47: Chapter 47 In the Name of the Plague

Once Pandora's box is opened, what is released is no longer a surprise, but a calamity.

Day broke.

Before the morning light in New Jersey could dissipate the night's chill, a silent plague had already quietly crossed the walls of the Prometheus base.

In the three minutes before the base's highest alarm sounded and the alloy airtight doors fully descended, three security personnel with minor scratches, relying on their familiarity with the terrain, drove a patrol pickup truck out of a side gate that had not yet been completely sealed.

Their only thought at the time was to escape that place which had turned into hell.

One of them stopped the car at a 24-hour gas station two kilometers from the base, saying he was going to buy water. He wobbled into the convenience store and then collapsed straight down in front of the checkout counter.

"Hey, buddy, are you okay?" The gas station clerk was just about to step forward to help when the fallen man suddenly sprang up and bit him on the neck.

At the same time, another security guard waiting in the pickup truck also turned; he lunged at his only remaining companion in the driver's seat. The shrill screams were blocked by the car windows, eventually turning into dull sounds of biting.

A truck driver who had just finished refueling witnessed the bloody scene in the convenience store. In terror, he shifted gears and stepped on the gas, trying to escape. But he didn't notice that when he got out of the car to stretch just now, he had been scratched on the arm by a "madman" who rushed out from a dark corner.

The truck hadn't driven even four hundred meters before the driver's vision went black, and the massive front of the vehicle crashed straight into a roadside lamppost.

A few early-rising passersby gathered around, attempting to drag the unconscious driver out of the mangled cab.

As they struggled to pull open the door, the driver "woke up."

At 9:00 AM, the New Jersey State Police 911 dispatch center received eleven emergency calls within half an hour. The contents were bizarre, ranging from "rabies outbreaks" and "mass brawls" to "cultists eating people in the street." Without exception, the locations were all concentrated within a radius of nearly four kilometers from the Prometheus research and development base.

The first to arrive at the scene were two state troopers, Patrick and his partner. They had just set up a cordon at that gas station when the bitten clerk from the convenience store wobbled out, appearing along with two other "people" draped in flesh and blood.

"Freeze! Put your hands up!" Patrick drew his pistol and shouted a warning.

His response was three roars that didn't sound human.

Patrick pulled the trigger, and the bullet accurately hit the chest of the "person" in front. The other party only swayed for a moment and continued to approach with stiff steps.

"The head! Patrick! Shoot them in the head!" His partner's roar snapped him back to his senses.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The three "corpses" fell, but Patrick's partner let out a scream. A fourth infected person—the original truck driver—had somehow circled behind the police car and bit his partner on the shoulder.

Patrick emptied the rest of his bullets like a madman, then desperately dragged his partner into the car, slammed on the gas to reverse, the tires screeching as they left black circles on the ground.

He grabbed the radio microphone in the car and, with a hoarse and trembling voice, shouted the words to the entire New Jersey law enforcement system that would go down in history:

"Dispatch, this is headquarters! We are under attack! Repeat, we are under attack! The targets... the targets aren't human! They can get back up after being knocked down! They're eating people! Requesting backup! Requesting heavy fire support! We need the military here!"

...

At noon.

A joint rapid response team from the CDC and the FBI cordoned off the scene. A four-kilometer isolation zone was quickly established, and heavily armed National Guard troops marched in; the systematic cleanup began.

Most of the infected were slow-moving and posed no threat under the fire of automatic rifles.

That is, until a team of FBI agents, while pursuing a lone infected person, broke into an abandoned warehouse.

"Target has entered the second floor. Search carefully," the captain gestured.

The team members slowly went upstairs in a tactical formation; everything around them was deathly silent.

Suddenly, a rustling crawling sound came from the ceiling.

"There's something up there!" An agent had just looked up when a dark red shadow pounced down like lightning from the overhead pipes!

The thing had no eyes, its skin looked as if it had been entirely peeled off, muscle fibers and blood vessels were exposed, its massive mouth split back to its ears, and its sharp claws left afterimages in the air.

"What is that?!" a young agent cried out, but those were already his last words.

The monster landed silently, its long tongue shooting out like a spear, instantly piercing through his tactical helmet. Then, with speed exceeding the limits of human reaction, it began a massacre in the cramped space.

Gunfire, screams, and the sound of cracking bones blended together.

Five minutes later, when the backup units arrived, they only saw severed limbs and broken arms scattered across the floor, and that monster using its tongue to reel an agent's corpse up to the ceiling.

This encounter resulted in four dead and two seriously injured, and it also gave the federal high-level officials their first direct realization that the danger level of this incident far exceeded their imagination.

Meanwhile, inside the Prometheus base.

Federal biohazard experts and digital forensics teams took over everything.

In the main aerosol ventilation system's filtration unit for Sector B, they successfully detected high concentrations of unknown retrovirus particles. The conclusion of the preliminary analysis report was: "Unknown source, complex structure, highly likely to be a synthetically engineered biological agent."

An even more fatal blow came from the servers.

Although the base manager, Rodney, had initiated an emergency formatting program before his death, the FBI's top digital forensics team still managed to recover some key data from the daily backup tapes.

It was a secret project document named "MK-7."

The document detailed the entire process of the Maida Group bypassing FDA regulations over the past three years, using violent felons as involuntary test subjects for illegal genetic modification experiments. The experimental content, data, failed cases... everything was detailed to a horrifying degree.

These pieces of evidence, forged by Weber's top intelligence personnel, were of such high quality that they were sufficient to pass the federal preliminary identification.

A perfect chain of evidence was formed: to develop a clandestine project, the Maida Group created a dangerous biological virus and then lost control of it in their own laboratory.

New York, Maida Group Headquarters, top-floor CEO office.

Within an hour, Victor Hamon received three phone calls and an email.

The first call was from the Department of Justice, notifying him that the Maida Group would be formally investigated for suspected endangerment of national security and crimes against humanity.

The second call was from the SEC, informing them that an emergency investigation would be launched into the Maida Group, and the stock had been forced to suspend trading before the opening bell.

The third call was from a senior reporter at the Wall Street Journal, asking for his comment on the "Prometheus biohazard leak."

Finally, there was an email from the House Health Committee, notifying him that the hearing regarding the Umbrella Corporation originally scheduled for two weeks later was canceled, replaced by an emergency inquiry session targeting the Maida Group.

Hamon looked at the email, shaking with rage. He suddenly grabbed the custom satellite phone on his desk and hurled it violently at the expensive floor-to-ceiling window.

"Blake!" he roared into the office communication system. "Find out! Find out exactly who did this! I'm going to tear them into ten thousand pieces!"

The voice of his private security chief, Blake, came through the intercom, but it carried an unprecedented gravity: "Sir... I'm afraid we have even more troublesome news."

"What could be more troublesome than this!"

"The FBI... they're already in the lobby downstairs. They... they have a search warrant."

...

Los Angeles, Umbrella Corporation, Basement Level 5 Main Control Room.

Chen Feng stood before a massive holographic map. On the screen, CNN's breaking news was looping scenes of the chaos in New Jersey, with a bold headline reading "Maida Group Lab Leak, New Jersey Enters State of Emergency."

On the system panel beside him, the data had stabilized.

[T-Virus Spread Monitoring Module]

[Current Infection Source: New Jersey, Coordinates 40.7°N/74.2°W]

[Infected Count: 163 (Growth Halted)]

[Spread Radius: 3.7 km (Stabilized)]

[Threat Level: Downgraded from "Regional" to "Controllable"]

That old fellow Weber really has incredible means. He said it would be controlled within five kilometers, and it really was, even better than expected.

All of the federal government's attention, just as Weber promised, was like a sudden tsunami, crashing down on the Maida Group with thunderous force.

Victor Hamon probably never imagined in his wildest dreams that the tactics he used against others would now be returned to him in full, or even doubled.

This play of 'driving the tiger to swallow the wolf'—no, it should be called 'playing with fire and getting burned'—was even more spectacular than he had anticipated.

Chen Feng picked up his coffee, a wave of satisfaction washing over him.

However, that crimson warning about the virus mutation still lay quietly in the corner of the data stream, like a tiny but unignorable thorn.

He knew this was only the beginning.

The true plague had only just received its name.