Mai Minghe's reproductive unit

Thinking back now, Jonah had kept a pretty close eye on her.

He kept turning his head to check whether Mai Minghe had caught up; whenever she hesitated or stopped, he urged her to hurry up and keep moving. Even if the young man was a compassionate person, he seemed a little too invested in keeping her alive-not only had he given up on the Phantasm, he was even willing to abandon the search for his companions for her sake.

Of course, all these reflections of Mai Minghe's came with hindsight.

"You're that sure?"

Jonah still kept his voice very low. Although he was no longer whispering, he seemed unwilling to let anything else hear him.

"This is your first time in the Nest. How can you be certain that ringing the bell will bring the residents out? What if one of them didn't go? Or went, realized they couldn't beat the others to it, and simply never entered the room?

"If I really were just a Hunter who got caught while escaping and thrown back into a ward, wouldn't your suspicions be costing you a powerful ally for nothing?"

"...Are you, then?" Mai Minghe asked quietly.

Jonah licked his dry lips, thought for a moment, and smiled.

"...No."

Before the word was fully out, Mai Minghe had already kicked the chair straight at Jonah.

Without waiting to see whether it hit him, she turned and ran-a clang rang out as the chair apparently struck something hard, sending a heart-stopping echo through the empty, quiet waiting hall.

It didn't sound as though it had struck a human body, but Mai Minghe had no time to look back and see what had happened. She burst out of the nurses' station, sprinted across the hall, and charged toward the corridor she had come from-she remembered several consulting rooms there whose doors hadn't been fully closed. If she rushed into one and locked the door, perhaps she could hold Jonah off.

A shrill whistle sounded behind her, followed by Jonah calling, "Come!"

What was he calling?

Mai Minghe forced her legs to move even faster, twisted around, and rushed into the silent corridor-for some reason, not a single footstep sounded on the floor behind her, as though Jonah hadn't followed her at all.

Unable to resist her puzzlement, she cast a quick glance back over her shoulder.

The corridor was empty, its pale light steeped in uninhabited silence.

Jonah really hadn't followed her.

Never mind why he hadn't; she had already run so far that even if he started now, he probably couldn't catch her, could he?

Should she still go into a consulting room?

The question flashed through Mai Minghe's mind, and she immediately decided: yes.

She knew nothing about St. Louis Hospital inside the Nest. Running around blindly might lead her into danger. She had looked into the consulting rooms as she passed them; at least they weren't entirely unfamiliar territory.

The first consulting room was locked. When she tried the handle and found it wouldn't turn, she immediately rushed toward the next room, its door halfway open-it was a heavy sliding door clad in steel. The moment Mai Minghe got a clear look at it, she cursed inwardly and hurried on.

Fortunately, the next consulting room wasn't far away, and its door was also ajar, leaving a narrow gap. She hastily pushed it, only to find that it wouldn't open any farther. The gap remained a fist's width, as though something had jammed it.

"Why didn't you go into that last room?" Jonah's voice asked.

Mai Minghe's heart skipped a beat.

She slowly raised her head and looked toward the voice, spotting an upside-down human face hanging at the junction between the ceiling and the wall.

Right... Jonah had climbed onto a wall before. He had crawled along the wall to reach her. No wonder she hadn't heard any footsteps.

With his belly facing the ceiling, Jonah clung firmly to the plaster with his hands and feet like an enormous reptile. She had no idea when he had made his way above her, or how he was keeping himself from falling.

His neck bent downward, his eyeballs dropping to stare at Mai Minghe and exposing a broad expanse of white-Jonah reminded her of a kind of doll whose eyes opened and closed with gravity. Whenever she held one, she always felt as though it were a living thing pretending to be lifeless.

She also understood why the door wouldn't open.

Instead of clinging to the ceiling, one of Jonah's hands reached into the gap and gripped a corner of the door, keeping her from pushing or pulling it.

"Don't rush. Wait a little longer."

Just as the question rose in Mai Minghe's mind, Jonah opened his mouth, his upside-down upper teeth appearing and disappearing between his lips. "My child will be here soon. It'll be counting on you to grow into its mature form."

What child?

Mai Minghe took a large step back from Jonah, then quickly glanced farther down the corridor.

A very small shadow rounded the corner. Had it not been scuttling toward her, Mai Minghe probably wouldn't have thought it was alive.

At first it looked like a ball, or a crumpled plastic bag. But a few seconds later, she saw it clearly-it was about the size of two fists, a wrinkled lump of flesh pink all over. Several thin legs on either side moved so quickly that they blurred into shadows.

What the hell was that?

The thought had barely crossed her mind when she suddenly felt something cool against both cheeks; two hands dropped from the ceiling, their fingers gripping her skull like iron claws.

Startled, Mai Minghe struggled desperately, punching again and again. Her fists landed with dull thuds against hard-muscled arms, but failed to loosen their grip in the slightest-the man's hands sank deep into her cheeks, squeezing her jaw and forcing her mouth open.

The wrinkled pink ball of flesh seemed to grow excited all at once. It crawled faster, several feeler-like legs climbing up her pajama pants.

Never had she wished so fervently for a weapon-anything would do, even a length of pipe. But earlier that night, she had been nothing more than a bedridden old woman. Apart from the few layers of clothing on her body, she had nothing.

"Don't be afraid," Jonah's voice soothed her. "Look, aren't I doing just fine? As long as memories persist, a person isn't really dead. After I entered Jonah, his memories as 'Jonah' continued to exist. That means 'Jonah' is still alive... he just has a symbiont now, that's all."

No wonder Roundhead's blood hadn't worked on him; the blood had been smeared onto Jonah, not onto the resident's actual body.

Mai Minghe frantically slapped and swept both hands over herself, trying to knock the thing off. But the lump of flesh was like an agile cockroach, its legs carrying it lightly and swiftly, dodging the edges of her palms again and again as it kept advancing toward her head.

"You could try covering your mouth, like Jonah did back then," Jonah said from above her.

Why offer such a sham of a suggestion?

Now that he had said it, she really didn't know whether she should cover her mouth-or was that precisely the effect he wanted?

Mai Minghe truly regretted ringing the bell four times. Ever since falling off the hospital bed, she had lurched from one peril to another, each situation more hateful than the last.

In that moment of hesitation, the thing had already climbed onto her chest. Up close, it looked even more like a cross between a brain and an insect-a cold, raw-fleshed smell rose from her chest as five or six slender legs stepped across her collarbone. An ugly thing, slick and wrinkled with overlapping folds of skin, appeared in Mai Minghe's field of vision.

Mai Minghe fought the instinct to raise her hands. As she desperately twisted her head away, she quickly stripped off her pajama top-the older people grew, the more they feared the cold, and she was no exception. She wore several layers even to sleep, and the outermost layer was unbuttoned, so she could yank it off in one pull.

Two long, slender feelers had already reached into her mouth. They were disgusting, painfully itchy.

Mai Minghe strained to look up, took aim, and swung her pajama top, striking Jonah hard across the eyes with all her strength.

Since he was using a human body, surely he was subject to its physiological limitations?

Who could remain utterly steady and motionless after being struck in the eyeballs?

Sure enough, Jonah let out an involuntary scream, and his grip on Mai Minghe loosened slightly.

The moment she felt his grip slacken, she bent over, freeing her head from his reach. At the same time, Mai Minghe wrapped her hand in her pajama top, seized the thing crawling into her mouth, and pulled it out.

Fortunately, the tall, thin patient had already made her vomit until she had nothing left. Otherwise, the sight of the ball of flesh waving its trembling limbs in front of her face would have made her throw up again.

Mai Minghe wrapped it in her pajama top and, suppressing her disgust, clutched it in her hand and ran.

She couldn't afford to be choosy this time. When she realized she had run back to the steel-clad sliding door, an idea suddenly struck her. She plunged inside and immediately turned beside the door. Sure enough, Jonah was rapidly crawling toward her across the ceiling, his blood-red eyes half closed and his face contorted.

"You slippery old woman-"

Mai Minghe kept her face set and grasped the door with one hand.

These residents.

"I told you, I'm not an old woman," she said quietly, throwing the ball of flesh onto the floor, right onto the sliding track. She yanked the door hard, sending it toward the ball of flesh.

Jonah's howl sounded as though it would tear his throat apart. "No, wait!"

The heavy door, made of lead clad in steel, slammed into the wrinkled ball of flesh, which had only just landed and had yet to find its footing. It burst without even a cry, spraying filthy blood and scraps of flesh everywhere-in an instant, only the largest piece remained between the door and the wall, flattened, its slender legs still twitching.

Before she could kick it aside and shut the door, a hand bulging with veins slapped against the edge.

Through the gap, Jonah's half-visible face barely looked human anymore; his nostrils flared and contracted like two newly opened bellows in his face.

"My child!" he shrieked.

Mai Minghe braced desperately against the door, not daring to let him pull it open and enter. At the same time, she swiftly scanned the dim room and couldn't help sighing inwardly.

Just as she had expected, this was a medical imaging room.

Rooms used for X-rays needed radiation shielding in their doors and walls, and few hospitals installed windows in their X-ray rooms-not because specially shielded windows didn't exist, but because they were expensive and not worth the cost-which meant that once someone was chased into an X-ray room, they were trapped like a turtle in a jar, with no escape route.

That was why Mai Minghe had passed it by the first time: if she entered an ordinary consulting room and locked the door, she could still escape through a window. That wasn't possible in an X-ray room.

"Does something like you really need to pass on its line?" Mai Minghe forced the words through her teeth as she pushed against the door. "This is already the Nest. Do you really need to bother with ecology and reproduction?"

"Once I kill you," Jonah hissed, his words seeming to stick together, "your corpse will disintegrate inside the Nest. I'll rebuild my child from your constituent units..."

"You mean you'll use my flesh and blood to rebuild your child?"

Mai Minghe leaned against the wall, bracing the door with both hands and feet. Her muscles trembled, yet she still couldn't get the sliding door fully shut. As she scanned the room for something she could use as a weapon, she kept talking to buy time. "I'm afraid my flesh and blood aren't disgusting enough. You won't manage it."

Jonah suddenly burst out laughing.

"Flesh and blood? I don't want your old, dried-up flesh and blood! As long as you've ever considered 'having children,' your mind and body have already been marked. The you who once considered 'having children' is still part of you to this day. As long as I get that part-"

Mai Minghe froze.

She hadn't expected memories from years ago to be stirred up here and now: her anxiety over her fertility declining day by day, her uncertainty over what choice she should make, her unease about what awaited her in old age...

Without realizing it, she eased the pressure of her hands slightly.

Jonah caught it.

The sliding door was suddenly shoved hard. Before her startlement had passed, she saw a red-haired head thrust through the gap.

I dug a stockpiled chapter out of my iPad, and I've scraped through another day. This feels as good as finding a thousand yuan in the pocket of a winter coat!

(End of chapter)