Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 936: Final Sobriety
Then, the "clown" said to Ronnie: "Give 5 mg of adrenaline, administered intravenously in small amounts over several times. Always pay attention to the survivor's heart rate. If cardiac arrest occurs, directly perform an intracardiac injection. At the same time, prepare a pacemaker."
"Oh, oh." Ronnie glanced at the "Clown" and felt a little strange.
She was almost 100% sure that this "clown" had been a doctor. His operation was even more skilled than those old professors with decades of experience in medical school, and he had an incomparable understanding of the structure of the human body. Several times, Ronnie thought that heavy bleeding was going to occur. She even prepared hemostatic forceps and cotton wool, but the "clown" just avoided those blood vessels... It was as if he was not operating on a living person, but a dry silicone human body model.
Did he...really work as a doctor? With this kind of skills, he should be a famous doctor, right?
Ronnie looked at the "clown" and wanted to ask something, but was a little hesitant to do so.
There was one thing that made her feel very strange - most doctors would call the person being rescued a "patient" but this "clown" kept calling them "survivors". Not only was it a bit awkward to pronounce, but even Ronnie found it particularly awkward.
Perhaps it was because women were more delicate in their minds, or perhaps everyone else was focused on whether the survivor could be saved. Except for Ronnie, no one paid attention to these things. They all stared at the scalpel that was nimbly moving under the light, watching it cut open the subcutaneous tissue and muscle bit by bit... The phrase "butchering an ox" might not be appropriate here , but there seemed to be no more appropriate idiom to describe the "clown's" surgery.
"What are you doing now?" the captain of the spear squad couldn't help asking, "Hasn't his breathing recovered? Why do you still need to cut open his chest?"
"There's something inside. If it's not removed, he'll die soon." The Joker replied while performing the operation.
Suddenly, the scalpel stopped, and everyone around held their breath. The Joker seemed to be thinking. Two seconds later, he stretched out his hand to Ronnie and said, "Bone rongeurs, the largest one."
Ronnie didn't dare to delay and immediately took out the instruments needed by the "Clown" from the medical box, disinfected them and handed them over.
The "clown" pulled the scalpel out of the incision, put it aside, inserted the retractor, and after prying the incision , he inserted the bone-binding forceps at an extremely fast speed and pulled out a large piece of inky black tissue covered with mucus from the deep incision.
"What is this?!" Soap widened his eyes and asked in a low voice.
"It should have been shot from that thing." The Joker pointed at the Ark covered by a fleshy fungus blanket in the distance. "After entering the survivor's body, it began to parasitize and invade the surrounding organs... His external injuries are actually far from fatal. He fell into a coma entirely because of this thing."
"From the Ark... No, it was fired from those monsters?!" Soap subconsciously put his finger on the trigger, "Has he been infected?!"
"The survivors' somatic cells show no signs of assimilation, and this thing is not a seed of erosion." The clown used a scalpel to cut open the mass of inky black tissue. After removing the flocculent tissue on the outside, a hard cone in the shape of an animal tooth was revealed inside.
This cone is white, but there are countless tiny holes on its surface. A sticky black fluid is slowly secreted from these holes, and after expanding, it turns into a floc-like tissue wrapped around the outside.
"But the problem is that he has no wounds on his chest or back. How did this thing get into his body?" asked the transport plane pilot.
"I don't know." The clown said, "If I knew, we wouldn't have to come here."
Not long after the foreign object was taken out, the survivor who had been motionless suddenly began to tremble violently. Everyone was surprised and delighted by this scene... but the next second, the surprise was reduced to surprise, without any joy.
A large number of irregular keratin growths suddenly began to appear on the survivor's body surface. These growths quickly wrapped up his body... It looked like a severe symptom of "leprosy", an infectious disease that had disappeared in the old era.
(Please search Baidu for what severe leprosy looks like. The pictures may cause discomfort, and the text description may be too strong and be censored. If you are mentally prepared, you can search it yourself. If you don’t find it, forget it.)
In addition to these growths, there are many tiny tentacles emerging from the cracks in the growths, constantly wriggling.
"Ah!" Ronnie screamed and rolled away. As for the others, they drew their weapons at the first moment, and more than a dozen black gun muzzles were pointed at the survivor who had suddenly mutated.
"You still say he's not infected?!" Soap exclaimed, "Look at what this is?! He's clearly a vessel for the Seed of Corrosion!"
"He's not a container." The Joker didn't dodge like Ronnie did, but continued to use a scalpel to cut out the growths that had grown - even though the growths grew much faster than he could cut them off.
"Do you want to listen to what you are saying?" Soap's facial muscles twitched involuntarily. "This... this man has tentacles growing out of his body. If this isn't a container for the Seed of Corrosion, then what else could it be? Aren't you afraid of being infected by him?"
"These tentacles are not seeds of erosion, and they do not have the ability to infect other organisms... or in other words, the method of infection does not rely on actual contact." The clown took out a glass bottle with a test paper that did not change color soaked in it. "I did a test at the beginning, and did not detect any cells that were alienated by the seeds of erosion in his body tissues."
"Could it be that the part you tested hadn't been infected at that time?" The captain of the Spear Squad was calmer than Soap, but there was still a slight tremor in his voice.
The mobile refrigeration box has been opened, and the active ammunition has been distributed to everyone. Soap and others have already replaced their ammunition with the "special magazine" with the black and yellow biohazard logo...
"That's easy. You see, this is the thing that caused him to be 'infected', right?" The clown picked up the cone from the ground with tweezers without changing his expression and threw it into the reagent bottle.
The test paper still did not change color.
"I told you, this thing has nothing to do with the Seed of Corrosion."
"Is it possible that this is a new mutant ... or is it another monster that is similar to the Seed of Erosion?" the team leader asked again, and as he asked, he stuffed the magazine filled with active ammunition into the gun.
"He's not a monster, he's a human," said the Joker.
"I know he's not a monster, but he's going to become one soon!" The captain's tone became heavier, his anxiety evident in his words. "Now is not the time to discuss this kind of thing. Although this survivor is very important to us, we must ensure that the mission can proceed smoothly under the current circumstances... If you can't turn him back to his original appearance, then I can only order him to be disposed of!"
"This change is irreversible, but if you want to get information about the Ark from him, now is your only chance." The clown paused and continued, "There is one thing I want to remind you of. After you hear what he says, he may turn into... 'the monster you call him'."
"What are you saying?" The giraffe was confused. "Why can I understand every word you say, but when you put them together, it becomes something I can't understand?"
The leader of the Spear Squad was stunned for a few seconds, then his face darkened. His arms dropped, and he stopped pointing his gun at the survivors. Instead, he turned to look at the Joker and confirmed with a very low voice, "Meme?"
"Almost." The Joker nodded.
The Spear Squad was recently transferred to the Mukach Base. They were one of the several batches of support troops that the Ark added to the Mukach Base after the attack. Before being transferred to the Mukach Base, they happened to be involved in the "memetic contagion" incident.
Of course, they didn't confront the meme head on, or else Spear Squad would have ceased to exist long ago.
Although they were only carrying out order maintenance work on the periphery, due to the terrifying nature of the "meme", the necessary information was still informed to the captains of each team, in order to prevent the soldiers from being exposed to the "meme" without knowing it, which would cause the spread of the infection.
"Does that mean..." the captain of the Spear Squad said in a dry voice, "We have all been infected?"
"It's a little different from memes." The Joker shook his head. "If 'memes' are acute infectious diseases, then that is chronic infectious. It's just that there are some things that are both 'pathogens' and 'catalysts' of symptoms. If you come into contact with too much of those things, it will greatly accelerate the symptoms of infection, even faster than acute meme transmission."
"What...what are you guys talking about? I don't understand a word you say." The giraffe looked at the clown, then at the team leader and asked.
Although I don’t know what “meme” they are talking about, judging from the conversation between the two, it must be something extremely dangerous.
"He may still have a few minutes of consciousness. If you have anything to ask, just ask." The Joker said to the captain of the Spear Squad, "Of course, the premise is that you are not worried about being 'infected'."
“…”
Before the captain of the spear squad could speak, the survivor struggled to turn over and said in an extremely unclear voice: "Quickly... run away... escape... from the Ark... the farther... the better."
