The Underclass - Chapter 7
Chapter 7
As it turned out, the snowy mountain had already been abandoned.
Galaxy, of course, knew An Hua's cunning and expected it wouldn't be this easy to find her.
Riding her air-cushion motorcycle through the massive mountain range, she discovered the area had been hollowed out.
The mountain's interior housed a sprawling, vacant experimental base. When Galaxy stepped inside, it was unnervingly quiet, with only the eerie green glow and the rhythmic beeping of discarded lab equipment echoing through the underground space.
Her boots hit the floor with dull thuds. Pushing open the main lab doors, the first thing she saw were several massive experimental vats in the center. They were a full three meters tall and filled with transparent nutrient fluid, but the truly horrifying part was the deformed animals preserved inside.
A three-headed rabbit with twisted limbs that stood two meters tall, practically filling the entire vat. A snake bloated with grotesque rolls of fat. A sheep with an eagle's beak, six horns, and eight legs...
As Galaxy walked past vat after vat, she felt a wave of nausea.
What the hell was this place?
She didn't know, so she kept walking. Crossing the main lab floor, she entered a gloomy corridor. The moment she stepped in, motion-sensor lights flickered on below her.
Rows of floor lights illuminated. Galaxy instinctively walked forward, but after a couple of steps, she sensed something was wrong. She whipped her head around, but could see nothing in the dark. The lights at her feet only illuminated the path directly ahead, so she pulled a flashlight from her pocket and shined it at the wall.
A pair of eyes was staring at her!
She jumped back in fright, the beam of her flashlight widening to reveal exactly what was inside the wall.
Animal bones. Countless animal bones!
They were suspended in formaldehyde inside the glass walls, floating aimlessly, staring with stiffened eyes, paying a silent tribute to anyone who walked this path.
It was utterly macabre. She didn't even dare step back, because behind her was another wall filled with the exact same gruesome display.
This entire space was stacked with an unimaginable number of animal corpses.
Galaxy just wanted to run away as fast as she could. But before she could move, someone lunged out of the darkness and pinned her to the ground!
She instinctively drew her handgun and fired blindly into the dark. A deafening bang echoed, but it seemed she hadn't hit anything. The woman above her let out an eerie, ghost-like laugh.
Galaxy's pupils shrank. Gritting her teeth, she shoved at the attacker, finally feeling a warm human body, which offered a slight bit of relief.
"Who are you?!" she demanded loudly.
The figure didn't answer. Using an undeniable strength, the attacker grabbed Galaxy by the hair, held her down, and immediately pressed something freezing cold and sharp against her neck.
"Get off!" she roared, fighting with all her might. But she felt a sharp prick at her neck, followed by cold liquid being injected into her veins.
Tears welled in Galaxy's eyes, and cold sweat dripped into them. By the faint floor lights, she caught a glimpse of a pair of eyes. This time, without a second's hesitation, she raised her gun and fired straight into the attacker's eye socket.
A horrific shriek erupted from the figure, followed by dead silence. The person who had just securely pinned her now collapsed limply on top of her.
Galaxy lay on the ground, gasping for air, tears spilling down her face. She felt like she was going to die at any second, yet the fluid injected into her seemed to merge seamlessly with her body, causing no discomfort.
She wiped her tears, reached out, and picked up the flashlight she had dropped during the struggle. When she finally saw the person on top of her, she was startled all over again.
The attacker had red hair, a deathly pale face, and dark circles that looked like bottomless pits. Her lips were completely bloodless, and she stared at Galaxy with one wide-open eye. In the center of the other eye was a small hole—the bullet wound.
Galaxy pried the syringe from the woman's fingers. It only had a serial code on it. It wasn't a standard syringe; she had seen something like it in An Hua's lab once. This type of injector was used exclusively for specialized fluids.
She clutched the syringe. She had to figure out what had been injected into her, even if she was going to die. She wanted to die knowing.
Strangely, she calmed down in that moment. As she wiped the blood off her hands onto the corpse's clothes, she noticed something odd.
The person's arms were soft flesh, but her chest was rigid, as hard as a block of iron.
Galaxy unhesitatingly tore open the shirt over the corpse's chest, revealing a mechanized torso.
No wonder her first shot had done nothing.
Her handgun could pierce steel, and she indeed saw a bullet hole in the chest plate, but there was no blood.
The woman's lower body and torso were mechanized; only her head remained human and capable of bleeding.
Galaxy looked down. She refused to believe this lab had no overhead lights.
She dragged the corpse forward. The floor lights flickered on one by one until she reached the end of the corridor. There stood a door made of specialized glass. As she stepped next to the genetic scanner, it blared, "Illegal intruder. Illegal intruder."
She simply lifted the corpse and held it up to the scanner.
"Scientist designation 0725. Target is deceased. One laboratory override access remaining."
"Do you wish to open the laboratory?"
Galaxy understood now. The scientists employed here truly received one opportunity to reboot the lab after their death.
She remembered something An Hua had told her back when they were still together.
Back then, An Hua had stood in her independent lab and said, "If I ever build a new lab in the future, I will definitely program it so that if the lab is abandoned, the scientists who worked there will have one chance to reboot it after they die."
Galaxy, still naive and inexperienced back then, rested her chin in her hands and asked, "Why would you set it up like that?"
"Because if I ever leave my lab, it will be because I was forced to. I hope that one day, someone can reboot everything I've built," An Hua had said with absolute certainty.
The bright memories of the academy and the mechanical sights flashed past her eyes. Galaxy blinked, bringing herself back to the dark laboratory in front of her.
Her eyes darkened. She could almost see An Hua sneering at her from wherever she had retreated to.
Look at you. Your every move has been entirely within my calculations. I knew you'd eventually track me to the depths of this snowy mountain to see what I was doing.
But so what?
Expressionless, Galaxy pushed open the door. The moment she stepped through, the lights blazed on, revealing the massive laboratory in its entirety.
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