Chapter 272 Infiltrating the Waterworks
The black SUV turned off its lights and stopped in the bushes outside the North District Water Plant.
The rear door opened lightly, and five figures filed out, the reflective strips on their tactical uniforms faintly visible in the moonlight.
Xiao Ran raised the thermal imager to his eyes. Three red dots flickered on the screen. "Three patrol officers, one rotation every seven minutes. The southeast corner surveillance has a fifteen-second blind spot."
Su Wanqing lowered her head to operate the terminal, her fingertips tapping rapidly on the virtual keyboard: "The camera is looping and playing the footage from ten minutes ago. The security window is twelve minutes."
She looked up at the wall and said, "Follow the route Xiao Ran pointed out."
Just as the team was about to move, Lin Che suddenly paused. He placed his right hand on his chest, his Adam's apple bobbing twice. "It's getting stronger," he muttered, "something's shouting in the water."
His eyes glowed blue in the night, like two small lights.
Xiao Ran placed his thumb on the switch of the electric shock glove, and placed his other hand on Lin Che's back. "Can you hold on?"
Lin Che closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the blue light had dimmed. "Let's go."
Xiao Ran took out his wire cutters and cut a hole in the wire mesh. Su Wanqing was the first to get in, turning back to make a gesture.
Lu Zhao tugged at Xiao Ling's sleeve, and the two of them bent over and went in.
"Divide into groups." Su Wanqing pointed in the direction of the main building. "Lu Zhao and Xiao Ling, go to the control room. The three of us will handle the center. Meet up in the north in twelve minutes." She glanced at her watch. "It's 2:28 now."
Lu Zhao nodded and ran towards the main building, pulling Xiao Ling with him. The voice-activated lights in the corridor lit up as they walked, then went out behind them.
Turning the corner, a man in dark blue work clothes came towards me.
He walked without lifting his feet, his arms swinging straight, and his eyes glowed with the same blue light as Lin Che's.
Xiao Ling subconsciously shrank behind Lu Zhao. The man brushed past them expressionlessly, his footsteps disappearing at the end of the corridor.
Lu Zhao whispered into the headset, "We've encountered an unusual individual in the direction of the control room, and they appear to be under control."
"Stay alert." Su Wanqing's voice came from the headset.
The control room door had an iris lock. Lu Zhao pulled a silver cube from his tactical bag and attached it to the door lock.
The red indicator light flashed three times and the machine popped open with a click.
The lights in the control room were all on, and more than twenty monitors lined up half the wall.
Xiao Ling rushed to the main console, her fingers flying across the keyboard. "There's activity in the processing center. At least six people are operating the equipment."
She called up several split screens, and the workers in the pictures moved in unison, bending and straightening up at the same time, like puppets being pulled by strings.
Lu Zhao inserted the USB drive into the host computer interface, and the data bar began to scroll: "The pollutants have increased exponentially over the past forty-eight hours. The injection point is indeed in the main treatment pool."
He leaned closer to the screen and said, "Look at this curve. It matches the conversion time Lin Che mentioned."
Xiao Ling suddenly stopped. She clicked on an encrypted folder, and a code rolled across the screen in green bars. "Brother Lu, these codes are wrong."
She swiped her mouse twice. "It wasn't written by a human. It looks like it was automatically generated by an algorithm."
She pointed at a line of characters and said, "Look at this loop structure. It repeats every seventeen characters. It's completely different from human programming habits."
"Save it and come back to analyze it." Lu Zhao pulled out the USB drive. "Three minutes left."
On the other side, Su Wanqing led Lin Che and Xiao Ran through the pipeline area.
Lin Che suddenly raised her hand, and the two of them stopped. Standing at the corner were three men in white coats, their eyes also glowing blue.
Xiao Ran took out his tactical knife, but Lin Che held his wrist and said, "Look."
The night shift bell rang. Three men in white coats turned simultaneously and mechanically walked in the other direction, their leather heels tapping on the concrete floor in perfect rhythm.
"It's controlled by a program," Lin Che said. "It moves according to time and its route is predictable."
The three of them crouched down and slid into the processing center. The space was larger than expected. In the center was a pool with a diameter of 20 meters, the blue water glowing with fluorescence.
There was a silver device standing by the pool, with pipes inserted into the main water pipe, and it was "gurgling" to inject blue liquid into the water.
Su Wanqing shouted into the headset, "Lu Zhao, we've found the source of the pollution. Use the silver injection device to inject blue liquid into the main water pipe."
Lin Che moved closer to the pool. He reached out and touched the water, and a blue light exploded, enveloping him in it.
His eyes turned pure blue, and his voice was like metallic friction. "This is the Weaver's genetic recombinant fluid. It modifies human genes through drinking water, making the body adapt to parasitism."
Before he could finish his words, he staggered to his knees, resting his forehead on the edge of the pool. "Stop it! I'm losing control!"
Xiao Ran rushed over to smash the device, but suddenly Xiao Ling's voice exploded in his earphones: "There's an energy anomaly in the underground passage of the processing center! It's not from the factory!"
The scales all over Lin Che's body suddenly appeared, a dazzling blue.
He raised his head and squeezed out a few words through his teeth: "Someone is coming. Very strong, but not a Weaver."
A melodious song drifted in from the entrance. Su Wanqing felt her head sinking, and she raised her hands to cover her ears, her movements so slow that it felt like she was in water.
Xiao Ran blushed and shouted, "Mind control! Cover your ears!"
The woman in the white dress walked out from the shadows, her black eyes like two deep pools.
Her smile stretched wide. "What a shame. You were so close to success."
Su Wanqing caught a glimpse of Lin Che trembling from the corner of her eye. She bit her tongue, her eyes raw with pain, and struggled to reach for her tactical knife.
It was then that she noticed that the layout of the factory did not match the system drawings - in the place originally marked "storage room", through the half-open door she could see the laboratory bench and incubator, and on the wall were dated test reports, the earliest of which was dated three months ago.
She pulled out her phone and quickly took a picture. As the camera panned over a document, the four red stamps "Military Confidential" stung her eyes.
The document was titled "Phase Summary of the Social Control Experiment" and contained several pages of "Genetic Adaptability Test Data."
"Wanqing!" Xiao Ran's voice rang out. Su Wanqing looked up. The woman in the white dress was singing a few notes higher. Lin Che's scales had already climbed up to his neck. Xiao Ling's voice was intermittent in the earphones: "Jammer needed."
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