Chapter 2 Chapter 2...You didn't lie to me, did you?
Lin guessed what she was going to collect.
The first day he woke up from his coma, she took a knife and implanted an electric shock device into the fish's tail. He struggled furiously and broke the only crystal trophy in the room that was worth something. The bottom of the trophy was engraved with the words "Excellent Student".
How could there be such an outstanding student?
Annie collected his blood, scales, and hair... She picked up the remaining base of the trophy, her hands were bloody, and while washing her hands, she cleaned the blood of the mermaid on the "Excellent Student".
The broken crystal trophy was sitting on a low wooden stand next to the fish tank.
Ani's figure blocked his view. She loosened her teeth and reached out to touch the red and swollen narrow gap behind Lin's ear. The mermaid trembled all over and held her hand tightly.
"Let me go." Lin said, "Let me go back, let me go back to District 8. I will repay you and let you live a good life."
"What is a good day?" Ani asked.
It was the first time she spoke underwater, and tiny bubbles appeared as her voice was transmitted.
Lin actually didn't know how to explain "good days" to a monster. He lost his mind and used the trap he gave to humans: "There's a lot of money. A lot of star coins. A lot... a lot of men."
"What's the use of this?" Ani asked curiously.
He was speechless for a moment.
Annie clasped his hands behind her back, lowered her head, and her snow-white hair floated in the water. After mimicking a female mermaid, she possessed greater strength than a human body. She followed the instructions on the Star Network and in the book and strangled the opponent with her slippery fish tail.
The thin scales rub against each other.
The subtle sound of rubbing is almost inaudible in the water. But Lin was forced to hear it. His ears with translucent exoskeleton were pressed against the glass. The cold touch went straight through his nerves. Lin gasped, his eyes reddened: "Let go, let go, you can't open my..."
He was talking about the reproduction lock.
Annie felt around with her hands. The other person's fish tail was covered with scars and the muscles were tense. If it weren't for the electric shock device, it would have turned against her and smashed her body at any time. She couldn't find the place to collect the samples. Lin was strongly resisting and was unwilling to open even a crack.
Boom boom boom——
At this moment, the noise from the two finally alarmed others. The old man's hoarse voice sounded outside the door, "Nell?"
Annie looked towards the door, and the moment she was distracted, the fish tail under her palm suddenly wrapped around her, strangling her waist as if to suffocate her, and the squeezing force was enough to crush a human's ribs and internal organs.
Lin suddenly grabbed her neck.
The mermaid's desperate effort was so powerful that the skin on Annie's neck turned purple, and there was a click, as if her cervical vertebrae were broken. Lin opened his eyes wide and saw the white-haired girl turned her head to look at him——
I really turned my head. Her head was twisted off.
"Nier?" the old man muttered, "I wonder what you've been making a fuss about all day..."
Annie seemed to realize that her head had fallen off, and she quickly supported her head. A sticky, flesh-pink liquid flowed out from the cracked neck, blocking the crack and quickly fixing her head.
She looked at the blue-haired mermaid.
Lin was completely stunned.
His deep blue eyes were filled with astonishment; hatred and anger were suddenly stopped, and these beautiful and proud eyes, like glass marbles, were completely blank.
Ani inches closer, her light pink eyes nearly poked by his eyelashes, "Why are you so angry? It will take me days to repair it."
Lin suddenly came back to his senses.
Why are you angry? Doesn't she know what she's doing? !
His blue eyes were soon filled with anger again, and he lowered his head to bite the other person's throat. However, Annie dodged it defensively, and used the strength equivalent to that of an adult female mermaid to restrain Lin with her backhand. She didn't know that mermaids loved to bite people so much, so she covered his mouth with force, and continued to look for the correct way to reproduce.
Lin's resistance was futile.
Until the water flooded the floor so much that it flowed out from the crack in the door. Ani didn't find anything unusual about his fish tail, and the old man knocked on the door again.
This time it was more urgent, accompanied by "Nier! Don't waste water!"
Ani loosened her hand and left the glass tank.
She left the water and her body quickly transformed back into that of a human girl. With wet white hair, she wiped the water off her body and said as she put on her clothes, "I know."
There was no movement outside. Annie put on her clothes and saw that the water level had dropped by half. Lin sank to the bottom of the water. His long blue hair blocked his shoulders and expression. All that could be seen was his chest trembling and rising with his rapid breathing.
She returned to no avail. While she was cleaning up and mopping the floor, she was thinking about this matter. Halfway through mopping up the water stains, she suddenly said, "I might kill you in a few days."
"..."Lin didn't react. Half a minute later, he sneered in a hoarse voice.
"I can't get any information from you." Ani wiped the water off the notebook on the ground, "You don't cooperate with me at all. I have no choice but to go to Hailan University to study new targets."
"..." Lin grinned, wanting to make a few sarcastic remarks, and the words "Excellent Student" on the broken trophy suddenly flashed through his mind. He paused and said, "You passed...?"
"Yeah." Annie looked at the notebook with unclear handwriting and took out a new pen to write.
There are only fifty or sixty places available for humans at Hailan University.
"How could you, a little girl from the slums, possibly..." Lin blurted out. Halfway through his words, his throat suddenly felt sore and he choked on water. He turned his face to the side and coughed several times.
"There are a lot of mermaids there. I should say, they are all mermaids, right?" Ani said, "I can't take you to school, so I have to kill you."
Lin's mind flashed with the image of those young mermaids being captured by her and tortured by a monster, and he covered his face with his hands in pain.
After Annie finished writing the record, she put on the StarNet watch again and looked up the prices of mermaid body parts on the anonymous black web. Just as she was memorizing the price, she heard Lin's voice.
"…You didn't lie to me, did you?"
Ani tilted her head and looked at him innocently, as if to say "Guess?"
Lin gritted his teeth and said, "With the reproduction lock, you can't get what you want even if you capture more mermaids." He had no idea what this monster wanted besides giving birth to children, so he had to bite the bullet and continue, "Humans don't have this concept. You can look up what the reproduction lock is. The younger the mermaid, the harder it is to open... I can cooperate with you."
The last few words were too hard for him to say, so he shut his mouth and stopped looking at her.
Annie looked at him and thought for a while. She knew nothing about mermaids and the only example she knew was Lin in front of her. She tapped the StarNet page a few times with her fingers and seemed to change her mind.
She looked at the blue-haired mermaid through the glass: "Okay. I can implant a microchip in your head that can explode. If it detects that you said something you shouldn't, then..." She snapped her fingers, her pink eyes smiling lively, "Bang, you can eat fish."
“…”
"But can you enter Hailan University?" Ani asked, "It is said that there is also a screening mechanism for mermaids..."
Lin stared at her for a few seconds, then said in a hoarse voice, "I'm a teacher there."
Ani was stunned for a moment, forgetting to simulate emotions, and uttered a sentence calmly and clearly: "Wow, oh."
"...What's so hard to believe!" She responded in a sarcastic tone, and Lin was furious. "If I hadn't been invited to teach half a month ago, how could I have met a monster like you? Who do you think would pass by the third district inexplicably and fall from the sky inexplicably-"
Ani put her hand to her lips and said, "Shh. If Dad finds out, he will cut you into pieces and sell every hair of yours."
Lin held his breath and remained silent.
-
On the third day after the chip was implanted in his brain, she packed up her things and ran away with Lin without saying goodbye.
"Please don't kill, rob, or sell organs on this train—"
"Please do not bring any cargo that violates interstellar law—"
"The cost of this trip has been automatically deducted. I wish you a pleasant journey."
She boarded the airship to District 8 in advance. The expensive ticket used up all of Annie's savings over the years. She counted the balance behind her StarNet ID over and over again, carefully calculating how much she needed to pay the tuition.
Suddenly, the blue head resting on her shoulder moved.
Lin opened his eyes a little and said softly, "No money?"
"Yeah." Ani nodded. She reached out and adjusted Lin's scarf.
Lin has been very weak since the starship crash, and only in the water can he still have some strength to cooperate with the research. His injuries had never fully healed - or rather, they had only been compounded. Now he had to maintain his land form and stay by her side, which was extremely tiring every day.
Although he didn't know when he would die, at least he was alive now and could still feel uncomfortable. So when he could rest, he would close his eyes and sleep leaning against this little monster.
This kind of air shuttle with a very low ticket price almost does not check identity. Annie bought two tickets using her own Star Network account. Lin's appearance was too eye-catching. Humans were worthless, but mermaids were rare treasures. She took out a scarf and a hat to cover him, and with his waist-length blue hair, passers-by could not tell his true race.
Lin exhaled softly, and his cold breath brushed Annie's cheek. She heard the other person say, "I have."
Annie searched in her bag and took out all the documents she had confiscated, including Lin's StarNet watch, XX qualification certificate, various cards, and several unfamiliar mermaid language certificates.
Lin reached out and tapped a thin card.
Ani stared at his long fingers and nails and thought that he should cut his nails and buy a pair of gloves. She retracted her gaze, took out the card, and stuck it to the back of the StarNet watch to read for a while: "Hey... iris verification, it won't automatically call the police after verification, right? Then your family and friends will know that you are missing because you were caught by me, and I..."
"Will you kill me if you call the police?"
"Of course." Her fingers touched the roots of the other person's hair. The dark blue hair covered a small scar, which was the wound where the micro-bomb was implanted.
Lin hummed softly and moved closer to verify.
The balance on the card was transferred to Ani's StarNet account.
He closed his eyes, rested his forehead against her white hair, and said weakly and disdainfully: "Change to a better car next time. I hate the air here."
"Secondary oxygen. Most people on Aquamarine use this."
Annie said indifferently, and the dark blue on her shoulder moved with difficulty. She didn't know why she wasted energy to express her unhappiness on such a thing, and bit her neck.
Annie took a breath and hissed softly. Over the past half month, she and Lin had become increasingly unable to get along. Just as she was thinking about whether she would be angry as a human being at this moment, a suspicious scene suddenly came into her sight.
That was another train of aerial vehicles outside the porthole.
Against the grey backdrop of the dilapidated and old downtown area, it was breaking away from its predetermined orbit in the air, burning, speeding, emitting smoke and countless strings of electric sparks, and rushing over like an out-of-control tumbling dragon.
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