Alien Relic Hunter

Although Liu Yi said that it was absolutely impossible for the corpse to escape from the closed ward, within two seconds after Hruni finished speaking, there was a sound of breaking glass, followed by a deafening gunshot. Voice……

The recording ends.

The contents of the next few recordings are similar. Every once in a while, someone's erosion level will suddenly limit and turn into decayed remains, and then they will be "processed" by Hruni and others.

There are also people who choose to kill themselves before turning into monsters... For example, Dr. Liu Yi, when her physical condition began to deteriorate rapidly, she did not hesitate to put the pistol into her mouth and press the muzzle against the roof of her mouth. He pulled the trigger directly.

Her last words before committing suicide were, "This mutation is not a disease. Medicine can't do anything about it. I can't even alleviate the pain of the 'patient'. All the data collected are meaningless..."

Then there was a dull gunshot, and the sound of bullets penetrating flesh and brain, tearing open the skull.

Although there was no image in front of Ke Lan, he could still imagine the scene... Dots of red and white objects splashed to the ceiling, and the body that had mutated into a human shape due to erosion collapsed, still warm. The blood quickly spread along the floor...

…

Apart from Hruni, the last person to become a corpse was Lao Zuo. When he was about to break through the critical point of erosion, he used his only trace of reason to ask Hruni to help him free himself...

After helping Lao Zuo fulfill his "wish", Hruni's physical condition was no longer optimistic. According to his own description, there were pathological mutations in many places in his body. He could feel his physical and strength ratio. There was a lot more in the past, but I often became confused...

He often has nightmares, and the contents of his dreams are all about the vast starry sky.

Logically speaking, the starry sky should feel beautiful, mysterious, and shocking... No matter what language or rhetoric people use to describe it, it should not be scary. But in Hruni's autobiography, the feeling that the starry sky brought to him was one of real terror.

As time went by, Hruni's conscious time became less and less, and he often fell into coma without warning... Moreover, he also developed very serious symptoms of sleepwalking. He looked at himself wandering wantonly in the monitoring room, always feeling confused. It felt like it was not a person, but something like a walking corpse.

While half asleep and half awake, Hruni often heard a voice whispering to him... At first, he couldn't understand what those strange syllables meant. But as the degree of mutation in his body continued to deepen, he gradually Became able to understand those languages.

At this time, he was surprised to find that the voice that had been whispering to him in his ears and in his mind spoke the language of the Alpha civilization.

What surprised him even more was that without even realizing it, he had mastered the language that the institute had spent decades failing to decipher even one letter or one syllable.

However, what makes Ke Lan a little depressed is that in the recording, Hruni did not mention a word about the content of these whispers.

Of course, it is also possible that he mentioned it, but later deleted this part of the recording... These whispers narrated in Alpha language also belong to the category of "forbidden knowledge", even if they are just narrated in the recording, they will Increase the listener's degree of erosion.

"I feel that the starry sky seems to be calling me..." Hrunny muttered to himself in the recording. At this time, his tone had changed a lot from before. Ke Lan estimated that it was Hrunny. His vocal cords and other organs were affected by the physical mutation, which meant that the day when Hruni was transformed into a corpse was not far away.

Sure enough, in the next recording file, after the first few minutes of silence, there was a strange-sounding sigh: "I think... I don't have much time. Before I completely turn into that kind of monster, I It is impossible to return to the Ark, to the world of human civilization... Ha... But even if I go back, I will be silenced by the people above..."

He paused and continued: "Perhaps I should be like Dr. Liu and give myself a break before I completely lose my consciousness as a human being... But I am not willing to do so.

"I think I should leave something behind... In case someone can find the wreckage of this battleship in the future, I should tell the latecomers the truth of the matter to prevent them from repeating our mistakes..."

Immediately afterwards, there was a ten-second-long electric current noise. Before Ke Lan could ask, the military AI had already answered first: "The data of this recording is not damaged. All of this was edited by Hruni Yang himself." Dropped."

"No, I can't do that. If I tell these things to those who come after me, they will become just like us even if they don't do anything... This thing is a virus, a virus that can be transmitted through cognition. Only by closing your eyes, plugging your ears, and remaining silent... can you have a slight chance of surviving.

"I don't know if forgetting those things can alleviate this symptom, but I can't forget them at all... As soon as I close my eyes, those things will come back like a nightmare. They will haunt me all the time... If ...It would be nice if there was a memory-erasing device invented by the institute on this ship...

"Perhaps, Lao Zuo and the others are right... These things cannot be made public... Human beings are simply not qualified to fight against them...

“How can we do it if they fail?

"My waking hours are getting shorter and shorter every day. I see myself in the video like a ghost, wandering around the battleship to my destination... I don't know what I want to do, and I don't know that either. What exactly does the voice want me to do...

"The whisper in my mind is getting louder and louder... This voice seems to come from the starry sky. It seems... as if it wants me to merge with the starry sky... This... how is this possible?

"I can't resist that force. I can only use external objects... I used the few waking hours to strengthen the confinement room of the battleship. I will lock myself in this room until I meet my end."

This recording ends here. The AI ​​of the "Shaojiang Kai" frigate told Ke Lan that since then, Hruni has been locking himself in a solitary room. The walls and doors of this confinement room were reinforced with armor plates from abandoned mechas. After locking himself in, Hruni used the thermite he brought with him to weld the hatch shut, completely transforming the confinement room. It has become a cage that cannot be opened.

Hruni used chains and restraints to secure himself to the floor... He did not prepare any food or drinking water. In his words, his severely mutated body could no longer sense hunger and thirst, and in his heart He has already made up his mind to die and has no intention of lingering any longer.

"I don't know how long I can live... To be precise, I don't know how much conscious time I have left." Hruni said at the beginning of the next recording, "According to the records of the central control computer, I am now one day Within two hours, I stayed awake for less than two hours. The rest of the time, I was mumbling to myself or trying to break free...

“The physical pain seemed to have gone away from me, I no longer had that weird discomfort, but instead my whole body was full of strength... I knew I was about to become that monster, just like everyone else.

"I feel like I no longer resist the changes in my body. The deeper the changes, the weaker the pain, and it will also produce a strange pleasure, which makes people indulge in it involuntarily and let it be at their mercy... I have remembered I don’t know how long I’ve been locked in here. I’ve broken the chains and restraints. Fortunately, this room is strong enough…

"I feel very strange, not only in appearance, but also in my thinking pattern. It seems that I have also undergone a fundamental change... I am no longer afraid of the starry sky, but instead have an urge to become one with it." .

"If anyone hears this recording...whether you are from the Ark or an exile in the wilderness, leave this place immediately, do not stay for any time, do not look through anything in the battleship, and do not search for anything suspicious. Traces... Forget everything you saw and heard... Believe me, I am here to save you."

It was very difficult for Khruni to say this sentence. He almost paused for a moment every time he uttered a word. About five seconds after finishing speaking, a muffled groan and the sound of flesh and blood tearing suddenly came from the recording, and then , the recording ends.

This is the last recording.

"Why is it gone? What happened next? Didn't you continue recording?" Ke Lan asked the AI.

"Other parts of the recording data have been damaged." There was no emotion in the AI's reply, but it was this emotionless attitude that made people feel even more irritated.

At least when the civilian AI says sorry, it will also show a sincere or tactful personalized emotion according to the user's current state, while the response of the military AI is always so intuitive, just like the dialog box that pops up when the program reports an error. .

A mistake is a mistake, nothing is nothing, straightforward and concise.

"Damn it." Ke Lan couldn't help but cursed, "Knife in hand, follow me and kill all the broken dogs in the world..."

"Sorry, no valid keywords were detected from your utterance." the AI ​​said.

This sentence is used by readers in online forums to vent their resentment towards the author of the fragmented dog. Of course, it is impossible for the military AI database to include this useless information. Facing the files on the screen that showed "data damaged, unreadable", Ke Lan could only sigh and turned around.

But the moment he turned around, his body became slightly stiff, and he subconsciously put his hand on the holster at his waist.

Mo Jue, who was standing behind Ke Lan... had a small piece of transparent tentacles like slug tentacles growing out from her forehead. This cluster of tiny tentacles was squirming on its own, but as an eroded individual, Mo Jue herself seemed to be completely unscathed. Unconscious.

"What's wrong? The way you look at me...is so strange..." Mo Jue also noticed the strangeness in Ke Lan's eyes, and reached out to touch his face in confusion.

It was okay not to touch, but a drop of mucus dripping from the tentacles fell on the back of Mo Jue's hand, making her stunned for a moment.

She raised her head and looked upward. The ceiling of the bridge was also made up of external surveillance screens, but now she could only see thick gray fog, and the visibility was basically zero.

"What is this?" Mo Jue originally planned to reach out and wipe the drop of mucus on the back of her hand, but the next second she realized that this operation was very unprofessional, so she retracted her hand and took out a stick from her pocket. test tube.

"Is this liquid dripping from above? But when I look at the screen on the ceiling... it seems very dry." Mo Jue put the drop of mucus into a test tube, thought for a moment, and handed the test tube to Ke Lan.

"This thing should be safe... I don't feel any discomfort on the back of my hand, and I have no signs of poisoning for the time being..." Mo Jue said nonchalantly, "The only thing I feel now is that I'm a little thirsty... But I It seems like I haven’t drank water for a long time, which should be normal.”

Ke Lan did not have a conversation with Mo Jue, nor did he reach out to take the test tube. During this series of processes, he stood still and silently observed the latter.

"You...what's wrong with you?" Mo Jue said with a guilty conscience, "Why have you always been..."

Ke Lan shook his head with complicated eyes: "I'm fine, but you... You can try to reach out and touch the corner of your forehead... Remember, no matter what you touch, you must stay calm. "

Mo Jue's expression suddenly changed. She stood motionless in place for a few seconds, and then she carefully stretched out her right hand and touched her forehead.

When her fingertips touched those wriggling tentacles, she quickly retracted her hand and her face became paler.

"I...what...is that on my head?"

"You can see for yourself." Ke Lan said.

"See for yourself? Oh...oh, right..." Mo Jue rummaged around in his pocket in a panic, and many of the small equipment he carried fell to the ground during the rummaging process. But at this time, Mo Jue had no intention of paying attention to such things. She just wanted to know what happened to her.

Finally, she found a mirror.

She took a deep breath and raised the mirror - even though she was mentally prepared, when she saw the tentacles growing from her forehead, the mirror in her hand fell to the ground.

"I...am I being parasitized by something?"

These wriggling tentacles were like an independent life form, and Mo Jue's first reaction was that they were foreign parasites.

"If it's parasitism, it would be easy to deal with... I'm afraid you have been corroded."