Vol 2 Chapter 11: Atonement: Red Earth (9)

Ethan stared at the documents on the transparent desk, his brows frowned. Before disappearing, the people at Base 18 had received a communication from the nearest base No. 19, saying that they had noticed an abnormality in the animal samples collected there. Several researchers were infected. The situation is not optimistic. Therefore, I reminded No. 18 The people at the base are careful. However, the specific infection and symptoms were not explained.
He thought of the weird worm and the scene of the weird worm crawling into Jeff's body.
I was concentrating on it, but suddenly there was an extra hand on my shoulder. He jerked his spirits sharply and almost jumped up, but when he turned his head he saw that Samuel didn't know when he was standing behind him.
"It's going to dawn, you won't sleep for a while?" Samuel bare his upper body, showing strong wheat-colored muscles, holding some dazzling hair, a little sleepy in his eyes, and half squinted at him. .
Ethan sighed, "I dare not sleep... and I can't sleep."
Samus squeezed into the sofa he was sitting on. He had to move to the side and was squeezed into the corner by Omega, who was taller than him. Samus leaned back comfortably, with his hand on the back of the sofa, and put a cigarette in his mouth with his other hand, and lit it with a very primitive lighter. "If I can't sleep, I will just discuss something with you. child."
Ethan was choked and coughed twice, and tilted his face back as far as possible to avoid the swirling smoke in the opponent's mouth and nose, "What's the matter?"
"You have taken that role for me. I know that your life is probably not going well. If you regret it, it is still too late."
Ethan rolled his eyes speechlessly, "That's it? Now you still have the heart to worry about this?"
"When I go back to the forbidden city, things have spread, and if I want to go back, it will be too late."
"Then I have to wait until I go back alive. Also, being thought of as Omega is not a big deal to me, anyway, I am not a toughguy. As long as you cover it, there will be no problem."
"In that case." Samuel took the cigarette out of his mouth suddenly, turned his head and looked at him with deep eyes, "I have to mark you."
Ethan didn't react to what the other party was saying for a while, looking at him inexplicably, "Huh?"
"Everyone knows that you are my person, but there is no mark on your neck. What do you think they would think? Either I don’t take you seriously, or I have a problem. Neither situation is not good for us. Now we You are in a dangerous situation and you can't make extravagance.
Ethan was speechless when he said it for a while, and he held back for a moment before finding a reason to refute, "But I am a Beta, without Omega glands. You are an Omega and do not have Alpha saliva, so you can't bite the kind that can last. The bite marks of the week."
"It's simple." Samuel said, pressing out the cigarette on the glass tabletop, and suddenly his whole body leaned in the direction of Ethan, covering the bewildered Beta in his own shadow. Ethan had such an ominous premonition in the gleaming eyes of the opponent, and he shrank his shoulders slightly.
"As long as I bite on your neck every day. The big deal is to bite harder, and spray some camouflage hormones."
At this moment, Samuel was exuding the strong Alpha smell of camouflage reagent, and undercurrents were lingering in his dark eyes. He put his hands on the back and armrests of the sofa, confined Ethan in a small gap in the middle with nowhere to escape, and his head was slowly and irresistibly pressed against Ethan's neck. Ethan swallowed, always feeling that the other party sounds like a reasonable theory. Why is it strange that he always feels that he is being taken advantage of by the other party?
He hurriedly reached out and pushed Samuel's chest, "This... shall we talk about this later? You... let me think about..."
Samuel's body didn't mean to move away. The heat from that skin dissipated from Ethan's palm, making him flustered and somewhat bewitched. For Beta, due to the lack of Omega glands, the marked behavior does not bring any sexual or psychological pleasure except pain, but I don’t know why. At this moment, Samuel, who is full of Alpha breath, looks at him like this. There was an unbearable impulse to sacrifice one's neck and let the other's sharp teeth fall into the flesh.
He began to wonder if Samus didn't just pretend to be Alpha, but he was already Alpha in his heart, but was born with the wrong gender?
And he himself...Ethan has always known that he is a bit M-leaning, although on the surface it looks serious and well-dressed, in fact, deep in his heart, he often fantasizes about being controlled, treated roughly, and even half-forced to do something indescribable. . This is why he prefers Alpha to Omega. But now that the masochistic desire that has been hidden for a long time has been provoked by an Omega, thinking about it, I am really hungry. Ethan swallowed, and was wondering if he would just leave him. Isn't it just a bite?
As a result, Samuel suddenly turned his face away, frowned and raised his head alertly, as if the keen cheetah sensed the abnormal movement in the air. Ethan asked him, "What's the matter?"
"Did you not hear?"
"Hear what?"
"A scream." Samuel stretched out his hand to the corridor leading to the rest area and sleeping area. "It seems to be coming from there."
Ethan didn't hear anything. After all, all the sleeping cabins are soundproofed. Even if you kill pigs in it, you should not be able to hear it.
The two of them just stood up and saw that a door had opened in the corridor, and Tanithel, who was far more perceptive than the humans on earth, also hurriedly walked out, even before the buttons of his coat were fastened, showing a firm and strong appearance. The smooth chest and abdomen muscles, mermaid muscles spread and disappear under the waistband, it is not like the figure that a priest would have. He glanced at Samuel and Ethan, did not say much, reached out and knocked on the door of a single lounge.
There was no response, and no one opened the door.
Tanithel activates the relentless ball, and a beam of light casts a location map with all inhuman coordinates marked on it. And there is indeed a person in the room behind the door at this moment.
Jeff.
Sure enough, something happened.
Ethan broke out in a cold sweat and immediately awakened the main computer Gina, "Open the door! There is an emergency!"
Samuel didn't know the whole story, but looked at Ethan inexplicably and commanded with a panic expression. In the current unupdated information on Base 18, Ethan's former secretary status has the current highest authority, so Gina obediently unlocked the lounge door. At the moment the door slid open smoothly to the right, a pungent and thick stench seemed to be able to incarnate in a gurgling black air, and the three of them couldn't help but step back. Ethan covered his mouth and nose with his sleeves, and saw the...person lying on the door at a glance?
It was indeed a human figure, but there were countless dense bumps on his bare arms and the skin on the back of his neck, spreading to the inside of his clothes. At first glance, I thought it was goose bumps that were magnified many times, but when I looked closely, I found that the bumps were actually moving, and a small black dot was faintly visible inside, just like a frog egg!
The urge to nausea kept going up in his stomach, and even Samuel had his hair on his back, stiff and afraid to move forward. At this moment, the human figure suddenly raised his head. The face that originally belonged to Jeff is now swollen. A bag that resembles a frog egg squeezes his facial features into shape, and it continues to twitch under his skin.
Looking at that face, Ethan somehow thought of the strange face.
"Help me..." His voice was not the same as before, it was vague as if something was stuck in his throat, and his breath was thick and sticky.
Seeing the other party's painful look, Samuel seemed to want to step forward, but Ethan stretched out his hand to hold him, "It may be contagious."
The priest suddenly raised his head, and looked at Ethan with some cold eyes. This Beta obviously knows something, otherwise he wouldn't be so nervous when he heard that Jeff was behind the door.
Ethan was uncomfortable with that inquisitive gaze, and his guilt grew stronger. If he told what he saw at the time, maybe Jeff could be saved?
The weird bug that can penetrate into the human body, the help message sent from Base 19 before it disappears, the blood infection... these seem to have some profound connections.
Could it have already started?
Thinking of this, Ethan put his body on the wall in a panic, and asked in a slightly trembling voice, "What should I do now?"
"While others are not awake, we have to isolate him immediately. Samuel, go get two sets of our spacesuits. Ethan, go and prepare the medical room!" Tanithel decided in a statement tone. There is no room for negotiation. And Jeff on the ground seemed to have a trace of consciousness. Hearing the words of the priest, the only recognizable eyes showed deep fear, "Don't... save me... uncomfortable! I'm so uncomfortable!"
His voice that seemed to be torn and spliced ​​was goosebumps. Tanithel looked at the nauseously trembling, bubbling hand that he stretched out to him with some kind of compassion, but there was no sign of changing his mind. Jeff could not be considered Samuel's person, so the latter had limited sympathy, and immediately turned and rushed to the hall where they placed the salute.
Ethan called Gina to take him to the medical cabin, which was an absolutely sealed cabin with many isolation and intensive care beds, like rows of translucent coffins lying horizontally in a long, dimly lit space. He was very unfamiliar with this place and had no idea what to do, so he had to tell Gina to call a service robot to help open the cover of a hospital bed and set a series of parameters on the bedside monitor. When filling in the name of the infectious disease, he didn't know what to fill, so he had to input UNKNOWN (unknown). Unexpectedly, the isolation level was automatically adjusted to the highest level after such input. Obviously, the designer of the hospital bed also considered the possibility of unknown situations in the alien.
Before long, Samuel and Tanithel were both wearing spacesuits, and they carried Jeff in together. The human figure is soft and lying, as if completely lost the support of the bones, but still seems to be painful, and the performance is extraordinarily painful. His clothes were soaked with the sticky liquid, many of the exposed bags were torn, and the juice kept dripping on the ground. Ethan hurriedly ordered the service robot to clean up and disinfected it three times.
Jeff, who was put in an isolation bed, suddenly started struggling violently. Samuel almost couldn't hold him, and took off his hand with one foot. At that moment, Ethan saw something black sticking out in Jeff's trousers, and then immediately retracted.
"There is something under the skin!!! Ah!!!" Jeff suddenly let out a scream, and all the pustules on his face suddenly burst at the same time!
No... that's not bursting... but being pushed apart. Countless black ones are similar to the strange bugs, but much smaller things break through the already red and swollen skin, and quickly grow out of those "pustules". Their lower body is still stuck in Jeff's skin, but their upper body is like an earthworm, bending and twisting in the air for a while, as if a layer of gray-black flagella grows on their face.
The disgusting sight of a tough person like Samuel couldn't help but back up a few steps in horror, crashing into an isolation bed behind him, and making a loud noise.
Although Tanithel was more calm than the two of them, he turned pale and quickly let go. Jeff seemed to have lost all of his consciousness suddenly. He was half lying on the isolation bed, his feet still hanging on the ground, and his face was dancing with something that didn't know whether it was a cat or a worm, and it was difficult to tell whether it was alive or dead. His body was still twitching from time to time, and some of the "pustules" on his hands also began to burst. Yellow and black viscous substances leaked from the breach, and similar black things were vaguely visible below.
Tanithel was the first to react. He quickly pushed Jeff's body into the bed and pressed the red button next to the hatch. The three-layer hatches quickly slid up in sequence. Across the three layers of nanoglass, you can still see the growing black thin lines, reminiscent of coral polyps in the deep sea that are constantly dancing with the tide, pattering on the sealing cover, seeming to be politely asking :let me out.
After completing all this, the three of them were relatively speechless for a while. What happened in just half an hour may never be forgotten by them.
They prayed that Jeff was dead. Because compared with the scenes they saw, I am afraid that death is more merciful.