Helo's heart trembled, and he stood still, one hand propped up against the wall, and looked at him with an unkind face.

Ando thoughtfully put the petri dish containing the liquid of the dead body into the thermometer, pointed the light at it, and helped the goggles: "No, do you believe it or not?" ”

He resisted the urge to say something about Elling, and swallowed.

Of course, you can't say it, otherwise Sayero will jump out of the grave even if he dies and shoot him down. That guy is an out-and-out maniac.

"Get out."

As expected, the young man threw him a word angrily, sat down in the chair next to him, and stared at the inside of the thermometer that began to swell and gradually coalesce into a solid liquid. An uncomfortable sizzle sounded in the silent space, muffled by a sudden burst of beautiful music.

As if he was really looking at some kind of pleasing work of art, Hero discovered that Ando's pervert had actually turned on the miniature player he was carrying.

"Alright, let's be patient. It takes a little time for the bacteria in this thing to thaw to resuscitate. ”

Ando turned the swivel chair around leisurely and put his arms behind his head, "You like to listen to opera as much as Sayero, don't you?" ”

Harrow shrugged noncommittally and stepped over to the water dispenser to pour a glass of water, he drank slowly, his ears drawn to the suffocating chant of the player.

It was his favorite singer, Farinelli, a peerless eunuch of the Baroque period, who was castrated by his brother when he was a child and was able to maintain the natural voice of his youth for a long time, even if he heard his arias on the record after centuries, you could hear the heartbreaking sadness hidden in that beautiful voice.

It's really timely, isn't it?

With Sayara's departure, a certain Cheng Cheng Dù also became the skeleton on which he stood up.

"Ando, I can't see that you have good taste."

He raised his glass, his tone a little mocking.

"This is what Sayaro downloaded. To be precise, this player was originally his, and it contained a lot of things he told me. Ando paused, "Most of them teach me how to take care of you, but unfortunately you kid doesn't appreciate it at all, and would rather live in school than go home." ”

"Home? Can you imagine a home where days and nights are only memories and no family? It's not like I haven't been back. ”

Herlo drank the water from her glass and curled the corners of her lips lightly. He lowered his eyelashes, a faint shadow sweeping across his pale face, reminding Ando of when he first saw him.

The thin boy stood motionless in the shadow of the large, cold iron gate, like a lonely tree in the desert.

The child looked up at the hazy sky, his eyes passed through the clouds, and he traveled to another dimension, looking for the man who had left him, there was not a tear in his eyes, only infinite confusion, as if the whole soul had been hollowed out from the inside out.

How could he not have experienced that similar feeling in his own childhood? The indifferent mother, the madman who took him as a real sample, those years spent in the hospital......

A drop of water leaked from the corner of the young man's pale red lips and hung on his chin and crumbled, and Ando couldn't help but stretch out his finger and wipe it off for him.

"You're as lovable as Farinelli." The man's slender and upturned eyes under the glasses flickered brightly, hiding soft feelings, "Since Sayero can't accept you, why don't you consider me?" I've been by your side all these years and know you better than he does. ”

I also cherish you more, instead of treating you as a shadow of another person.

Swallowing the second half of the sentence, he took off his watch: "I'm serious, Helo. ”

"Bang-"

At the same time as Helo got up from his chair, the monitor in the corner of the wall somehow smashed to the ground, and a string of sparks burst from the broken wire, which was not loud, but startled both of them.

"What's going on? How did this thing fall all of a sudden?"

Heloh doused the spark with water, crouched down to look at the finger-thick monitor, picked it up, and looked overhead. There was a small black hole, like a peeping eye.

"Maybe it's because this little place was missed during the warship's overhaul, and I never let anyone else into my room, except for you." Ando spread his hands, deliberately leaning his face over the moment the other party stood up, and his lips brushed over his delicate and small earlobes.

"What do you do?" Helo covered one of the ears of the attack, staring at him angrily.

"I didn't mean it." The perpetrator looked innocent, and when he got cheap, he obediently wiped his mouth, and suddenly felt a cold current coming from the top of his head for no reason. Could it be that there is an air leak inside the warship? He thought to himself, and his attention was immediately drawn to the change in the heater, and he patted the shoulder of the person next to him.

"Look. It's alive again. ”

Helo looked at it and was immediately taken aback.

In the bell-shaped glass heater, the things growing in the small petri dish were unobstructed, like a large mass of translucent tentacles, writhing desperately in the confined small space, sticking to the glass wall and growing rapidly, one by one from the thickness of a finger to the size of a small squid, as if swollen because of congestion, showing a bewitching purple red, and tiny blood threads emerged from under the surface.

"It grows very fast, dividing thousands of cells per second, and I don't know what kind of big thing it will become...... Think that if it were to be sold to an alien specimen exhibit, it would have been marked as a minor. ”

A thought flashed through his mind, and Helo asked, "Have you tested it for other environmental stimuli?" ”

"Of course, like all germs, this thing is a hotbed of humid and warm environments. How's that, interested in seeing magic? Ando walked to the side of the ecological simulation system box and took out a guinea pig.

Sensing that his life was short, the guinea pig squeaked sharply and struggled desperately in his hands. Ando rubbed the mouse's head with one of his gloved fingers, tenderly treating it like some pet.

"Don't be afraid, good boy, you will soon be in another world."

He laughed, the reflection of the white isolation suit shining on his teeth, silver.

Heloh frowned, subconsciously standing a little farther away, watching intently as he stuffed the mouse into the petri dish and turned up the temperature.

The mouse landed on the "tentacle", bounced against the glass wall, and immediately fell into a group of snakes and was tightly entangled. In the blink of an eye, the piece of flesh the size of a football shrank to the size of an earthworm under their eyelids, quickly burrowed into the mouse's body, and disappeared without a trace.

Soon, the mouse convulsed and fell to the ground, the surface of the skin was crawling with purple blood, and the body was shrinking like a leaky ball, as if it was being sucked by a ferocious spider, and soon stopped breathing. Herlo held his breath, knowing that the show wasn't going to end like that.

In an instant, he noticed that the mouse's body had plumped up again, and it had returned to its normal posture, as if nothing had happened just now, except that its eyes had turned into a glowing fluorescent purple.

Helo felt a pang of suffocation.

"Is Sayero's current state because he is parasitized by this kind of thing?"

He stared at the mouse in a cold sweat, trying to see what it was thinking.

He was afraid that Ando would say yes, but he didn't expect the other party to walk over to the petri dish and shake his head.

"I tried to compare Sayara's blood sample with the extracted body fluid for cross-infection and DNA sequence comparison. The conclusion was that there was no match, and antigens were produced. In other words, not only does Sayaro have prosthetic organs, but his blood also contains an antibody that can defend against the alien parasite's cellular invasion. ”

As he spoke, he saw Ando take out another snake and throw it into the petri dish.

The mouse, which should have been afraid of its natural predators, actually approached and let the other party tightly restrain it, and at the moment when it was about to die, the translucent tentacles broke through its abdomen, tore the entire abdominal cavity apart, and burrowed into the scales of the snake, and disappeared without a trace.

The development process, which is no different from just now, is repeated again.

"You see, this parasite will look for the next one after it has completely eaten away at the subject's body. It may seem ferocious, but it has no basic intelligence, and is like a low-level single-celled organism or a controlled mechanical component, repeating the process over and over again. I used to make this a few days ago with beef soaked in battery acid, and it did as well, so I lost some samples. ”

"And those tentacles... I have to say that these tentacles-like things are very interesting, I think they are the carriers of the instincts of this mysterious lifeform, because they cannot control the parasitic body to attack and eat in their own way, these tentacles are similar to limbs and mouthparts, it moves through them. ”

"If Sayaro is parasitized by this kind of thing, he won't still be able to communicate with you. He will turn into the skin of an empty monster looking for a host. ”

"But I've seen his iris take on this purple, Ando." Helo said with extreme trepidation.

"What?" Ando was stunned.

Helo squinted, not knowing what he found, walked to the side of the potion preparation table, picked up two test tubes containing one red and one blue liquid, poured them straight into a beaker to mix, and after shaking it, the red liquid floated to the surface of the blue liquid, and soon bubbled up, which was dissolved, staining the liquid purple.

"What is this thing? Do you sue me? ”

He picked up the ingredient detector on one side and pointed the light at the beaker, and the liquid immediately showed strangely shaped crystals. They look like a bunch of viruses.

As he did this, he noticed that Ando's face had changed entirely.

He raised his hand and brought the beaker to his lips, his thin lips curled up slightly threateningly, raising the eyebrows that were not covered by his bangs, as if he was drunk at the bar, and smiled charmingly: "Cheers?"

"Don't mess around!" Ando rushed over to snatch the beaker from his hand, and was terrified by the way he raised it and threatened to throw it.

"That's the flower of evil! Helo! ”

"What can suppress this alien lifeform is not the serum of the "flower of evil". ”

Ando sighed and muttered as if he had been defeated.

"It's the 'Flower of Evil' itself."

"As I suspected, Sayaro did inject a 90 percent concentration of the 'Flower of Evil' solution into his body. God knows how there could be such a thing in the base of Thorn Paradise......"

Helo froze there as if he had been struck by lightning. Did Saharo really do that? So was Sayero's unusual behavior attacking him that night because the flower of evil was at work in his body?

"Hiss......" At this time, a strange movement attracted the attention of the two people.

"Wait." Ando raised his hand and lifted his glasses in surprise.

The parasitic rattlesnake in the petri dish craned its neck and hissed letters, and its tail vibrated constantly, signaling that the rattlesnake was "buzzing" when it was threatened.

"Didn't you say that the parasitic hosts were left with only the most basic instincts?" Heloh asked.

"Basic instincts also include self-defense." Ando shook his head and looked around, "It's strange that there are no natural predators of snakes here. ”

Helo felt a little uneasy for no reason, vaguely feeling that something was not quite right around him, but there was no evidence to follow. Suppressing this delusion, he asked, "What will happen if it parasitizes humans?" ”

"Can't be sure... After all, human beings are complex creatures, and their instincts include many kinds, especially those like Sayero, who have undergone harsh military training, and many behaviors have been ingrained and become a kind of conditioned reflex. It's hard to say what his instincts had. ”

"But I can guess why Sayaro injected himself with the 'Flower of Evil'."

"That neurotoxin can greatly stimulate the human nerve center, and the high concentration can cause the human brain to evolve in a short period of time in a certain way...... You know that the infected people of the 'Flower of Evil' are very difficult to kill, and they are so excited that they are like knocking a ton of heroin, but in fact, the 'Flower of Evil' used as a biological weapon at that time was transmitted through guò fog bombs, and the concentration was only 20 ......"

"Injection 100 percent...... I'm afraid I'm going to become a superhuman, right? By the way, have you ever watched an old movie called "Super Body" from decades ago? The effect of the 'Flower of Evil' is similar to that of the little blue particles in it, except that its main function is to greatly stimulate people's evil desires......"

"It's long-winded." Helo impatiently interrupted the other party's explanation, "In order to defend the body from alien germs, neurotoxins are injected to activate the brain's potential...... He's so cruel to himself. ”

"Theoretically, no human being can withstand the stimulation of the 'Flower of Evil' with a purity of 100 percent. Even if you become a superhuman for a short time, your brain will soon fail due to overuse. Sayaro survived only because he forced himself into hibernation. This is a sensible thing to do. ”

"Now that he's woken up, it won't take days—"

"Maybe I'll die in half a month at most."

Helo clenched the beaker, shadows shifting under her low-hanging eyelashes. Ando heard the glass gurgle in his hand.

"You...... You put it down first! That thing is dangerous! ”

He lifted his eyelids, and the bottom of his eyes was the same as Ando had ever seen, the kind of confusion that had been hollowed out.

For a moment, he thought that this kid's depression was about to attack again, and he couldn't help but touch the tranquilizer that he had kept in his pocket all year round.

"Don't be stupid!"

"Stupid? Do you think I was a kid a few years ago? ”

The young man smiled and put down the glass in his hand and grabbed his wrist.

The strange power from the metal bones contained in the slender fingers made Ando almost jump. He couldn't help but regret agreeing to help this kid transform his body, and now Helo is simply a little devil with a soft appearance! Someone has to rule him......

"I've got to figure out what's going on at his base and get back to the root and find a solution. No matter how bad it is...... There is another way. ”

"What?" Ando felt that his brain hurt, and he didn't know what this kid was going to do with the risk. He had a bad premonition. Normally, this kid can do something seemingly whimsical and make it happen without anyone believing it, and the price is very bearable.

"Do you know four-dimensional creatures?"

Helo paused, looking out the window into the vast expanse of space, his gaze falling into the distant Milky Way.

"The kind of existence that is not limited by space and time. They are rumored to come from another dimension deep in the galaxy, and are free to travel between planes and planes. If I can't save Sayer, I'll chase them and let them take me back to the time when I can save Sayra. ”

Ando's mouth opened wide in jaw, and he couldn't help but sneer: "You actually believe in this legend? Four-dimensional creatures? Mysterious meteorite rain, the birth of the Holy Spirit? Have you joined the cult, my little darling? Travel back in time and space, and you live in science fiction? ”

"You're wrong!"

The silver-haired young man glared at him, his eyelids reddened and his eyes as sharp as blades.

He unzipped and turned his back, revealing the tattoo on his back. The silver-scaled flying fish snaked and undulated on the smooth back curve of his breath, shimmering with a dazzling color like the Milky Way, and its posture seemed to be about to spread its wings and fly, as enchanting and presumptuous.

Ando held his breath when he heard the sound of all the cells in his body bursting.

"I've seen the Blade Rover, I've seen it with my own eyes. After that meteorite shower, Sayaro grabbed it for me and made it into a specimen before it broke down into particles and disappeared......"

"Helo, come and see!"

He calmed his heavy breathing, dragged into a whirlpool of memories by the voice of a man from afar. The scene many years ago was the same as last night, and he seemed to see the sea again in the night after the meteorite rain.

A layer of meteorite dust floated across the surface of the sea, emitting a galaxy-like glow in the darkness. The beach was also covered with large and small glowing meteorite fragments, and he rolled up his trousers and ran towards the man who was squatting not far away, and saw the other man standing up, holding a glittering object in his hand.

He remembered that Saya had put the dying silver flying fish in a glass jar and put a meteorite in it before it dissipated into a point of light, like an everlasting lamp that had been frozen there forever.

Why not let it go? Brother, isn't it time to throw itself into the arms of the universe?

He asked, only to catch a glimpse of a flash of darkness in Sayara's deep eyes.

"Because he's so vulnerable. I was reluctant to let him go, for fear that he would be injured or die in the treacherous depths of outer space...... I just want him to shine in the palm of my hand for the rest of his life. ”

"Have you heard a poem, Helo...... See the world in a grain of sand, and see heaven in a flower. ”

"Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and savor eternal ...... from one hour"

Helo muttered lowly.

He couldn't forget the way Sayero looked down at the flying fish, as if he was afraid it would slip away, his gaze like a heavy, rusty lock.

Herlo took a deep breath and forced himself to jump out.

"And then it was gone. But not long after, it magically appeared in one of my photos before the meteorite shower. You don't know that in the years after Sayero's departure, I participated in a research project at the school, which was to study the connection between four-dimensional organisms and meteorite showers. There was more than one person who had this miracle that I had encountered. Four-dimensional beings can transmit people's minds to the time and space where they once were. ”

He pulled on his clothes, but he didn't notice that the person behind him was getting closer. His bare shoulder was grabbed, and the moment he turned his head, he was caught off guard by Ando's burning gaze.

Before he could react, the shadow in front of his eyes flickered, and he felt a heat on his shoulders—the man lowered his head and kissed the spines of the flying fish on his shoulders, his lips burning through his skin.