Chapter 66-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 66 Observation
Zhu Ning didn't know what these people were so nervous about. She didn't even have a weapon on her—if anyone should be nervous, it should be her.
Ring ring ring—
The phone kept ringing, but no one answered it.
Zhu Ning shifted her feet. The people beside her seemed unresponsive, their states all somewhat unnatural. Someone must have given them new instructions through their earpieces.
Zhu Ning smoothly opened the phone booth door and picked up the retro red telephone receiver. The ringing stopped abruptly.
At this moment, there was only one person who could call without those four objecting.
Sure enough, a man's voice came from the receiver. "Miss Zhu, hello."
The voice on the other end sounded very cold, different from Prometheus's voice—it had a kind of coldness that made people uncomfortable.
Zhu Ning was very polite: "Hello."
"My surname is Chu."
Zhu Ning went with the flow: "Hello, Mr. Chu."
While listening to the phone, Zhu Ning watched outside the booth. Those people hadn't moved at all, staring intently at Zhu Ning, seemingly wary that she might pull some trick.
Inside the laboratory, the image of Zhu Ning entering the phone booth was projected on a large screen.
Apart from Professor Chu talking to Zhu Ning, the technicians all seemed very nervous. They still remembered suffering a setback at Zhu Ning's hands last time—this person was hard to guard against.
Professor Chu's original order was to capture Zhu Ning alive and bring her back to Eternal Pharma. Now it seemed this task wasn't so easy to complete.
Zhu Ning had quite a reputation. The biggest benefit after making a name for herself was that no one would underestimate her. They would even imagine her to be stronger than she actually was.
Professor Chu looked at Zhu Ning on the screen as if having a face-to-face conversation with her: "You seem to have broken one of my experimental subjects."
He was talking about Subject 777, so his identity should be the person in charge of the experimental subjects. Zhu Ning guessed he was probably a professor or researcher.
She didn't know if this person was directly related to the Mechanical Oceanarium incident. He seemed more focused on experiments, while the person at the Mechanical Oceanarium had acted too strangely. She hadn't figured it out yet, and they apparently didn't know that Cheng Mofei's employee wristband was in her possession.
She hadn't dealt directly with Eternal Pharma before. Last time she got the assassin's camera and exchanged a few words with the person in charge, but unfortunately, they couldn't take it and cut off communication without saying a word.
Zhu Ning immediately said: "I was wrong. I didn't mean to. Prometheus made me do it."
Technician: "..."
Professor Chu's side fell briefly silent, as if he hadn't expected Zhu Ning to have this kind of style. Having been in this line of work too long and seen too many tough characters, he thought she would talk tough and refuse to give in. He didn't expect her to apologize and sell out Prometheus in one smooth motion.
Zhu Ning asked: "Do you want me to be your mole? I'm willing."
"She's really... enthusiastic." The technician found this scene somewhat absurd. How could there be such a person? Rushing to become a mole?
Wasn't she Prometheus's ace? Was the treatment over there that bad?
Only a defecting loyalist had a chance of being loyal to you. He'd heard that Zhu Ning only loved money. If she could betray Prometheus for money today, she could betray Eternal Pharma to the Sanitation Center tomorrow.
A person with a bad record, the technician thought. Zhu Ning's valuation in his mind dropped two points. She wasn't a top-quality product—Eternal Pharma couldn't use someone like this.
But Professor Chu's interest in her didn't diminish. He showed a smile. His appearance was that of a refined scoundrel, and when he smiled, it made the technician feel a bit creeped out. This expression usually meant something bad was about to happen—something truly bad.
Professor Chu: "I don't have that intention."
Zhu Ning sighed with some regret: "Otherwise I could earn two salaries."
Technician: "..."
No wonder she had such high sanity and the First Military District had no plans to recruit her. The military needed absolutely obedient soldiers—this kind of person was too hard to control.
Zhu Ning: "What are your plans now?"
Honestly, she and Eternal Pharma didn't have any life-or-death feud. They weren't at that point yet, otherwise they wouldn't have called to test the waters.
Cheng Mofei's sacrifice was his own business. Right now, Eternal Pharma had no specific elimination plan targeting Zhu Ning.
Eternal Pharma also wasn't willing to kill her at any cost. Every organization found it difficult to cultivate talent. When the input-output ratio was too low, the matter seemed unnecessary. There was still room for negotiation.
Professor Chu's side paused: "Huang Yaruo has disappeared."
Huang Yaruo? Zhu Ning hadn't heard that name in a long time. She thought Huang Yaruo had been captured by Eternal Pharma's people, but it sounded like Eternal Pharma hadn't found her.
If Huang Yaruo was Experimental Subject 777's symbiotic partner, then she was part of the experimental subject. Finding Huang Yaruo could recover some of the losses. So Huang Yaruo was still alive.
Zhu Ning made a sound of acknowledgment and said thoughtfully: "You want me to help find her? But you have to pay me, right?"
Technician: "..."
He could barely stand listening anymore. Zhu Ning truly had no backbone.
Professor Chu: "I just want to find someone responsible for my losses."
Zhu Ning: "That's quite reasonable."
After all, they had exhausted their efforts raising the experimental subject, and Zhu Ning had crushed it into ruins. Someone did need to be responsible.
While communicating, Professor Chu zoomed in on Zhu Ning's face, observing her features very carefully.
Previously, Zhu Ning had always worn a helmet. Even after he discovered Zhu Ning's identity, he'd only seen photo information. This time he was seeing a very vivid face. She looked composed, with her hair in a high ponytail and some messy strands at her temples.
Zhu Ning didn't care much about her appearance. She wasn't the type to dress meticulously, nor was she some well-educated lady. If you just looked with your eyes, she was like an ordinary person who'd just finished a night run.
But she looked somewhat familiar, as if he'd seen her somewhere before.
"I don't lack subordinates, nor do I lack moles." Professor Chu said.
To him, moles were just consumables. Even the most powerful Ability Users were just consumables.
Professor Chu: "I need a new experimental subject."
Zhu Ning frowned. What did he mean?
Zhu Ning had destroyed his experimental subject, so Professor Chu needed Zhu Ning to return that part. He didn't want money, nor did he need Zhu Ning to work for him. He wanted a new experimental subject.
Professor Chu's fingers tapped on the table. "Miss Zhu, I very much want to observe you."
Zhu Ning: "..."
A pervert?
Professor Chu's voice was unhurried, as if he were just saying something as ordinary as "I'd like to go on a date with you."
This time Zhu Ning wasn't so relaxed. She was a bit angered by him. She wasn't afraid of being a mole or going to war, but she hated his tone—condescending, as if she were merely a lab rat.
She wouldn't let an AI take over her body, and similarly, she wouldn't become a pharmaceutical company's experimental subject.
Professor Chu: "Your data in all aspects should be very interesting."
A Defective with ultra-high sanity was definitely not an accident. Professor Chu thought of the abilities she'd used last time. Just the abilities she'd shown included two types, and she carried various contaminated props. This might not even be all her abilities—she was still hiding part of her strength.
From a scientific research perspective, Professor Chu really wanted to open Zhu Ning up and take a look. She didn't seem much like a Natural human—she herself seemed like an experimental product.
If the initial destruction of Experimental Subject 777 had made him somewhat angry, now he was very grateful to Prometheus. Otherwise, he might not have been able to meet such an interesting person.
Zhu Ning's gaze darkened. "What if I refuse?"
Professor Chu's gaze wandered over Zhu Ning's body as if it had substance, like a sharp scalpel. Wherever his line of sight landed was where the blade would cut. In his mind, he'd already dissected her countless times. "You cannot refuse being observed."
Zhu Ning could kill the four assassins before her, but she couldn't refuse the potential of being observed. That wasn't an overt active attack, but something more covert.
Eternal Pharma had countless eyes. They had countless observable cameras. Zhu Ning could guard against enemies, but she couldn't guard against gazes.
District 103 had innumerable cameras. Eyes made from Contaminants might not even be noticed.
Zhu Ning could find a house to live in—that would be relatively safe. But could she hide in a safe house for her entire life?
She would always have to walk among crowds, unable to distinguish which passersby were real passersby and which were observers hidden among them.
As long as Professor Chu had his eye on her, the observing gaze would be like a bone-attached maggot—sticky, damp, forever clinging to her. Even if she temporarily shook it off, her body would still bear traces of that cold gaze.
Zhu Ning couldn't eradicate the gaze. Until death, she might never escape it. Even after death, she would be dissected, with researchers studying the direction of every blood vessel, the structure of her heart, opening her brain to see the mysteries within.
Living, she'd be a living experimental subject. Dead, she'd be a dead experimental subject.
I haven't imprisoned you, nor have I killed you. I'm just observing you.
This was a form of psychic contamination.
Psychic contamination didn't only exist in contamination zones. Even in ordinary people's lives, one person could inflict psychic contamination on another.
Or perhaps this behavior itself was part of the experiment—to see if a person could survive under continuous psychic contamination.
She would never feel safe, always feeling like a shadow was following her closely. She couldn't help looking for peering eyes. When sleeping, she'd want to turn over and look under the bed. When walking, she'd unconsciously want to look back. When eating, she'd always feel someone was watching her from the opposite building. When bathing, she'd imagine an eye peeking out from the ventilation opening.
Over time, she wouldn't even be able to distinguish whether these gazes were real or imagined.
No one could remain rational under such continuous and intensive observation. She would go mad sooner or later. Professor Chu was guessing how long that would take—a week? A month? A year? He hoped that day would come quickly.
Zhu Ning: "Are you trying to destroy my sanity?"
She was no longer a novice who'd just entered the Wasteland. The deeper her understanding of Contaminants, the more she could reverse-engineer their logic.
People found it hard to remain rational under observation. This process was the process of destroying sanity, making Zhu Ning step by step walk toward madness, then burst into a contamination zone, just like they'd once done to Huang Yaruo.
Professor Chu fell silent. The technician had followed him for so long and rarely saw him show this expression, frowning at Zhu Ning as if looking at a difficult problem. Few experimental subjects that Professor Chu set his sights on could break free.
People feared the unknown, but once they knew the answer, it lost its effect.
Just like when Zhu Ning interviewed for work and Fang Ying asked if she was afraid—as long as she wasn't afraid, she wouldn't be contaminated.
Zhu Ning smiled. She found the camera in the phone booth. "If you want to observe, go ahead. I don't care."
Why care about gazes? A gaze was just a gaze. A gaze had no substance. They said gazes were like knives, but at most, that was just a light, insubstantial gaze.
She would fear monsters, firearms, and weapons, but she wouldn't fear gazes. At most, she'd feel a bit disgusted.
The best way to deal with gazes was to ignore them, or to look back.
He could observe all he wanted, and Zhu Ning could live her own life.
If Professor Chu could observe something truly valuable, Zhu Ning didn't mind him sharing it with her. Coincidentally, Zhu Ning also wanted to know what kind of thing she was.
But if this pervert really happened to expose his laboratory one day, stepping from behind the scenes to the forefront, Zhu Ning guaranteed she would repay all of this. She would also let him know what it felt like to be constantly watched with no escape.
Zhu Ning didn't speak. She just looked up at the camera. Her eyes held no intimidation, no anger, only calmness.
Even at this moment, Zhu Ning hadn't been provoked. She was too stable.
Professor Chu's side frowned. Her sanity was too high—it couldn't be destroyed. She couldn't even be shaken in the slightest by his voyeurism.
They hadn't engaged in real firepower exchange, but he'd already lost this round.
Author's Note:
Ahhhhh I've been working overtime so much I'm really about to become a Contaminant. I need to stay rational!
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