds seems to be able to isolate the damage of the ion beam to some extent. The incomplete insect body was like a zombie, looking even more terrifying and disgusting than when it first appeared.
"What the fuck is this?!"
"Oh God, oh, oh, oh, oh... help..."
The one who screamed was Lena.
The person who was crying and shooting at the same time was Schroedreth.
“…”
It was Lin Xi who bit her tongue hard and let the pain force her to calm down.
The three men fired while slowly retreating.
They tried to make the damn bug stop by shooting...or just slow it down a little, so that at least they could find a gap to turn around and run for their lives.
It's a pity that even the body has been blasted into a mess of insect mince by the plasma beam, and even the neck connecting the body fell directly from the terrifying body after several accurate shots - that insect But his body was still swinging its limbs, stepping on his own blood and internal organs in an attempt to reach Lin Xi.
Lin Xi held the gun in his hand tightly. The ion generator at the muzzle was already heating up. Lin Xi's palm was wet. He originally thought it was his own sweat, but the bright red that caught his eye showed that it was actually his. Blood in hands.
Moreover, what makes matters even worse is probably...
Click...
There was another disturbing sound, the harsh noise of metal deforming. Lin Xi suddenly raised his head and looked at the top of his head -
The originally smooth and smooth metal panel is gradually beginning to deform and dent downward.
Click—
It was that sound again, closer now.
The originally bright and dazzling light flashed suddenly, and then dimmed suddenly amid a crackling sound of electricity.
"Fuck, there's something on top of our heads too!"
Lin Xi let out an urgent roar.
Because of the sudden change in light, there was only darkness in front of him at that moment.
In the flash of lightning, Lin Xi felt the faint sound of wind coming from above her head. He felt goosebumps all over his body. He fell forward suddenly, then rolled around on the ground holding his head.
"Tick tock..."
Some wet sounds came from where he was before, and Lin Xi refused to think about what was coming down from above.
He suddenly fell down—
"Buzz-"
At this moment, the interior of the spacecraft shook slightly, and the red emergency light at the bottom of the wall came on.
Lin Xi was finally able to see his surroundings again, and then he saw clearly what he had just escaped - they were two dark brown, whip-like tentacles that stretched out from the gaps in the vents. come out.
And with the overwhelming clicking sound of the metal sheets on the ceiling, even idiots knew that the thing above their heads was about to rotate out.
Almost at the same time that Lin Xi saw the two tentacles, the gun in his hand made a slight buzz—the color of the ion generator changed from green to bright red.
It's overheating.
"Damn it."
Lin Xi cursed. He had never been so irritable.
He swung the gun away, and then pulled Lena and Schroedreth hard.
"Walk-"
he shouted urgently.
Then, the moment another behemoth, the dark brown giant insect, fell out of the vent, Lin Xi took you and Schroderreth and started running wildly.
The entire aircraft was filled with blood.
The monster probably damaged an important line when it sneaked into the three of them. Now Lin Xi and the three of them could only rely on the emergency lights to flee in a panic through the intricate corridors.
The second person whose ion gun overheated was Lina, followed closely by Schroedreth. They still had electromagnetic guns that were already turned on in their backpacks. However, under the current circumstances, they couldn't even find anything they could reach out for. The gap between shooting.
But eventually they had to turn around and face those two... or more giant insects...
Because unknowingly, Lin Xi and the other three accidentally escaped into a dead end.
The reason why they judged wrongly was because this corridor was extremely wide. They thought there would be a fork in the corridor, but what stood in front of them was an extremely thick and tall metal door.
The door was red under the emergency lights, just like the door to the underworld.
Lin Xi's shoulder hit the door, and then he turned around and looked at the slowly approaching figures.
As they walked, they kept flashing their thick wings behind them, making a continuous sizzling noise.
It was at this moment that Lin Xi felt that the nerve called reason in his head was completely broken.
He felt extremely angry—
This situation should not happen.
The thought flew through his mind quickly.
Hula—
The sound was not produced in reality, but in his brain.
Lin Xi felt as if a small explosion suddenly erupted in his head.
There was a bang.
Something invisible exploded, and then the fragments penetrated his soft gray brain, passed through his skull, and shot into the void...
"Well… "
At that moment, Lin Xi felt that her mind was blank.
He lost control of his body, stumbled, and fell to the ground with his back against the metal door.
"Dr. Lin Xi!"
Vaguely, he seemed to hear Lina shouting in panic.
But at this moment he didn't even have the strength to turn his head.
Severe pain was swaying in his head along the center point of the "explosion", and the pain almost made him scream.
But just when Lin Xi fell to the ground unable to move, the monsters following them seemed to have finally reached their limit.
They stopped in Lin Xi's field of vision, and then shook slightly.
With a final bang, he fell heavily to the ground.
"Huh... Huh... Huh..."
Lin Xi could hear her heavy breathing.
He stared unblinkingly at the insects that were gradually turning over, and the feeling of extreme disgust and panic still remained in his heart.
He guessed that you and Schroedreth probably felt the same way.
I don’t know how long it took, but Lina among the three finally calmed down a little.
"They're dead."
She forced herself to take a few steps towards the corpses of the insects. Then she stood there and observed for a while, then she quickly ran back to Lin Xi and said.
"They were really dead. I looked and they were no longer moving."
she repeated nervously.
"I know."
Lin Xi murmured in response to her.
He didn't even remember how he managed to stand up from the ground.
He had a splitting headache and his whole body was shaking.
It was at this time that Schroedreth let out that exclamation.
"The central control room... Dr. Lin Xi... this is actually the central control room!"
Lin Xi looked where he pointed, and it took a while for his eyes to focus.
There is indeed a line written there: Central Control Room
The following is a special reminder: unauthorized persons are not allowed to enter.
On the right side of the nameplate is a biometric authentication device that glows faintly.
"If only we could get in..."
Schroedreth muttered, and he unconsciously pressed his hand on the authentication device.
And no one expected that just after he finished that action, a soft electronic sound actually sounded like that.
"Beep—Authentication passed, please enter."
The author has something to say: Alas, Jinjiang gave me an ugly default cover for no reason.
I feel like I am retaliating for writing ugly articles...
Thanks to the little angels who voted for me or gave me the nutrient solution~
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20 bottles of Chichichichichichi, Yi, zll; 17 bottles of tomato jam; 10 bottles of Love Magic Circle, Xiaoyao Yisanxian, Azhuang, Jinshan; 9 bottles of Mengmeng; Yiyidu. , The heart is like mint. 5 bottles; 3 bottles of Xiaobayu, 123; 2 bottles of Milu Shishilu, what丶, xiuhefuyun; 1 bottle of Yuanzali Lan, Yellow Card, Skin Allergy, Orange Rain
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