Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 858: "Hazardous Waste"
Channel 4 is not located together with the three regular garbage channels 1, 2, and 3. Instead, it is located at the deepest part of the garbage treatment plant. The corridor leading to this channel is covered with various warning signs, all of which have similar meanings:
"Danger ahead."
"No entry for non-staff members ."
"Please check your protective gear and weapons, personnel on duty at Channel 4."
"If there is any abnormality, report it immediately and close the security gate."
…
And so on.
"I can understand wearing protective gear." After listening to Ke Lan's translation, Sanshisan nodded and said, "After all, hazardous waste is either toxic or harmful to the human body, or radioactive waste... But why do you need to carry weapons? Can garbage jump up and bite people?"
"This passage is more than ten kilometers long and can be considered a relatively simple small ecosystem... Although it is impossible for ordinary creatures to survive in this environment, anything that can survive in this passage must be a monster that has mutated to the point where it can no longer be seen from its original appearance." Ke Lan said, "Carrying weapons should be to prevent these mutated creatures from escaping from the passage, right?"
"For example... a giant mutant rat that is covered in rotten flesh, has radioactive mineral crystals growing all over its body, and is taller than a human when it stands up?" Thirty-Three said in a low voice.
"Have you seen this kind of creature? Is it a native creature of Alpha?" Ke Lan asked curiously.
Thirty-three's description was very detailed, and it didn't seem like a made-up monster image... but Ke Lan didn't have a name in his mind that matched this kind of creature, and there weren't many similar monsters in the movies he had seen.
"I have seen them, but they are not native creatures of Alpha Planet, but mutated creatures from Earth." Sanshisan recalled, "That was the first mission I received after transferring to the Airborne Rapid Reaction Force. At that time, I had only been in the army for less than a year and was only a rookie, so I had a very deep impression of them."
"Having been in the field force for a full year, I am considered a big shot in the eyes of the garrison corps..." Ke Lan couldn't help but complain. In his opinion, this was definitely a self-deprecating statement. Although the airborne rapid reaction force of the field force was not the top elite, it was definitely a front-line combat force, at least much stronger than the unit that Lao Gou led before.
Thirty-three ignored Ke Lan's complaints and continued walking, "It was a six-month confidential mission. The captain told me that the combat intensity of the mission would not be very high, so we did not carry too many heavy weapons... But on the contrary, the mission location was extremely harsh. Every soldier participating in the mission was issued the top individual protective clothing at the time, and each squad was assigned a field pollution treatment vehicle."
"With this configuration...it seems that the mission location is in a severe radiation area." Ke Lan continued.
"That's right." Thirty-three nodded, "Deep in the Prismatic Basin."
Although Ke Lan had not heard of this place name many times, as a relic hunter, he had some understanding of those "special" places on the surface of Alpha.
Although the Prismatic Basin cannot be considered a relic of the Alpha Civilization, it was artificially created by the Alpha Civilization rather than a natural landform on Alpha. According to experts, the Prismatic Basin was originally a "garbage dump" used by the Alpha Civilization to bury radioactive waste. However, under the influence of tens of thousands of years of wind, sun, geological movement, etc., the soil covering the radioactive waste collapsed, forming a huge pit with a diameter of hundreds of kilometers. In this pit, prismatic crystals with strong radiation can be seen everywhere exposed on the surface, and the name "Prismatic Basin" is derived from this.
After glancing at the warning signs posted on both sides of the corridor that he couldn't understand, Thirty-Three continued, "This is a mission in cooperation with the research institute. A research team from the research institute is going to conduct a field survey and experiment in the Prismatic Basin. Our mission is to protect the personal safety of the members of this research team."
"What happens next?" Ke Lan asked - since the mutant rat left a deep impression on Sanshisan, the process of this mission should not be too smooth.
"The researchers brought more than a dozen cages of mice as observation subjects. They injected half of the mice with anti-radiation nin, and the other half with a preparation synthesized from substances extracted from the 'prism scorpion'. I remember that the researchers called it 'reducing serum'. Because I was in charge of guarding the makeshift biological laboratory at that time, the entire experiment was conducted under my supervision. Oh, and the prism scorpion is a native creature that lives in the prism basin. It is said that they can even feed on radioactive waste."
Thirty-Three took a breath and continued, "After injecting the two agents, they released the mice outside and allowed them to move around on their own. Of course, each mouse was implanted with a chip to track and monitor its physical condition."
"I can almost imagine how the plot will develop next..." Ke Lan muttered, "In that environment, the reliability of the chip must be a mess, right?"
"That's right. Not only the chip, but even the drones used to receive chip signals crashed several times in the Prismatic Basin. In the end, we had to switch to manual tracking... A total of 120 mice were injected with the Prismatic Scorpion's reduction serum. I remember that the number of survivors was exactly 70. But after two months, we only found 36 living specimens or corpses."
Ke Lan: "Almost half of it is missing."
"Although the mice that were found had different degrees of mutation, they did not develop highly threatening attack organs. Neither the research team nor we realized the danger. In addition, there were still four months before the end of the mission. They immediately decided to continue further research based on this part of the data... As for the mice that were not found, they became the task of the patrol team every day.
But one day in the middle of the fifth month, the team on patrol that day did not return to the camp until the handover time in the evening, and the communication could not be connected due to radiation interference... Although this kind of thing is rare, it has happened several times in five months... At first, we thought they were just lost, but after half an hour of time limit, the captain decided to send two teams to look for them, and I was in these two teams.
We only found the bodies of that squad, each of them gnawed beyond recognition... Judging from the bite marks on their armor, they were killed by a giant rodent."
"Those mutated little white mice?" Ke Lan pursed his lips. The plot was a bit old-fashioned, but if it could be made into a movie, the visual effect should be very good... If the bloody and horrific factors were not taken into account, it should be a big hit.
"Yes... but we failed to find the murderers who killed the team, so we had to return to the camp to report the situation. That night, the camp was attacked by a group of mutant rats." Thirty-three took a deep breath and his face turned slightly pale. "We thought at first that even if the missing mice had mutated, there would only be thirty-four at most, but we forgot one thing, that is, they have a very strong reproductive ability...
There were at least two thousand mutant rats that attacked the camp, each of which was more than one and a half meters long. I don't know how they grew to such a scale in the barren Prismatic Basin... There is a lack of water and food here. In just five months, they grew from thirty-four palm-sized white rats to two thousand huge mutant rats. It's hard to believe, but it happened.
As mentioned before, we did not carry any heavy weapons. The most powerful weapons were only grenades and under-slung rifle grenades. Even if the rifle grenades hit directly, it was difficult to kill a mutant giant rat. The camp's defense line lasted less than five minutes before being breached.
Fortunately, after we reported the situation, the captain had already sent a message to his superiors requesting support. Not long after the battle began, a high-speed battleship arrived at the camp for support... But at that time, there were no more than ten people alive in the camp. "
"No wonder you have such a deep impression." Ke Lan sighed, "These people from the research institute are really the kind of people who seek death that I am familiar with... How many of their people died?"
"All dead... Those mutant rats seem to have a certain level of intelligence. Their priority targets are biological laboratories and researchers wearing white protective clothing. Soldiers like us wearing orange protective clothing are obviously not their first targets... These mutant rats seem to be out for revenge."
"What was the original purpose of this project? To develop a new generation of radiation-resistant Ning?" Ke Lan suddenly asked.
"No, I glanced at the computer screens of those researchers a few times. Their mission goal seems to be to research...biological weapons that can survive in high-intensity radiation environments." Thirty-three replied.
"...Then I can only say that he died a good death." Ke Lan curled his lips, "You will suffer for your own sins."
After Thirty-Three's story was told, the two of them almost reached the end of the corridor. This was a hall divided into multiple blocks. On the left hand side was a whole row of cabinets for storing equipment, and on the right were shower cubicles for cleaning - these shower cubicles were naturally not used for bathing, but for washing away radioactive dust or some other pollutants on the protective clothing... But now these shower cubicles have collapsed, and the metal partitions have fallen to the ground in all directions. The protective film that originally covered the surroundings has also been torn to pieces. As for the water pipes, they have been rusted and riddled with holes. Several sections of water pipes have disappeared, leaving only a thick layer of rust mixed with dust on the ground.
Five hundred thousand years... this hall has not collapsed completely. It can only be said that the civilization that built this nest city has strong construction capabilities. As for the desolate scene in front of him, in Ke Lan's opinion, it is similar to the city called "Pripyat" on Earth, but the photos he saw were only the appearance of the latter after it was abandoned for decades due to a nuclear accident.
And this nest city will have the word "wan" added after the number of decades.
"I'm starting to feel some tingling on my skin." Thirty-Three said as he zipped up his protective suit and pulled up his hood, covering his entire head with only half of his breathing mask exposed. The heavy protective suit they had worn when they entered the Gray Mist Forest had long been lost, and now all they could get was this portable protective suit that was as thin as a sunscreen jacket.
Ke Lan searched through the equipment cabinets but did not find the protective clothing left by the Hive Civilization - this place had been emptied. Unfortunately, he could only see the hall when it was operating normally, but could not see what happened here when the "disaster" came.
"Remember to inject anti-radiation and radiation-eliminating drugs on time." Ke Lan said, and walked straight forward.
The anti-radiation ability sometimes seems a bit useless, but sometimes it is really useful.
After passing through the hall and climbing over two unmanned security gates, Ke Lan and Sanshisan finally arrived at the exit of "Passage No. 4".
The walls of Channel No. 4 are made of lead plates with graphite cores sandwiched between them, and a thick layer of concrete is poured on the outside of the channel... This structure is somewhat similar to the reactors of nuclear power plants on Earth.
"It's been half a million years, why is the radiation intensity here still so high?" Thirty- three's voice sounded very dull through the breathing mask, "Is this really just a channel for transporting radioactive waste?"
"Take uranium, the most well-known radioactive element, for example. The half-life of uranium 234, uranium 235 and uranium 238 is 270,000 years, 710 million years and 4.5 billion years respectively. For these elements, 500,000 years is not a long time." Ke Lan explained to Thirty-Three, "What's more, we still don't know what elements are contained in the radioactive waste of this hive city. Some elements have a half-life even longer than uranium."
"Compared to these things, a person's life is just a blink of an eye." Thirty-three sighed casually, then pulled out a short axe made of Nino alloy from his waist and held it in his hand. He nodded to Ke Lan and said, "Let's go. Even if the radiation is strong, we have to bite the bullet and endure it."
"I have no problem. This amount of radiation is just like a tickle to me." Ke Lan said, "As for you...if your body can't handle it, don't force yourself. It's not worth risking your life for such a small matter."
"It's okay, my skin is just a little itchy, and my back feels a little hairy... Compared to the environment in the Prismatic Basin, there is still some difference." Sanshisan lifted the breathing mask a little and calmly wiped away the blood from his nose that had already flowed to his lips.
