Chapter 60 - Doom (6)

The sleeping Adam was taken away and Zhang Xun was also sent back to his cell. Soon after, a doctor was suddenly escorted into the cell, gave Zhang Xun a fever-reducing injection and bandaged the wounds on his wrist, face and forehead.

Zhang Xun slept for a long time and when he woke up, he felt that the headache that had been tormenting him had eased a lot. He wrapped himself in the damp sheets, looked up at the old rust-covered pipes above his head and thought about his future with Adam.

If they really had a future.

The Round Table had specially sent a doctor to treat him, indicating that his threat had worked. They were worried that only Zhang Xun had the ability to wake Adam, so he could not be allowed to die. Now the Round Table should be looking for all the Lab mechanics and making them find a way to bypass his blockade and wake up Adam.

Although Zhang Xun was very confident in his designs, no one could guarantee 100% that there wouldn't be a new mechanic with more talent than him who hadn't emerged yet who could find the loopholes he might have missed, and could bypass the various restrictions he had set. He could only pray, pray that he was still the best, the only mechanic qualified to control Adam.

But was he really still in control?

Adam had saved them, saved everyone, but at the same time, no one knew what Adam had communicated with Eden in that less than a minute time. How did Adam take control from Eden? Could Eden's complex neural network, which has been evolving itself for two hundred years, also have loopholes?

A faint worry, like eternal white noise, reverberated in his mind.

Another day passed and there was still no news from the Round Table.

On the third day, the door opened. A tall doctor wearing a medical mask and a white coat walked in to help him change his dressing. Zhang Xun was still curled up on the dirty and cramped bed and got up in a drowsy manner, without raising his head to look closely at anyone.

Until he heard a muffled groan and the sound of something heavy falling to the ground.

He looked up, only to see two guards lying on the ground. The tall doctor gently closed the door of the cell, then tore off his mask, revealing a handsome and unruly face.

"James?! Why are you here?!" Zhang Xun's eyes widened.

James carefully listened for movements outside the door and then came to Zhang Xun to sit down and carefully checked the injury on his forehead, "How are you?"

"I'm much better. What are you doing?! Do you want to die?!"

"I've come to take you away," James said and took out a guard's uniform from the first aid kit he carried, "I've cleared the way, we can leave from a drain on the other side of Lost Lake and go northwest near the town of Wood Creek, then someone will take us to the port and from there we can mingle into a cargo ship all the way to the refugee country of New Zealand."

James's words were quick, as if trying to save every single second. Zhang Xun's head was in turmoil and he asked with difficulty, "You want to... escape with me? Where's Adam?"

James paused slightly, raised his head and looked at him with deep, sad and worried eyes, "Don't worry about Adam. I heard that there's a new mechanic who has successfully passed his evaluations and it seems very likely that he can bypass your device and wake Adam up."

Zhang Xun's heartbeat seemed to stop for a moment and his mind went blank.

The thing he had worried about most had happened. He had overestimated his ability and had underestimated the potential of a rising star.

There was only one Adam, but there was never only one mechanic.

"Once he succeeds in cracking it, the Round Table won't keep you. The Sixth Chief won't keep you. We must leave now." James said, stuffing his clothes into his arms, "Now is the best chance to go, while the Round Table's attention is focused on Adam"

Zhang Xun looked at him, but shook his head, "No. I can't go."

James suddenly couldn't hold back his emotions that Zhang Xun never knew were there, glaring at him almost fiercely and growled, "Why?! Don't you think you've sunk deep enough in this muddy water?! Adam will be fine! The Round Table won't dare to hurt him! But once you no longer have any use or value, the Round Table will never be lenient. What's more, they want to use this opportunity to replace Commander Zhang Shuo! What are you hesitating about?!"

"I can't go with you! You have nothing to do with this, I can't put you in harm's way!" Zhang Xun met James' anxious eyes resolutely, "If you leave Lost Paradise, you will always be a fugitive, forever ruined! You have to get out of here immediately!"

"Don't be stupid! Don't think I won't knock you out and take you out!" James said threateningly, "Hurry up and change your clothes."

"I said, I'm not going." Zhang Xun looked at him calmly, "Thank you James. But I took a gamble and I lost, I have to accept it."

"Just for Adam? Are you willing to die for that artificial intelligence? Are you controlling him or is he controlling you?" James stared at him in disbelief, as if looking at a lunatic, "What the hell do you hope to get from him?!"

James stood up suddenly, grabbed Zhang Xun's wrist and pulled him up, pulling him towards the door. Zhang Xun struggled but his tone remained calm, "You know we can't escape like this. The time has passed for the doctor to change the bandages for me and someone will come soon."

James looked at the watch on his wrist. He knew that what Zhang Xun said was right. He cursed, "You really want to die this badly?!"

"It's not certain that I'll die. You have to protect yourself. In the end, my father and I may depend on you to survive." Zhang Xun covered his other hand over James' hand that was holding his wrist, "Jamie, listen to me this once, leave now and protect yourself!"

James stared at him reluctantly, but after all, the time had passed. He cursed in frustration, opened the door and ran away.

The next few days were getting harder to bear and he waited every day to hear that a new mechanic had replaced him, but as the days passed, there was still not even a whisper.

Then, one clear morning, an invisible drone flew over Lost Paradise and dropped a bio-bomb in the unrepaired breach in the Fifth District.

Most of the people in the Fifth District had been evacuated, so the explosion caused no casualties, but a strange, yellow smoke with a pungent smell gradually and silently dispersed in the air along with the excessive radiation in the Fifth District. It quickly passed through the temporary isolation made of radiation-proof materials around the Fifth District and began to spread towards the adjacent Fourth and Sixth Districts. The people who first came into contact with the strange yellow mist didn't have any special symptoms at first, but within three hours, a yellowish liquid would begin to ooze out of their eyes, ears, nose and even the pores on their skin, and their minds would start to become distracted and extremely photophobic, almost like the symptoms of rabies. That pale, yellow liquid was extremely contagious and it seemed that just touching them brought the risk of being infected.

Bioweapons...

Eden had never used such a thing before.

Was this Pandora's Box opened to infect Adam who had a human body?

Because the mucus secreted by the patient's body had a honey-like, golden yellow colour, it was also known as the Honey Plague. With the Fifth District as a centre point, it quickly spread to the Fourth and Sixth Districts and the hospitals in each district were suddenly crowded with patients who started to show symptoms. But the doctors didn't know if it was a virus or something else and it would take a lot of time to research a vaccine.

The problem was they didn't have time. Eden had calculated that it wouldn't be difficult for the plague to spread in their relatively closed environment. When it thought that the garbage was almost cleaned up, it would come again with a large army.

These were all things Zhang Xun learned about later. All he knew was that one day he was suddenly taken out of the prison and sent all the way to the outside of the Round Table's grand gate.

In the parliamentary hall, there were only five Chiefs present and the Sixth Chief was sat next to the vacant Fifth Chief's seat, staring at Zhang Xun with an extremely suppressed and dark look.

"The Honey Plague, how much do you know about it?" asked the First Chief.

Zhang Xun shook his head that he didn't know, so a clerk quickly explained what had happened in the past two days.

Zhang Xun was stunned and kept feeling that Eden's strategy seemed to have changed to some extent. Cruel and inefficient weapons like bioweapons were not Eden's style.

And at this point in time...it seemed a little suspicious...was he thinking too much?

"Every day, more people are becoming infected and the wards of major hospitals are full... Its speed is astonishingly fast. Coupled with the recent siege... people in other areas have begun to panic and riot, trying to forcefully escape from Lost Paradise. We need Adam to produce a vaccine as quickly as possible. Based on the time frame, he must have participated in the research of this weapon." The First Chief said in the gentlest voice possible, "Zhang Xun, wake Adam up."

It seemed that genius mechanic wasn't quick enough...

Zhang Xun maintained his calm expression, staring at the Sixth Chief. He knew that making demands at such a time was a bit unbearable, but this was the only way to force the Round Table to accept his conditions.

"I can wake him up at any time. You should all be clear about my conditions." Zhang Xun stared at the Sixth Chief, "Give me autonomy over the Lab and write it into a decree, it's a simple request."

"Using the lives of your compatriots to blackmail the Round Table, Zhang Xun, you are a disgrace to mankind." The Sixth Chief's voice was arrogant and cold, like a Pope who judges the world from above.

There was a dull pain in Zhang Xun's heart, as if his soul was indeed rotting a little bit like the Sixth Chief had said. But he had already learned to keep his cool, to separate his emotions from his appearance.

"For today, all I need is a signature on a written document, you don't need to formally revise it right now. As long as you sign it, I will wake up Adam immediately." Zhang Xun said calmly, as if he wasn't affected by those contemptuous words and faces.

After a short silence, the Sixth Chief finally leaned back in his chair and said lightly, "Okay, you want a certain degree of autonomy for the Lab, then I'll give it to you."