The Underclass - Chapter 17
Chapter 17
8824 closed her eyes and explained to her slowly, "There is no cure for SAR. The only thing that can give a person release is death."
Galaxy's facial expression nearly cracked.
Even her body went a little stiff.
Oblivious to this, 8824 continued, "That tyap-j ward is a place that helps researchers who accidentally get irradiated find a quick release."
"It's filled with tyap-j at a concentration hundreds of times higher than what's in the mines. Just lying in there—even just stepping inside—can lead to rapid death."
"Even if they don't die instantly, they will rapidly contract SAR and begin showing severe symptoms within two hours. That's why it's a restricted zone. Unless you're already infected with SAR, no one goes near there." 8824 reiterated her warning: "Even just getting close is impossible."
At this moment, Galaxy's expression was laced with genuine horror.
Assuming she had frightened her, 8824 quickly reached out and patted her shoulder. "It's okay. Your mentor was being very careful. She was protecting you."
That wasn't right.
She had entered that room too. It had been nearly twelve hours, so why was she completely fine?
Forget showing symptoms, she didn't even have a single white hair.
"What if someone went in but didn't show symptoms?" Galaxy asked. "Is that possible?"
8824 shook her head. "That's impossible."
Her absolute certainty left Galaxy feeling somewhat terrified.
She hurriedly scrambled out of bed and began putting her clothes on.
8824 asked in surprise, "What's wrong?"
"I'm heading back early," Galaxy replied with forced composure. "See you tomorrow."
8824 didn't try to make her stay. She simply said, "Alright then, head back first."
Galaxy hastily left 8824's room, her entire body feeling icy cold.
She touched her blonde hair—it hadn't changed at all. She knew very well that her body had undergone some sort of change since being injected with that unknown substance at the snowy mountain lab in Lucia Town. But it wasn't a change like the people in 'Heaven' had experienced. She hadn't developed bones of steel or iron, nor had she mutated in any obvious way. What exactly had changed was hard to say.
But she could feel that, perhaps, she wouldn't catch SAR.
But what about that little girl? And Fula.
The little girl might still be lying in there, and Fula had taken a few steps inside before Galaxy pushed her out.
Galaxy thought her heart had grown sufficiently cold and hard, but right now, she felt it trembling.
When 8824 calmly described it as a door of death, Galaxy's hands and feet turned ice cold.
Discarding any thoughts of what trouble she might run into, she rushed back toward that laboratory.
An afternoon had been enough time for her to memorize the facility's floor plan. Within fifteen minutes, she stood before the door, and the familiar scanning beams lit up.
"Personnel 8927 detected. Gene sequence: ruined."
No one would appear in this restricted zone at night. In fact, precisely because it was a restricted zone, there was no verification lock on the door—anyone could open it.
Galaxy pressed the button the female researcher had used earlier that day. The heavy door slid open silently, revealing the scene inside.
On that high-tech electronic bed lay the little girl she had carried in that morning, but her hair had turned completely, glaringly white.
Galaxy walked over to the bed. The girl's eyes were tightly shut, as if she were asleep. She was still wearing the filthy worker's uniform that looked so out of place here.
She was already dead.
The tyap-j in this room was concentrated enough to cause instant death within three hours.
Galaxy's fingertips trembled, and tears suddenly spilled from her eyes.
Nearing a breakdown, she slumped against the edge of the bed, her voice shaking. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... I really thought she would save you... I'm sorry..."
She had killed people before, whether intentionally or not. But none of those times brought her to the brink of a breakdown like seeing this innocent little girl lying on that bed.
She remembered the other person who had come in with her—Fula.
Panic flared across her face.
It took her a good moment to suppress the panic and let a brief wave of calm seize the high ground.
She had to leave this place. She had to go see how Fula was doing.
But she couldn't leave empty-handed either.
She quickly slipped out of the room and headed toward the one-way corridor from that morning.
She laid in wait halfway down the path for quite a while until a researcher came walking back from that direction. The researcher was carrying a case, her steps hurried. Without hesitation, Galaxy knocked her out.
The case in the researcher's hand emitted a cold, heavy glow in the darkness. Instinct told Galaxy there was something special about it. She popped the case open. Inside lay two neat syringes filled with black liquid.
Galaxy desperately wanted to wake the researcher up and violently threaten her, but that would be flagged as malicious intent.
As she had confirmed when she knocked out that other researcher in the morning, merely rendering someone unconscious didn't violate the system's rules, perhaps because she harbored no true malice and hadn't caused any lasting physical harm.
But what required deeper consideration was this: the mechanical systems clearly hadn't classified the first researcher's act of tricking them into carrying a girl into the tyap-j lab as 'malicious' either.
That was a terrifying realization.
It either meant that, from the researcher's perspective, it wasn't malicious but rather a "kind" act to help the girl find release... or it meant that this behavior—which would be considered utterly evil anywhere else—was simply not defined as malicious by the facility's programming.
And the reason that researcher had been so indifferent to Galaxy and Fula, even dismissing them so casually when they left, was because, in her eyes, the two of them were already as good as dead.
Galaxy suddenly understood something. She decisively slung the unconscious researcher over her shoulder and walked back toward the death ward.
She was going to take a gamble.
Using her hair tie, she bound the researcher's hands. Before the woman could wake up, Galaxy pressed the button to open the tyap-j lab doors.
The researcher, whose name tag read 6724, groggily woke up not long after. She looked at her surroundings in confusion, feeling a sharp pain in her neck and the blood pooling in her tightly bound wrists.
Then, staring in disbelief at what was directly in front of her, she began to struggle violently.
A cold voice echoed above her head. "6724. What is this?"
She couldn't see the person standing behind her. She could only see a slender wrist dangling the very drugs she was supposed to deliver to the S-class laboratory. Her pupils shrank. She couldn't believe she was being taken hostage inside the institute, yet the overhead mechanical monitors hadn't sounded a single alarm.
It wasn't that they couldn't sense the malice of the person behind her; it was because this person had exploited a loophole. Throwing someone into the tyap-j lab was not on the system's list of malicious acts.
"Five seconds. If you don't answer, you're going inside." Galaxy counted down slowly. "Five, four, three, two, one—"
6724 gritted her teeth. Seeing her remain silent, Galaxy shoved her forward.
As they reached the threshold, 6724's terror finally overpowered her loyalty. She hastily spat out, "It's Black Water! Black Water!"
Galaxy stopped. She asked, "What is Black Water?"
"Black Water is a substance extracted from raw tyap-j ore, but it can only be extracted after the radiation is purged. That's why the humanoid statues are set up in the main lab—to facilitate the extraction. The conditions for creating Black Water are extremely strict; it requires continuous, uninterrupted irradiation from moonlight, though artificial moonlight works as well." 6724 spilled everything in a panic. "Over all these years, we've only managed to extract a little over thirty vials. We're still running clinical trials to verify its exact effects, but so far, we can only confirm that Black Water has miraculous applications in clinical medicine. The rest of its pharmacological properties remain undetermined."
"So you use the workers to purge the radiation, then place all the purified tyap-j under that fake starry sky to cultivate and extract Black Water?" Galaxy finally pieced it together. "But since you still haven't figured out exactly what Black Water is after all this time, why do you keep sacrificing endless human lives to harvest it?"
"You don't understand. Even though we haven't figured it out yet, the value of Black Water is absolutely incalculable!" A fanatic gleam flashed in 6724's eyes. "We still have plenty of time to conquer this problem."
"Conquer it with the lives of the workers?" Galaxy asked coldly.
"These are necessary sacrifices." 6724's words were no different from 8824's.
Galaxy gave up trying to reason with her. She grabbed the woman's collar and dragged her backward. Right now, her desire to destroy something was peaking.
Seeing herself dragged away from the tyap-j lab, 6724 felt a wave of relief and relaxed her guard. Out here, if Galaxy tried to murder her, Galaxy would absolutely die first. As long as she was away from that specific lab, she didn't fear for her life.
"Where are you taking me?"
Galaxy remained silent. She tucked the two vials of Black Water into her jacket and dragged 6724 all the way back to where she had originally ambushed her, arriving at the main doors from that morning.
At night, only mechanical guards watched the area; there were no living sentries. Galaxy held 6724's head steady, scanned her iris, and then pricked both their fingers to provide the necessary blood samples to the mechanical needle, completing the verification.
"Researcher 6724. Researcher 8927. Welcome back."
Thanks to Galaxy's initial entry that morning, the system implicitly recognized her as a member of the institute.
6724 was somewhat taken aback. "You betrayed the institute? You're a traitor?"
Galaxy sneered. "No. The rebels infiltrated the institute. You've got the sequence of events reversed."
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