Chapter 170: Slim (10)

The news of deaths in the hospital had, of course, been sent to Misha by Orff.

After investigating the details of Gracie’s case the previous night, Orff had taken a keen interest in the matter. Early this morning, he hacked into the police system to check what progress had been made overnight in Dalami City’s investigation—only to be greeted immediately with reports of the bloody incident at the hospital.

In addition to the written report submitted by the officers on the scene, he also sent Misha a segment of bodycam footage.

In the footage, when the officer saw the patient spewing out a tapeworm, her body covered in blood, he sucked in a sharp breath and muttered through his teeth, “F**k! This thing is disgusting…”

After cursing, he noticed that the tapeworm in the patient’s mouth was about to crawl out completely and lunge toward him. Without thinking, he instinctively raised his pistol and fired with a “bang,” blasting the worm into a pulp.

“No! Leave one alive—we need a live specimen for analysis!” another voice shouted from off-camera. The officer glanced over and saw a middle-aged man dressed like a doctor hurrying over.

“This kind of tapeworm has never been seen before. We need to understand them well before we can safely remove them from the patients’ bodies.”

“F**k… I knew this assignment wouldn’t be easy,” the officer muttered.

He lowered his gun, pulled out a stun baton from his waist, switched it on, and cautiously stepped forward, lifting the blanket covering the patient in one swift motion.

“Whoosh!” A pale pink blur suddenly shot out from under the blanket, darting straight toward the officer wearing the bodycam.

What followed was a burst of panicked screams. The camera jerked upward, capturing the ceiling, then spun wildly, the view flipping rapidly between the ceiling and the floor. At the same time, crackling electric sounds, terrified cries for help, and the screams of people nearby filled the audio—complete chaos.

The officer was lucky. Because he had the stun baton in hand, although the mutated tapeworm initially coiled around his neck, after a struggle, he managed to electrocute it into unconsciousness and pull the large, slick creature off.

“Get this thing away from me—seriously, it’s disgusting…”

He flung the limp tapeworm toward a nearby doctor. Before he could even catch his breath, more bloodcurdling screams began erupting one after another from the surrounding wards.

…

From the officer’s report and the bodycam footage, it was clear that in the early hours of that morning, six people had died in ways similar to Gracie. Five of them died in their hospital rooms, while one had an even worse fate—he died silently in a restroom stall. If someone hadn’t gone to use the bathroom and noticed blood seeping out from the adjacent stall, no one would have realized he was already dead.

Because the first five were discovered in time, the tapeworms that emerged from their bodies were either killed or stunned and all successfully captured. As for the last person, the tapeworm from his body was never found—it was unclear whether it had escaped through the drainage system or moved elsewhere within the hospital.

As a result, the central hospital sealed off an entire inpatient building and brought in a specialized pipeline cleaning company to clear all the building’s pipes, including the sewage system. Until the cleanup was complete, all patients would be transferred to the older ward building.

…

After reviewing all the information Orff had sent, Everly rested her chin on her hand, thought for a moment, and came up with a hypothesis.

“Do you think those six patients who died might have all taken the white capsule?”

Misha blinked, a bit slow to follow. “Why do you say that?”

“You saw what happened during the attack yesterday afternoon. When one person was targeted by a tapeworm, the others avoided that person and looked for a new host. That suggests these mutated tapeworms repel each other—so each infected patient should only have had one worm inside them.”

As she spoke, Everly scrolled the screen, pointing Misha to a section of the officer’s report. “Look here. Excluding the one who died in the restroom, the other five patients each had two tapeworms emerge from their bodies. It’s only been one night—even if the worms laid eggs on the spot, there’s no way they could grow that large so quickly. So I’m thinking… could it be that before they were infected by the worms from Gracie, they already had one inside them?”

Clearly, Everly wasn’t the only one with such a suspicion.

By noon, Orff—ever diligent, like a farmer inspecting his fields—sent over more information he had gathered from Rakucho Pharmaceuticals.

Since last night, Rakucho Pharmaceuticals had been trying to get in touch with high-level officials in the Dalami City Police Department. After the chaos at the hospital this morning subsided, they spent a small fortune and finally managed to pry information out of the police. From them, they obtained egg samples from Gracie’s body, as well as two live mutated tapeworms—both taken from one of the six people who had died that morning.

At present, Rakucho’s researchers had already completed testing on the two live specimens, confirming that one belonged to the “first-generation,” while the other was a “second-generation” variant.

Orff: [I secretly hacked into the core database of their headquarters in Neon and found some new information. It’s all written in Japanese, so I won’t send the original text. To summarize: “first-generation” refers to the older version from before the weight-loss drug was approved for sale in the U.S., while “second-generation” is a modified strain created after the company altered the original genes to meet U.S. regulatory standards.]

Gracie first came into contact with SSU in December of last year. At that time, the drug was only available through smuggling channels, so the first capsule she took contained the “first-generation” strain. By May this year, SSU had already been officially launched in the U.S., and the new white capsule she purchased and consumed from the official website contained eggs of the “second-generation” strain.

[According to the human trial data retained by the headquarters, first-generation tapeworms are relatively aggressive. Their theoretical maturation period is 7 to 9 months, but if they absorb a large amount of energy during growth, their maturation can be accelerated. “Maturation” refers to the process by which the tapeworm develops from a larva into an adult. Once fully matured, segments at the end of the worm’s body—called gravid proglottids—detach and are expelled from the host along with feces. These segments contain eggs, which is how the species reproduces.]

[As for second-generation tapeworms, after a series of modifications, their maturation period has been stabilized. They must develop inside the human body for 7 to 9 months. Therefore, as long as the black capsule is taken within six months after consuming the white capsule—killing the immature second-generation worms—the body will not expel tapeworm eggs. This prevents the outside world from discovering the drug’s true composition through the eggs.]

[Aside from the maturation period, Rakucho Pharmaceuticals’ researchers had not noticed any other differences between the first- and second-generation strains, nor had they ever considered what might happen if both were placed inside the same body… In fact, after developing the more suitable second-generation strain, the first-generation had already been phased out, and all related research was discontinued.]

[Now, with two live tapeworm samples in hand, the U.S. branch’s research department is preparing to find a suitable test subject for experimentation…]

Orff’s final line was chilling the more one thought about it.

Everly had no doubt that if the research department deemed it necessary, they might very well use a living human as a test subject—illegal immigrants, trafficked individuals, the homeless, the poor… In a place like this, as long as there was money, human beings could still be treated as expendable materials.

[Can you secretly send this information to the pol—] Everly typed halfway, then deleted the message.

Just because Orff was a hacker didn’t mean his actions online couldn’t be discovered. There were always people more skilled out there. If the pharmaceutical company truly wanted to, their resources could easily track Orff down with someone even better. She couldn’t risk dragging her own people into danger out of impulse.

Better to wait… This incident was too severe, and the pattern wasn’t hard to spot. The U.S. authorities would likely catch on soon enough and find a way to deal with it.

Suppressing her irritation, Everly tossed her phone aside and continued living in seclusion at the cabin.

…

For a while after that, Orff kept up a routine like clockwork—morning, noon, and night—sending Misha updates he had sneakily obtained by slipping past firewalls.

Just as Everly had expected, not everyone in the upper ranks of the United States was incompetent. Through background investigations of the six deceased patients, the police quickly identified a common factor—they had all taken SSU fat-burning capsules.

Gracie, the original host of the mutated tapeworms, had also been heavily dependent on SSU.

Based on this clue, the police collected samples of the SSU fat-burning capsules for testing. From the white capsules, they detected tapeworm eggs. At this point, the origin of the mutated tapeworms had essentially become obvious.

Realizing the seriousness of the situation, the police department immediately escalated the report step by step. Not long after, the matter reached the attention of the FBI.

At the same time, in the laboratory of Rakucho Pharmaceuticals’ U.S. branch, an in vivo experiment involving the two generations of tapeworms had just concluded.

Looking at the remains of a homeless man in the sealed lab—his eyes still open in death—and the two tapeworms crawling across the floor with bloodied bodies, the researchers’ faces were filled with excitement and satisfaction at their “successful discovery.”

“It’s amazing! Even though the genetic overlap between the first- and second-generation strains is 99.98%, they still exhibit extremely strong competitive instincts. If second-generation eggs are introduced into a body already occupied by first-generation worms, the second generation grows at a dramatically accelerated rate. At the same time, the first generation responds to the survival threat by accelerating the splitting of gravid segments, allowing larvae to hatch directly inside the host, thereby compressing the second generation’s living space. The reverse is also true.”

“They compete with each other, recklessly consuming the host’s energy until the body is completely hollowed out and can no longer sustain them. At that point, they destroy the host’s body and leave it to seek new hosts,” another researcher added.

“If we can figure out what exactly triggers this ‘hostility’ and ‘competition,’ then by simulating that component, we could artificially control the worms’ growth and egg-laying rate. That would no longer be a dream! A new, more powerful, faster-acting weight-loss drug would belong to our U.S. branch!”

Just as the researchers were indulging in visions of fame and success, a loud bang echoed through the building.

The laboratory doors were kicked open.

In the next second, a group of armed police officers stormed in and arrested everyone inside—researchers and management alike.