"Roger!"
Helicopter Three quickly descended and plunged into the clouds.
Before long, startled cries rang out over the communications channel.
"What's going on, Helicopter Three?" Liu Li asked urgently. "What did you see?!"
"We're transmitting the images now!" someone aboard Helicopter Three replied.
After a brief loading period, footage captured by Helicopter Three's long-range observation equipment appeared directly on Liu Li's computer screen—nearly one-third of Chimera Seventeen's massive body had changed from its originally smooth appearance into something that would make anyone with trypophobia faint at a single glance.
When the camera zoomed in again, Liu Li finally saw clearly that the flesh-colored, pimple-like bumps were actually twisted human faces packed across the surface of the giant cocoon!
Liu Li sucked in a sharp breath.
But his hands did not stop moving. He immediately transmitted the images back to the Command Center, accessed the archive database, and began comparing the faces one by one.
Although most of the faces were twisted, deformed, or incomplete, the powerful AI recognition system could still reconstruct their original appearances... A few seconds later, the comparison results came in: 13,757 faces had been scanned in total, and 8,701 of them had matching records.
Some of those faces belonged to soldiers and hunters who had died during Meme sample collection operations. Others belonged to people who had died or gone missing in various anomalous creature invasions and secondary disasters in Tianfu City and nearby towns... Several faces belonged to personnel stationed at Bunker One and Bunker Two, who had lost contact not long ago.
"These... these faces..." the crew aboard Helicopter Three muttered. The eerie, horrifying sight had clearly struck them hard.
"Chimera Seventeen has undergone a significant mutation. I suspect the loss of contact with Bunker One and Bunker Two may be related to this