Chapter 5

Sera Westbrook's POV

Kyle told me to move to the second floor and live with Vera. I didn't understand why he wanted to do that, but he probably had his reasons. I didn't object.

Maybe he wanted to give me a chance to have some contact with other people. Thinking about it carefully, I really hadn't talked with anyone in a long time.

I went back to the room on the second floor. Vera quickly made the bed and set a small heat lamp between us. "The temperature's been unstable lately—make sure you stay warm."

I looked at her back and said nothing. Vera really was warm and welcoming—she voluntarily gave up half the bed and let me sleep beside her. She seemed very curious about me and asked me a lot of questions. I answered them one by one, and before long, she was asleep.

I looked up at the ceiling and emptied my mind. Even inside Kyle's base, I still didn't feel truly safe. Vera slept beside me, completely unguarded, her body relaxed against mine. Maybe because of her, drowsiness gradually crept over me, and I closed my eyes.

At four in the morning, my wristband buzzed. Time to check my body for wounds. I sat up, took off my jacket, pushed my shirt up to my ribs, lifted the dressing on the left side, and checked again and again.

Hearing the sound, Vera propped herself up on one arm, turned the lamp up, and tilted her head to look at me. "Do you do this every day?"

"Mm."

She got up, poured a glass of water, and set it beside my hand. Then she looked at the places I couldn't see. "Call me next time—I'll help you check your back."

She was a little too good to me, and I really couldn't refuse. "Thanks."

That night, I slept pretty well.

The next morning, I heard noise downstairs, got dressed, and walked out of the room.

In the first-floor room, Kyle, without even looking up, was plotting the route and preparing the search targets: two locations on the northwest line. First the supply point at the old armory, then the clinics on Front Street. The supply point came first because Front Street would be completely flooded when the spores spread.

Each member had their own assignment.

Halfway through, he suddenly stopped and asked me, "How much of that did you understand?"

I said, "All of it."

He probably wanted me to go on the mission with them.

But Kyle seemed to have something else in mind—he didn't give me a task.

He said, "You stick with the Titan. No acting alone, don't deviate from the set route, and report your wristband readings to me promptly."

Kyle looked around and added, "Sera's situation is very unusual. Even though her combat ability is high, she still needs time to adapt. During this period, I hope everyone can be more understanding toward her and grow alongside her."

Some of the members nodded; others said nothing.

I didn't refuse. I lowered my head and sent my current readings to Kyle.

Kyle must have had a reason for doing this. Maybe he wanted to see how well I worked with the team, to have me train with them more and build closer combat bonds.

In the afternoon, Dorian started drawing a second tube of blood. He rolled my sleeve up to the elbow. The tray had been laid out long ago.

I glanced at Kyle, and he said nothing.

He didn't want to say anything, and I didn't want to ask.

I was the one who'd abandoned him back then. I really had no right to keep questioning him.

Kyle Reynolds's POV

After dinner, Dorian came to find me. He took off his glasses, a trace of fatigue in his eyes, and wiped the lenses with a cloth.

"The test results are out. There's a sequence in her blood that doesn't belong to a human." He held the glasses up to the light and looked carefully. "It's not a genetic mutation, and it's not contamination residue—it's structural, very stable, present in every blood sample."

He put the glasses back on, turned the computer screen toward me, and pointed at the image. Two sequences side by side, a seam running straight between them, joined very cleanly—no sign of a break, and none of the frayed edges a natural break would have.

Dorian said, "This is the ganglion of a deep-sea cephalopod—mainly responsible for signal transmission. In other words, someone cut open Sera's genes, inserted this segment, and welded the seam shut. Five locations, all exactly the same."

I pressed my hand on the table and stared at that seam, my expression serious.

Back when I worked for the Combine, I had more or less heard of things like this. But they were all top-secret—information outsiders couldn't know. Even I had only gotten a tiny fragment of it.

Could Sera be connected to the Combine?

Dorian glanced at me, paused for a few seconds, and went on. "Actually, I've seen something like this once before. Six years ago, I was on night duty at the hospital. At three in the morning, five patients were rushed in. No one knew where they'd come from. Everyone signed the same confidentiality agreement that day—I signed it too."

He folded the cloth, then unfolded it again. "One person's abdominal cavity had grown plant fibers that had already taken root and sprouted. One case was special—when her cranial cavity was opened, it was full of eggs, not even insect eggs, but a mass of eggs that defied description. One patient's eyes had been replaced with compound eyes. The other two had human bodies and animal limbs, and the joints had already healed."

I knew Dorian's way of working and his cautious nature. "So you kept their samples?"

"Yes, I kept five blood samples." Dorian didn't deny it. "Five blood samples, and the test results were all the same. I thought I'd never see that result again. Until today, on Sera's test report, I saw the same thing."

My mood grew even heavier. "What did they do to her?"

Dorian said, "It was the vampire squid. They implanted vampire squid genes into her."

Only then did all the strange things finally connect. The moving hair, the pain she couldn't feel, the gaps in her memory. Everything had left traces after all.

It's true that I had resented Sera for the abrupt way she'd broken up with me. But now Sera was a victim. In the time I was away, she had endured a great deal of pain and pressure—so much that she could no longer feel any pain at all.

Facing her as she was now, how could I bear to blame her?