Falling into the Abyss

It wasn’t a very long journey to go to the Earth Union, but after waking up from his sleep, the atmosphere in the whole spaceship was not right.

Only Ethan and Samuel were on the spaceship. Originally, Roland wanted to send someone to go with them, but Ethan refused. The spacecraft sent to them by the Ophiuchus Alliance had a strong anti-reconnaissance device, so if there was only one ship, there should be no problem traversing around the solar system’s energy net to the Earth Union.

The two of them sat in the cockpit, watching the jumping figures on the dashboard. Neither of them spoke. Since they entered this part of the galaxy, a kind of unspeakable repression had been emanating through the universe’s vacuum layer upon layer like the tide. This sort of atmosphere lingering throughout the galaxy, as if the whole galaxy was dying bit by bit.

This was the beginning of destruction.

Instead of traveling straight to Earth, they landed in the famous slums, the Seventh Space Station—where Samuel was born.

It was a huge city suspended in the vast universe. It looked like it was made up of many boxes of different sizes stacked on top of each other, wrapped in a layer of pale yellow air. Starting from the docking bay of the spaceship, the crowded roads were surrounded by stacked high-rise buildings on both sides. Even above their heads, there were huge buildings. Countless neon signs, illegal vendors, disorderly built roofs, and clothes hanging outside filled the entire space, almost occupying the entire road originally for dual-purpose vehicles or aircrafts.

Ethan had never been to the Seventh Space Station before. Since he was a child, he had known that this was not a place for people with status to come. Besides the Forbidden City, this was probably the most chaotic city. The narrow and complex air streets were full of hooligans, thugs, prostitutes, and drug dealers. He once saw the Seventh Space Station on TV, and he only remembered that the streets were full of dirty water stains, garbage, and even excrement. People were wearing dirty and usually not very well-fitting clothes, children squatted on the side of the road eating some kind of synthetic rhizome that Ethan could not recognize, and there was an empty numbness and loss in their eyes. There were gunfights every day, and your wallet might be stolen when you go shopping for groceries. In his impression, this was a chaotic place where he wouldn’t be able to live.

However, Samuel grew up in such a place. The streets he saw on TV when he was a child that had made him frown were Samuel’s home.

There was no expression on Samuel’s face. He didn’t know how to feel after coming back to his hometown after so many years, and whether he should be nostalgic or feel ashamed of it. But from his leisurely pace and seeing his footwork as he easily dodged groups of people and how skillfully he rebuked someone when he banged into that person and got scolded by them, it seemed that he had quickly adapted to the environment here.

Although the Earth Union’s government had been calling on everyone not to go out as much as possible, there were quite a lot of people in the slums. Maybe it was because even if they faced the risk of being infected with the plague, they still had to come out and continue to work to support their families. Many large factories were still open in the Seventh Space Station. When many other space stations were on holiday, these factories were always running tirelessly. People wore gas masks over their faces and protective clothing on their bodies, and they had to continue to work for a meager salary.

Miraculously, the Seventh Space Station had not been cordoned off. However, it was said that there were people infected with the plague.

When Ethan received the information previously, he didn’t directly feel the impact of the plague. But now, walking on the streets of the Seventh Space Station, he could feel it. A lot of people walked past with their bodies all wrapped up. They seldom heard the sounds of conversation, and people never talked to others unless there was a need. People bent their heads and waists, walking quickly through the narrow alleys, their eyes filled with fear and numbness. It was as if everyone was gray, and all of their feelings were shades of gray.

Samuel took Ethan into a crooked-looking tavern. There were few people in it, and the air was filled with the smell of smoke and bad beer. Samuel sat down on the bar and raised his hand towards the fat uncle, who was lazily wiping a glass.

“What do you want?”

“Their daughter was infected with the plague and was quarantined. It seems that she died in the quarantine area yesterday. They wouldn’t even show them her corpse,” the fat uncle said in a tone lacking sympathy and as if he was factually stating something.

Samuel seemed to be uninterested and asked, “Can I borrow your phone?”

“Long distance or short distance?”

“Short distance.”

“A dime a minute. The phone is over there.” The fat uncle pointed to an antique wireless phone on a faded white lacquer cabinet in the corner. There was a cash machine next to it. Samuel went to call while Ethan stayed where he was.

He was probably going to call his home. After the outbreak of the plague, his father seemed to have returned to the Seventh Space Station.

“You’re not local?” the fat uncle asked.

Ethan said, “I’m not.”

“You couldn’t have escaped from the neighboring quarantine area, right?” The fat uncle hummed and laughed. “I don’t want another group of special forces in protective clothing rushing in. If it happens, I won’t have any business anymore.”

“Has that happened before?”

“Two days ago. After the Fifth Space Station was isolated, some escaped. One of them came here.”

When Ethan heard the words “Fifth Space Station,” he suddenly felt that his palms were sweating. He raised his head and looked at the fat uncle through his sunglasses. “Is the Fifth Space Station isolated?”

“Yes. It’s said that those isolated areas are already like dead cities. The roads are full of black bodies that are turning into worms. If there aren’t any of the black worms that these disgusting people turn into, then there are newly infected patients who bite people just like rabies. The army has no control over the situation at all.”

An old woman in the next seat suddenly put her hands together and began to pray. A simple lunch was placed in front of her. Ethan noticed that the pamphlet she had put on her lap was the same pamphlet the Lord Grace’s Association had circulated in the Forbidden City before.

Ethan felt as if his chest was tightly grasped by something. “The person who escaped, what did they look like?”

“She was a thin woman with dark skin and looked about thirty or forty years old.”

It seemed that it wasn’t his father….. Ethan took a big sip of Black Skull, and the bitter taste made him cough a few times. He wanted to go to the Fifth Space Station. He wanted to go now.

Samuel came back at this moment with a dignified expression. “There’s no one at home to pick up the phone. Let’s go straight there.”

Just as they got up to leave, a man suddenly rushed in from the outside. His hair was disheveled, and his body was swollen. His face had begun to rot and turn green, and his bloodshot eyes were full of a bloodthirsty and beast-like light. His clothes were stained with blood, his hands were so swollen that one could hardly see the shape of them, and he was covered with a layer of sticky liquid.

People in the tavern screamed with fear, and the panicked people scuttled away from their seats, trying to stay away from the man who was apparently infected with the plague. The originally quiet tavern exploded in an instant, and the fat uncle flipped out of the bar with a skill that didn’t match his figure, rushing straight to the back door. The infected man was also like a mad dog. Fortunately, he was clumsy and couldn’t catch anyone for a while, but the couple who lost their beloved daughter didn’t seem very lucky, and they were forced into a corner by him. The Alpha was trying to protect his lover, but he was also afraid to touch the body of the infected patient. After all, the mucus was said to be highly infectious, and they were likely to be infected just by contact. He pretended to be fierce and yelled to intimidate the infected person, but his hands were shaking. His Omega partner was crying in a trembling voice, “Help! Help! Somebody help us! Somebody help me!”

His pitiful plea touched a chord in Ethan’s mind. He remembered when he was taken to the Forbidden City by the robot police officers, when he was locked on the other side of the Neptune space station by everyone, and when he was left in the dark by Samuel and others after his sudden mutation of Pales. At that time, he begged like this, but no one came to save him……

Until Tanisiel showed up……

Therefore, he stood up, disregarding Samuel’s pull, and strode straight toward the infected person. He grabbed the back collar of the infected person who was about to lunge at them. A black tentacle from his fingertip spread along the collar of the infected person to his neck, and then it suddenly tightened.

The infected person let out a painful whimper but couldn’t make a sound because his throat was being strangled. Ethan jerked back, and his huge and swollen body fell and knocked over several tables and chairs. The infected person convulsed for a while, struggling to get up from the ground as he roared angrily. However, when his bloodthirsty eyes met Ethan’s gaze, Ethan slightly pulled down his sunglasses and looked at him from behind the edge of the frames, and he immediately behaved timidly and shrunk back.

There was a lot of commotion in the street. It seemed that people from the epidemic control station had arrived. Knowing that he couldn’t be seen by the people from the station, Ethan turned around and rushed out through the back door with Samuel.

It was only for a moment, but Ethan felt that the infected person seemed to be afraid of him.

Was it because……he was the initiator of all this?

Ethan didn’t have any direct feelings regarding the terrifying catastrophe caused by his mutation, but now he felt how many innocent people were suffering from fear as they watched their close relatives become monsters because of him. Originally, he thought that he was heartless, but at this time, his heart was aching with a dull pain, and guilt began to grow in his mind, until he began to hate himself more and more.

At that time, he mutated beneath the Forbidden City because of anger and followed his instincts to pour the mucus stained with his DNA into the mouth of the blond guard who tried to sneak up on him. It was an instinct, the instinct to expand one’s own race, to infect and contaminate things that belong to Order.

At that time, he listened to his instincts and thought about how hateful and dirty people were. They were hypocritical, stupid, and fanatical. They really needed to be purified.

But after seeing the scene of the Seventh Space Station, he began to doubt himself.

They ran to an alley a few blocks away before coming to a stop. Samuel glared reproachfully at him. “Do you want to get caught? Why aren’t you minding your own business?”

“To me, it’s my business,” Ethan lowered his head and said in a moody voice, “And isn’t that what you want? Otherwise, you wouldn’t keep in touch with the Earth Union.”

Samuel seemed to have received a blow and was stunned for a while before he said, “I’m not going to hand you over to them. I just wanted you……to come back……”

“And why do I need to come back? To help you kill all the Lord Grace’s Association believers? Or do you hate everyone and want to destroy everything, whether it’s the Lord Grace’s Association or the government?” Ethan said, as he gently placed his hand on his left chest where the emblem had been drawn. “If that’s what you want, then I’m afraid that day is not far away from now.”

Without that emblem, he was afraid his so-called “real” father would come to him soon. At that time, even though he had become an adult, he may not be able to compete with an ancient “god” whose lifespan was billions of years long.

What was more, he didn’t intend to resist.

Ethan’s words left Samuel speechless. He did betray Ethan, so he could not refute what the other party said.

He no longer said anything, pulling down the hood of his clothes as they hurried in the direction of his home. They did not dare to take a taxi. After all, cars were too flashy in the Seventh Space Station. They had to walk across half the station.

However, when they finally stood in the narrow staircase before the sky had gotten dark and pried open the door to Samuel’s house with a thin wire, they found that Samuel’s father was not at home.