The remote connection software paired with a bionic could enable the "bionic auto-follow" function once real-time location access was granted by default.
Xin Hexue left Number One a message. "Come here immediately."
The heat had left him a little dazed.
When he put the communicator back on the shelf, he nearly dropped it on the floor.
Dizzy and unable to think clearly, Xin Hexue closed his eyes and rubbed the spot between his brows.
The brief darkness kept him from noticing two uninvited guests slipping into the bathroom.
His waist was slender, and his thin abdominal muscles felt soft when relaxed. One tentacle seized its chance, turning its sucker-covered side inward and instantly winding tight around its exceptionally beautiful and fragile prey.
The other slipped into the bathtub, swelling upon contact with the water, and gently brushed his smooth calf.
Xin Hexue's eyes flew open in surprise.
In the bathtub...!
Tentacles had actually grown in the bathtub...
Dazed by the drug, he thought.
Gurgle, gurgle...
Chapter 21: Face Blindness (21)
Half an hour earlier.
A gilded, carved antique clock stood in the corner, kept free of dust by the estate servants' daily cleaning. Its weight swung gently on its chain, driving the clockwork until the hour hand pointed to eight.
Gerard's political career had begun when Old Master Pei helped him enter the Federal Security Bureau. From a low-ranking clerk to his current position as deputy minister of the Economic Security Department, he had remained loyal to the Pei family all these years. Had he not been the wrong age and already married at the time, Old Master Pei had originally intended to match his nephew with him.
As a trusted confidant, he even had a private lounge of his own at the Pei Residence, a clear indication of his status.
In politics today, Gerard was still in his prime. Unlike those old and decrepit directors and deputy directors with heads of graying hair, he had covered the two newly grown streaks of white at his temples with dye. He was only forty-five, with a bright future ahead of him, and his eldest son Cook was only twenty.
Cook...
At the thought of his dead eldest son, Gerard's straight back finally bent. Still holding his wineglass, he sank back onto the sofa, his hunched back making him look as though he had aged twenty years in an instant.
Cook was the child his first wife had left behind when she died young. The children born to his second wife and his other lovers could not compare. No matter how much his lovers resembled her, they could never measure up to his first wife.
Gerard did not know whether he had done wrong. For the sake of the Pei family backing him, he had proposed a plan to exterminate the xenogeneics completely, bringing about his eldest son's death.
Even if he were twenty years younger, though, Gerard would probably still have supported the research project undertaken by the Prometheus Laboratory under the Qiu Group. Although it was an inhumane project that forcibly stitched humans and beasts together into a new species, he thought that for their new future, the sacrifices of the civilians who took part in the experiments, willing or not, were only proper. They were made to explore another possibility for human evolution; perhaps they could even attain immortality.
A road so full of thorns naturally had to be paved smooth with bloodshed and sacrifice.
Unfortunately, the research project had failed because of a sudden fire. The experimental subjects, whose transformations were only halfway complete, defected. They had not been sufficiently prepared to sacrifice themselves, and they became the xenogeneics of today. Their frenzied acts of revenge had left no choice but to drive them out to the border beyond the Thirteenth District.
Gerard leaned back in his chair.
If the fire had not terminated the experiments back then, perhaps the Core District could already have enjoyed the benefits of immortality and evolution, and he too could have gotten a share under those people chatting and laughing at the banquet.
Lost in his vision of the future, Gerard drove away the lingering sadness of losing his son. He lit a cigarette and waited for his new little lover, who was taking his time arriving.
The ceiling light illuminated every corner of the room.
Silently, a vast, heavy black shadow descended over him from behind, as if blotting out the sky.
Gerard's pupils contracted. The sight of the distorted shadow on the floor set alarms ringing in his head. His advancing age made him a fraction slower to react, and that split second left Gerard a step too late.
The gun he had just drawn fell limply onto the carpet, just like its owner.
A black line swept across his neck. The middle-aged alpha's eyes remained fixed on the empty air for a long time as crimson blood gushed from his neck, soaking the dark red carpet.
As the Cutter was leaving, he came face-to-face with one of the tentacles.
Neither xenogeneic spoke.
The tentacle was controlled by a secondary brain, and only the main brain and the other secondary brains could understand its language. Thus, even if the Cutter and the tentacle tried to communicate, they would not understand each other.
They passed each other.
The Cutter did not care where the tentacle was going. He returned to the aircraft, and the black shadow attached itself to the bionic body again.
Number One immediately sensed his master's summons. Xin Hexue's location was visible within his operating system.
Without hesitation, he chose to go to him at once.
Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle...
Xin Hexue choked on the water. He coughed twice and began to struggle, sending water splashing out of the bathtub.
The more he struggled to escape, the tighter the arm around his waist coiled around its prey like a snake, pressing intimately against him without a gap.
The young man's breathing was ragged and fragmented, too suggestive to listen to.
His half-arched posture revealed the subtle contours of his back muscles. His vertebrae pressed against the tentacle's suckers, and the damp, clammy sensation kept writhing, invading his bare skin like licking lips and tongue.
The young man's skin was fair and soft, his flesh smooth and his figure well-proportioned, still warm to the touch.
The tentacle could sense the rhythm of life in this body, beating steadily within his chest.
"＊＆＆％...￥％＃￥＃＠"
"＃＃￥＊...％＠＃＠(＊＆％)"
The xenogeneic's voice sounded as though it came from an extremely distant sea, where the water shimmered an eerie blue beneath the moon. Xin Hexue could not understand it at all.
One tentacle wound its way up his slender ankle.
It considered itself the most important of the eight arms, because it was the hectocotylus, responsible for reproduction.
Now, following the guidance of its soul, it had found its one and only beloved partner in this life—
Oh... it meant, its wife...
It was no longer a wild tentacle without a wife...
It would give the hope of life to its beloved partner, so it kept searching for its partner's wet, soft reproductive cavity.
It got stepped on several times along the way. It loved that...
Wife...
"＆＠＊...＆＃)"
Its wife's hand was so small, his skin so fair...
Wife, you smell so good...
"＊＆...％＆％...％＃"
At the critical moment, K struck both arms with a hundred-thousand-volt electric shock.
Xin Hexue smelled food that was crisp on the outside and tender on the inside.
He thought he would never eat seafood again.
He hated seafood.
K explained: [Sorry, the skill's cooldown just ended.]
He sounded like some kind of Pokémon, and even his electric shock skill had a cooldown.
Xin Hexue weakly braced himself against the bathtub and stood up, throwing a disposable bathrobe over himself. Taking advantage of the interval between waves of the drug's effects, he did a quick cleanup of the mess in the bathroom.
He did not understand why there were so many xenogeneics in the Pei family.
The script unfolded from his character's perspective and provided very limited information. Most of the world's background was only mentioned in passing.
"Xin Hexue's" only contact with xenogeneics should have been in his originally intended final ending, when he became cannon fodder wandering the border and died at their hands.
Xin Hexue frowned and lowered his gaze, his face cold. Without hesitation, he dropped the tentacles, which had been severely weakened and shriveled to a tiny size, into the sink drain and washed them down.
Well, hopefully they would not clog the pipes.
Xin Hexue left the bathroom and suddenly broke into an incessant coughing fit. A strong, sweet, rusty taste surged into his throat, and the pain in his lungs, which had not flared up for a long time, made him double over as his chest shook. Even the hand braced against the table clenched tightly.
At this rate, he would end up putting himself in the hospital sooner or later.
Xin Hexue accidentally knocked something down.
A glass picture frame shattered on the floor.
His hand was trembling badly from the coughing fit as he turned the photograph over.
It showed a teenager, a child, a man, and a woman.
Xin Hexue was face-blind and could not recognize any of them.
But this was the Pei family home; there would not be a family photograph of unrelated strangers here.
After leaving the washroom, Xin Hexue had turned this way and that, wandering in a large circle, and could not tell where he had ended up.
When he entered the room, he had instinctively assumed it was a guest room for visitors to rest in. Finding the photograph made him look around again.
The decor was almost identical to Pei Guangji's room in the South City villa. He glanced into the adjoining study and saw familiar books on the shelves.
Was this Pei Guangji's room?
Xin Hexue examined the family photograph again. He guessed that it showed Pei Guangji and Pei Ying. Besides this one, there were many other group photographs on the wall.
The small red print on some of them identified them as class graduation photos from elementary school, middle school, and high school.
Another had the large garden at the entrance to the Pei Residence in the background.
Three children and a teenager who looked a few years older.
Seeing Xin Hexue's furrowed brows, K asked: [Do you need a hint?]
Xin Hexue: [Yes.]
He could only judge by hair and eye color. The one on the far left was probably Pei Guangji, and the first one to his right was Xi Zhengqing. He was not familiar with the other two.
K: [From left to right: Pei Guangji, Xi Zhengqing, Zuo Yongyan.]
His words confirmed Xin Hexue's earlier guesses.
Xin Hexue breathed out a hot breath. The drug's effects were faintly beginning to surge back again. [What about the other one?]