Chapter 131: An Unexpected Discovery
I stood on the command deck of the Shaahnex and looked at all the dead bodies around me.
When we boarded the ship, there was some resistance from the Dryadalis’ who had managed to put on space suits before they ran out of air. However, the team that Midnight brought with him quickly eliminated the threat. They were now scouring the ship for anything good.
"You don’t have to be here. You can leave this to me and my men," growled Midnight from where he stood just behind my left shoulder. "This isn’t the first ship we have scavenged."
I let out a mirthless chuckle. "One thing you are going to need to learn about me is that I like to do everything myself. Sometimes, it is the only way to make sure that things are done properly," I said, looking up at the towering creature.
At 5’2", I had never experienced what it was like being the tallest person in a room, but I was not always the smallest either. However, standing with Midnight like this made me feel practically dainty. I can’t say I didn’t like the feeling.
"Very true," he grunted, and I knew that he understood what I was trying to say.
"Besides, I don’t want to owe you any more than I absolutely have to," I continued with a smirk as I looked up at him.
"You don’t owe me a thing, Little one," he said, wrapping a large arm around my chest and shoulders. I leaned back into his embrace and sighed. I think this is the first time I have ever been touched in my life where I didn’t feel like my skin was getting flayed off with a dull knife.
It was a weird feeling, experiencing excruciating pain every time someone would touch me; I would fully admit that. Even my adoptive parents couldn’t hold me as a baby. My psychologist thinks that that might have also played a part in my lack of emotional development.
For the most part, I could ignore the pain, like what happened when my neighbor kidnapped me that time, but I was only able to turn it off for a short time. After that, the pain was that much worse.
No, being in Midnight’s embrace was... nice.
We stood in silence, watching the team spread through the ship on the monitors in front of us. I wanted to say that things were going smoothly, but I knew that as soon as I did, shit would hit the fan. I think it was a rule of some kind or other.
"Sir," came a growled voice over the speakers. Jun Li, still in complete control of all of the ship’s systems, patched through the transmission to the bridge without me having to ask for it. "You might want to come see this," the male continued.
Apparently, all it took was me thinking that things were going smoothly to send things spiraling down. Now, let’s hope that his surprise was a good one and not a bad one.
Midnight growled something in return and then proceeded to escort me off the bridge and down several levels to a floor that I could identify just by the smell.
Fucking medical.
Midnight placed his hand on my lower back and waited to see what I was going to do. Pushing back the images of the last time I was unlucky enough to smell this particular scent, I strolled forward as if nothing was wrong.
"Report," said Midnight as we approached the only door that had a wolf guarding the outside.
"I—" started the soldier, only to stop and shake his head. "I have no idea what they were thinking."
I skirted around the soldier and walked into the cold, sterile medical room. It looked like a pretty standard medical room, the white walls and the overly bright lights flooding the place. However, what was unique was the organs that were lined up along the back wall, and I could even see a few limbs tossed haphazardly into a corner, the bright red blood a striking counterpoint to the white. Maybe the room wasn’t as sterile as I had originally thought.
There was a body still strapped to the table, but its chest cavity was carved open, and the ribs were sticking up through the blood and tissue, stark white against the reddish-purple of the inner muscles.
I looked inside the cavity and saw that it was completely empty. That meant all of the internal organs along the wall belonged to it... her.
"What the fuck happened here?" demanded Midnight as he followed in a few moments after me.
"Experimentation," I said with a shrug of my shoulders. Going to the section of the wall where the still-beating heart was suspended in a clear gel-like substance, I turned on the touchpad in front of it.
A bunch of scribbles and lines appeared, but I had no idea what any of it meant. "Can you read this?" I asked, pointing to the screen embedded into the table. Midnight came over to where I stood and looked over my shoulder.
"Female of species seemed to have a positive reaction to ECD829 in the initial stages. However, after six months of consuming the beverage, its body started to break down. There is no sign that it has the same genetic markers as Subject 1. Experiment has been deemed a failure. Removing internal organs to see if they offer any insight into the failure," read Midnight, and I looked up to see his eyebrows scrunching in confusion.
"Do you understand?" I asked, once again leaning against the male.
"No. Do you?" he replied, his gaze drifting over the heart in front of us.
"It is really simple. The Alliance, or at least the Dryadalis, are trying to recreate the same experiment as the Sisalik but are not having as much success," I said with a shrug like it wasn’t that big of a deal. And as far as I was concerned. It wasn’t. But I was interested to see if she was a new abductee or one of the only eleven humans in this section of the universe.
Midnight looked down at me, and I could feel his gaze burning into me. "What experiment are the Sisalik doing?" he asked, his gaze steady, unwavering.
"Well, I can’t be sure, but I think they are trying to bring back the Ethawainians."
