Evan stared at the lines of text, his heart skipping a beat.
This Beyonder Characteristic was far too dangerous, and far too vicious.
Control viruses. Control bacteria.
Used carelessly, this thing could cause mass infection and death in any public place—or through a water source.
He glanced instinctively at his fingernails, then felt his teeth with his tongue.
"Good thing it doesn't spread through the air. It needs a scratch or a bite."
"And since it's a Beyonder Characteristic, I should be able to switch it on and off."
He pieced this discovery together with his earlier suspicions, and a larger picture began to emerge.
Neither the Healing Church nor Red King Laboratory probably knew their drugs could combine to produce something like the Copper Plague.
An ordinary person subjected to both those monstrous institutions in turn wouldn't survive long enough for a Beyonder Characteristic to manifest at thirty percent.
Otherwise, with an effect like this, one side or the other would have monopolized it long ago.
It was an accident.
A by-product that had slipped through the cracks while two factions fought a covert battle in the same building.
He might be the only person who knew!
Evan kept his expression neutral and closed the panel.
The pain surged again. He tipped three pills from the bottle of "painkillers" Yuri had tossed him and swallowed them.
[Your digestive function improved. Physique permanently +0.001.] [Your hearing improved. Physique permanently +0.001.]
"...It's still aspirin."
Just in a different bottle.
Time crept by.
Near the end of the first day, Yuri came in with the freckled nurse to examine him.
They checked his pulse and blood pressure, pressed on his abdomen, and inspected his rash.
Neither said a word throughout. Once they were done, they left without an explanation.
The first night passed peacefully.
He felt his stomach.
The Demon Hunter Characteristic was digesting slowly. The cramps had eased a little, but they hadn't stopped.
The second day was much like the first.
He kept taking the B Virus, and the reversal effects kept accumulating.
After four doses, his Physique and mental strength had each permanently risen by 0.08.
The Copper Plague's progress reached 0.09%.
Examinations, meals, reading, medicine, sleep.
It was like spending two days in prison, except the jailers fed him.
Then, as the second evening's sunset cast an orange-red patch of light through the ward window onto the opposite wall, the door opened.
Yuri walked in, the freckled nurse behind him.
His expression was colder than it had ever been.
"Mr. Arkham, I'm sorry to inform you that you don't qualify for the second stage of the drug trial."
He tossed a bundle onto the bed.
It was Evan's clothes, folded crookedly.
Three medicine bottles landed beside them: Copper Pills, aspirin, and Mercury Pills.
"Please leave now."
The freckled nurse took two coins from her apron pocket and pressed them into Evan's hand.
Two dollars.
Evan's first move was to snatch up the three bottles and tuck them beneath the sheet before they could be taken away again.
Then he looked up, a perfectly measured hint of displeasure on his face.
"What about dinner tonight..."
Yuri's gaze turned icy.
"People who fail don't get fed. It's in the contract."
Evan curled his lip and muttered, "Cheapskate."
Then he began taking off his hospital gown.
Once he was completely naked, Yuri's gaze lingered noticeably.
It settled between Evan's legs and swept over the area twice.
He hadn't found what they wanted to see.
A trace of disappointment and confusion crossed Yuri's face.
While getting dressed, Evan slipped the half-full bottle of aspirin into his jacket pocket.
Yuri saw him, but said nothing.
To him, a dozen or so aspirin tablets weren't worth even a puff of a cigarette.
Once he was ready, Evan slung his jacket over his shoulder and gave Yuri a smile without a trace of resentment.
"Doctor Yuri, let me know if you have any more drug trials."
The corner of Yuri's mouth twitched sharply beneath his mask.
At that moment, only one thought ran through his head: The drugs have completely rotted this man's brain.
Everyone else who signed the contract came to take their medicine looking reluctant and uneasy, then spent ages staring at the bottle and trembling afterward.
But not this man.
The drugs everyone else treated like a deadly threat and couldn't wait to avoid looked like delicious candies to him.
He swallowed anything they gave him.
And just then, Yuri watched Evan unscrew the bottle of Copper Pills, tip one out, and pop it into his mouth.
"The Healing Church's medicine really does work better," Evan remarked with a shake of his head, then traced a crooked cross over his chest.
"Praise the Heavenly Father."
Only by forcing down his disgust at such stupidity did Yuri stop himself from kicking the man in the backside.
Evan left the ward with the medicine bottles.
He walked down the corridor.
It was quiet. Only his footsteps thudded against the floor.
As he passed the other four rooms, his powerful Physique and the heightened hearing brought on by aspirin's reversal let him pick up voices.
They drifted through the wooden doors in broken fragments, almost as though they came from another world.
"Please, stop growing..."
The voice came from the first room on his left. A woman's voice, weak and trembling, thick with tears.
"Who am I? Where am I?"
That came from the second room on his right. A man's voice, flat in tone, as though reciting a poem he didn't understand.
"Ah... ah..."
From the room at the far end came a voice whose owner's sex he couldn't make out.
It was only a low, rhythmic moan, like the sound of a wounded animal.
Evan kept walking, but a chill ran down his spine.
Those were the kinds of voices he'd expect to hear in an asylum.
Loss of Self-Awareness. He had heard that side effect for himself.
Stop growing. Evan repeated the words in his mind.
Does the B Virus make something grow on the body after it devours syphilis?
He remembered how Yuri's gaze had lingered between his legs during every examination over the past two days.
That hadn't been a doctor checking a rash. It had been a researcher looking for an expected mutation.
A genuine chill crept up his spine.
Once I get stronger, I'll kill every last one of you! Anger flared inside Evan.
He pushed open the clinic door, and a cold gust carrying the smell of coal smoke and horse manure struck his face.
Evan narrowed his eyes at the setting sun sinking between the buildings at the end of the street.
Its blood-red glow stained half the western sky a bronze hue.
It fell on the brick wall of the building opposite, on the roofs of freight wagons, and on the dark faces of the day laborers waiting for work at the street corner.
That was humanity. No matter how hard life became, people never gave up hope of surviving.
He took a deep breath.
Then the smog hanging in the air made him cough several times, leaving his throat itchy.
In mid-November, the wind at dusk cut across his neck like a little knife.
Evan turned up his jacket collar and put both hands in his pockets. His fingertips brushed the hard sides of the three medicine bottles.
Two days had earned him two dollars and three decent meals.
But those were minor gains.
The real payoff was on his Attribute Panel.
He brought it up as he walked.
[Profession: None] [Slots: None] [Characteristics: Basic Sanguine 8%; Demon Hunter (digesting); Copper Plague 0.09%] [Physique: 1.915 → 2.013] [Mental strength: 1.025 → 1.107] [Spirit Vision: 0] [Talent: Power of the Nine Dragons] [Regeneration: 124%] [Blood Quality: 116.1%] [Syphilis: 48% → 31%] [Liver Damage: 41% → 39%] [Brain nerve damage: 13%]
"The pneumonia and digestive ulcers are completely gone."
Evan slowed, his eyes moving back and forth over the figures.
"Syphilis dropped straight from forty-eight to thirty-one."
"And my Physique broke past two."
He raised his right hand and studied his forearm beneath the light of a streetlamp that had just come on at the corner.
The connected patches of copper-red rash—the shameful marks that had made him a laughingstock in gym class and drawn condemning stares in the cafeteria—were completely gone.
His skin looked as though he had never been sick.
A belated rush of relief rose from deep within him.
He pressed his lips together, holding back a full smile, and slipped his hand into his pocket again.
Just then, the panel changed.
[Syphilis: 31% → 11%]
The number made a huge jump. Evan stopped walking.
Another value changed immediately afterward.
[Copper Plague: 0.09% → 0.1%]
He froze for a second, then understood.
"So that's it. The Copper Plague inherited the B Virus's ability to grow by devouring pathogens."
An old cart horse beside the road snorted, puffing out a cloud of white vapor.
The driver tugged on the reins and rounded the corner, cursing all the way.
Evan stood still, his mind racing.
"So to increase the Copper Plague's progress, besides taking medicine... I could deliberately catch diseases?"
"And the quickest way to get infected would be..."
His thoughts stalled for half a second.
"Selling my ass?"
Evan's legs instinctively clamped together.
"Fuck. That's way too twisted."