Imperfections Volume 1 Chapter 17

The s.p.a.ce station that served as the Toxic Nest's strongholdwasn't designed for the rebellion of the Union in the beginning.

A cult organization, if desperate enough to worship bugs, was sure to not have high levels of either wealth or aesthetics. The s.p.a.ce station was reformed from a discarded one — simple waste utilization. On the surface it might be flourishing, but inside, it was full of hidden security risks -- for example, its terrible anti-interference ability.

The s.p.a.ce station's backup power system was rarely overhauled.The lights were flickering and the alarms were screeching all the time because of the extremely unstable power supply.   An enormous group of fl.u.s.tered researchers gathered together from all places in the unknown situation like insects affected by themagnetic field, collectively fleeing towards the lower parts of the starship. Jingheng Lin frowned, but then chose to act according to the situation, slipping into the crowd silently.

Zhanlu's voice pierced right into his ear. "My apologies, sir, but as Mr. Lu is already one hundred and ninety-six years old, and that I believe that he could freely act without a guardian's supervision, thus I did not notify you the danger alerts in time after you left him alone."

"It's fine. I should also be blamed for my negligence." Jingheng Lin humbly self-reflected with him. 

"I also didn't expect that in Monoeye Hawk's big skull, after two hundred years of development, there only grew an almond."

Zhanlu went quiet for a moment. After a bit of evaluation, he realized that Jingheng Lin's words were simply an ironic and piercing joke, and let out an unamused laughter: "Ha ha ha."

Bixing Lu, who was in the a.r.s.enal, did not yet know that he was the cause of such an amount of chaos. Shocked at the sudden ma.s.s power outage, he asked, "Hey, your' s.p.a.ce station has a really unstable power system -- even a few alarms made it overload? Do you need me to help you to repair it? Wait, calm down, talking's just fine, what are you guys doing?"

The s.p.a.ce dock was already shut down due to the power outage, leading to the half out-of-control state of the s.p.a.ce station . The person who rang the alert failed to receive any feedback and was already more than a little bit agitated. He pointed his gun at Bixing Lu, threatening, "Shut up!"

Bixing Lu pursed his lips obediently, showing the authenticity of his peaceful intentions. He was here to look for lost minors, not trouble. Sadly, the man seemed to have failed to acknowledge his sincerity: two men pinned him down from both sides, patting him down randomly.

Bixing Lu let them search him, speaking in a good-mannered way, "I'm extremely sorry for intruding, it's just that four kids from my school messed with the course equipment, and are lost somewhere around here…"

The armed men of the Toxic Nest ignored his reasoning, and the two men pinning him down bent his arms backward — these men had chips inserted in them and had inhuman strength. They also had the intention to cause severe wounds and could easily pull off a normal human's arms like this.

Bixing Lu's shoulders tightened, and his smile faded away. "I'm not here to cause trouble. Are you guys sure that you want to do it like this?"

The two men were shocked. Who knew that Bixing Lu who did not have broad shoulders and wide chests would haveexceptionally tough bones and muscles? One of the men stepped on the back of Lu's knee, making him kneel by one knee. His knee made a cracking sound and made a small dent in the ground.. The cold muzzle of a gun was pressed against his forehead 

"Shut the f.u.c.k up."

Bixing Lu looked down at the dent made by his knee, licking the edge of his upper teeth, and then answered, "Fine."

The guard, stumped by his words, had his mind go blank for a second. But what came next was an ominous gust of wind. He raised his head up by instinct. His eyes suddenly widened, the last image reflecting onto his retinas was a furious ball of fire coming towards him — the mech behind Bixing Lu had moved by itself!

No matter how many chips one had on himself -- even if enough chips were inserted in one's self to qualify as a giant multi-card slot -- he could not simply avoid a mech's attack. Before the man holding a gun could even open his mouth to shout, the part of his body from the neck up was blown off by a launcher, flying in an arc and sizzling in flames.  A neat blackened wound replaced his body from the shoulder-up, not even a single drop of blood flowing out of the wound -- it was already cauterized.

Bixing Lu had kept his mental connection with his mech even though he had already left it!

The remaining two armed men from the Toxic Nest were frozen in shock. Before they could panic, Bixing Lu broke free from their grasp with inhuman strength. The gun from the dead man finally dropped from the body's hands. Bixing Lu grabbed it, ramming the neck of the guy on his left with his elbow.

"Haven't you ever heard of remote links? Your mech engineering teacher must have died early, didn't he?" The guy he just attacked dropped to the ground without letting out a sound. Bixing Lu flexed his arm, "Who doesn't have a chip?"

The man who had just kicked him earlier had fear on his face, and in extreme terror, he unconsciously activated the biological chip inside his body

Two chips from the same sources interfered with each other within such a short distance. There was a light buzz echoing beside Lu's ears, like the sound caused by the high frequency vibration of a thin piece of metal, slowly stretching into a thin, excruciating line of sound that pierced through his brain. 

Lu's heartbeat expanded by dozens of times, and his chest p.r.i.c.kled due to the shock. A nauseous chill went down Lu's chest, but the uncomfortable feeling quickly disappeared, leaving no aftermaths. Bixing Lu pressed on his chest instinctively, and when he looked down, he saw the man writhing on the ground as if he was electrocuted.

Bixing Lu stuffed the gun in his pocket. He planned to do a full-body scan and remove the chip as soon as everything was finished.

He contemplated on the plan and started to walk inside, but then he looked down and realized that his pant leg had a hole on the knee!

This time, young master Lu was really p.i.s.sed off. If it wasn't for the emergency, he really, really wanted to go back and shoot the son of a b.i.t.c.h who kicked him a few more times. Unfortunately, there were no spare pants for him in this situation. So he had to bend down and use brute force to expand the hole further, pulling out a few stray strands, and grabbed a knife to cut a few random slits on the other pant leg--he transformed his hopeless suit pants into a punk-rock one.

Even though he seemed less of a serious headmaster this way, at least he could be recognized as a fashion icon and was suitable to go out and meet people.

Bixing Lu looked up at the blinking lights, then clicked a few times on his wrist to access his personal terminal. "You destroyed my pants, then let me freeload on your internet for a while."

In the chaotic s.p.a.ce station, the unstable communication system couldn't withstand even a tiny attack. Bixing Lu kept walking cautiously — though walking could not

stop him from hacking into the server's encryption within seconds. He seized the authorization to cancel the pa.s.sword onthe server. In the next second, all the electronics with communication features automatically had a signal……even though it wasn't really stable.

Bixing Lu kept walking, searching the runaway students'terminals, but he only found White's. The other three were heavily damaged — probably from their faulty handling of the mech.

As he tried to get a call through, he also quickly searched for the students' location.

White didn't pick up the call.

How could White spare his attention for picking up the call? When the mysterious door opened, he froze in front of a row of guns pointed at him.

The robots that should've opened fire were stuck in a cycle of reboots, all the guns were frozen in a position ready to shoot.

"Dudes," White murmured, "Can anyone pinch me to tell me that I'm still alive?"

Mint drew in a single deep breath and pulled White back, her long hair standing on its ends. But she soon figured out that the robots were only posing and had no intentions to open fire. They stood still for a few seconds, then Mint bravely and slowly raised her hand and pushed aside the gun which was almost poking White's nostrils.

The security robots' eyes flashed confused signals rabidly, but the robots stayed still.

White's calves trembled in fear. He pointed back at the direction where they came from, "I, I…I think we should…"

Before he could finish his sentence, he heard the sound of explosion created by Bixing Lu, whom at that exact moment had controlled the mech's launcher to shoot the guy that had a gun pointed at him. The launcher's boom echoed in the confineds.p.a.ce, terrifying the c.r.a.p out of the students.

White let out a broken sob and turned back. "......Let's go back! Run! There's someone opening fire behind us!"

The three ran away, dragging Rickhead along with them, and dashed through a line of security robots frozen like terracotta warriors with their eyes tightly shut.

The icy smell of disinfectants rammed into their noses, and what came into their view was a room similar to a conference room .The seats placed in a circle were empty, and in the center of the room was a 360-degree monitor screen.

"What is all this?" Jingshu Huang asked. "What is this place for?" 

"It should be a lab." Mint scanned with her gaze over the room, replying softly, "Remember that dumba.s.s I beat up at the opening ceremony? Pres Lu had me clean up mech parts in the lab for half a month after that, and I've seen his experiment reports there. This seems to be the same format as that." 

White examined the incomprehensible reports but did not understand anything except for the time and date written on it. He immediately asked, "Then what's the stuff written on these...Ow!"

Mint wasn't patient enough to answer him again and kicked him. "Where did you get all these motherf.u.c.king questions from? f.u.c.k off!"

They kept going on, and dashed into a narrow pa.s.sageway that had a tiny door at the end of it. The door should've been locked, but the power outage left it with a tiny seam. The three set Rickhead aside, then pushed the heavy mechanical door open together. They dashed in, but just after a few steps, they skidded to a grinding halt.

"My……" White originally wanted to say "my mom", but it did not seem to match his gallantry and made him sound like a mama's boy, so he swallowed the words back. But still, he stared at what was in front of them — countless rows of giant transparent incubators were lined up, their bases shining with a bright, eerie white glow. Every single one had a floating, naked child in it. All of the children's skulls were missing half of them, exposing their naked brains that had immeasurable tiny chips and connectors connected to them. Countless wires extended from their brains to the incubators like umbilical cords. 

Like monsters ready to be born.

Walking inside further, it was not simply children with half of their skulls missing — some had mechanical arms and legs, some had their innards exposed for everyone to see — and their tiny hearts and lungs worked on, powered by the lab's appliances.

A part of the incubators had stopped working: probably because of the power outage. Tiny bodies floated up in them. Marks on their bodies showed that they had struggled before death. 

Their post-death imagery sent chills through the students.

Mint's arms trembled, and she spoke, forcing herself to overcome her fear, "Let's get out of here."

White couldn't take it anymore, and burst into tears while running. "I'm so, so sorry, I'll apologize to the Headmaster on my knees tomorrow…"

"You'll have to live until tomorrow to do that! Wait a minute!" Jingshu Huang suddenly noticed a kind of medicine in an incubator and yelled out. She abruptly stopped,

 pulled out one of the tubes, skillfully loaded the syringe and directly stabbed the injector into Rickhead's veins. Under the horrified stares of her cla.s.smates, she spoke in a low voice, "It's just a strong stimulant with a few  side effects — they use it a lot in hospitals, you're fine as long as you're not allergic to it……you're not, right?"

Rickhead: "......"

Just then, chaotic footsteps came over, and the half-dark lab suddenly lit up. With a light hum, the backup power was activated — the pirates that came off the starship had arrived, and they happened to block the students in their path!

Bixing Lu had found White's location before White could pick up any of his calls, and he had already followed them to the back door of the lab. Just in time, the security robots were successfully re-activated, and the guns that had accidentally let the children pa.s.s were not so nice to Bixing Lu.

Bixing Lu: "......"

At this moment, what else could he reply with except for a smile?

He laughed awkwardly, and jumped backwards—but it was too late.

Dozens of laser guns opened fire on him.

Bixing Lu closed his eyes by instinct. Just then, a gigantic mech car hurtled over, spreading out its protective shield, taking him under its cover, and the mech car rammed right into the lab, making the security robots and laser guns flip over into a humongous mess. A heterochromatic Monoeye Hawk rushed downwards—

Just moments earlier, something had happened to the s.p.a.ce station's communication system, and it was suddenly decrypted. Monoeye Hawk's communicator showed that a familiar name was nearby, and a glance at it nearly scared him into jumping out of the starship's top floor.

Monoeye Hawk kicked the mech car's door open. "You little s.h.i.t, you…"

He was suddenly face-to-face with a "Jingheng Lin" half kneeling on the floor.

Monoeye Hawk: "......."

Bixing Lu: "...Dad?"

Monoeye Hawk nearly had a heart attack because of the "Dad". He clutched at his chest, and took a step back. "You……you, you, you……"

The next moment, an unmanned mech car triggered a small-scaleexplosion, destroying the lab's entire back door. The Toxic Nest's cult, the pirates from the starship, the four trapped students, the great Headmaster Lu and his horrified, frightened father…

As well as a Jingheng Lin hiding in the corner, all met unexpectedly.

TBC