As Tianci finished drawing out the blood from Xiaoyun’s arm, he finally decided to ask the question on his mind.
"What are all these vials for?"
"You’ll be leaving soon. So I thought I’d need to stockpile so of it in case you don’t co back."
"You serious?" Xiaoyun questioned again, looking back at her in disbelief after hearing her answer.
"Mhm... What are you looking at like that for?"
"There’s still like two and a half months before I leave. Isn’t this just way too early to stockpile sothing like this?"
The answer made Tianci freeze for a second. But she quickly recovered as she took off her gloves and threw them into the bin.
"You got a point, but too late... Anyway, you can go now."
As the scientists began exiting the room with the cart full of blood vials, Xiaoyun remained seated as he stared back at her right in the eyes.
"You still haven’t told what the blood is used for."
"Do you really want to learn about science?"
"I got nothing else better to do."
Seeing him unwilling to give up, Tianci let out a small sigh before getting up and walking over to the bookshelf nearby.
"Here, you will need to read this to understand what we’ll be doing next... And get ready to dress up."
Inside the book, it was full of technical terms that Xiaoyun couldn’t understand. However, there was one thing that he could understand.
"Isn’t this the picture of... that man’s invisible wife?"
"It is. She’s the test subject we’ll be working on today. Go grab those clothes and put them on yourself."
As Tianci pointed at the clothes on the wall, Xiaoyun quickly went over to grab them, turning himself into a ’scientist.’
"What are we doing now?" Xiaoyun curiously asked as he watched Tianci just sitting there in complete silence.
"The others are bringing the subject in."
After waiting for five whole minutes, the lab door opened, revealing a woman wearing hospital clothing with extrely pale skin.
Directly behind her was a man whom Xiaoyun recognized. It was none other than Wen Zhang, the husband of the test subject.
"Mister gov—"
"Doctor Li, get ready for today’s injection."
Tianci interrupted Wen Zhang’s attempt to speak with Xiaoyun as several other scientists began arranging the equipnt in the room.
Soon, the whole place beca an operating room. A hospital bed in the middle that had velcro straps next to the guardrails.
"Miss i, do you mind lying down on this bed?"
The pale-skinned woman slowly climbed up the bed, sitting down as the nearby scientists brought more equipnt to the bedside.
"Liang i, is everything ready?"
"Yes, madam."
"Test number 3, starting now."
As three of the younger-looking scientists started strapping the pale woman onto the bed, Xiaoyun could feel her husband getting a little nervous.
"Doctor Li, you can do the injection today... And Liang i, are all the vitals correctly displaying the numbers?"
"Yes, madam." Liang i answered as the heart rate chart and the display screen behind refreshed twice in a row.
"Okay."
The other male scientist began moving a syringe full of red liquid, slowly putting the needle up against the pale woman’s arm.
After injecting all of it into the woman’s body, all of the scientists took a step back except for the one with blonde hair and a notebook in hand.
She only moved up even closer, standing right on the end of the bed, seemingly to be waiting for so sort of reaction to record.
"How long has it been?" Tianci quietly asked.
"One—"
Before one of the scientists could answer, the pale woman suddenly started shaking uncontrollably.
Her face began turning a little green, with her eyes turning red as the shaking turned into sothing out of an exorcism film.
The heartbeat monitor was louder than ever as alerts started beeping nonstop, reaching all the way to 200 before it flat out zeroed.
"Is this what’s supposed to happen?"
Xiaoyun’s question went unanswered as the heartbeat chart sohow went from zero back up to 80 before stabilizing around 120.
"Tianci, bad news." The male scientist murmured as he started drawing a small bit of blood out of Wen Zhang’s wife.
"I know, Doctor Li... Lee, what was the ti duration?"
"Three minutes and twenty seconds."
Within seconds, all of the scientists looked a little down. Even Wen Zhang himself looked a little disappointed hearing the number.
"What happened?"
Xiaoyun asked, looking more confused than ever as the scientists began unstrapping the pale woman from the chair.
"I’ll tell you later. I need to go put the other trial on pause first."
As he watched her leave the room with the other scientist, Xiaoyun looked over to Wen Zhang and the woman standing next to him.
"Is she feeling fine?"
"I don’t know, governor... All I know is the longer the reaction, the better for her." Wen Zhand answered, his face filled with sadness.
Xiaoyun didn’t try to stop them from leaving as they exited the room, leaving him and a young scientist who was putting everything away.
---
"Now, can you tell what happened?"
Xiaoyun and Tianci were now in a eting room together, as he waited for a whole hour and a half for her to finish a eting.
"The drug efficacy is starting to fail."
"What drug? The liquid inside the syringe? That red liquid that you injected into Wen Zhang’s wife is the drug?"
"Yes. We had been testing it for the fifth ti now. This had been the shortest response, and the blood test is worse."
"How bad is it exactly?"
"How do I put this... Imagine this drug is supposed to make the human body react by creating antibodies against it.
We went from the drug causing a total reaction for hours to now, only minutes. It had completely nullified all the progress we had made."
The answer made so sense in Xiaoyun’s head, but a ton of questions remained as he couldn’t wrap his head around wanting a reaction in the first place.
"If I’m getting this right, the reaction is a good thing? It’s like the drug you injected is trying to neutralize or destroy the virus inside her body?"
"No, no, no, the drug’s purpose is not to destroy the virus. That’s practically impossible to do when every human on earth carries the airborne version."
Tianci paused for a second, then continued.
"Doctor Li and I had been developing a theory... Zombie Mutants aren’t a real virus carrier, at least compared to a regular zombie."
"I know that. Mutants can’t infect humans."
Xiaoyun instantly answered first, his mind rembered the amount of ti he had seen soldiers scratched by it and ca out fine.
"Yes. That’s the foundation we built the theory on. But the question remained, how does a zombie turn into a mutant then?
Is it through randomness? Or based on what the zombie’s body had personally experienced before turning?"
The room fell into silence as the question Tianci asked caused more and more confusion, one that made him realize how naive he had been.
"I don’t know," Xiaoyun quietly murmured.
"That’s what we had been trying to figure out. This drug has zero effect on humans or zombies.
But it seems to trigger a do sothing in mutants. Specifically, the cells on their body seem to strongly react against it."
"Sothing? Like what happened earlier?"
"That’s part of it. But the mutant cell showed changes. It was seemingly being suppressed back down to normal."
"Normal as in human?"
Tianci froze for a second, then shook her head.
"Normal as in... It’s not human. But it’s not a zombie either. It’s just less aggressive towards others."
"Aggressive? Like white blood cells attacking foreign cells?"
"Mhm. They aren’t as willing to seek more cells to... Mutate even further."
"Mutant even further?"
As Xiaoyun stared back at Tianci in silence, she slowly nodded her head before giving him the worst news possible.
"There is no limit to how many tis a mutant could mutate. They don’t even need to do anything, and their DNA would mutate on its own."
"In a good way or in a bad way?" Xiaoyun questioned.
"Mostly bad way. They can beco an even more dangerous, tougher skin resistant to bullets or even be immune to them."
"No zombie is immune to physical damage to their bodies. They just need a higher caliber against them."
"Not if they can self-regenerate faster than you could hurt them. Imagine a zombie that could just keep regenerating its head after the bullet goes through."
"I’m good."
Just as Xiaoyun was about to get up and leave with the pessimistic news, his brain suddenly rembered sothing.
"Wait, you said mostly bad. So there’s so good out of this?"
"What makes you think we’re conducting this experint for? Of course, there’s sothing good out of this." Tianci answered.
"Like what?"
"If this drug works as intended, then we can slow down a mutant’s cell from mutating even further on its own.
Right now, Xianlin is already peaceful. We want her to stay that way rather than mutating into sothing more aggressive."
"Those reactions earlier don’t exactly look peaceful to ..."
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