Chapter 11
382words
"Use this!" Lila dragged out an ethylene oxide canister. Kay wedged it into the door crack, and Buck shot it point-blank.
BOOM!
The blast wave hurled them backward. The iron door blew open, revealing a scene that stole their breath—not an armory, but a prison.
Dozens of rusted alloy cages lined the room, broken restraints scattered inside them. Walls bore desperate scratch marks, and dried black bloodstains covered the floor. In the deepest cage, a skeleton clutched half a journal.
Lila picked up the journal. Scrawled across yellowed pages:
【...serum experiment failed, symbiote consumed host...they use humans as breeding grounds...】
Buck suddenly collapsed to his knees, blood spurting from his prosthetic interface. "Amy..." he stared at the girl. "She's not the antibody..."
Kay's eyes widened with realization. He looked at Amy, who backed away in fear, yet uncontrollably dripped glistening saliva from the corner of her mouth.
"She's a blood feeder," Kay said coldly. "The fungus uses her blood to cultivate stronger spores."
The journal's final page had been torn out, leaving only half a line: 【The only antidote is in...】
"In the Ark!" Lila suddenly screamed. She rushed toward the cricket breeding box—those insects that consumed fungal toxins now had shells gleaming with the same crystalline light as Amy's saliva!
Buck, however, raised his 1911 at Kay's head. "Give me the journal."
"Why?" Kay gripped the cutting torch tightly.
"Because I have the last page!" Buck snarled, ripping open his shirt to reveal an incomplete biohazard symbol tattooed on his chest. "When I escaped... I took it with me!"
He pulled out a charred yellow page with a formula written in blood: [Cricket enzyme + Neodymium magnet = Spore inhibitor]
CRACK!
The bullet grazed Kay's cheek and struck the fungal filaments behind him. The golden hyphae recoiled like wounded snakes into darkness.
"You missed," Kay said.
Buck laughed grimly. "I was aiming at what was behind you." His prosthetic limb suddenly began smoking—fungi invaded his body from the connection point!
"No time!" Lila dumped crickets onto the neodymium magnet array. The moment insects touched magnets, blinding sparks erupted from their exoskeletons!
Amy suddenly unleashed an inhuman shriek. Golden filaments in her eyes rapidly expanded as she lunged toward the magnet array!
