The Effects of NZT

For the next few days, Chen Chen used the two hours of his lunch break and the two hours from six to eight in the evening to go to the hotel, feed the mice their medication, and change their bedding.

The eight mice also proved remarkably resilient. No illnesses, fights, or other accidents occurred, allowing the experiment to proceed smoothly.

Feeding the mice was not difficult. A fixed amount of feed each day was enough, and whenever Chen Chen occasionally took out a peanut or a piece of walnut, they would jump about happily.

However, Chen Chen was bleeding money. Out of his monthly living expenses of fifteen hundred yuan, more than a thousand had gone toward just seven days of rent.

It was only the middle of the month, yet Chen Chen was already nearing the point where he could no longer afford to eat at the cafeteria.

"Since nothing has gone wrong so far, that should mean it isn't toxic."

At noon seven days later, Chen Chen headed to the hotel as soon as class ended.

He gave the two mouse cages one last look. If circumstances allowed, he had actually wanted to conduct a withdrawal reaction test as well, but his living expenses could no longer support it.

Besides, he had used up one pill over the past seven days. Although that was not much, under circumstances where he could not mass-produce them, every pill was incomparably precious.

So Chen Chen brought out their final meal and let the mice eat their fill.

Then he took out the tribromoethanol solution he had prepared earlier. With his left hand, he took out the mice one by one and held them belly-up, while his right hand inserted the syringe into their lower abdomens, passed through the abdominal muscles, and slowly injected the solution.

Tribromoethanol was often used to anesthetize animals. Since Chen Chen had deliberately administered an excessive dose, in less than three minutes the mice collapsed one after another inside their cages and entered deep anesthesia.

About eight minutes later, all the mice died peacefully and without awareness due to excessive suppression of their central nervous systems.

This was euthanasia by anesthetic overdose, considered one of the most humane methods of killing experimental animals.

Well, it was far more humane than decapitation, cervical dislocation, exsanguination, air embolism, and other methods.

After confirming that all the mice were dead, he checked out of the room, bought a bottle of alcohol from a medical supply supermarket, found an empty alley, and poured all the alcohol over the mice's bodies.

As a faint blue flame rose, the mice were completely consumed by the fire, gradually blackening until their forms could no longer be made out.

Whatever the drug's ingredients were—whether it was a biochemical agent, traditional Chinese and Western patent medicine, or even a genetic drug—no longer mattered. After being burned at temperatures of five or six hundred degrees, all molecular bonds would be utterly destroyed.

It could also be considered a cremation for the eight contributors.

After that, Chen Chen did not return to school. He casually made do with lunch outside, then took Line 9 of the subway toward Shangdu People's Hospital, the city's most authoritative hospital.

Although the animal experiment had revealed no issues, it was better to be safe than sorry. What if the drug was harmless to rodents but highly toxic to humans?

There were precedents for this phenomenon. Take chocolate, for example. Humans could eat it without any problem, and it could even improve their mood, but if a mouse ate it, it would be like an old man eating arsenic—asking to die.

That was why Chen Chen had come up with the idea of taking the drug at a hospital. As long as he had not taken cyanide or paraquat, he could be saved.

Anyone who had ridden the subway knew that the signal along the Shangdu subway lines was abysmally bad. The only thing one could do was make emergency calls, so subway TVs had been installed as a public amenity.

The programs shown on them mainly consisted of news and information.

At that moment, Chen Chen sat on the subway, watching the live news reports on the screen out of boredom. There were legal education segments and news advertisements, and they were at least watchable.

The most attention-grabbing report was about a recent act of bravery. On the Renmin Road section, a man had been stabbed three times by vicious criminals while trying to stop a kidnapping, before being rescued by police who arrived afterward, and so on.

Since rush hour had just ended, the subway was somewhat empty. Nearby, only four or five elderly ladies carrying church pamphlet tote bags sat together.

Clearly, these elderly ladies were heading to church for Mass.

"Ah, Renmin Road? Isn't that around here?"

One elderly lady had taken off her shoes and was sitting cross-legged on the seat, rubbing her feet as she sighed. "There really aren't many young people like that anymore."

"Exactly. Every time I take the subway, it's hard enough just to get someone to give me a seat. They always say they're not feeling well, or they're on their period, or whatever... You just can't reason with people like that..."

Another auntie, who was twice Chen Chen's size, sighed as well.

By the time the subway arrived at the station, it was almost two in the afternoon.

Chen Chen wandered around the hospital alone for a while before finally arriving at the Emergency Department.

The Emergency Center was meant to handle urgent medical cases. No matter when one came here, the place always seemed steeped in a grave atmosphere.

Ambulances wailed as they came and went. From time to time, gurneys rattled through the dim corridors, accompanied by the hurried footsteps of nurses.

Occasionally, a large group of family members would rush in, gather in the hallway to argue incessantly, and then be asked by security to sit in the waiting area.

In such a noisy environment, Chen Chen's arrival naturally attracted no attention whatsoever.

Chen Chen sat in a corner of the waiting area and took out the pill he had prepared long ago, examining it carefully one last time.

Chen Chen shook his head, took a deep breath, and gently placed the pill in his mouth.

He slowly closed his eyes.

One second, two seconds, three seconds...

"Xiao Jie, Xiao Jie, hurry to People's Hospital! Your father just collapsed..."

"Quick, quick, quick! Make way, make way! Don't block the path—open the door! The stretcher is coming!"

"Boohoo... It's all your fault! If you hadn't been driving so fast, would this have happened? If anything happens to Peng Peng..."

"Mom, Mom, what exactly happened to Dad? When can he come out of that door?"

At some point, Chen Chen realized that his hearing had become extraordinarily sharp.

Not far away, a weathered-sounding woman held a phone as she told her daughter about her husband's condition, her voice faintly choked with sobs.

Outside the emergency room, gurneys scraped with piercing shrieks as nurses kept pushing aside family members blocking the way.

In the seats ahead of Chen Chen, a married couple spoke in low voices, while the woman kept quietly sobbing.

And beside him, a soft little girl kept asking her mother questions. Though still so young, she was gradually beginning to understand something.

Countless sounds mingled together, yet remained distinctly separate. Every syllable of every sentence, every emotion in every conversation, appeared in Chen Chen's mind with perfect clarity...

Like a grand symphony.