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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
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A question arose.
If Cassandra’s words were true, then this virus alone was enough to turn a person into a zombie. But they had put this virus in the food long before the zombie incident broke out. The accident should have happened long ago.
Camilla seemed to have had the same thought as me.
“Me too, and other people, we often just ate the Kibele canned food. We did say we were still hungry even after eating, maybe because the amount was not enough, but it wasn’t to the point where we wanted to eat the person next to us.”
At our question, Cassandra typed on the keyboard. After comparing and contrasting two similar-looking viruses, she showed us the results.
“To put it simply, Kibele modified the Limos virus. Because they knew themselves that the original was too dangerous. They lowered the hunger-inducing level a lot, but instead, it seems they created several variants.”
Cassandra scrolled down. She showed us a certain video. On the outside, it was just a beaker full of water, but when she accelerated it 10 times, you could see a soft lump of flesh growing inside.
“This is a research data screen for cultured meat. I told you they grow stem cells in a nutrient solution to make flesh. This is that picture. However, Kibele manipulated the nutrient solution here. This water drop, being dropped by a dropper here, contains the modified Limos virus.”
“What are they doing? Trying to make the stem cells ‘hungry’?”
At my question, Cassandra nodded.
“That’s right. Kibele wanted to reduce the meat growth time a lot. Because a longer production period means increased costs.
To do that, they had to artificially raise the division speed of the stem cells, and at the same time, they had to supply enough nutrients so that the cell structure wouldn’t collapse.
To do that, they would have had to feed the stem cells a lot.”
It meant that they had hoped the stem cells would grow quickly by absorbing a lot of the nutrient solution.
“Sounds like a zombie.”
Both Cassandra and Camilla looked at me. I organized my thoughts and laid them out, step by step.
“Think about the zombies we’ve met so far. There were ones with large wounds on their bodies, and even one with half its head blown off. But the Cro-virus made all of them move.
It stimulated their appetite to make them move around and eat anything.
If their body was injured, it made the cells divide to the point where they were indistinguishable from a tumor to fill in the flesh.
As long as the host could move, it probably didn’t matter much whether the brain was functioning properly or not. Right?”
Cassandra nodded her head without a word.
“Before the situation grew as big as it is now, the Disease Crisis Management Agency secured a zombie and conducted various experiments. They stopped it after several researchers and guards became zombies.
That’s right. The Cro-virus raises the body’s recovery ability and constantly gives orders to find food. It’s a thing that will do anything to keep its host alive.
Because the longer the host lives, the longer the Cro-virus itself can survive. And in that process, it tries to destroy anything that interferes with the host’s survival.”
“…For example?”
Camilla asked in a disgusted voice. It felt like she was afraid even to listen.
“Rational judgment. The ability to feel pain. Zombies become dull to pain and lose their thoughts. People can control their actions with their thoughts, but it just erases that. So that…”
“So that?”
“They see the person next to them not as a person but as food. Only their own and the host’s survival. The Cro-virus wants only that.”
It was so absurd that a laugh escaped.
“What on earth is Kibele? What were the researchers thinking?”
Cassandra, who had also been a Kibele researcher, bowed her head.
“There were many researchers from Elza at Kibele. There were unlucky people and psychopaths, but they were all smart and had a strong sense of responsibility and mission.
The sense of mission to free Elza from starvation. To let everyone live equally, without starving, at least without being sad about food.
The land of Elza is wide, and even though its main industries are livestock and agriculture, there are too many people who starve. Because there are too many lands that have been devastated by war, and everyone is too poor to buy enough food.
That’s all. To feed many people at a low price. That was all it was. But not just Cassandra, but none of the researchers there, wanted the wish for there to be no starving people in Elza to be fulfilled in such a cruel and terrible way.”
Hadn’t Camilla said it? That to the people of Elza, Kibele’s food was like a gift for the poor.
It was true that the land of Elza was wide, and the prices of agricultural products and meat were low, but the reality was that most of the people of Elza couldn’t even earn that much.
It wasn’t because the people of Elza were poor or lazy. It was just that they were having their possessions taken away by the eastern country, Römer, and the western country, Minsk.
Now the people of Elza, Römer, Minsk, and other countries would also gradually turn into zombies. All while suffering from the curse of hunger that the people of Elza had experienced.
“Where on earth did a monstrous virus like this come from? Didn’t you say, Cassandra, that if you find the data, you can find out who entered the information about this virus.”
Camilla, unable to hold back, pointed at the laptop with her finger. Cassandra shook her head as if confused.
“The input itself was done in this research lab. The problem is the source from where they received this virus.”
“And?”
“There’s no data. I don’t know if they entered it and then deleted it, or if they didn’t enter it at all.”
I looked at the laptop monitor. As Cassandra said, the related information was cleanly wiped.
“Can’t it be recovered?”
Camilla urged, but Cassandra shook her head as if at a loss.
“The chances are small. It was too long ago. Even if it were possible, it would be impossible with this laptop, and it would be difficult even if we turned on the generator and mobilized all the computers here. The algorithm I wrote now was because Cassandra had worked at Kibele and knew how the data system was structured. Finding and recovering deleted data is a bit of a different domain, and Cassandra isn’t confident in that.”
If so, it would have to be considered difficult.
But, for some reason, I thought I knew. Where this Limos virus had come from.
“Cassandra. I’m going to go talk with Camilla for a bit.”
“Huh? Uh-huh…”
I took Camilla and went into my room.
“Let’s show Cassandra too.”
“What?”
“The video that was on Hood’s cell phone. The one where, when blood was sprinkled on the statue of the Goddess of Hunger, the owner of the cell phone said he was hungry and bit another person.”
“…Huh?”
Camilla covered her mouth with the back of her hand as if shocked.
“Camilla, Cassandra said it too. That this virus survives tenaciously. What if that virus was in the goddess statue that was dug out of the ground, and it was activated when blood was sprinkled on it…”
“Wait a minute. Wait, Johan. Do you know what you’re saying right now?”
I knew.
The Goddess of Hunger was a spiritual pillar that united the people of Elza. Camilla still offered a prayer in a small voice when she ate dinner, when she had to pull the trigger with concentration, and every dawn when the light came in after we had shared our love.
But if the goddess statue contained a virus that could bring about the end of the world, then Camilla and the people of Elza had been no different from worshiping and depending on the destroyer of the world.
It meant that the god of faith they had believed in and relied on had actually been trying to eat everyone.
But
“No. Camilla. It might not be that. Someone could have contaminated the goddess statue. Cassandra talked about anthrax too. Anthrax is often used as a tool for terror. There’s a possibility that the goddess statue was used for the same purpose.”
“Who on earth?”
“The person who excavated it would know the full story. If they’re still alive. And if we can meet them.”
Joanna Mustaine. An archaeologist and paleontologist, and a prodigy who was said to have been appointed as the youngest tenured professor at Elza National University.
She had led the excavation project, entrusted with a national project by the Elza government, and was the hidden card of the Elza Liberation Army, who had been called ‘Fulcrum.’
Camilla sat down on the bed. She clenched the sheet with her fists.
“…My heart hurts so much.”
I helped Camilla up and hugged her with all my might. The things she had believed in and relied on, all the things she had leaned on, were slipping away one by one.
Swimming, which had been her past, present, and future. The liberation struggle was just an excuse to use people. And now, even the goddess who had been her faith.
“What, what do I have to live for now?… Why does everything that was a given just leave me? Why?”
Camilla did not cry. It seemed she didn’t even have the energy to. I gently patted her back.
“One really good thing will remain.”
Camilla looked at me with red eyes. I smiled as if making a promise.
“I said the really good things will remain. Because in the end, only the most solid and hard things remain.”
“What, why are you suddenly saying something cool?”
Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, Camilla laughed.
“I heard it too. A certain… teacher I know told me. To be honest, I don’t really know what it means either, but I lived with those words as a comfort. That even if it seems like everything has collapsed, there’s definitely something left, and that’s… even after going through such a terrible thing, it’s a precious thing left to me.”
“Johan, you’ll stay, right? By my side?”
“Yeah.”
Camilla hugged my back so tightly it hurt.
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Cassandra, who had seen the video, seemed to be quite shocked.
“What is Cassandra looking at right now? How could this be?”
But before she replayed the video, I gently held Cassandra’s hand. Camilla bowed her head slightly and went upstairs after leaving a word of apology.
“Sorry. Camilla is having a really hard time.”
Cassandra said nothing else.
Again, coolly, mechanically, she looked over the video until she was sick of it. She also watched it, pausing from time to time, and amplified specific sounds to listen.
“What do you think?”
“This boy, the one who bit the medical staff in the ambulance. It’s an acute infection symptom. In the early days, there were many cases like this.”
But this was a video from 4 years ago. And the full-scale spread of the zombie incident was much shorter than that.
“An acute infection symptom like this appears almost immediately. And there’s no one who would just stand by and watch this. So in the early days, the suppression was very fast. After the Disease Crisis Management Agency sent down active guidelines, the quarantine was also effective. But… huh? Uh huh huh?”
Suddenly, Cassandra started typing.
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