Late-Night Modifications. Did You File the Paperwork?
Late at night.
Fully armed, Sing Sing crouched in the bushes more than ten meters away from the old school building.
Around the campus, several surveillance cameras had their dark red indicator lights on.
It rotates once every seven seconds, leaving a gap of less than two seconds near the west wall of the old school building.
The probe's swing frequency and blind spots formed a network in his mind.
"Whoosh!"
A dark figure swept across the open space, cutting into two blind spots of the surveillance cameras.
When the surveillance footage came back on, Sing Sing had already arrived in front of the old school building.
A large iron chain hung on the door.
Sing Sing took a closer look and saw metal scratches on the edge of the lock cylinder. There were even fingerprints left on the chain on the side.
I rubbed it with my thumb, and a little oil appeared on my fingertip.
"Hey, someone's been coming and going a lot?"
They keep claiming it's haunted, but it's been sealed off for decades, yet the lock cylinder is still in excellent condition. It seems this campus ghost story is most likely just the cheapest access control system.
Sing Sing pulled a steel wire from the lining and skillfully inserted it into the keyhole.
Click.
The iron lock came loose with a snap.
There's nothing special about it; it's simply a matter of practice makes perfect.
Sing Sing held up the chain, preventing it from hitting the door.
After confirming that no one was around, he slipped inside and left the door slightly ajar.
The corridor was pitch black; you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
After listening intently for a moment and not noticing any other noise, Sing Sing took small, quick steps and floated forward along the base of the wall.
Before long, he reached the end of the first-floor corridor.
In front of me was a wooden door with a sign that read: Storage Room
There was almost no dust around the door hinges, and the door handle was cleaner than the surrounding area.
Sing Sing squinted, cupped the door panel in his palm, and slowly opened it a crack.
By the dim light, he could see what was behind the door.
There are no mops or buckets in this storage room.
It was a bottomless, pitch-black elevator shaft!
Moreover, there was no elevator car; several steel cables hung down to the ground, and cold air rushed up the well wall.
Sing Sing peered down, but couldn't see anything.
"Sigh... government food is awful. I read textbooks during the day and crawl through tunnels at night. Even the donkeys in the production team have to offer me a cigarette when they see me."
He pulled his head back, muttering to himself as he counted on his fingers, "High-altitude work allowance, night shift bonus, compensation for emotional distress—if any of these are missing, I'll have a word with Lao Wang."
Complaints aside, we're already here, we can't just take a touristy photo at the wellhead and go back empty-handed.
Sing Sing put on non-slip gloves, tested the load-bearing capacity of the steel cable, and then jumped.
The descent speed increased rapidly, and the surrounding temperature dropped sharply.
Sing Sing's eyes were incredibly focused as he silently counted down the seconds in his mind.
Three seconds.
Six seconds.
In the tenth second, he clenched his fingers, and his shoes stomped against the well wall several times to dissipate the last bit of momentum, allowing his feet to land steadily.
With the tension of the steel cable and the deceleration from pushing off the wall, the actual acceleration is much lower than that of free fall.
With the pulling force offsetting part of the gravity, the acceleration is less than 9.8, and the falling distance will be much less than 490 meters.
The acceleration is taken as 4.9 m/s².
h = 0.5 × 4.9 × 10² = 245m
"Damn, who can withstand this? They dug over 200 meters underground from the school. Is the principal a part-time tomb raider?"
The musty smell from being away from the sun for so long made his nasal cavity itchy.
Sing Sing looked up and scanned his surroundings; the space in front of him was frighteningly spacious.
At the top are a complex network of exhaust ducts, some of which have rusted through.
On both sides are rows of tightly closed explosion-proof doors, and old-fashioned warning lights and numbered plaques are embedded in the walls.
This scale far exceeds that of ordinary air-raid shelters.
"Damn it, Lao Wang was right! Those bastards are up to something big down there."
Sing Sing tiptoed to the nearest door and peeked inside.
Behind the door was an abandoned sterile room.
Three three-meter-tall culture tanks stood side by side in the center, their glass surfaces covered with cracks, and murky, yellowish culture medium remaining at the bottom.
In one of the tanks, a thigh that had lost its original color floated.
The flesh was not completely rotten; the fractured femur was replaced by a metal hydraulic rod; gears and wiring were embedded on both sides of the knee joint.
Black fascia is wrapped around the mechanical structure, which has been welded into a part that is half flesh and half iron.
Sing Sing clenched his fist.
To dissect a person into pieces and then forcibly piece them back together with mechanical parts?
Superpowers are innate; Mutants are still human.
Abilities are meant to secure a stable livelihood, not to be used by these psychopathic rulers as raw materials for developing biological weapons!
Sing Sing took out a miniature camera and aimed it at the culture jar inside.
The evidence must be taken back.
Just as he was about to change his angle and take a couple more close-up shots, a subtle noise came from deep within the corridor.
"Crunch... crunch..."
The sound didn't last long, quickly turning into a series of chilling "click-click" sounds.
Sing Sing's ears twitched slightly.
This commotion couldn't possibly be caused by some security guard on night duty; could it be something more sophisticated?
Sing Sing calmly put the miniature camera into his pocket and turned around unhurriedly.
In the darkness at the end of the corridor.
A figure walked out with faltering steps, hunched over, his skeletal proportions unrecognizable.
Most of his face was locked in a rusty iron restraint.
Sing Sing stared at the number on the restraints, his fingertips pausing at his waist.
Is this guy also a victim?
The one eye that was exposed contained not a trace of human reason.
He was wearing a tattered hospital gown.
A large, irregularly shaped mass of flesh could be clearly seen wriggling in the gaps in the clothing.
"Hey, hey, hey."
Sing Sing, pursing his lips, blurted out in broken Japanese, "Hey buddy, why aren't you sleeping in the middle of the night? Doing mechanical modifications here? Did you get the necessary permits?"
The man stopped and roared as the right side of his hospital gown burst open without warning!
His entire right arm exploded, and flesh and blood multiplied wildly in the air.
Within half a second, the chunks of flesh automatically reformed and expanded, transforming directly into a mutated tentacle as thick as a water bucket!
Sing Sing was dumbfounded; the surface of the touchscreen had even hardened into a biological carapace.
Mechanical saw teeth were actually embedded in the gaps of the carapace!
Flesh and blood encased metal gears, spinning rapidly and emitting the sound of a chainsaw.
Sing Sing's eyelids twitched twice.
Good news, the mechanical voice that Saeko Busujima heard has been found.
The bad news is that this machine grows on people's bodies and will chase after them and attack them.
Grandma's...
I originally thought this was just a simple ghost adventure, but who knew I'd open a mutated blind box!
"Bang!!"
The stinger, having missed its target, slammed into the blast door next to it, creating a dent and cracking the wall.
Sing Sing, who had ducked to the side and behind, clicked his tongue and said, "With that kind of strength, you could save money on machinery if you went to a construction site to drive piles!"
His attack missed, and the madness in the man's single eye intensified.
The gears on his arm hissed as if to slice Sing Sing in half at the waist!
"Whoosh!"
Sing Sing became a blur as he charged straight at the roaring bio-engineered saw-tooth tentacle!
Hold the knife handle with your right hand.