After giving his orders, Pierson studied Evan's black-and-white ID photo attached to the file. The young man had a thin face, unremarkable features, and a stubbornness in his eyes peculiar to youth.
He looked like an ordinary poor student.
But what was in his blood was anything but ordinary.
Beneath the bustling city, the various Beyonder factions observed strict rules and territories.
This was not merely a Sanguine, or merely a Demon Hunter.
This was a freak who carried Sanguine blood, the scent of Demon Hunters, and a potion from the Healing Church.
The Red King Laboratory feared none of those factions.
But a syphilis-infected specimen was hardly worth provoking trouble from all three at once.
He had no desire to cross the wealthy aristocratic vampires entrenched at Sage University.
Nor did he want to deal with those lowlife Demon Hunters, who had nothing to lose and clung to people like burrs.
And then there were the madmen in black robes and fanatics in red robes hidden beneath the Healing Church's white robes.
Pierson drew his suit jacket together, straightened his crooked bow tie, and resumed his haughty tone.
"Collect every medicine he has on him. Don't let him take anything on his own for the next two days!"
Yuri acted quickly.
Evan was passing the time when the door opened. The sound was quiet, but the rhythm of boots on the wooden floor had changed.
He looked up to see Yuri walk in, followed by the sturdy, freckled nurse from the front desk downstairs.
She stood with her arms crossed. She looked less like a nurse than hired muscle.
"Hand over every medicine you have on you."
Yuri's tone left no room for argument.
Evan's expression darkened, and his brows drew tight.
"Doctor, my stomach and intestines hurt like hell. I can't do without those medicines."
Yuri was silent for several seconds. His gaze lingered on Evan's face behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
"I'll give you something else for the pain."
Evan sighed and reluctantly took a small black medicine bottle from the inner pocket of his jacket.
It held the Healing Church's Copper Pills.
He unscrewed the cap and tipped the pills onto the bedsheet one by one, counting under his breath.
"One, two, three... Thirteen left."
He put the pills back into the bottle, tightened the cap, and handed it to Yuri.
"Remember to give it back."
Yuri took the bottle and slipped it straight into his white coat pocket without even looking at it.
"Anything else?"
Evan took a bottle of Aspirin from another pocket, counted its contents the same way, and handed it over.
"Anything else?"
Evan hesitated, then dug a small bottle of Mercury Pills out of the depths of his trouser pocket.
The corner of Yuri's eye twitched.
By the time he accepted the third bottle, the look he gave Evan had shifted from scrutiny to something beyond words.
A strange glint flashed behind his wire-rimmed glasses, one he did not even notice himself.
How the fuck are you still alive?
Yuri sighed inwardly.
He stuffed all three bottles into a deep pocket of his white coat, then turned and signaled the nurse to step forward.
The freckled nurse's strong hands searched Evan with practiced efficiency.
She went from the outer pockets of his jacket to the inner ones, then from his shirt pocket to his trouser pockets.
Her movements were brisk and showed no respect whatsoever, as though she were rummaging through a bag of dirty laundry.
Evan raised both hands in cooperation and stared at the ceiling without expression.
"Nothing else," the nurse told Yuri.
Yuri nodded and left.
A few minutes later, the door opened again.
A medicine bottle came flying through the gap. It bounced twice on the bedsheet and came to rest.
"Three pills each time, three times a day," a voice said flatly from outside.
The door closed again.
In the testing room.
Yuri set the three medicine bottles on the workbench in a row.
Pierson stared at them in silence for ten seconds.
"How the fuck is he still alive?"
At last, he said what he had been holding back, his voice full of almost absurd disbelief.
Yuri cleared his throat.
"He said he can't do without painkillers now. The pain in his stomach and intestines is unbearable."
He paused, then added,
"You can't fake that kind of craving and fear."
He had spent over a decade in this line of work and seen too many people used to test drugs. He could tell real pain from an act at a glance.
The pain Evan was struggling to suppress was no performance.
"He probably doesn't have long," Yuri concluded.
Pierson glanced at the three bottles and waved a hand.
He had no interest in those medicines. A pile of mortal rubbish.
The hours that followed were mind-numbingly dull for Evan.
He began to regret not bringing a few books.
Once he was sure there would be no surprise searches, Evan retrieved the small glass vial of Night Demon Potion he had wedged between his buttocks and hid it somewhere less conspicuous.
There were no cameras in the room, not even a peephole.
The Night Demon Potion was his last resort.
If something went wrong at night, it could let him move through the darkness with ease and find a chance to escape.
Two hours passed.
The B-Virus's reversal took effect.
[Three-Stage B Virus: side effects reversed.] [Your immunity increased. Physique permanently +0.02.] [Your Self-Awareness increased. Spirit permanently +0.02.]
Evan looked at the two stat increases and laughed despite himself.
"Immunity and Self-Awareness?"
He connected those results with the earlier notifications in his mind.
"So the B Virus's side effects are reduced immunity and reduced Self-Awareness."
"That makes the host more susceptible to infection, so the B Virus can multiply and devour things inside the host."
"And then... the host gradually stops recognizing himself?"
Cold sweat broke out across his back.
"Fuck. They're breeding viruses like fighting insects."
"Not a single one of you is fucking human!"
The logic behind it was more horrifying than he had imagined.
They used people as culture dishes and syphilis as nutrients, letting the B Virus devour, multiply, and grow more concentrated inside the human body.
Meanwhile, the host gradually lost his Self-Awareness and became whatever they wanted him to become.
He etched the clue into his memory, intending to ask Hill about it when he had the chance.
The Healing Church's Copper Pills. The Red King Laboratory's B Virus.
Two organizations had planted different seeds in ordinary mortals.
And when those seeds collided in the same body, he had unexpectedly collected the result in his Panel.
Lunch arrived at half past twelve.
An intern in a white coat came in carrying a tin tray, set it on the bedside cabinet, and left without a word.
Evan sat up and took a look.
It was a decent spread.
The staple was white bread, good bread made from fine white flour with a golden crust. Ordinarily, Evan could not afford to go near the stuff.
There was a cup of warm whole milk, a small serving of mashed potatoes, a sliced tomato, and a little roast carrot and beef sprinkled with Rosemary.
Outside on Gooding Street, a lunch this good would cost at least twenty cents.
"The Red King Laboratory certainly isn't skimping."
Evan picked up his fork and ate slowly.
After lunch, boredom got the better of him, and he called through the door.
"Doctor, could you find me a few books to read?"
About five minutes later, the door opened, and Yuri tossed in a stack of things.
A few old newspapers, two medical manuals, and three old medical textbooks.
The textbook covers were worn through, their spines held together with tape. The pages were yellow and brittle, giving off a mingled smell of old paper and mothballs.
Evan opened them one by one.
He had already planned to apply to medical school, so he had no objection to reading them.
More importantly, his mind still held a basic knowledge of twenty-first-century medicine and chemistry from Earth.
Many pathological descriptions that baffled people of this era were clear to him at a glance.
One manual, for instance, attributed "bile disease" to "an imbalance of bodily fluids and an excess of black bile."
After reading a few lines, Evan matched it to cirrhosis and bile duct obstruction in modern medicine.
Time slipped by unnoticed.
When the Panel displayed another notification, it was already two in the afternoon.
[Unknown fusion side effects reversed.] [Beyonder Characteristic "Copperization 0.01%" evolved into "Copper Plague 0.03%" (click to view details).]
"Copper Plague?"
Evan raised an eyebrow.
He opened the details with a thought.
Lines of text unfolded before his eyes.
[Copper Plague: Convert your body into a copper form. Using copper as a medium, you can devour and control viruses and bacteria.] [For every 1% of progress, immunity and resistance to physical damage increase substantially; Physique permanently +0.03.] [Unlocks at 30% progress: You become immune to the vast majority of viruses and bacteria and can use Partial Copperization.] [Unlocks at 50% progress: You can concentrate viruses and bacteria and infect targets by clawing or biting them.] [Unlocks at 70% progress: Gain complete immunity and full Copperization, and use copper as a medium to spread infection.] [Unlocks at 100% progress: Transform a composite virus into the rapidly acting Plague of Copper.]