Volume 2: The Undersea City Chapter 44: Natasha's Request for Help
“…”
Ke Lan was silent for two full minutes. During this time, he stood up and walked around the bed, flipping through a few drawings on the workbench. Then he took out a pen from the cabinet, paused for two seconds, put the pen back, and sat back on the edge of the bed.
"I can sense that you seem anxious."
"...How can I not be anxious?" Ke Lan scratched his hair vigorously. "By the way...did you make a statement when you returned to the Ark? What did it say?"
“I did, but I didn’t tell you.”
"That's right... After all, this matter involves your confidential experiment..." Ke Lan rubbed his cheeks, trying to calm himself down.
At this moment, the PAD in Ke Lan's pocket suddenly vibrated.
(Additional explanation: The connection is disconnected from the Internet of Things and WIFI of the residence. The PAD uses a GPRS network similar to that of a mobile phone to send and receive information.)
He opened it and saw that it was an email from Hound with an attachment.
"This is confidential information leaked from the research institute. Shred the file immediately after reading it. Don't leave any traces."
The attachment contains a video file. The video is very short, only about a minute long.
"This is a message Lao Gou sent me, and it contains a video." Ke Lan talked to Asano Akira and clicked the play button.
The video quality is very poor, the light is dim, and the camera is shaking, but you can still vaguely see the nearby ship's side and the sea in the distance.
This is a video shot on a boat. It was probably shot just after nightfall, and there was still a hint of dark orange afterglow at the end of the sea level.
There are only two oceans on Alpha. The Polar Ocean at the South Pole is frozen all year round, and it should be in the polar day period now. If this video was shot recently, it can only be above the Central Ocean.
This made Ke Lan think of the boatman he had just met in the bar...
A group of people wearing cold-resistant protective clothing were running around on the deck. They looked nervous. Besides the deafening waves, there was also someone shouting loudly in the background. Unfortunately, there was too much noise, and Ke Lan could only barely hear a few words like "salvage" and "save people".
Waves tens of meters high mixed with broken ice hit the hull, and when they fell, it was like a rainstorm with hail. People fell to the ground from time to time. The worst guy even slid out for more than ten meters until he hit a steel frame and stopped.
A dozen sailors pulled a steel cable and hauled up a completely deformed spherical diving chamber.
Armed men with guns surrounded the diving cabin. A soldier wearing light power armor stepped forward and used an acetylene torch to cut open the stuck door.
"No signs of life! I repeat, no signs of life detected in the diving chamber!"
Ke Lan finally heard this sentence clearly. The person filming the video walked closer at this time, and saw the soldier wearing power armor put down the tools in his hands and dragged a corpse out.
It was a human mummy, but his abdomen was swollen like a pregnant woman who was about to give birth in nine months!
The video ends here abruptly.
Ke Lan took a deep breath , clicked "Play Again", and then dragged the progress bar to the last ten seconds.
Fast forward, fast forward, pause, play at 0.25 times speed , pause.
The picture froze at the moment when the mummy was dragged out of the diving chamber.
"It can't be that thing..."
Ke Lan felt his heart tremble, and he quickly deleted the video, then sent a communication request to the Hound.
In less than a second, the communication was connected. It was obvious that the Hound was waiting for Ke Lan to contact him.
"Has the video been deleted?" the Hound asked as soon as he opened his mouth.
"deleted."
"Did you see anything?"
"Very similar, very similar to that priestess." What Ke Lan was referring to was, of course, the mummy that was dragged out of the diving tank.
"Remember what the security people called that thing? It should be called 'flesh-eating worms', right?"
"Hmm...'flesh-eating worms'." Ke Lan felt his scalp tingling. The first time he came across this word was not from the mouth of the security bureau investigator, but from those fragments of memory of unknown origin in his mind.
“Do you know where the video was filmed?”
"Zhonghai."
"Not only in Zhonghai, but also in the sea area where the underwater city is located. The icebreaker is called 'Pioneer One', which is where Bartholdi works. The video was shot half a month ago, when the remains of the underwater city were just discovered."
"It seems that things are more troublesome than Bartlett described." Ke Lan did not mean to blame Bartlett. After all, he was just a mechanic who stayed in the engine room in the bottom cabin most of the time and had few opportunities to go to the deck. Anyone who saw this scene must have been given a gag order and could not tell Bartlett the truth. It was understandable that Bartlett knew nothing about it.
"The people in the Security Bureau must know the inside story."
“But they certainly wouldn’t tell me.”
"If that guy really has flesh-eating worms in his stomach, the people from the Security Bureau will definitely keep a close eye on you, so you have to be careful. I'm going to hang up first. The risk of being monitored will be high if the communication time is too long." The Hound did not ask much about other things, which made Ke Lan feel relieved.
Hound and Asano Akira are trustworthy, but he still didn't tell them these secrets - not because he didn't want to, but because he couldn't explain it if he told them, and it would implicate them and increase unnecessary risks.
As for what intelligence the Security Bureau and the military have, Ke Lan has no way of guessing now and can only take it one step at a time.
Since there were traces of flesh-eating worms in the underwater city, he should just stay away from that place. There were so many ruins on Alpha anyway, and it would be enough to survive by exploring those low-level ruins that were not too dangerous.
Just as Ke Lan was thinking this, she suddenly received a video call request.
"Did this Lao Gou guy forget to say something? Why did he insist on a video call?" Ke Lan muttered to herself, but when she looked down, she found that the person who sent the request was a stranger - "Natasha".
"Eh... Natasha? Why does this name sound familiar?" Ke Lan always felt as if she had heard this name somewhere before. However, the name Natasha was used too frequently among female Slavs. There were several female stars named Natasha under Ursus Films alone...
"Ivan's girlfriend seems to be called Natasha. He told us that she is the three-time champion of the women's free-fighting competition." Asano Akira, who was sitting at the table, said.
"Oh, that's right! But what does Ivan's girlfriend want me to do ?" With this question in mind, Ke Lan clicked the "Agree Button".
This is an extremely beautiful Slavic girl with three-dimensional facial features like a sculpture and long wavy light golden hair. She wears a silver necklace on her slender neck, and below her is a bottomless canyon...
However, Ke Lan had no way to appreciate the beautiful scenery of the canyon at this time. The girl's face showed obvious anxiety and fear, her eyes were red, and there were traces of tears in the corners of her eyes.
"Are you... Natasha?" Ke Lan hesitated for a moment and greeted her in Chinese.
Ke Lan doesn't speak Russian, but as the most widely used language on the Ark, Chinese has become the official default common language.
"Yes, yes...you...you are Ke Lan, right?" The girl spoke Chinese a little haltingly, but at least it didn't affect communication.
"Yes, I am." Ke Lan nodded.
"I am... Ivan... Ivan's girlfriend... Please... help us!" the girl said with a hint of tears in her voice.
"What happened to Ivan?"
"He... he seems to be infected with something... but... but he won't let me go to another doctor, and won't let me touch him... he... he asked me to come to you... if you can help us... please..."
The girl moved the camera while crying, and saw Ivan, who had just parted, now lying on an operating chair, dying. His exposed skin turned red, just like a cooked crab. His chest was rising and falling violently, and every rise and fall was accompanied by slight twitching of his limbs. It was obvious that breathing had become an extremely strenuous task for him.
"Don't panic, stay calm, and be careful not to touch Ivan's body. Then, let me see the wound on his arm." Ke Lan said. Ivan's injured arm was covered with a blood-stained surgical towel, but from the shape protruding from the cloth, it was obviously not a human arm.
"Okay... okay..." Natasha walked over tremblingly and picked up the surgical towel with a pair of long metal tweezers.
"Ah..." Ke Lan couldn't help but let out a soft cry.
Ivan's entire arm had been completely alienated. Several fleshy tentacles as thick as a fist were entangled together like twisted vines. The original bones and muscle tissues were no longer visible. They were wriggling like snakes, and transparent and sticky secretions were constantly dripping onto the ground.
"I'll be here right away - remember, don't run into him!" Ke Lan said quickly, then opened the communication window that had just been closed and sent a text message to the hound.
"Ivan is in trouble!"
