That poor lunatic—the mercenaries under Nolan had already started calling Hao Ren that. The weirdo who had carried a female corpse to the base today. Though Hao Ren had been here for less than two hours, word of him had already spread throughout the small outpost. No one knew which wild-eyed idiot had first imagined the whole story, or which loudmouth had then spread it around, but in any case, if Hao Ren went outside now, he was sure to attract a whole circle of attention.
Hao Ren, however, wasn't concerned about that. He was currently focused on studying the Data Terminal's body, though certainly not for any thoughts unsuitable for children. He wanted to know how this Second Generation Evolver had somehow become the Data Terminal's host. Since the Dream Plane was a real world, everything that happened here should follow natural laws. Since the Data Terminal's consciousness could parasitize a corpse, there had to be some part of this body compatible with the terminal's consciousness pattern.
Finding that compatible part might allow the terminal's senses to recover.
Hao Ren carefully removed the strips of cloth roughly wrapped around the blonde girl's body as makeshift bandages. The fatal wound running through her chest and abdomen was still grotesque, and since all her blood had long since drained away, he could now clearly see the silver-white lines that had grown together with her body, suspended between machinery and biology. Hao Ren tried not to pay attention to the skin exposed elsewhere on the girl's body, but with such a horrifying wound in front of him, he really had little interest in examining her body.
The Data Terminal still hadn't recovered its senses, but it had established shared audiovisual input with Hao Ren. It could now see its surroundings through Hao