86: Chapter 86 Ouroboros

"Redirect the satellite."

Marcus didn't waste any time, accessing the real-time signal of a commercial high-resolution satellite within fifteen seconds.

The moment the image appeared, Chen Feng's breath hitched.

The entire processing plant had disappeared.

It wasn't just blown up; it had been wiped from the face of the earth. With the explosion point as the center, everything within a radius of about one hundred and fifty meters had turned into debris and flames. A column of smoke rose straight into the night sky, and the thermal imaging screen was a blinding white.

"B-05-03's last coordinates... were at the outer wall of the cold storage area, about forty meters from the center of the explosion." Marcus's voice was steady, but his speaking speed had clearly increased.

Chen Feng's gaze was fixed on the satellite image, his fingers unconsciously tapping on the table. The system panel was still hanging in the corner of his vision, a red warning flashing continuously.

["Sarah Mitchell's" vital signs are continuing to drop.]

"Let's go."

Chen Feng stood up.

Marcus was stunned for a moment. "Where to?"

"The hospital."

Chen Feng pulled a silver-white cryogenic briefcase from a hidden cabinet on the wall, entered the password, flipped open the lid to confirm the contents, closed it, and headed toward the elevator.

Marcus followed him. "She might already be—"

"Shut up and follow me. We don't have time."

The elevator doors closed.

Chen Feng glanced down at the briefcase.

The cooling module inside the case was running, its blue indicator light glowing. A syringe was secured in the shock-absorbing slot in the center, filled with a pure black, viscous liquid that shimmered with an irregular luster under the light.

The system panel automatically popped up information about the agent.

[Ouroboros Virus (Prototype-α)]

[Status: Extremely Unstable]

[Fusion Success Rate with Host: <10%]

[Failure Outcome: Irreversible Genetic Collapse, Death]

Chen Feng closed the case.

The elevator reached the ground floor. He strode toward the garage while Marcus made calls in the background to mobilize people.

"Which hospital is the closest?"

"St. Mary's," Marcus said. "Most emergency cases from the Port Area go there."

"Drive."

—

Chen Feng received a call from Tony on the way.

Word had already spread. An explosion in the Port Area, a SWAT team ambushed, heavy casualties. On the live broadcasts of various news channels, the National Guard and fire trucks were sealing off the scene.

"The National Guard pulled seven people out of the ruins after arriving," Tony's voice was urgent. "Five were confirmed dead on the spot... no, it's just been updated, six. Only two still have vital signs; one is Sarah Mitchell, and the other is a young officer."

"What about Nemesis?"

"It evacuated before friendly forces arrived. B-05-03 is moving toward the eastern waters of the port with injuries, and B-05-02 has also left the battlefield. No one saw them."

Chen Feng breathed a slight sigh of relief. It wasn't time for Nemesis to be seen by the public yet.

"Did anyone catch anything on camera?"

"No. The explosion fried all electronic equipment within a two-hundred-meter radius, and the only three nearby surveillance cameras were also destroyed."

"Good."

Chen Feng hung up.

The car sped through the late-night streets of Los Angeles at 140 mph. Marcus drove like he was—steady, but incredibly fast.

Fourteen minutes later, at the St. Marys Hospital emergency entrance.

When Chen Feng got out of the car with the cryogenic case, the emergency hall was already in a state of chaos.

The lights from the news vans lit up the entrance like day, and reporters were being kept behind the police line by security guards. Several police cars were parked haphazardly on the roadside, their sirens still flashing. A group of uniformed officers crowded the corridor; some were on the phone, while others leaned against the wall with red eyes, staring blankly.

Chen Feng recognized several faces among them; they were people from the South District Precinct.

He carried the case through the crowd, and no one noticed him. Everyone's attention was on the emergency room.

Then, he heard crying.

It wasn't a loud wail, but the kind of suppressed, intermittent sobbing that suggested someone had cried until they could barely breathe.

At the entrance of the emergency room, Karen Mitchell was holding someone, her body leaning heavily against the wall, her legs trembling. The person she was holding was Amy.

Amy's face was buried in her mother's shoulder, her whole body curled into a ball and shivering.

Chen Feng stopped in his tracks.

Amy probably heard his footsteps and looked up.

Her eyes were so swollen she could hardly open them.

"B... Boss?"

Her voice was completely hoarse, as if her throat had been ruined by crying. The moment she saw Chen Feng, the expression on her face—

Chen Feng would never forget that expression for the rest of his life.

It wasn't hope, but the instinctive reaction of a drowning person seeing a piece of driftwood. She had already given up hope, but she was still desperately trying to grab on.

Amy broke free from Karen's embrace and rushed over, her hands tightly clutching the edge of Chen Feng's coat.

"Save her..."

Her voice was so low it was almost inaudible.

"Please, you can do anything, right? You can make any medicine—please save my sister..."

Chen Feng looked down at Amy's hands clutching his coat. Her knuckles were white, and her nails were digging into the fabric of his coat.

"Where is Sarah?"

"Inside..." Karen's voice was also trembling. "The doctor said... said her internal organs are extensively ruptured, and she's lost too much blood... at most, she has..."

She couldn't go on.

Chen Feng walked past them to the emergency room door.

The door was closed, but through the glass, he could see the medical staff inside in a flurry of activity.

A gray-haired emergency doctor pushed the door open from the inside and spoke a few words to a police officer who looked like a commander waiting at the door. Chen Feng only heard the last two sentences.

"...Prepare for the end. Ten minutes, at most."

The officer's body swayed.

Chen Feng walked over.

"I'm going in."

The emergency doctor glanced at him. "Are you family?"

"Sort of."

The doctor frowned. "Sir, the patient's injuries—"

"I know her injuries. A penetrating abdominal wound, multiple ruptured internal organs, and blood loss exceeding forty percent of her total body volume."

The doctor was stunned by these words. He stared at Chen Feng's face for two seconds.

"You are..."

"Umbrella Bio-Pharmaceutical, Chen Feng."

When he stated his name, several police officers nearby turned their heads simultaneously. Some recognized the name.

The emergency doctor opened his mouth, but Chen Feng didn't intend to say any more to him.

He glanced back at Marcus.

"Clear the room."

Marcus nodded and gestured, and then the four Umbrella security personnel who had followed him in began to carry out the order.

They were very professional. No pushing, no arguing; they just stood in their positions and used their eyes to tell everyone who approached—you can try ignoring the consequences.

The medical staff were "invited" out. The emergency doctor was still struggling. "You can't do this—"

"Give me ten minutes," Chen Feng said. "Just ten minutes."

—

Only two people remained in the emergency room.

The sound of the monitor was overly clear in Chen Feng's ears. Beep—beep—beep—the interval between each beep was lengthening.

Sarah lay on the hospital bed, covered by a green surgical sheet soaked in blood. Her abdomen was a horrific mess of gauze and hemostatic clips, but blood was still seeping out, though much slower—not because it had stopped, but because she was almost drained dry.

Her face was as white as a corpse. Her lips were colorless. A ventilator was breathing for her, but the rise and fall of her chest was so slight it seemed like it could stop at any moment.

Chen Feng walked to the bedside and stood for a few seconds.

He knew what had happened. Nemesis had tried its best to protect her, but the explosion's shockwave had sent a twisted steel bar flying. The moment Sarah regained consciousness, she had pushed the young officer beside her away, and then the steel bar had pierced her abdomen.

She had saved someone else.

And then she had doomed herself.

That was just the kind of person she was. Stubborn to a fault.

Chen Feng knelt down and opened the briefcase.

The black syringe lay quietly in the cooling slot.

The system panel expanded in his field of vision.

[Ouroboros Virus (Prototype-α)]

[Fusion Success Rate: <10%]

[Failure Outcome: Irreversible Genetic Collapse, Death]

Ten percent.

Less than ten percent.

But if he didn't give her this shot, the success rate was zero percent.

Chen Feng reached out and took the syringe. The black liquid swayed slightly inside the tube, unnaturally viscous.

He walked to Sarah's side and removed the oxygen mask.

Without the mask in the way, he saw her current face clearly for the first time from such a close distance. Specks of blood still clung to her eyelashes. There was a new wound at the corner of her left eyebrow. Her blonde hair was scattered messily on the pillow, completely different from that night when he had helped her tidy it.

The interval on the monitor lengthened again.

Beep—

—Beep—

Chen Feng pulled off the safety cap of the syringe.

"Sarah."

He called her name. His voice was not loud, just as casual as when he usually spoke to her.

No response. Of course, there wouldn't be a response.

"If you can hear me, I'm telling you in advance." Chen Feng pressed one hand over her left chest, finding the point of her heartbeat. It was very weak.

"Once this shot is administered, you'll either become one of the most special people in this world, or—"

He didn't finish the sentence.

"Forget it, there's no point in telling you this. You never listen to me anyway."

Chen Feng's hand holding the syringe was steady.

He looked at Sarah's face, suddenly thought of something, and his lips curled slightly.

"Last time you said 'goodnight,' I didn't have time to respond to you."

"So you have to live, otherwise I'll lose this round."

He aimed the needle at the major artery.

Chen Feng did not hesitate.

From the moment he decided to leave with this case, he had already finished all his internal struggles.

He plunged the needle in.

The black liquid was pushed into Sarah's heart.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

At the fourth second, the line on the monitor, which had been getting flatter and flatter, changed violently.

The heart rate shot from thirty-two beats per minute straight to one hundred and eighty. Then two hundred. Two hundred and forty.

It wasn't a normal heartbeat waveform, but completely disordered, sawtooth-like peaks.

The alarm began to shriek.

Sarah's body suddenly arched, as if a massive electric current was spreading from her heart to her limbs. Her fingers twitched and grabbed the bedsheet, her nails tearing several gashes in the fabric.

The wounds on her neck, arms, and abdomen began to change simultaneously—at a speed visible to the naked eye, the muscle tissue at the edges of the wounds writhed, as if something was spreading, rewriting, and rebuilding inside her.

But at the same time, patches of black networks began to appear on the surface of her skin, like ink spreading on rice paper, creeping from the injection site to her entire body.

The system panel's data flickered frantically.

[Ouroboros Virus injecting... Host genetic sequence is being rewritten...]

[Fusion Progress: 3%...7%...11%...]

[Warning: Host genetic rejection is severe, cell collapse rate at 17%...]

Urgent pounding came from the door.

"What's happening in there! Open the door!"

Chen Feng didn't look back.

He stared at Sarah's face.

The black networks were climbing up her neck.

Her lips moved slightly, emitting a syllable that Chen Feng couldn't hear clearly.

Then—

The monitor went black.

All the lights in the emergency room flickered simultaneously.

Chen Feng stood by the bed, the empty syringe from the briefcase still in his hand, watching the black patterns on Sarah's body spread at a speed visible to the naked eye.

On the system panel, the fusion progress numbers were still jumping.

[14%...18%...21%...]

But immediately after, another line of red text popped up.

[Cell Collapse Rate: 22%... Rising...]

The two numbers were in a race.

Whichever reached the finish line first—the fusion rate or the collapse rate—would determine the outcome.

Chen Feng put the syringe back into the case and closed the lid.

Then he pulled over a chair and sat down by Sarah's hospital bed.

There was nothing more he could do.

What happened next was entirely up to her.