Facing the crisis, Kevin merely calmly halted his thrust. It had only been a feint, so he withdrew his force extremely quickly. Then he took a step back, brushing past the blade's tip, and pressed the gun already prepared in his left hand against the Loyal Ninja Mortal's head at close range before pulling the trigger.
"Bang! Bang!"
The two shots blasted two holes through the Mortal's head. Kevin kicked away the corpse that had lost its support, then raised his rifle and sprayed the remaining Mortals in the room.
The Honkai Energy leaking from the large number of Mortals had already begun turning some researchers into Mortals. These people, who had been screaming moments ago, now became walking corpses and lunged at their former colleagues.
"Was this an accident?" Kevin blew off the last Mortal's head, caught his breath briefly, then immediately sprinted to the small room where Mei was. Opening the door, he saw Mei sending a message to Lin through the communicator.
"Mei! Are you all right?!"
"I'm fine. I already injected an inhibitor, so I can move around here for the time being." Mei entered the final character, rose to her feet, and walked over to Kevin. "Kevin, the containment system has sealed off all floors above the fifteenth. Now we only need to wait for reinforcements."
"Okay. Then stay here and don't move."
"No, we need to save people. This incident is far too suspicious. We arrived, and then explosions and a Mortal containment breach happened right after... There may still be survivors. We have to rescue them."
"But you..."
"Don't worry about me. Didn't we get through Changkong City the same way?"
Kevin, who had still been hesitating over whether to save anyone, immediately made up his mind and pulled Mei toward the rooftop.
As they went upstairs, Kevin killed every Mortal they encountered, searching floor by floor for survivors.
The blast had affected an enormous area. Every floor above the fifteenth bore signs of explosions. This had clearly not been an ordinary accident, but a deliberate attack involving bombs planted in advance.
The horrifying scene drained the color from Kevin's face, but he still forced himself to step over the blurred corpses one by one, while keeping Mei as far from them as possible.
No one knew whether the dead would truly remain motionless in an environment with such dense Honkai Energy.
"Crack..."
As they passed a small room blasted to pieces, Kevin heard rubble shifting. He vigilantly aimed his gun toward the source of the sound.
"Who... is it?"
A human voice. A survivor!
After freezing for a moment, Kevin immediately stepped forward to the pile of rubble, set down his gun, and began digging with both hands.
Then, a familiar man's blood-soaked face appeared before him, lying on the verge of death amid the ruins.
"Doctor Spacy?"
Justice
"Doctor Spacy, how are you?!"
The sight of that head made Kevin dig faster. Using both hands, he gradually pulled Spasi from the rubble. As the horrific wounds on Spasi's body came into view, Mei's expression grew increasingly grave.
Finally, when Spasi's left forearm, covered in purple streaks, was exposed, Kevin still did not realize what it meant.
"Doctor Spacy, grab my hand..."
"Wait, Kevin." Mei stopped him. As she crouched down to inspect Spasi's arm, she caught sight of a small arm still trapped beneath the rubble. "There's someone else."
After digging again, Kevin sucked in a cold breath when he saw SiZhi emerging from beneath the debris.
Twisted, grotesque purple streaks spread from SiZhi's crushed and deformed legs all the way to her neck. Honkai Energy, the mark of death, moved through those streaks as though breathing, visibly spreading further, about to reach her face.
At this level of corrosion, if she did not turn into a Mortal, she would only die outright. Her vital areas had already been saturated with Honkai Energy. Even with an inhibitor, the difference would only be between a few minutes and a few hours. And Mei had only one dose of inhibitor left.
There were now two people who needed the inhibitor: SiZhi and Spasi. If Spasi received it now, Mei would still have a chance to immediately perform an excision surgery on him. As for SiZhi...
This was not a difficult choice for Mei. If she and SiZhi had traded places, she would have made the same decision.
She decisively took out the inhibitor, tore open Spasi's charred sleeve, and drove the syringe toward his arm.
Spasi recoiled in terror, avoiding the syringe. Looking at SiZhi, who was also barely clinging to life, he pleaded, "No... give it to SiZhi..."
This was a sudden destruction no one had anticipated. In nearly an instant, close to a hundred lives had vanished. For Spasi... no, for everyone at the Fifth Branch, it had been so sudden and cruel.
Spasi did not know what had caused this incident, nor did he care about his left arm being corroded by Honkai. Right now, he only wanted Mei to give that inhibitor to SiZhi.
He understood better than anyone how weak the inhibitor's effects were on SiZhi, yet he still hoped for that impossible miracle. What if... what if SiZhi's constitution was special? Maybe she had the serum for curing Honkai Sickness that he had been searching for all along, and it only needed the inhibitor to activate it?
His mind was in chaos, unable to think of anything else. He only knew that if the inhibitor entered his body... SiZhi would die.
Kevin was equally distraught. He stared helplessly at Mei, who had not acted yet. At this moment, all he could do was trust that Mei would make the right judgment.
For the first time, Kevin came into such intimate contact with Honkai's cruelty.
And this was far from over.
"Graaah—"
Kevin's hair stood on end.
Spasi's eyes widened.
Mei turned her head coldly and looked at the swaying figure that had risen to its feet.
A Mortal.
"Mei..." Kevin stood up and took a step forward, shielding Mei.
He swallowed, wanting to raise his gun, but his hand felt as heavy as a thousand pounds, as though someone were dragging his arm and refusing to let it obey him.
Mei turned back, raised the syringe, and gave a simple, clear command. "Kevin, shoot."
"Don't... please, Doctor Mei..." Spasi's tears poured from the corners of his eyes onto the floor like floodgates opening. He begged Mei, whose face remained cold. "Karen can definitely still be saved... please... can we detain Karen for now? I'll definitely develop..."
Kevin's pupils contracted. The breath from his lungs to his throat seemed impossible to release, and his mind became a complete mess.
Now, he should simply shoot the approaching Mortal. No matter who they had been in life, once corroded by Honkai, they were all puppets controlled by Honkai Energy. Kevin would never spare either his bullets or his sympathy.
But at this moment, the arm that would not waver even at the brink of death was trembling.
Because the Mortal who had stood up was not someone else.
It was Spasi's wife, Karen.
Her once-beautiful, jewel-like azure eyes had been consumed by terrifying whites. Her skin had turned the pallid color common to Mortals, while her flawless white hair was stained with dirt and blood. She dragged her feet slowly toward where they stood.
Kill her here?
In front of her husband and child? Just pull the trigger so simply, then... make her stop moving?
Kill Spasi's beloved right before his eyes?
At this moment, the one Kevin saw transformed into a Mortal was not Karen, but Mei.
If he were lying in the ruins right now, watching Mei turn into a Mortal and approach him, while someone else raised a gun to kill Mei...
Would he also let out a heart-rending scream? Would he beg with tears streaming down his face?
What if it were Lin? What would he do?
The face of the person holding the gun gradually became Lin's.
Lin ignored Kevin's wails and then pulled the trigger that sent his friend to death.
"Doctor Spacy, perhaps what I'm about to say is inhumane, but in my view, only truly curing Honkai Sickness and saving humanity is justice." Mei adjusted her glasses. The cold gleam behind her lenses sent a chill through the bones. "Please do not doubt my choice. You are an important talent in the fight against Honkai Sickness, and I cannot save them either."
"Kevin, shoot."
Mei raised the syringe.
Kevin raised his pistol.
The white-haired boy gripped the handle with both hands, stopping the trembling in them. He turned all his mercy into resolve to end her suffering and aimed at Karen's forehead.
His finger tightened.
"No—no—" Spasi struggled and reached out his hand.
"Bang!"
The bullet pierced Karen's skull.
Time stopped for Spasi.
Within that frozen moment, his mind had already collapsed. He watched Karen fall forward, watched SiZhi breathing rapidly, watched Mei drive the syringe into his shoulder, watched Kevin's shock, and...
Lin standing in the distance, having fired the shot.
"Fsssh..."
The inhibitor was fully injected into his body. Spasi's mind collapsed completely, and he fainted.
"Lin..." Kevin's body trembled as he stared at the helmeted man lowering his gun, his lips shaking uncontrollably.
Lin walked past Kevin, picked up SiZhi, then headed toward the rooftop without looking back.
"Let's go. We'll perform the excision surgery on the rooftop." His voice was as cold as ever.
As though nothing had happened.
Lin lowered his head and gently touched SiZhi's face with one finger.
"...Team Member Lin."
Someone knelt on the rooftop.
Tears fell like pearls from a snapped string.
A corpse lay beside her.
The Few and the Many
Humanity always looked back on the past, pointing fingers at unbearable history as though doing so would remind itself to create a better future.
But that was not the case.
Reinforcements from the Third Branch will arrive in seventeen minutes and thirty-one seconds.
Lin picked up several fragments from the ground and scanned the substances clinging to those charred metal pieces.
The results appeared shortly afterward, even faster than Lin had expected. But after seeing the displayed list of components, he understood why.
Almost all of them were newly discovered materials, with at least eighty percent artificially synthesized. That also explained why he had found none of these bombs during his initial scan of the Fifth Branch. Like that greatsword, they had used new technology that Lin had yet to encounter.
Failing to detect the bombs did not surprise Lin. But that man had been able to set up so many bombs throughout the Fifth Branch without anyone noticing, and even open detention facilities that could only be accessed with the biometric authorization of the branch's High Council...
Even without knowing the full picture, some answers were already obvious.
"What if one day humanity disappoints you?"
Elysia's question echoed in Lin's ears.
Lin slowly clenched his hand, crushing the fragments into a ball before releasing them onto the ground.
A new notification received by Prometheus made Lin's gaze freeze completely.
Lin, one minute and thirteen seconds ago, the assassin violently resisted while being transported to headquarters and was executed on the spot. The execution video has been entered into the database.
Executed on the spot? Less than half an hour had passed between his detention and transport, yet the assassin had already been executed. They had not even questioned his identity. And it had happened aboard a transport aircraft containing only the prisoner and the escorts?
With Fire Moth's technology, creating a convincing fake video file was probably easier than Lin killing a Honkai Beast.
Lin stood guard in the passageway leading to the top floor, staring at the devastated Fifth Branch as he quietly gripped the pistol in his holster.
"What happens next?"
The original plan was to detain him in The Deepest Place after interrogation. The body will now continue to headquarters for autopsy and identity investigation. This is publicly available information. Your authorization level is insufficient to view further details.
"The Deepest Place?" Lin quietly repeated the unfamiliar name.
No information regarding The Deepest Place has been entered into the database.
In other words, when it came to handling that "corpse," even those with Captain-level authorization or below only knew that much. Calling it a complete blank would not be an exaggeration.
An incident that had nearly destroyed an entire branch, yet its final handling was so vague and evasive, like an old woman's rag covering her shame—reeking of rot, yet impossible to see through.
Then, before long, an announcement concerning this incident would probably be released. Its content would likely be an investigation report claiming some vague, mysterious organization had attacked the Fifth Branch. They would continue investigating this "mysterious organization," whose technology was equal to or even surpassed Fire Moth's, and perhaps hint that the attack had been motivated by Fire Moth's human modifications.
You ask where the mysterious organization is? Come on, since it is a "mysterious" organization, of course the answer is, "We don't know yet." We're investigating too.
Even though everyone understood that replacing those words, "we don't know yet," with "no comment" would make no difference at all.
"Lin."