Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 937: Ronnie
"He...he seemed to be saying, let's run away quickly?" Soap pointed at the mutated survivor and said uncertainly.
"You heard it right." The transport plane pilot nodded vigorously. "He said that I should run away as quickly as possible, as far away from the Ark as possible... Uh, what do you think?"
"I, what I heard was different from what you heard." Ronnie murmured as she hurriedly got up from the ground, "I seemed to hear another strange voice whispering in my ear... but I couldn't understand what that voice was saying at all..."
Before Ronnie could finish her words, Soap, who was standing not far from her, suddenly took a big step back, pointed the gun at Ronnie, and asked in a trembling voice: "What's that on your face?!"
"On my face?!" Ronnie was stunned for a moment and reached out to touch her cheek. It would have been fine if she hadn't touched it, but once she touched it, she froze in place - her originally smooth and delicate face had become bumpy without her knowing when, as if someone had splashed strong acid on it... More importantly, her face became like this, but not only did she not feel any pain, she didn't even feel the slightest bit of strangeness. If Soap hadn't seen it, she didn't know when she would have noticed these changes.
When she took her hands away from her face, the flesh on her face actually dripped down as if it was dissolving, and the rotten tissue adhered to her palm with mucus. If you look closely, you can see tiny tentacles like little insects wriggling in these tissues.
"You're infected?!" The giraffe's breathing became very rapid, "It must be because you came into contact with this person! Damn it! I knew it! I knew it!"
He shouted hysterically as he stepped back step by step. The safety on the gun in his hand was already on. If he applied a little more force to the trigger with his index finger, the loaded active ammunition would whiz out of the muzzle and penetrate Ronnie's body.
Soap really wanted his companion to calm down first, but the problem was that even he himself could not calm down at this time - the flesh and blood on Ronnie's face began to fall off in large chunks after being touched by her own hand, and the white bones were exposed in some places, but she seemed to feel no pain, standing there stupidly , not saying a word.
"You...you don't feel any pain?" Soap asked tentatively.
Ronnie, with dull eyes, shook her head slightly.
As a medical student, Ronnie knew very well that not being able to feel pain was far worse than being able to, because it meant that the nerves in her face were completely necrotic...the rotten tissue did not look like it had been peeled off from a living person, but more like it came from a corpse.
"Ronnie, stay calm! Don't move. There will be a way, there will definitely be a way." The captain of the Spear Squad did not point his gun at his medic. Neither the survivor nor Ronnie seemed to show any aggressiveness, and their minds remained clear. This was a blessing in disguise.
If one had to use one word to describe the team leader's current state, "overwhelmed" would definitely be the most appropriate - he hasn't had time to ask the awakened survivors about what happened on the Ark, and on the other hand, his subordinates have encountered a sudden situation, and it is the kind of "emergency situation" that cannot be delayed at all, which makes it a bit difficult for the team leader to make a decision for a while.
After hesitating for several seconds, he gritted his teeth and said, "Ronnie, if you can still hold on, hold on for a while. I'll deal with the survivor, and then..."
"Hold on..." Ronnie slowly turned her head and faced the captain with her severely decayed face, with more than half of the facial bones exposed, and said word by word, "I... I don't know... I... can't..."
She soon became unable to speak because even her tongue had rotted away, leaving a fist-sized hole in her throat. The rotten tongue rolled into a blurry mass of flesh and rolled out of the hole and fell to the ground.
"Everyone! Stay away from the survivors and Ronnie! Also, don't have any contact with each other!" the team leader ordered loudly. Although the "Joker" repeatedly emphasized that this symptom was not transmitted through contact, Ronnie became like this after having direct contact with the survivor, which made the Joker's words seem unconvincing.
"Clown, you should also quickly step back!" The captain said to the clown, "Check your body to see if you have similar symptoms."
"I'm fine." The Joker said calmly, "I must emphasize again that it is not the contact with the survivors that caused these symptoms, but the whispers that Ronnie just mentioned that she heard."
"I don't care about contact or whispering. Before I figure out the cause of the problem, I must stop any behavior that may cause the symptom to spread!" The team leader said sternly, "That survivor, if you can hear me, tell me what happened on the Ark! Also, what is this mutation symptom?"
“Ark… Ark…” The survivor lay on his back, his body twitching. He seemed to want to look up at the night sky, but his face was covered by growths and he could not see anything with his eyes. “The Ark is finished… No one can survive… Don’t come back… Tell the people outside… Don’t come back… Everyone will die… No, it’s worse than death…”
"I know something happened on the Ark, but you have to tell me what happened so that I can pass the information back to the various bases and let the base supervisors make a judgment. Do you understand?" The team leader said loudly, "Tell me, what is the current situation on the Ark? Are there any survivors? Which areas have the enemy occupied?"
"Survivors... cough... cough cough... there are... but soon... there won't be any... cough cough..." The survivor squeezed out his words almost one by one, "As for the enemy... the enemy..."
The word was stuck in his throat and he couldn't say it no matter what. Ignoring the warning looks from the captain and Soap, the "clown" walked closer to take a look and said, "His throat and mouth have been blocked by the growths. He can't speak."
"Then... can you help him clean up those augmented creatures?" asked the team leader. Although this was completely contrary to his previous order, at this time, only the clown could accomplish this task.
What's more, the Joker didn't seem to be "infected" like Ronnie - he had much more direct contact with the survivors than Ronnie.
"Of course you can, but the growths grow much faster than they can be removed, and I just discovered that removing the growths will stimulate them and speed up their growth... just like the hair on a person's body, the more you shave it, the faster it grows and the coarser it becomes... It takes a lot of nutrients and energy to grow these growths, and if it speeds up, he will be drained to death."
"Then he can't survive now!" The captain said anxiously. At this time, he didn't care whether his words were unpleasant or not. "Even if he dies, at least let him finish his words first! Do you know how important that information is? It may be related to the life and death of tens of millions of people!"
"It's too late." The clown shook his head. "The growths have not only invaded the body surface and throat, but also occupied the brain... Even if I can instantly remove all the growths from his body and stop them from growing, he is already a vegetable. From a 'human' perspective, he is already dead, but his body organs are still active for the time being."
“Damn it!” The leader of the Spear Squad stomped his foot on the ground angrily, looked at the survivor whose body was still twitching but whose entire body was gradually losing its human form, then turned his head to look at Ronnie who was kneeling on the ground, at a loss, and asked, “Is he… really hopeless?”
"If there is hope, I will," the clown replied.
"Okay...Okay, then Ronnie, do you have any ideas?" The captain of the Spear Squad had a look of pity in his eyes, and he quickly walked to the side of the Joker and said to the two of them, "I don't need you to save her... You... You just need to treat her as a test subject. If you can find a way to make her recover or stop the infection, that would be great. If not, it doesn't matter if you dissect her... At least, we have to figure out what's going on."
The clown turned his head to look at him, without saying anything, walked in front of Ronnie, squatted down, and looked straight into her eyes.
To be precise, it is one-eyed - one of Ronnie's two eyeballs has rotted and fallen out of the eye socket, and the other eyeball has become like a cloudy glass ball, barely embedded in the eye socket, and it is unknown whether it still has visual function.
But what frightened Ronnie the most was that no matter what happened to her body, she didn't feel anything - she tried to reach out and pick off the rotten flesh stuck to her bones, but she didn't feel any pain at all...it was as if this was not her own body.
She suddenly recalled the time when she was admitted to the medical school. At that time, human anatomy was a required course for every freshman. However, not long after the first semester started, the power supply system of the medical school had a serious failure, and the entire school was without power for 15 days. To make matters worse, the backup power supply of the cold storage was sent to the logistics department for routine maintenance...
Most of the cadavers were soaked in formalin solution, so they would not rot easily even if they were not frozen. However, in order to allow students to dissect bodies that were closest to the state of a living person, some newly arrived cadavers were not treated with preservatives and relied entirely on freezing for preservation. Not long after the power outage, these bodies began to rot.
When this group of students, led by the professor, walked into the cold storage where the cadavers were stored, the strong stench of corpses made several girls bend over and vomit on the spot.
Ronnie was a brave girl. Not only did she not vomit, she even took the initiative to help the professors and faculty move the coffins containing the cadaver teachers... While one of the coffins was being moved, there was a loud explosion-like noise. Fortunately, the lid was locked, so the students and faculty who were moving the coffins were not affected.
Based on the knowledge from the books, Ronnie knew that it should be a phenomenon called "giantism" (please do not search it, the pictures may cause strong discomfort). When other students avoided it, she came forward and watched the faculty and staff open the coffin where the "explosion" occurred.
It was hard to describe the contents of the coffin cabinet, but for some reason, Ronnie did not feel scared. Instead, she put on rubber gloves for dissection and reached out to touch it as if possessed.
The feeling was exactly the same as when she touched her face with her hands now.
"You, can you hear me?" The clown stretched out a finger and waved it in front of Ronnie. Ronnie's eyeballs did not move with the finger. As for the focus of vision - the entire eyeball had become extremely turbid, even the pupil and the white of the eye could not be distinguished, so how could one see the focus of the eye?
Just when everyone thought that Ronnie was completely hopeless, she suddenly nodded slowly.
"Very good, the auditory system is still functioning normally... but this may be one of the reasons why you have become like this." The clown whispered, "Can you still hear the whispers now? Are those voices always lingering in your head, as if they were deeply engraved in your brain?"
After waiting for several seconds, Ronnie nodded again.
"Forget them," said the Joker.
This time, Ronnie shook her head.
"Can't forget?" The clown seemed to sigh, and it seemed that everyone just heard it wrong... He stood up, pulled out his pistol, and put the muzzle of the gun against Ronnie's crown.
"Is there no hope?" asked the captain of the Spear Squad.
"The erosion is too deep, any effort is meaningless." The Joker replied.
"What degree of erosion? Do you mean... infection?" The team leader was puzzled. "Then can you figure out how this disease is transmitted? Even if we can't save him, we have to have an idea... Otherwise, we won't even know how we were infected."
"I told you, this kind of thing is very close to 'meme'." The Joker pointed at his head with the hand that was not holding the gun, "Cognition is pollution."
"puff!"
The sound of the pistol with a silencer was very dull. Ronnie's body tilted to one side and fell to the ground. A mixture of brain matter and blood slowly flowed out from the bullet hole on the top of her head. If you use a light to shine on these things at this time, you will find that her brain matter is actually a strange gray-black color, mixed with a large amount of floc-like fibers.
"Captain...should we continue?" a soldier from the Spear Squad couldn't help but ask.
"The mission is not yet complete, so we must continue." The team leader said without hesitation, "Besides, the survivor also said that there are still people alive on the Ark."
