Chapter 1343: Lin Sanjiu's Kidney
When Lin Sanjiu heard the knock on the iron door, she breathed a sigh of relief: Wan Qingge had finally returned.
In fact, Wan Qingge had only been gone for less than a morning, but for the two anxious posthumans present, it felt like they had been waiting for half a lifetime—especially when there was nothing else to do. They could only sit quietly and wait, feeling their abilities gradually escape with each passing second.
"You're back." She opened the iron door on the factory side and smiled nervously at the tall young man outside, "How did it go? Smoothly?"
"I got them," Wan Qingge said, walking in, looking back outside, and closing the iron door again. "The stock in the hospital storeroom was much smaller than I thought. I only managed to get less than thirty pens."
"That should be enough!"
Even He Huan, who usually maintained a detached attitude, couldn't help but step forward upon hearing the noise. Although he didn't say anything, Lin Sanjiu felt that he didn't have much confidence in successfully leaving: even if he did what he was supposed to do and considered what needed to be considered, it seemed like he was just going through the motions and leaving the rest to fate. This was likely because He Huan was the posthuman with the most severe degradation of abilities—now, seeing hope of retaining abilities, he was excited to the point where his cheeks were slightly pink.
"Did you encounter any problems on the way?" Lin Sanjiu asked as they walked together.
"No." Wan Qingge paused and said, "Everything was fine."
"That's good," she nodded. "We should now be invisible to the surveillance network."
After hearing about Han Suiping's experience, they discussed it in detail. Given this country's pervasive surveillance methods, they should have been discovered shortly after they were transported. Lin Sanjiu herself had done many things that now seemed quite conspicuous: arriving soaking wet, eating someone else's goods as gifts, and wearing scary makeup everywhere. How could they not have been noticed?
Once their biological characteristics were marked in the surveillance network, even if they moved to ten different cities, they would still be under surveillance—just because the civilians in this country couldn't use the internet didn't mean the surveillance system wasn't connected.
That's why Lin Sanjiu had always felt a subtle feeling of unease; and if she had to say when this discomfort disappeared, it was undoubtedly after she changed her gait.
"You see, if neither facial recognition nor gait recognition can find the biological marker 'Lin Sanjiu,' then the monitors simply can't distinguish us from the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. " She had said this when teaching them the techniques of changing gait, "Unless they know exactly when and where I appeared and can use surveillance footage from that location to re-label my new gait."
Systematic gait changes were not easy; just dragging your feet or tilting your shoulders would have minimal effect on gait recognition. This also meant that, due to the limitations of their overall biological structure, even posthumans could only change their patterns to one or two sets, unable to continuously change.
Destroying cameras wasn't a viable solution either, not to mention there were so many that a few individuals wouldn't be able to clear them all. If they damage surveillance in one area, it's like drawing attention to themselves in that area. Therefore, ensuring that new gaits weren't discovered and facial features weren't collected became the best means of invisibility within the surveillance network.
"It's really over the top." Wan Qingge poured all the adrenaline pens onto a table, complaining, "The whole country is under surveillance. How much manpower and resources must be spent? They're paying too much attention to us."
"Don't try to sugarcoat it for us."
He Huan picked up a pen, examining it, and said, "Didn't Han Suiping see something about it in that encyclopedia? The country discovered posthumans before the people did, so they could cover up and explain away our existence until now. If the first people to encounter posthumans—no matter how small-scale—were civilians, then it wouldn't be long before the truth came out. What does this show? The surveillance system was established before posthumans appeared."
Lin Sanjiu lightly shivered for no apparent reason. She didn't want to delve deeper into it, focusing her thoughts on the present instead, and asked, "Who should try first?"
Nu Yue, who was the most eager to try, was still on the cruise ship. The remaining few exchanged glances for a few seconds, and Wan Qingge shrugged, saying, "It doesn't matter who goes first."
"Even though normal people are at risk with just 1mg, we're not normal people, but we still need to be cautious." He Huan opened the packaging and said, "Let me go first. I'll use three pens. My abilities have degraded the most, so if effective, it should be most evident on me."
For safety reasons, Lin Sanjiu had Han Suiping and Guan Hailian close the door to another room. After all, no one knew what effects posthumans would experience when stimulated by adrenaline.
Aligning the orange end to the outer side of his thigh, He Huan tightly grasped three adrenaline pens, took a deep breath, and thrust them down with force. With a few clicks, the three small needle tips had pierced through the fabric of his pants, releasing adrenaline into his body. After counting to three, he withdrew the pens, his face flushed and breathing rapidly.
"How is it?" Wan Qingge hurriedly asked.
He Huan closed his eyes, took a few breaths, then opened them again. "...No change."
Those few words cast a dark gray curtain over the faces of the other two. He Huan sat down, supporting himself on the chair. His fingertips still trembled uncontrollably, as if his body were considerably burdened. He checked his body for sensations for a while longer and finally shook his head. "It's no good. I can still feel my abilities gradually draining away."
"Did you not administer enough?"
Wan Qingge grabbed three pens, but before he could hand them over, Lin Sanjiu stopped him. "Give me seven," she said, her heart fluttering in her throat. "His physical condition is closest to that of an ordinary person now. 2mg of adrenaline is the most unsafe for him. Let me try 2mg first, and if it proves effective, then let him take the risk."
Her movements were extremely fast to ensure He Huan's two batches of adrenaline could connect. In the blink of an eye, she injected all 2mg of adrenaline into her body. Suddenly, a dense black fog burst forth from deep within her body. Mrs. Manas let out a sharp scream, then she couldn't hear anything and couldn't see anything.
The pitch-black mist, seemingly stirred up by a tornado of violence, swept through every part of her body like a raging storm. Adrenaline seemed to stimulate something fiercely, and she couldn't even feel her own body. The black mist engulfed her physical and mental faculties, becoming a part of it. Consciousness shattered into fragments like broken glass, only occasionally flashing a glimmer of light in the ruined darkness of her mind.
It was precisely this flickering glimmer that made her realize that the problem was the mass of black mist-like kidney, which she had exchanged for in Lava Hospital.
However, this realization was fleeting, as Lin Sanjiu was immediately swallowed up by the black mist again. She lost her sense of touch on the ground and her sense of space and time. After who knows how long, she finally began to see things clearly again, little by little, and found herself lying on the ground.
Tables and chairs were overturned, and unused adrenaline pens were scattered over the floor. Wan Qingge held onto He Huan's arm. Both of them were retreating far away. They stared at her without blinking, their faces a mix of pale and blue, filled with astonishment and uncertainty.
The deep black mist gradually receded from within her body, returning to the shape of a kidney and back to where it should be. Lin Sanjiu called out "Mrs. Manas" in her mind several times, but the only response she received was a deathly silence. She propped herself up with one hand on the ground and slowly got up, feeling her muscles trembling all over—not the happy tremble of being filled with strength, but the trembling of muscles working hard after being suddenly emptied.
"What happened?" Wan Qingge also noticed something was wrong, hurriedly approached and helped Lin Sanjiu up, asking, "How... How do I feel like you're even weaker now?"
It wasn't just a feeling; she was indeed weaker. Something went wrong after the 2mg of adrenaline stimulated the black mist kidney into a frenzy. Along with her Higher Consciousness, physical abilities, and evolved abilities... everywhere the black mist traveled within her body, the corresponding abilities were reduced by nearly one-third, and the mist engulfed her from head to toe.
She didn't even have enough Higher Consciousness left to form Mrs. Manas.
"Adrenaline..." Lin Sanjiu gasped for breath, sitting on the ground, and said, "It's actually accelerating the degradation of my abilities. I have a kidney, but it's not a real kidney; it's something... I can't even describe it. Maybe the two are having a reaction."
She didn't dare say if it was her fault. Still, she dared not let Wan Qingge try again—1mg of adrenaline had no effect, but the effects of 2mg were unpredictable. If Wan Qingge also rapidly degraded, wouldn't they soon have to surrender?
"How could this happen?" Wan Qingge picked up a pen, looked at it several times, and threw it aside. He walked quickly to Han Suiping's room and shouted angrily, "Han Suiping, come out!"
Before Lin Sanjiu could stop him, He Huan spoke up first.
"No... It shouldn't be his fault." He sat down on the only chair that hadn't been overturned, his chest still heaving violently. "I'm afraid... we might have been deceived."
Lin Sanjiu's heart sank.
"As soon as we heard that adrenaline pens were controlled substances, we felt reassured, didn't we?" He Huan chuckled bitterly, self-mockingly. "They have drugs that slow down degradation, so why can't they have drugs that speed it up? Add a little to the adrenaline, and it's no different for ordinary people, but for us..."
He shook his head and fell silent.