Alien Relic Hunter

"..."

Ke Lan was silent for a full two minutes. During this period, he stood up and walked around the bed, flipping through several drawings on the workbench. Then he took out a pen from the cabinet and was stunned for two seconds. , put the pen back again, and sat back on the edge of the bed.

"I can feel that you seem anxious."

"...Can I not be anxious?" Ke Lan scratched his hair hard, "By the way...Did you take notes when you returned to Ark? What was written in the notes?"

"I did it, but I didn't say it."

"That's right... after all, this matter involves some kind of confidential experiment of yours..." Ke Lan rubbed his cheeks and tried to calm down.

At this moment, the PAD in Ke Lan's pocket suddenly vibrated.

(Additional explanation: What is disconnected is the Internet of Things and WIFI in the residence, and the PAD uses a GPRS network similar to 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. After reading it, shred the document immediately and don't leave any traces."

Attached is a video file. The video is very short, only about a minute long.

"There is a video in the message sent by Lao Gou." Ke Lan and Asano Akira talked for a while and then clicked the play button.

The video quality is very poor, the light is dim, and the camera keeps shaking, but you can still vaguely see the side of the ship nearby and the sea in the distance.

This is a video taken on a boat. It was probably just after nightfall, and there is still a dark orange afterglow at the end of the sea level.

There are only two oceans on Alpha. The polar sea located at the South Pole is frozen all year round, and it should be in the polar day period now. If this video was taken recently, it can only be above the middle sea.

This made Ke Lan think of the boatman he just met in the small bar...

A group of people wearing cold-resistant protective clothing were running around on the deck. They looked nervous. In addition to the deafening waves, there were people shouting something in the background. Unfortunately, there was too much noise, and Ke Lan could only barely hear it. "Salvage", "rescue" and other words.

Waves tens of meters high mixed with broken ice slapped against the hull of the ship. When they fell, they were like hailstorms. From time to time, people fell to the ground. The worst guy even slipped out for more than ten meters until he hit the ship. It stopped on a steel frame.

A dozen sailors pulled a steel cable and dragged up a completely deformed spherical diving cabin.

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 hatch.

"No signs of life! I repeat, no signs of life were detected in the diving chamber!"

Ke Lan finally heard this sentence clearly. The person who shot the video came closer at this time, and saw the soldiers in power armor put down the tools in their hands and dragged a corpse out of it.

It was a human mummy, but his abdomen was as swollen as a pregnant woman who was about to give birth at nine months of pregnancy!

The video ends abruptly here.

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 0.25x speed, pause.

The scene was frozen 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, quickly deleted the video, and then sent a communication request to the hound.

In less than a second, the communication was connected, and the hound was obviously waiting for Ke Lan to contact him.

"Has the video been deleted?" Hound asked as soon as he opened his mouth.

"deleted."

"Did you see anything?"

"It's very similar to the priestess." Ke Lan was naturally referring to the mummy pulled out of the diving cabin.

"Remember what the people from the Security Bureau called that thing... It should be called 'flesh-eating worm', right?"

"Hmm...'flesh-eating worms'." Ke Lan felt his scalp numb. The first time he came across this word was not from the mouth of the Security Bureau investigator, but from those in his mind. Memory fragments of unknown origin.

"Do you know where the video was taken?"

"Zhonghai."

"Not only in the middle sea, but also in the sea area where the undersea city is located. This icebreaker is called 'Pioneer 1', which is where Bartholdi works. The video was shot half a month ago, and the seabed was just discovered. When the city remains."

"It seems that things are more troublesome than what Bartelty described." Ke Lan didn't blame Bartelty. After all, he was just a mechanic and spent most of his time in the engine room in the bottom cabin. He didn't have many people on the deck. Opportunity, everyone who saw this scene must have been given a silence order, and it was impossible to tell Bartelty the truth. It is understandable that Bartelty knew nothing about it.

"People from the Security Bureau must know the inside story."

"But they certainly won't tell me."

"If there are really flesh-eating worms in that guy's belly, people from the Security Bureau will definitely keep an eye on you. You have to be more careful. I'll hang up here first. If the communication time is too long, the risk of being monitored is high." As for other things, the hound didn't ask much, which made Ke Lan breathe a sigh of relief.

Hound and Akira Asano were trustworthy, but he still didn't tell them these secrets - not because he didn't want to tell them, but because he couldn't explain them if he told them. On the contrary, it would involve them and increase unnecessary risks.

As for what information 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 are traces of flesh-eating worms in the Undersea City, he just needs to stay far away from that place. Anyway, there are so many ruins on Alpha Planet, and just exploring those low-level ruins that are not too dangerous is enough to sustain his life. .

Just when Ke Lan was thinking this, he suddenly received a request for a video call.

"Is there something else that this guy forgot to say? Do you still want a video?" Ke Lan muttered in his heart, but when he looked down, he found that the person who sent the request was a stranger - "Natasha".

"Eh... Natasha? Why does this name sound familiar?" Ke Lan always felt that he had heard this name somewhere, but the name Natasha was used too frequently among female Slavs. There are several female stars named Natasha in Ursus Pictures alone...

"Ivan's girlfriend seems to be named Natasha. He told us that she won three consecutive championships in the women's free fighting competition." Asano Akira, who was sitting at the table, said.

"Yes! But what does Ivan's girlfriend want from me?" With this question in mind, Ke Lan clicked the "agree" button.

This is an extremely beautiful Slavic girl. She has sculptural three-dimensional facial features and long wavy light golden hair. She wears a silver necklace on her long neck, and below is a bottomless canyon... …

It's just that Ke Lan couldn't appreciate the beautiful scenery of the canyon at this time. The girl's face showed obvious anxiety and panic, her eyes were red, and there were tears in the corners of her eyes.

"Are you... Natasha?" Ke Lan hesitated and said hello in Chinese.

Ke Lan does not speak Russian, but as the language with the largest number of speakers on the Ark, Chinese has become the official default universal language.

"Yes, yes...you...you are Ke Lan, right?" The girl's Chinese was a little shaky, 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 crying.

"What happened to Ivan?"

"He...he seemed to be infected by something...but...but he wouldn't let me go to another doctor or touch him...he...he asked me to come to you...if you can help us If so... please must..."

The girl moved the camera while crying, and saw Ivan, who had just parted recently, lying dying on an operating chair. His exposed skin turned red, like a cooked crab. , his chest rose and fell greatly, and each rise and fall was accompanied by slight twitching of his limbs. It was obvious that breathing had become an extremely difficult task for him.

"Don't panic, be sure to stay calm, be careful not to touch Ivan's body, and then show me the wound on his arm." Ke Lan said, Ivan's injured arm was covered with a blood-stained surgical towel It was covered, but judging from the shape protruding from the cloth, it clearly didn't look like 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 exclaimed softly.

Ivan's entire arm has been completely alienated. Several fleshy tentacles as thick as a handful are intertwined like tangled vines. The original bones and muscle tissue are no longer visible at all. They squirm like snakes, transparent and sticky. Thick secretion kept dripping to the ground.

"I'll rush over right away - remember, never touch him!" Ke Lan said quickly, then opened the communication window that had just been closed and sent a text message to the hound.

"Something happened to Ivan!"