44: Chapter 44 Failures

The urgent red warning light from the system remained on Chen Feng's retina for an entire night.

The next afternoon, when the doors of the secret elevator reserved for Webber slid open silently, Chen Feng was already standing at the entrance waiting.

Webber's physical condition seemed to have deteriorated further since their last meeting. He leaned almost his entire weight on the lawyer, Green, his steps unsteady and his breathing accompanied by a slight wheezing sound. However, his eyes, sunken deep in their sockets, remained as sharp as a hawk's.

"The company's expansion is coming along well." Webber glanced at the brand-new third basement level, which had nearly doubled in size since his last visit, filled with a cold and efficient sense of technology. His praise was concise, devoid of any superfluous emotion.

Chen Feng did not respond but simply made a "please" gesture, leading him into a newly completed, signal-shielded conference room.

Once the door closed, Green helped Webber sit in the main seat and then retreated to the wall like a loyal shadow, his face written with tension.

"The Federation's dogs haven't just caught a scent of your place." Webber got straight to the point, his voice dry yet every word clear. "Early this morning, three of my offshore foundations simultaneously received joint audit notices from the tax department."

Chen Feng's eyelid twitched.

This move was ruthless enough.

Instead of acting directly against Webber himself, they started with his wallet. No matter how secretly the old man operated, the flow of funds would always leave traces. As long as they followed the money, linking him to the Umbrella Corporation was only a matter of time.

"They want to dig me out from the shadows and put me on the table." Webber's withered fingers tapped lightly on the smooth conference table. "I don't care about my reputation, but I cannot let anyone or anything interrupt 'Eternal'."

As he said this, a nearly paranoid, fierce glint appeared in his cloudy eyes for the first time. It was a madness born from an extreme fear of death, a desire to crush all obstacles.

"I need more 'tools'." Webber looked at Chen Feng. "But this time, it's not for cleaning up the trash at home."

He paused for a moment, appearing to organize his words, or perhaps weighing a crazy idea.

"I want to create an 'accident'." Webber's voice dropped even lower. "An accident large enough to divert the attention of all Federation departments and everyone else away from us."

The conference room was terrifyingly quiet, with only the faint hum of the ventilation system.

Webber's gaze fell on Chen Feng, as if scrutinizing a piece of merchandise. "Those two little pets you sold me... in the process of creating them, there must have been failures, right?"

He asked very directly.

"What do the scraps look like?"

Chen Feng locked eyes with him for a full three seconds before standing up.

"Follow me."

He didn't ask further questions; he had long anticipated Webber's cold and pragmatic personality. Some things were more persuasive when seen with one's own eyes than through any words.

He led Webber and the pale-faced Green through a long corridor made of pure white alloy, finally stopping in front of a massive isolation observation room at the deepest part of Level B3.

On the wall of this observation room, numbers were marked in red font: S-04 & S-05.

Chen Feng pressed a button on the wall control panel.

Vrrr—

A thirty-centimeter-thick titanium alloy gate slowly rose, revealing an exaggeratedly thick layer of bulletproof glass behind it.

On the other side of the glass were two "people."

Their skin displayed an unhealthy grayish-white color, and the dark blue-black veins beneath the skin bulged like earthworms, knotted together. Their eyeballs were completely cloudy, turned a milky white, and viscous liquid constantly dripped from the corners of their mouths.

They had lost all characteristics of higher intelligent beings, leaving only the most primitive instincts. At this moment, they were using their ragged, blackened fingernails to mechanically scratch the bulletproof glass in front of them over and over again.

Screee... Screee...

The sound wasn't loud, but it felt like it was scraping directly against one's eardrums, making the scalp tingle.

They seemed to sense movement outside and stopped their actions, looking in Webber's direction in unison. Low growls issued from their throats as their mouths opened and closed unconsciously, as if tearing at something invisible.

Green, the lawyer following behind, took only one look before abruptly turning his head away, his stomach churning. He had seen the horror of a Licker piercing through steel plates, but the scene before him brought a different, deeper level of disgust and fear rooted in biological instinct.

"My god..." he couldn't help but whisper, "What on earth are these things?"

"We classify them as 'Failed Transformants'," Chen Feng's voice was calm without a hint of emotion. "When the T-Virus is injected directly into a human body, there is a very high probability of severe rejection. The result is what you see here: massive necrosis of dermal tissue, atrophy of the cerebral cortex, with only the most basic brainstem functions remaining to drive the most primitive eating instincts."

He paused, adding a personalized definition.

"Personally, I am used to calling them 'Zombies'."

He glanced again at the two monsters behind the glass and added, "The success rate for directional induction into biological weapons like 'Tyrants' or 'Lickers' is extremely low. This," he pointed inside, "this is the most likely normal state under T-Virus modification."

Webber remained silent throughout.

He just stared fixedly at the two "failures" behind the glass, his aging body trembling slightly from standing too long, but his gaze was terrifyingly steady.

He watched for a full ten seconds or so before slowly speaking, asking the most crucial question.

"What... are their characteristics?"

Chen Feng was taken aback; he had a faint, ominous premonition.

"The essence of the T-Virus is a retrovirus," Chen Feng's voice wasn't loud, but it echoed clearly in the empty corridor. "It is transmitted through bodily fluids. If bitten or scratched by them, as long as the wound comes into contact with saliva or blood containing the virus, transformation will be completed within half an hour."

He turned his head and looked directly into Webber's cloudy eyes, saying word for word:

"There is a over ninety-nine percent chance of becoming one of them. Because the rejection reaction from a natural infection is far more violent than a directional injection in a laboratory."

No sooner had he finished speaking.

Bang—!

A loud crash!

Subject S-04 behind the glass suddenly lunged forward without warning, slamming its head hard against the fifteen-centimeter-thick bulletproof glass!

The massive impact caused the entire wall to shake. Green let out a startled cry and retreated several steps in succession.

Webber also instinctively took a step back, but the expression on his face was not one of fear.

Not only was there no fear in his cloudy eyes, but instead, a dangerous and excited light, like that of discovering a new continent, lit up.

He looked at the monster slamming its head against the glass with more foul-smelling slime flowing from its mouth, then turned to look at Chen Feng.

Heh...

A dry, hoarse laugh squeezed out of his throat.

"I've thought of a way, Chen."