Alien Relic Hunter

"Are you telling the truth?!" The hound had a look of disbelief on his face. It took him more than ten breaths to digest the news...

He took a step back and looked Ke Lan up and down: "Are you sure they didn't lie to you? Then why have we been with you for so long without any impact...?"

"Perhaps there was a secondary mutation after the fusion of my cloned cells and the cells of the Seed of Erosion." Ke Lan raised his hand and looked at his palm - there was a light white mark there, which he had previously interacted with the group of heretical sects. When the members were fighting, his palm was accidentally cut by the rough metal zipper on the opponent's collar. But now, the scar is no longer visible at all. It only takes a few days for the pigment to settle in the new light-colored cortex, and the white mark will become exactly the same as the surrounding skin.

"To be honest... I'm not sure whether I'm still a human being in a biological sense."

"Why don't you count it?" The hound glared at him and shouted, "Do you have a few more arms or an extra eye than us? Why are you not a human being? Don't forget how you enlightened Ivan before. Yes, how come it’s your turn and you start thinking wildly?”

"I'm not thinking wildly, but this matter really happened because of me. If I don't deal with it, if the 'thing' inside mutates three or even four times, I'm afraid the entire Ark will suffer," Ke Lan said.

"Are you sure you won't be infected by that thing?" the hound asked.

Ke Lan nodded.

"But how can you guarantee that...the group of people outside are not taking advantage of you?" Hound suddenly changed the topic, "Don't look at them and they haven't mentioned a word about the abnormality in you. That's because you are the only one who can solve this problem now. They need your help, so they are pretending like this... After you get rid of the 'thing' inside, I'm afraid this group of people won't be so easy to talk to."

"I don't think so..." Ke Lan shook his head. The abnormality in his body had already appeared during Yagunaktor, but the Undead Crew did not go into details. Instead, they issued a ban on him. An order to conduct an investigation—and this "memetic contamination incident" was caused precisely because people at the institute violated the prohibition and secretly conducted experiments related to themselves.

Ke Lan felt that the Immortal Crew Association might have foreseen such a result, so they issued such a ban... Unfortunately, they still underestimated the persistence of the lunatics in the institute.

"Curiosity killed the cat"... never refers to the cat's own curiosity, but to the fact that humans kill cats out of their own curiosity and want to know "do cats really have nine lives"? Throw it away... And now, Ke Lan feels like he is the unlucky cat.

If it weren't for the suppression of the Immortal Crew Association, the madmen at the institute would have used all available armed forces to go to Fleet Zero to arrest people.

"You don't think so?" Hound repeated in a rhetorical tone, "I know the faces of those people at the top of Ark better than you. As long as there are enough benefits, any promise is no different to them. It's just a common occurrence. What's more, they didn't make any promises to you, they just vaguely expressed an attitude. Even if this attitude changes 180 degrees by then, there will be nothing you can do. Reason!"

Seeing that Ke Lan didn't seem to listen to his words, the hound suddenly became angry: "Ke Lan! You should have seen the blockade outside now! You are not stupid. You should be very clear about what's inside. , you can’t stop it with guns and mechas, so who do you think these things are prepared for?”

"..."

"The cunning rabbit is dead, the lackey is cooked, the flying bird is gone, and the good bow is hidden! This is the proverb of you Chinese people, haven't you heard it? What's more, for them, whether it is value or threat, you must be in it Do you know what's on top of that 'thing'?! Now if you want to go in, they will make way for you, but when you want to come out, do you think it will be so easy?"

"I...I really fucking hate the fact that iron cannot become steel!" The hound said and smashed it on the door of the toilet cubicle nearby. Suddenly, a hole the size of a bowl appeared on the aging and brittle polymer door panel. .

"That's not how the idiom "hating iron cannot turn into steel" is used..." Ke Lan started to speak, but was interrupted by the hound.

There was a "click" and there was another hole in the door of the toilet cubicle.

A crack more than half a meter long connected the two holes, and the entire door panel was already crumbling.

"I can use it however I want and you have no control over it! The problem now is that the group of people calling themselves the Crisis Management Department have already arranged the bags. Don't you know who this bag is intended to be used for? Are you going to get in there obediently?" the hound jumped to his feet.

"Actually, if they wanted to arrest me, they would have arrested me long ago." Ke Lan sighed, "They know more than we imagined."

"Them? Who are they?" The expression on Hound's face froze - he had already heard the implication in Ke Lan's words: The "them" did not refer to the people from the "Crisis Management Department" outside, nor the researchers. The Academy and the Security Bureau, not even any class or organization he knew.

"An organization called the 'Undead Crew'." Ke Lan sighed, and finally said the name. "They are the people in power hiding in the dark. The so-called highest decision-making organization, the 'United Parliamentary Group', is actually nothing more than It’s just a puppet they pushed out into the open.”

"The United Parliamentary Group...are just puppets?" Hound's movements froze. He always felt as if there was a thick lump of phlegm stuck in his throat. He couldn't spit it out or swallow it. It was so uncomfortable that it made people want to go crazy.

"This... undead crew... who are they?" Hound took a deep breath, "Why do they hide in the dark?"

"They..." Ke Lan recalled "Pope" Chiron's body like a mountain of meat, and couldn't help but paused, "Maybe they are not human."

"Not a human?" Hound was stunned for a moment, obviously not expecting Ke Lan to give such an answer.

"It's not a human... what could it be? Computer AI? It can't be Alpha, right?" A somewhat absurd smile appeared on the corner of the hound's mouth, "This joke is not funny at all. Don't tell us that the ruler of mankind is actually They are a group of Alpha people, haha, then I will just feel that I am not awake yet, and now I am dreaming, a dream that is extremely ridiculous."

"One thing that is certain is that they were once humans. As for what they are now...I can't tell clearly. They are probably 'things' similar to me." Ke Lan said.

The hound stopped laughing, looked at him steadily, and asked: "A...'thing' like you? I probably understand..."

"This is just my guess. In fact, I have never seen the true face of the Undead Crew. Among the people I have come into contact with, all those who know their existence have never seen their true form with their own eyes. Including Schroeder and Lin Qiming ...and that Maginot who was transferred to Mukach."

"Magino also knows about this undead crew member?" Hound asked.

"He knew the crew existed, but not much."

The hound suddenly let out a long sigh, shook his head to himself and said: "Damn... So that's what happened... No wonder Maginot took the initiative to contact you at that time. It turns out that this damn fat pig knew it from the beginning. … Damn it, if I hadn’t left the military, I should have access to this information by now…”

"Old dog?" Ke Lan shouted worriedly.

"I'm fine, I just need a little time." Hound waved his hand towards Ke Lan. He didn't care whether the floor in the toilet was dirty or not. He squatted down and gently kneaded the hanging hair on both sides of his forehead with both hands. Skull point.

"Actually, I've always known that you were hiding something from us, but I knew there must be a reason why you didn't tell us... Now I see, this is it."

"I originally didn't plan to tell you about the existence of the Immortal Crew... They have too much energy. I can't guarantee whether they will take any extreme measures to keep their privacy. In their eyes, , the life of ordinary people is just a number, a number that can be used as a bargaining chip on the scale." Ke Lan said while standing.

"I know." Hound nodded, "You did the right thing... Now I already know about it, oh, and Asano Akira outside, he can definitely hear it... As for other people, don't tell them ”

He stood up from the ground, and for a moment, Ke Lan felt as if he had aged more than ten years.

"I just never thought that the fate of mankind... would be decided by such a group of people." Hound said slowly, "So, you should also join them in the future, right?"

"They have already sent me an invitation. As long as I can pass the test, I can become a member of the Undead Crew Association." Ke Lan said, "The mission in the molten mine area is the assessment content of the first phase of this test."

"Ke Lan, can you promise me something?" Hound suddenly said. ,

"What's up?"

"Even if you do become one of them in the future, don't forget that you are a human being, not a monster."

The hound paused and continued: "The power of life and death can easily make people addicted... I don't know what you will become by then, and I also know the principle of 'kindness does not control soldiers'... but in this situation After you become a chess player, don't forget the days when you were a 'chess piece'."

The hound rubbed the muscles on his face vigorously and adjusted his mood: "It may be too early to tell you this now... In fact, I have nothing to express, compared to the group of people in the United Parliamentary Group who are just waiting to die. I'd rather have someone more capable lead us...but you...you have to be careful, those things, even if they treat you as the same kind, but the same kind and the companion have different meanings..."

His words were a little incoherent, but Ke Lan still understood most of the meaning.

"I know." Ke Lan nodded.

"We shouldn't be a burden to you, right?" Hound asked with a smile.

"It doesn't count."

"That's fine. You can go in with confidence. If these little bastards from the institute dare to have any bad ideas when you come out, I will be the first to kill them."

"Okay, but it seems that their old nest has been taken away..."

"Fuck, you just have a fucking mouth, right? If you can't speak, don't speak." In just a few seconds, the hound returned to its usual state, as if the conversation just now had never happened. Same.

"...Then I won't say anything."

"By the way, that person from the crew meeting, even if they have sent you an invitation, they may not be sincere, but you need to distinguish the specific situation yourself. We can't help you in this regard... leave one more My eyes are always right, and I never mind trying to speculate on others with the greatest malice...especially people like them who are in high positions and have an overview of the whole situation. They can see a lot of things that we can't see, just like me before As they say, they are chess players, and we are chess pieces - the chess players can see the entire chess movement, but we can only see a few squares around us. Maybe in the next step, we will be treated as abandoned pieces. Give it away."

…

…

Between the third line of defense and the institute's headquarters, which is classified as a "contaminated area," there is a "blank area" with a width of 300 meters.

In order to prevent individuals infected by the "meme" from using buildings as cover to penetrate the defense line, the buildings in this circle were wiped out by some kind of amazingly powerful weapon. Standing on the edge of the blank area, Ke Lan could only You can see the exposed foundation and metal materials that flowed like magma after being melted, and then solidified again.

At the end of the blank area is the super energy shield like an inverted giant bowl.

There are no personnel stationed on the third line of defense, and the entire line of defense adopts a fully automatic control system-as long as anything moving attempts to pass through the empty area, those densely packed turrets will immediately lock it until it is It was so blasted that not even a scrap was left.

At the same time, in order to prevent the spread of information with "memes", all communication lines in the entire West Second District were cut off, and only the internal wired network of the Crisis Management Section could be used. The power armor worn by Ke Lan and Asano Akira is equipped with two sets of communication devices - the wired communication device is connected to the command post at the end of the defense line through a six-kilometer cable. If the cable is cut, they Laser communication can also be used...of course, provided there are no obstructions in the path of the laser emission.

"The automatic firepower of the third defense line will be turned off in fifteen seconds. You have a five-minute window to cross the empty space in front. Are you ready?" Schroeder's voice came from the earphones.

"Let me confirm for the last time, do I have the authority to fire at will? I will not be responsible if any priceless bottles and cans are broken by then." Ke Lan said.

"...Experts from the institute said they hope to minimize the damage." Schroeder said, "After all, those are precious scientific research materials..."

"Try my best, I can only say that I try my best."