After the dark figure vanished down the corridor’s end, Sanzai leaned close to Shen Ge’s ear and whispered, “That was a floor patroller. There’s one on each floor. They love eating brains and entrails the most. We absolutely have to stay far away from them.”
Hearing this, Shen Ge felt something was off. Before tonight, he hadn’t seen any patrollers, let alone Sanzai. Why had both appeared now?
Was it because the experiment had entered its second phase?
Had the antibody affected his mind, causing him to see these monsters that weren’t originally there?
No!
Shen Ge quickly dismissed that thought. If these monsters didn’t exist, then who had he killed during his last trip into the dream world?
Thinking of this, a memory from when he left the ward flashed in Shen Ge’s mind—Sanza’s words to him:
“After being injected with that medicine, you’ll start seeing strange things. Don’t worry, they’re all fake. No need to be afraid…”
All fake?
“Sanzai clearly said those monsters are fake, but he also mentioned there are many guards outside… So, is it the drug’s influence, making me see the patrollers and guards as monsters?”
Due to his “three-year in-depth study at a mental hospital,” which was part of his “clear” memory, he had even taken psychology electives in university.
He recalled an article about a normal person who, after long-term use of psychiatric medication, couldn’t distinguish reality from hallucination and began acting strangely.
This time, re-entering the dream world, Shen Ge chose to cooperate with Dr. Chen’s experiment. As a result, his “treatment” had noticeably improved compared to last time.
Until today, he even felt there was no difference from ordinary hospitalization. It was only after the experiment entered the second phase and he was injected with the so-called “virus antibody” that his body underwent drastic changes.
Sanzai’s appearance and the hospital’s eerie atmosphere—all these changes happened after the antibody injection. It was hard not to suspect the antibody was problematic.
Or perhaps, this was simply part of the experiment?
Sanzai didn’t pay attention to Shen Ge’s changing expression, focusing intently on the sounds from the depths of the hallway to prevent the patroller from doubling back.
Once he confirmed it was safe, Sanzai grabbed Shen Ge’s hand, led him through the long corridor, down the stairs, and finally stopped in front of a double-door operating room. “I heard they’re doing some really scary experiments in here. Want to take a look?”
Before Shen Ge could respond, Sanzai gestured for him to be quiet, pushed the door open a crack, and slipped inside first.
Shen Ge remembered this lab. On the operating table inside lay a woman, bound, naked, her skull removed, revealing a brain veined with blood vessels still pulsing faintly. And in her belly, something akin to a fused “Freak” was being cultivated.
Sanzai observed the operating table with interest for a moment, then wheeled over a chair, climbed onto it, and stood to get a better look at the woman.
Noticing Shen Ge hadn’t followed, he waved at him, whispering urgently, “What are you waiting for? Come on.”
His demeanor wasn’t like urging someone to look at a horrifying dissection, but more like sharing a novel discovery, an interesting toy.
Having experienced Sanzai’s “adventures” once before, Shen Ge was no longer surprised by this bizarre mentality. He climbed onto the chair, this time intending to observe the female Freak up close.
The woman lay with her eyes open, staring vacantly at the ceiling.
She was quite beautiful, with pale skin. However, a horrific wound ran from her jaw down to her abdomen, with obvious stitching marks.
This gash gave the impression she had been sliced open and then sewn back up. Her “stomach” area bulged, a lump about twenty centimeters high.
It looked like a pregnant woman’s belly, but the location was her stomach.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Just then, rapid footsteps echoed as a group of people approached the operating room. Sanzai, startled, immediately grabbed Shen Ge to leave.
“Oh no, we’ve been spotted. Let’s go! If they catch us, they’ll definitely feed us to the bugs. You don’t want to eat bugs, right?” A rare trace of nervousness flickered across Sanzai’s pale face.
The sounds grew closer, almost at the door. Sanzai tried pulling Shen Ge under the operating table to hide, but Shen Ge remembered last time they hid there and were discovered.
“No good! They’ll definitely check the subject later. We’ll be found if we hide here! That bed over there!” Shen Ge pulled Sanzai towards a bed by the wall piled with lab equipment. He yanked down the white sheet to cover the bedside, then he and Sanzai crawled behind the boxes stuffed under the bed.
They hadn’t even settled properly when footsteps entered the operating room.
Fortunately, the newcomers didn’t notice Shen Ge and Sanzai. They gathered around the operating table, performing various checks and experiments on the female Freak.
“Embryo implantation, no signs of rejection for now.”
“How much black mist was injected?”
“Increase the dosage.”
“If rejection occurs, use Antibody No. 3.”
“…”
The experiments lasted over three hours. This time, because Shen Ge and Sanzai weren’t hiding under the female Freak’s bed, they managed to stay safely hidden until the procedures ended.
“Whew… they’re gone, right?” Sanzai sighed in relief as the footsteps faded outside the door.
Shen Ge said, “Better safe than sorry. Let’s wait a bit longer, until they’re farther away.”
So they waited in the operating room for another half hour, confirming no sounds outside, before crawling out from behind the boxes.
“You’re pretty calm, huh?” Sanzai looked at Shen Ge with a smile.
Through the Mirror Freak, Shen Ge knew about “Sanzai’s” background. While their plight was pitiable and tragic, as the original, he found it hard to genuinely feel the “tragedy.”
Because, strictly speaking, Shen Ge was the biggest victim in this entire experiment.
Thus, facing Sanzai, Shen Ge always felt an awkwardness. He wasn’t even sure if this friendly “Sanzai” might be the Mirror Freak who would be shouting for his blood over a decade later.
“Wait!”
As Shen Ge pondered the Mirror Freak and Sanzai, something flashed through his mind. He felt he had overlooked a crucial piece of information!
According to the Mirror Freak, because Shen Ge’s “experimental body” held high research value, the Freak Association researchers had created a bunch of “Sanzai” clones to serve as lab rats for more dangerous experiments.
But!
At this point, Shen Ge had only been at Rongshan Mental Hospital for a few months. Had the Freak Association already successfully cloned “Sanzai”?
Thinking carefully, Shen Ge found this utterly impossible. Setting aside whether current technology could achieve such advanced cloning, Sanzai here seemed no different from a normal ten-year-old. Even with hormones, a cloned embryo couldn’t grow to be identical to him in just a few months, could it?
Could it be that “Sanzai” existed before Shen Ge even came to Rongshan Mental Hospital?
If so, the Mirror Freak’s claims were clearly problematic. Unless Shen Ge was also a “clone,” none of this made sense.
Just as Shen Ge was still pondering Sanzai and the Mirror Freak, the woman on the operating table—who had been staring vacantly at the ceiling—slowly turned her head to look at him and Sanzai.
Then, her lips moved. Her voice was faint, halting, as if she might die at any moment. She spoke to them: “Kill… me.”
“Huh?” Sanzai was clearly taken aback, instinctively looking at Shen Ge. “Did… did she just speak?”
Shen Ge nodded, approached the operating table, and met the woman’s gaze. He was about to say something when she repeated, “…Kill… me.”
The woman’s limbs were firmly strapped to the table. Unlike three hours ago when Shen Ge first saw her, her bulging stomach hadn’t changed much then. But after the lab coats’ procedures, her distended belly now pulsed thump-thump-thump, like a beating heart.
“Kill. Me.”
Seeing no reaction from Shen Ge and Sanzai, she repeated again. Both sensed a pleading tone in her voice.
“She… wants us to kill her?” Sanzai looked nervously at Shen Ge, clearly having never heard such an outrageous request.
Shen Ge looked at the woman and asked, “Do you know… what’s in your belly?”
The woman made a slight movement with her head, like a nod. Then her gaze shifted to Sanzai beside them, her meaning clear.
Shen Ge’s expression darkened. He reached out and began pulling out the tubes connected to the woman one by one. Sanzai instinctively swallowed, muttering, “You’re way braver than me. I only dare run around the wards at most. You actually dare touch their experimental subject… Aren’t you afraid… of being fed to the bugs?”
Shen Ge was about to reply when he saw the woman’s lips struggle to move, painfully forming two words: “Tha…nk… you.”
However, before she could finish, she suddenly gasped in pain. Her bulging abdomen slowed its pulsing, and the stitched wound visibly began to split open. Then, a lump of “stomach” pushed through the wound, “sitting up” from within the woman’s corpse.
Next, with a soft plop, a small but strong hand tore through the thin layer of stomach from the inside, like shedding a skin wrapping it.
When those small hands completely peeled open the “stomach,” it revealed an “infant.” By size, it wasn’t a newborn, but more like a one or two-year-old toddler.
“He, he, he, he, he!” Sanzai stammered in terror, staring at the infant who bore a seventy or eighty percent resemblance to himself.
Shen Ge remembered last time he had used a scalpel to slit the woman’s throat, killing her completely before the Freak inside her stomach awoke.
This time, he didn’t want to trigger this Freak too early. He had only removed the tubes first, planning to find some anesthetic to inject. Who knew the Freak in her belly would awaken a step ahead?
Now, the “infant” sitting on the woman’s corpse slowly reached a hand towards Shen Ge, tilting its head, revealing a chilling smile. “Found you.”
“Ah—”
“AHHH!!!”
Shen Ge remained unfazed, but Sanzai beside him screamed in terror. Already shaken by the infant’s extreme resemblance to himself, hearing it speak those creepy words in an eerie voice completely shattered his composure.
“Let’s go!” Shen Ge grabbed Sanzai and ran for the operating room door. He knew this strange infant, though just born, was rapidly mutating inside with mystical energy and would soon evolve into a Tier 2 Freak.
Although Shen Ge had mastered the power of “manifestation” in the dream world, revealing his strength too early wasn’t wise. It also meant this dream journey was nearing its end. But he still had many doubts that needed time to verify.
After escaping the operating room, Shen Ge and Sanzai chose to run upstairs. Just as they reached the stairs, they heard shouts from the other end of the corridor.
Immediately, the entire floor was bathed in piercing alarm sirens and blinding red flashing lights. Soon, a team of fully armed soldiers, led by lab coats, stormed into the operating room.
Shen Ge and Sanzai ran to the top floor. The door to the rooftop was sealed shut with a chain. The windows were boarded up with planks.
The floors below were on alert; guards seemed to be heading upstairs. But with the strength of two ten-year-olds, prying off the window planks was unlikely.
“Come on, I know another way.” Sanzai was about to lead Shen Ge back downstairs when Shen Ge grabbed his arm.
Shen Ge asked, “You want to go to another floor through the bathroom ventilation shaft?”
“How did you know?” Sanzai looked surprised.
Shen Ge said, “Don’t rush. Right now, their focus will be on the Freak in the operating room. They probably won’t come up here.”
“But what if they do?”
“First, you’re not sure if going down will help us escape. Second, don’t you think it’s strange? Such a large inpatient building, and there’s not a single surveillance camera in the operating rooms or corridors… Most importantly, that woman was important experimental material. Shouldn’t there be guards posted? But there wasn’t a single guard around.”
Sanzai blinked, clearly his child’s mind struggling to keep up with Shen Ge’s adult reasoning. “You’re right. So…?”
“…” Shen Ge didn’t know how to explain further. He just told Sanzai to stay quiet and hide with him by the rooftop door.
They waited for who knows how long. Shen Ge and Sanzai sat leaning against each other, gradually feeling drowsy, and actually fell asleep.
After an indeterminate time asleep, Shen Ge vaguely heard familiar voices conversing nearby. It sounded like Dr. Chen.
Shen Ge wearily opened his eyes. The fluorescent light on the ceiling was uncomfortably bright. He instinctively frowned, then heard Dr. Chen ask, “Are you okay? Any physical discomfort?”
Am I… back?
Was I found hiding by the rooftop door and brought back? Or… was it all a dream?
Using “fatigue” and “discomfort” as cover, Shen Ge quickly replayed the previous night’s events in his mind, considering how to answer Dr. Chen.
After much thought, he decided to attribute everything to a “dream,” answering “truthfully” in that context.
“Dr. Chen, I… I think I had a strange dream. In the dream, there was a little boy who looked a lot like me. He took me playing hide-and-seek in the hospital. We ended up in a place like an operating room. Inside, we saw a pregnant woman with a huge belly. Then suddenly, her belly burst open, and a strange baby came out…”
“And then?” Dr. Chen asked.
Shen Ge feigned hesitation, as if genuinely recalling the dream. “We were chased by a bunch of monsters. We hid by the locked door to the rooftop. We were so tired, we rested against it… then I woke up.”
“Do you remember what the strange infant looked like?” Dr. Chen pressed.
Shen Ge tried to describe it. Just then, a lab coat pushed in a food trolley with a covered silver platter.
Dr. Chen lifted the lid. In the center of the platter lay a bloodied infant, curled into a ball. “Did it look like this?”
