Chapter 27: My Lord, Is There Really No Way?

Gone. That cave, that coffin, where she had woken up, was gone.

Humans seldom visited this depth of the mountain. The image of her participating in the commencement was still vivid in her mind. Emerald couldn't understand how she suddenly had woken up in a nearly decayed coffin inside a cave?

Who on earth had taken her here?

Still deep in her thought, she heard a slight sound, the sound of trampling snow. She looked up and saw an array of soldiers appearing on the road.

She stood up. Then she saw the soldiers stepping steadily in front of her.

"Second lieutenant Wilson?" A soldier asked for confirmation.

"Yes."

They took out their guns immediately and surrounded her expressionlessly.

"What's going on?" She stepped forward. The military police then stepped back immediately but with the same surrounding formation.

"Surrender your weapon." Chief of the police shouted, "Don't move and get down."

"What happened?" She crouched with her hands putting on her head as required, and looked up, "I want to see the Lord."

The police didn't answer. Instead, two policemen, with gas masks and thick gloves, cuffed her hands, legs, and neck.

Was she toxic?

Emerald was pushed by the police in her back with a long metal bar and staggered forward. She felt shadowy in her mind. She was taken to the Security Department on Planet Hope.

****

The light was on in the biochemical isolation room on the one floor below, seven corpses lying on the dissecting table.

Kenzo stood quietly outside the isolation room with his hands crossed on his back. Wade stepped out from the elevator and said. "The Zerg queen has sent an apology statement and said they will pay a considerable compensation."

Kenzo smiled and didn't say anything. But Wade felt a little embarrassed.

"I agree that the pilots' virus infection is not simply by accident." Wade looked at the corpses, "but there is not sufficient evidence, who will believe there is a conspiracy behind? That means we cannot keep the peace anymore, which has lasted for twenty years."

Kenzo glanced at him, "not a virus---but parasitism."

Wade thought for a while, "The Crew on the Phoenix is controlled. The inspection has been completed, and no infection was found." He paused for a second, "Among the four pilots who fought with Zergs, two are lying here. That includes the woman who stayed with them and the innocent people bit by them. I heard that Emerald was the least wounded while Zach was the most."

"So Williams must be infected, Emerald may not." Kenzo looked at him. "Is that what you're trying to say?"

"She is your woman." Wade felt sorrowful, "Are you going to kill her?"

Before Kenzo responded, his wrist communicator rang. "Director, second lieutenant Emerald is captured and will be sent to the department in about one hour."

"How is she?" Wade asked.

The military police answered. "She looks normal. She's unaware of what's happening."

Wade was pleased. Did that mean there was no parasitism inside her? He looked at Kenzo and saw his waveless face. It was hard to tell his feelings.

Emerald didn't know she would see Kenzo and Wade that soon. What she also didn't know was that she would meet them in such a situation.

She grabbed the bar of the steel cage and looked at the corpses on the table, feeling deeply frightened.

They had received the honoring with her yesterday. How could they have died here? Their head, arms, legs, and whole body were full of fist-sized holes covered in dried blood and Zerg larva. They looked like they had suffered a violent painful death.

"The results are in." Wade stood outside the glass door. Emerald heard his voice from the microphone, "Emerald... there are fifteen eggs in your body, and they have begun to hatch."

Emerald felt her mind going blank. She barely manages to ask. "How could it be? When we came back to the ship, there wasn't anything wrong..."

"These larvas are extremely small. If not hatched, they cannot be seen." Wade said.

"Then..." Emerald's voice conveyed a strange kind of quietness, "What should I do next? Will the doctors take them out of my body?"

Wade looked at her for a while, his sight being sorrowful and pitiful. Then he turned to Kenzo beside him, "At your suggestion, I will arrange a mass inspection in the city."

Watching Wade disappear into the elevator, Emerald lost all her strength. She grabbed the steel cage, looking blankly at Kenzo, who remained silent.

"My Lord..." her voice was soft. Kenzo looked at her, still indifferent but with a little scorn. He didn't say anything and just opened the door and walked in.

Watching him approaching the steel cage, Emerald retreated a little.

"Where is Zach?" His voice was cold, as if he was talking with a corpse.

"I don't know..."

"The farthest corpse is the only daughter of the Finance Director." He said, "Someone saw Zach and her leaving together. And she was bitten to death."

So had Zach already been killed by the larvas? Emerald's heart sank. She felt pained by the mere thought of the lively Zach turning to a disgusting and ferocious corpse.

But she couldn't bear to feel pity for others! She had fifteen hatched eggs in her body!

She felt strange and uneasy at this thought, as there was indeed something crawling in her veins.

"I don't know where he is." The sorrow overwhelmed her and made her voice lifeless. But she still wanted to try and gave Kenzo a wistful look. "My lord, is there really no way?"

Kenzo looked at her with his arms crossed before his chest; his voice was as usual, "Throughout the human Federation, there has not been discovered a way to eliminate the infection source inside a human body. Therefore, you have no choice but to die."

Tears blurred Emerald's sight, making his image double.

Emerald once had said very firmly that she wasn't afraid of death, but she came into this world in her flesh - if the larvae bit up her body, she definitely couldn't go back.

And that kind of death was too dreadful. She couldn't help recollecting how she had come into this world without any reason and led a miserable life at the bottom of society. She had no choice but to lose her freedom and virginity to survive. She had worked hard to become the second lieutenant of the Federation, but now that she barely had achieved that dream, she had turned to a source of infection overnight, making her feel like she fell from heaven to hell.

Was she going to end up being eaten by larvae to a skeleton and then be eliminated as a pollutant?