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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
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‘If you don’t know, you have to find out.’
Letitia looked up the long and complicated names of the chemicals on the internet. Even after reading them, she couldn’t understand what they meant, but words like ‘synthesis,’ ‘preparation,’ and ‘receptor’ kept catching her eye.
Her anxiety grew.
‘That Cassandra woman, is she trying to do research outside, too?’
It was Virginia who had interrogated Cassandra, but it was Letitia who had taken down her testimony.
So she knew well how sinister and dangerous that Disease Crisis Management researcher was. How vulgar and frivolous that ‘report’ had been.
Just recalling its explicit contents made her back bend and her thighs clench. And now the man who had been ‘taken away’ by that woman was asking for these reagents.
‘Wait a minute?’
Caesar was a strong man. But even a person who could leg press a ton couldn’t lift their own eyelids when they were sleepy. Because everyone has limits they can’t overcome simply because they are human.
And if you used the power of ‘drugs,’ you could break even the strongest person like a cracker.
‘The countless needle marks on the arm of that woman with the huge chest. No way… no way? With drugs, she could do this, and that, to him…!’
But already in Letitia’s mind, Caesar was tied to a chair, drooling helplessly. In front of him, a woman with a chest bigger than her own head was swaying back and forth, holding a syringe and approaching, saying, ‘Want to do something that feels good?’…
But she couldn’t just come out and ask, ‘Caesar, can you take a picture of your body and send it to me!’ Nor could she ask, ‘Did that lewd pervert give you a wicked shot?!’
If a clever investigator were to catch on, Caesar’s life would be in even more danger.
‘I have to uncover that woman’s plot. And I have to check if Caesar’s body is okay. To do that, I have to see his body, I should have recorded the video call earlier! There was so much information I could have gotten just by looking at his eyes!’
But what was past was past. Letitia resolved to do well from now on. So she searched for ‘how to check a man’s body in a long-distance relationship.’
“’Out of sight, out of mind’? These people are crazy.”
Letitia tried changing the search term here and there. Finally, when she searched for ‘how to make a man take off his own clothes,’ a keyword she knew well popped up.
Romance scam. A method of whispering words of love while pretending to be a professional like a soldier, doctor, or lawyer, and then swindling money…
“No. I’m not committing fraud, am I? We’re just making a fair trade. And I have a duty to check whether Caesar’s health is okay or not. What kind of soldier am I if I can’t even protect my family.”
So this wasn’t a crime. But she couldn’t use it right now. Because she needed to look up more case studies. First, she had to let the captors know that Caesar was valuable to them to ensure his safety.
I’ll try my best to get them. It might take a while, though. In return, please contact me often. If it’s not you, Caesar, coming in person, I won’t give these drugs to anyone. I’m sorry. The world is getting worse, so I can’t help it.
I understand. Thank you.
For now, she had bought some time.
Letitia activated the IP scrambling program. She entered a long, complex command, as complex as the reagent names, and connected her phone to her computer.
It wasn’t for no reason that she had given Caesar the Minsk satellite access program. The pro-Minsk intelligence officers had played a little ‘prank’ while distributing this program.
The location tracking function.
To use an analogy, it was similar to finding a lost child at a shopping center. ‘We are looking for so-and-so in such-and-such area, if you find them, please come to the information desk.’
A method that revealed both the pursuer and the person being sought. That’s why it couldn’t be dragged on for long. It was also the reason why Letitia had activated the IP scrambling program.
But Caesar’s location couldn’t be specified. His location changed from here to there. It would be in the northern part of Elza one moment, and then move to western Römer 10 seconds later.
“…You cunning bastards. You’ve already tampered with Caesar’s phone. This is a function that doesn’t work unless it’s intentionally activated!”
Letitia frowned. She wanted to check his condition as soon as possible.
‘I have to go to work early tomorrow. To look up cases of romance scams. This is for justice.’
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The process of securing the research facility, which took almost a month, was incredibly tedious. After confirming that the zombies weren’t just charging in thoughtlessly, the three of us changed our strategy.
We decided to secure the area quietly, stealthily.
Since we couldn’t make a sound, we made throwing weapons. We tore scrap metal from the streets and made it into blades, and broke sturdy branches and attached them to the ends. Hammers and nails, wood and saws, rebar.
And then we threw them at the zombies.
It was closer to the concept of ‘making them bleed to death from excessive blood loss’ than ‘killing them in one shot.’
Only in absolutely unavoidable cases did we finish them off with a silenced pistol. It was effective. It was just too slow.
But in the end, we got our hands on the research facility.
At first glance, it was just a building with three floors above ground and two below. Except for the fact that it was surrounded by a wall over 10 meters high, and the building’s doors were welded shut, making them impossible to open.
But there was no rule that said you had to go in through the door.
We parked the truck next to the building and placed a ladder on top. The windows on the first and second floors were reinforced with steel plates, but the third floor was just a closed glass window, so we broke it with a hammer and went in.
The three of us checked the interior. There was no one there. Not even a corpse.
“They must have evacuated in advance.”
The first and second floors had experimental equipment, research analysis rooms, and conference rooms, while the third floor was a living space. The water tank was on the roof, so even if the electricity was cut off, water still came out. Though it was all spoiled.
In the basement, there was also a diesel generator and storage batteries. Well, a research facility should have those things. They had been replaced less than half a year ago.
We started it up as a test. Electricity flowed throughout the entire building. Cassandra checked the equipment and found the usable things, and unplugged all the unnecessary equipment.
We decided to use the generator only when doing research. For minor electrical use, the solar panels and power box I had brought were sufficient.
We decided to leave the first-floor entrance sealed as it was. Instead, we would come and go through the first-floor window. We had to move people and luggage, after all. But we also decided to block even that with furniture during normal times, leaving not a single gap.
To be honest, I didn’t really like it.
“If it were up to me, I would have smashed everything from the first to the third floor and lived in the basement. Then from the outside, it would look like an already looted building. But now we’ve completely sealed it up. If a passerby sees it, they might think there’s something inside and try to break in.”
Perhaps knowing that I was saying it out of worry, Camilla stroked my arm comfortingly.
“That would be the case if there were people here. You saw. It’s just zombies.”
“Let’s not kill all the zombies from now on. Let them stand guard for us.”
The fence was high and sturdy, and the entrance was a steel gate that could be opened and closed. Since the 2.5-ton truck and the pickup truck were parked behind the building, you wouldn’t know they were there at a glance.
It was easy to say, but just stabilizing things to this point took almost a week. And the work wasn’t even finished yet.
And finally, today, we decided to skip dinner.
Once the situation had stabilized to some extent, Cassandra suggested we get a health checkup first. To do that, she said we had to maintain an empty stomach for a certain period of time.
Camilla, Cassandra, and I were all concerned about our physical condition, so there was no disagreement on that point. The problem was that this was a Human Non-Protection zone, a place where you get hungry even when you’re just sitting still.
Even though the contamination level was said to be lower here, we were still hungry.
When you’re hungry, you get irritable. At times like these, it’s better for each person to focus on their own hobbies. So I told the two of them about Letitia’s USB program.
“How is it? Useful?”
At my question, both Camilla and Cassandra nodded. Both of them were sitting on the living room sofa, fiddling with their respective phones.
The Minsk satellite access program that Leti, no, Letitia had given me was effective. Video was a bit much, but exchanging photos or text was no problem.
The fact that the user’s location could be revealed was a bit of a concern, but Cassandra solved it nicely. It was the result of Cassandra taking my USB, saying she would look at it first, and then turning on the computer and tinkering with it.
“Yeah. The scrambling code is already in the program itself. I’ve activated it, so you should be able to just install this.”
“You can read code too?”
“I taught myself. There wasn’t a program that could synthesize, break down, and automatically calculate the expected results of countless cells, so I made one.”
To Cassandra, even that didn’t seem like a big deal.
“You were able to do that just by self-study?”
“It’s because I had a concrete image of ‘I want to make something like this,’ not because I just learned aimlessly. Cassandra doesn’t know how to code any other programs. Because I only learned what I needed. It wasn’t very interesting.”
The field Cassandra was interested in was probably the eradication of the virus. Because she was serious about it.
I briefly told them about my conversation with Letitia. Of course, I excluded all the miscellaneous stuff and summarized only what the two of them needed to know.
“She said she’ll try to get the reagents you mentioned. Through someone she knows. I think it’ll be faster to get them in the city.”
“…Can we trust that woman? She seemed a bit weird.”
Camilla pouted, looking displeased. I also admitted that she was weird. But I didn’t tell the two women that ‘Leti is actually a soldier.’ If I did, they might just throw her to the zombies alive.
“She seems to be almost an alcoholic, beyond just liking alcohol, but since she’s an addict, she’s easy to use. I don’t think badly of it. If worse comes to worst, I can just go alone.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to see that woman.”
Camilla lay down on the sofa. Well, it wouldn’t be a problem for me to go to Hampton alone, so it didn’t matter.
“But those reagents, we absolutely need them, right?”
At my question, Cassandra nodded.
“Actually, with the reagents we have now, we can only do a basic checkup. Tomorrow’s checkup will be fine, but we’ll need them for a more detailed analysis. I only picked things that can be commonly found in most labs. If we can’t get them, well, we’ll just have to raid a university chemistry department building.”
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And the next day.
“…Interesting.”
Cassandra held out the test results in front of us. They were filled with terms I couldn’t understand, but overall, it said ‘Normal.’
“What’s so interesting about it?”
Camilla asked back, chewing on a sandwich.
“First of all, your bodies are very healthy. Cassandra’s is too. What I found interesting is the virus stability. By any chance…”
“Yeah?”
“Do you two have sex regularly?”
Camilla hastily turned her head.
“…Please. Cassandra.”
“I’m asking this as a doctor and a researcher. I apologize if my words were a bit unrefined. You two, on average, how often do you have sexual intercourse per week?”
“We haven’t!”
My face flushed and I hastily waved my hands.
“We haven’t yet!”
Camilla said with a mix of annoyance.
“I see…”
Cassandra tilted her head, then suddenly grabbed my hand. I was pulled to my feet by her hand, caught off guard.
“What are you doing?”
“Let’s go to a private room with Cassandra.”
“Why all of a sudden! The checkup is over!”
“I need to mix Johan’s bodily fluids with Cassandra’s. I think it will be very interesting.”
In the end, Camilla shoved the rest of the sandwich into her mouth and shot to her feet.
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