Wild Creatures

Chapter 90

07.30 am Sunday

Once again, all around them was clear evidence of how much no one seemed to care about this level.

Gravel and loose stones are scattered on the ground and there's a musty smell in the air. The walls are roughly plastered and not even painted, exposed brickwork in places. Above them, an open network of air conditioning vents and foil covered tubes wriggle like huge silverfish in this bizarrely humid floor.

It feels unfinished on purpose, as if whoever was in charge hadn't cared enough to complete the work.

They didn't have far to go before they came to a closed door, a locked one, with a window.

It was dark inside the room, and at first, Baoshan Sanren thought it might be empty. But then she narrowed her gaze, squinting into the darkness and then, she gasped. She turned around and looked for Xiao XingChen, yanking him forward and making him look inside too.

"What am I supposed to-" and then he bit off his words with a choked cry.

He pushed his way to the door and kicked it open, rushing inside.

"Who's in there?" Wei Ying whispered urgently to his grandmother.

She looked so sad.

"It's Song Lan...but something is wrong."

They all entered behind one another, and someone found a light switch.

There had been a low growling noise all the while, but when the lights flickered on, something threw themselves at the floor-to-ceiling bars, making the ground shake and there was the snapping of teeth with murderous intent. The reinforced steel bars held but shook ominously, releasing a cloud of dust, and as they got used to the dim light, they saw a man pressing his whole body against his barrier between them and himself, swiping at them through the gap.

His eyes were totally black, no white at all where normal people would have eyeballs, and saliva dripped from his fangs. He bared them now, showing off his weapons. He was perceiving a threat and his whole body was attuned to fighting it. He wore trousers but his torso, while bare, had black streaks of lightning, stark against his pale skin, all reaching up towards his neck.

He looked terrifying.

"Song Lan...what...w-what have they done to you?" Xiao XingChen said, moving forward blindly, but Baoshan Sanren stopped him.

"Don't." She gestured towards the creature behind the steel bars. "He's in no shape to be approached. He doesn't even recognise you." Then she turned to Wen Qing. "What do you know of his condition?"

Wen Qing studies him, her sharp eyes take in every detail that normal people would have overlooked.

"From his behaviour, it looks like something other than just the medication we test on patients. I don't know why he's like this, but there must be something blocking his neurological functions. Specifically targeting the part of the brain that remembers things, like past experiences, people, and such. This isn't just a case of him going feral," she answers, after observing Song Lan for a few minutes.

"Then what could it be?" Wei Ying asks, glancing at his Uncle's face.

Xiao XingChen looked devastated.

"And whatever they've done to him, can it be reversed?" He added, having just thought of it.

"Hard to say without doing a full medical check. But the question is, how? At the moment, we can't even get close to him." Wen Qing thinks for a second.

"What if we knock him out?" Lan Zhan asks her.

"That could work, but he's not likely to swallow anything. Not in this condition. Which means we will have to use other means," she sounds apologetic.