Pendulum City is the seat of the Roxeland Company Central Division. It is more than 200 kilometers away from Asmo and 150 kilometers away from the N11 base. In the turbulent era when there were no roads at all, the ground in most areas was rough and ruins were dotted with ruins, 150 kilometers was already the limit of the combat radius of the old tanks owned by the branch.
Just after dawn, the pendulum city was awakened by the roar of the engine and a simple and powerful password. Five light personnel carriers were lined up in the central square of the city. Heavily armed soldiers boarded the vehicles one after another. Two other powerful off-road jeeps were parked beside them. Looking at these rookies. Beside the machine gun shooters, there stood a veteran each, with RPG rocket launchers in their arms.
Sophia was dressed in a straight military uniform, with no smile on her face, and looked coldly at the soldiers boarding the car. After the next soldier got on the troop carrier, she raised her hand and looked at her watch. The time was thirty seconds faster than she had planned.
Only then did Sophia walk to her off-road command vehicle, this time she drove it herself. The four wheels of the command vehicle rotated at the same time. Amidst the ear-piercing sound of tire friction, the command vehicle rushed out, overtook the military vehicles all the way, and quickly rushed to the front of the convoy. As soon as it arrived in front of the convoy, the command car roared even more, its speed increased again, and it sped away. Five or six elite fighters were carried on the command vehicle. These fighters with second and third levels of ability sat very firmly, showing no signs of being thrown out at all, and even their bodies rarely swayed.
Seeing the command vehicle speeding away, the drivers of the follow-up military vehicles were all sweaty. They no longer cared about the life and death of the soldiers in the car, and regardless of whether the queue was neat or not, they stepped on the accelerator one by one, chasing each other, and rushed out of Chongbai City like a racing car.
In Pendulum City, an 18-story office building has been completely restored, and it has become the location of the Roxland Corporation branch. Lucas stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows on the eleventh floor, watching the troops go away. Although Sophia didn't bring a chariot this time, this team is an elite unit under her command, and its combat effectiveness is even worse than the one that captured N11. Using such a force to wipe out a mob team that has recently entered the area controlled by the Roxland Corporation is really overkill. What's more, Sophia personally led the team?
In the field encounters, even Lucas himself did not want to encounter an opponent like Sophia.
This time, it can only be said that the luck of these mobs was really bad, just when Sophia was in a bad mood. Lucas has no sympathy for these mobs who make their homes everywhere. Just as the tank speeding through the urban agglomeration on the emblem of the Roxelland Company implies, in this turbulent age, power is power. With power you have everything, no laws, no rules. The so-called rules can only take effect among people with the same power, and will be guaranteed to be enforced. And what maintains the rules is power. If one of the two sides loses its strength, the rules also lose their power.
All in all, these were turbulent times. Countless rules are formed every day, and more rules are broken every day.
Only a big company like Roxland can produce a person like Sophia. Only in the Roxelan company can Sophia grow and give full play to her strengths. With five of each, Lucas can win over Sophia. Twenty people, the ending is unpredictable. If it was more than 200 people, most of Lucas' troops would be wiped out, and Sophia would still have most of his troops left. Only a giant like Roxland would have a guard of more than 200 people led by Sophia.
The convoy has traveled a long way, but the smoke dragon formed by dust is still floating higher and higher. Lucas left the window, came to the large desk, and pressed a few numbers on the phone, and a thin, old voice came out from the phone: "Who? It's not specified in the company regulations Is it time for my experiment?"
"Lucas."
The voice on the phone muttered something, and said reluctantly: "Okay! What do you want me to do? I still have a lot of experiments to do."
"Did the analysis result of that thing come out?" When standing in this office, Lucas was no longer the casual and decadent look, but full of majesty, speaking concisely and clearly.
"The result just came out... Wait! What's going on! This... You'd better come and have a look, I can't explain it on the phone!"
Lucas immediately dropped the phone and rushed out of the office. He walked through the corridor at an astonishing speed, without waiting for the elevator that was still parked on the ground floor, but went directly along the fire exit to the sixteenth floor: the location of the branch's biochemical laboratory. After checking the ID card, Lucas walked straight through the researchers who were working hard, and walked directly to the central laboratory that occupied half a floor.
In the thousands-square-meter laboratory, there is only a dry and thin old man, who is leaning over the microscope to observe something. Seeing the twitching of his cheek muscles, he is obviously extremely excited. This old man is the chief scientist in the biochemical field of Roxland Corporation, and he once created a fourth-level ability Rothstein.
Lucas patted him on the back, and Rothstein immediately gave Lucas the electron microscope. After closing his eyes to the eyepiece, Lucas was stunned. In the green field of vision, dead cells could be seen everywhere, and he recognized several well-known bacteria with strong vitality.
"This is..." Lucas stood up straight and looked at Rothstein questioningly.
Rothstein was wiping the sweat off his brow with a handkerchief, and he sighed, "My God, I've never seen such a thing! Where did you get it? How... how do you describe it?"
Rothstein tapped on the computer next to the test bench like a rainstorm, and a set of thrilling images were immediately played on the screen.
Against the green background, it is full of vitality, bustling with all kinds of cells. The cells, or bacteria, move slowly and attack each other. At this time, one can see that a cell is expanding abnormally, and then breaks apart, and dozens of new types of cells that are obviously different from the mother body flow out from it.
Stolen story; please report.
The movement of all cells seemed extremely slow, but Lucas didn't think so. In the real world, these cells or bacteria actually move so fast that if a person is infected with the above bacteria that make the cells mutate, it means that he will not survive a day at all.
At this moment, an astonishing scene appeared. A medium-sized cell suddenly appeared at the edge of the scene area, and they moved extremely quickly, almost a hundred times faster than other cells. As soon as these cells meet other cells, no matter what type the opponent is, they will stick out a needle-like corner, forcefully penetrate the opponent's interior, and inject their own fluid into it. In just a few seconds, the injected cells would burst and spit out more than a dozen cells that were exactly the same as the intruder. The intruders immediately spread out in all directions, at a speed as fast as an off-road locomotive passing among the tortoises. In less than a minute, all the cells in the image were not spared, either ruptured, or were directly stabbed to death.
On the entire screen, all that can be seen at this moment are densely packed intruders!
The intruders collide with each other, and then bounce in all directions like a ball, and then collide with more intruders, resulting in a more complex bouncing movement. However, there are no other cells or bacteria for them to eat. Will make all intruders, old and new, bounce wildly.
Another minute later, all the intruders were dead, and there was a dead silence in the memory, with dead cells everywhere, just as Lucas had just seen through the eyepiece.
This image is exactly the film recorded by the electron microscope.
Lucas only felt his scalp tingling, and his palms were covered with cold sweat, which was slippery, clammy and very uncomfortable.
After a while, Lucas said, "You mean, these cells were found on the sample I gave you?"
Rothstein nodded, and added: "The record you saw is only the second half. At the beginning, there was only one living cell, and I called it the invader. As you can see, this one cell killed immediately It touches every cell, and turns them into its own brooding ovaries! When I first saw this scene, I was almost terrified, and then I remembered to record the video!" His voice was urgent and Sharp, seemingly immersed in the horror image just now.
Lucas frowned, staring at the screen that was frozen in a cell cemetery, and suddenly said: "If..."
Rothstein obviously knew what he was going to say, and immediately said: "If this kind of cells invade the body, we may turn into monsters within half an hour! And no one knows what kind of things will appear!"
Lucas' hands trembled immediately, which was an extremely rare phenomenon in him who was always calm. However, Rothstein didn't notice this, and pointed to the screen and said, "I don't know if this is good news. If the intruders can't find food within a minute, they will die. This may be explained by the fact that they have more Their counterparts are hundreds of times faster, so they require a lot of energy. And the invaders will never kill each other."
"Analyze their genes immediately."
Rothstein shook his head, tapped on the computer keyboard again, and brought up another chart. It is full of fragmented gene fragments, and it is impossible to make up a complete and meaningful gene sequence.
Rothstein pointed to this chart and said: "Look, this is the gene of the invader. This is not a gene at all, but just a piece of meaningless nucleic acid! There can only be one explanation, and that is the death of the invader." At the time, they had completely destroyed their own genes. You see, these invaders looked as if they already had their own independent intelligence!"
"How about that sample, can you detect the genetic makeup of living invaders?" Lucas' voice was heavy.
Rothstein shook his head again, and said: "There are no living invaders on the sample. You have seen that the invaders never leave much time for other cells and themselves. The scene just now is the last one I found. Invaders. As soon as I moved it into a standard genetic screening petri dish, it immediately revived and began to kill. From the beginning of this process, until all the living things in this petri dish are dead, the total is..."
The doctor looked at the time on the monitor, and said a number that made Lucas break out in a cold sweat: "Two minutes and eleven seconds."
To the cells, the petri dish was as big as what Lucas could see when he stood on the top floor of the branch building and looked around.
"If this thing enters the living body, will there be an incubation period, will it mutate again?" Lucas asked dully.
"It doesn't look like it at the moment. Such a vicious cell does not need a incubation period. But mutation is hard to say. The performance of a single cell may be completely different from the performance of an organ." Rothstein replied, still wiping his face. There was a steady stream of sweat on the top, and he looked terrified: "Fortunately, I was careful enough when I received your sample, and I followed the experimental procedures completely, and I never touched it with my hands."
He suddenly saw Lucas's face was extremely ugly, and he opened his mouth wide, took a sharp breath, and stammered, "You...you shouldn't..."
"Damn it! I touched that thing!" Lucas let out a heavy breath in his chest.
Rothstein immediately took a few steps back, and slammed into a row of glass cabinets full of chemicals. There was a sound from the medicine cabinet, and the bottle of strong acid on the top of the cabinet shook a few times, then suddenly toppled over, and fell straight on the doctor's head. If it is poured by this 1000cc strong acid, the doctor's huge head is guaranteed to be lost.
Lucas took a step forward and caught the bottle of acid firmly. His muscular arms were only a few centimeters from the doctor's head. The doctor raised his head, and the bloodshot eyes behind the high lens immediately opened to the limit! But his fear of acid seemed to be far less than his fear of Lucas' arm.
Lucas smiled bitterly, took a syringe from the tray next to him, pierced it into a blood vessel in his arm, sucked a tube full of blood, and then carefully injected it into the vacuum test tube. He drew three tubes of blood in a row, and a blue flame spewed out from the palm of his left hand, turning the needle tube stained with his blood into ashes, leaving only a burnt black needle.
"Help me do a test to see if I...was infected with that ghost thing."
The doctor stood close to the medicine cabinet, unwilling to get even a little closer to Lucas, just nodded blankly.
Lucas thought for a while, and ordered: "Delete all the video backups, and leave only one copy for me. Don't mention this matter to anyone, including the senior management of the head office. People in the branch can't say anything, especially It's General Sophia, absolutely don't let her know about this! If someone finds out about this, then whether you leak it or not, Perry will die."
Rostand trembled for a moment, and then he woke up from his fear. Perry is his only daughter, who is only seven years old this year.
For the next three days, Lucas sat silently in his office, crossed his hands and propped his chin, looking out the window at the gray sky. He didn't say a word almost all day, and his subordinates reported to him the daily operation of the company according to the usual practice. Lucas just listened quietly and waved them out.
Lucas spent the whole evening in the office like this. He didn't eat anything, just drank two bottles of water.
In the early morning of the fourth day, smoke and dust rose into the sky outside the pendulum city again, and it was Sophia who led her troops back. Lucas finally changed his unchanging posture and stood up. He reached out to the phone, dialed a few numbers, and then cut off hesitantly. But his hand was always on the phone.
The phone rang suddenly, Lucas' hands froze, and he didn't press the call button until the ring rang several times. Dr. Rothstein's voice sounded on the phone: "It's me! Is anyone there?"
"I'm listening," Lucas replied. His voice was hoarse and unpleasant. It turned out that sitting in meditation for a few days had already made his voice completely hoarse. Fortunately, the doctor still recognized his voice, and said, "It's good that you are here! The test results of the blood samples came out. I tried all the methods, and the results showed that there were no traces of intruders in the three blood samples. Thank God! "
Lucas suddenly felt that all the strength in his body was running away without a trace, and he couldn't stand at all, so he slumped on the seat. The doctor's nervous voice kept coming from the phone: "Hello! Hello? Are you okay? Hey, answer me..."
Lucas collected himself and said : "I'm fine. You wait for me there, I'll go over to see the test results now." Before the doctor could answer, he cut off the call.
An hour later, Lucas walked out of the laboratory on the sixteenth floor. His hair was a little messy, his eyes were deep-set, and his unkempt stubble looked longer than usual. In the old days, if a tall, vicissitudes, and decadent man like him entered the entertainment circle, he might have a good future.
Perhaps to explain his downcast appearance, Lucas' stomach growled suddenly. Only then did he feel hungry, and he was not hungry in general, and sweat broke out layer by layer on his body. Lucas remembered that he hadn't eaten for a few days, and was thinking about going to the restaurant on the lower floor to have a good meal. After thinking for a while, he pressed the intercom in the corner and asked, "I'm Lucas. Where is General Sophia now?"
The communicator was connected to the central control room, and the staff on duty inside naturally recognized Lucas' voice, and immediately replied: "General Sophia is now practicing shooting in the underground shooting range."
Lucas felt an inexplicable tension in his body, but he still walked to the elevator and went straight down to the weapons range on the second basement level. As soon as the soundproof door of the shooting range was pushed open, the pungent smell of gunpowder came to the face, and the gunshots echoed in the space were extremely loud and deafening, with an indescribable wildness and brutality. Lucas is proficient in most firearms, old and new, but he can't hear any guns that make this gunshot.