"Baby, are you there yet?"
Suddenly, that phrase crackled through Lansi's headset.
The speaker had deliberately lowered his voice. Under normal circumstances, that kind of magnetic, sultry tone would have made anyone blush and go weak at the knees.
But Lansi was only irritable. He pressed one hand to his headset, whispering furiously, "Can't you just squeak or something before you start talking? You scared me to death."
Lansi had currently crept up to Dr. Murin's house. Under the night sky, everything was dead silent; there wasn't even the sound of a bug nearby. He squatted on the outdoor hillside, keeping a silent watch.
Just now, Winsor's voice had come so suddenly that Lansi's heart had nearly jumped out of his chest.
There was a silence for a few seconds before Winsor replied, "Your reaction is not what I imagined."
"Read fewer of those trashy romance books," Lansi snapped.
Right now, Winsor was acting like a bad student trying to get a perfect score on an exam solely by reading study guides, completely failing to realize that the person writing the test questions wasn't an idiot.
"There's no one here," Lansi muttered, looking at the mansion. The dark, gaping windows showed no signs of light, making him highly suspicious that Dr. Murin didn't even live here anymore.
"If it's abandoned, maybe Dr. Murin really has gone missing," Winsor offered casually over the headset.
Once he realized Lansi was dead-set on slipping out to find these so-called "allies," Winsor had no choice but to provide a few potential candidates. At the time, Winsor figured Lansi would need to weigh his options, but he hadn't expected Lansi to have his mind made up from the very beginning. Out of all the suspicious names Winsor had floated, Lansi hadn't hesitated for a second before choosing Dr. Murin.
When he first heard the choice, Winsor had fallen silent. He assumed Lansi only picked Dr. Murin because he didn't fully grasp the situation.
Before Will entered the picture, Dr. Murin was the one pulling all the strings. If Lansi and his friends were the "good guys," then Dr. Murin was undeniably the "villain." Now that Will was here, since both were technically villains, it seemed highly probable that Dr. Murin and Will were working hand in glove.
"I don't think the Dr. Murin you describe would willingly be in cahoots with Will," Lansi said.
He had chatted with Winsor enough to get a general sense of what Dr. Murin was like—self-righteous, arrogant, and mean. Of course, it was undeniable that the man was incredibly brilliant, possessing a genius mind for analysis and discovery.
Because Dr. Murin was that kind of person, Lansi suspected his current "disappearance" was actually because he had uncovered Will's true nature. Coupled with the research notes and materials Dr. Murin had left behind on that small island, it was hard not to suspect that the scientist had begun targeting Will.
Putting two sharp, thorny personalities together would only result in them wounding each other bloodily, neither ever willing to back down. All in all, Lansi believed Dr. Murin might actually share a common goal with him. Since their objectives aligned, why not investigate? If they could bring Dr. Murin into their camp, they would instantly gain total insight into the inner workings of the laboratory.
The only issue now was what Carl and the others had mentioned: there was always someone flanking Dr. Murin.
That person, as both Lansi and Winsor knew, was Will.
While Lansi didn't know why Will chose to stick so closely to Dr. Murin, if Will was currently in that house... it was going to be a bit troublesome.
"Hurry back," Winsor urged through the headset.
"Okay."
Lansi glanced up at the moon. Judging by the hour, it was getting late, and he probably wouldn't catch anything tonight. He prepared to slip away.
He didn't expect that just as he began climbing down the hill, the lights inside the mansion would suddenly snap on.
*Lights? So someone is home?*
Lansi thought it over, then scrambled back up the hillside as best as he could, nesting himself in the brush to peer down at the mansion below.
He managed to find an excellent vantage point, giving him a clear view of the interior. After the lights flared to life, a man stepped out. He walked onto the balcony, stared out at the distant mountain view, and lit a cigarette.
Using the ambient light spilling from behind the figure and the orange flare of the cigarette, Lansi recognized him. This was the exact man who had led a squad to yank the blankets off him back in Wen Yu's villa—Dr. Murin.
Though they had only crossed paths once, Lansi could tell the man's mental state was in shambles.
He wore a button-down shirt with his white lab coat thrown over it. His clothes were completely disheveled, and there were obvious stains smudging his coat, though its owner didn't seem to care in the slightest. The black-rimmed glasses he always wore sat crooked on his nose. He held the cigarette between two fingers, and as he smoked, it was easy to see that his hands were trembling uncontrollably.
In the deep gloom of the night, the red ember of the cigarette glowed bright, then faded, over and over again.
Lansi actually saw a hint of despair in him.
*Well, the man has come out, but how can I just walk up and ask?* Lansi lay on the hill, hesitating.
After a moment, another figure stepped out from behind Dr. Murin. Lansi took one look, realized it was Will, and was so shocked that he immediately yanked his head back down.
The exact moment Lansi retracted his head, Will looked up and swept his gaze across the surroundings. After scanning the area for a while, Will found nothing. He raised his eyebrows, dismissing the sudden palpitation he had felt as a mere illusion.
"What are you doing out here?" Dr. Murin saw Will standing beside him and showed an expression of pure impatience. "Me smoking is my own business. Does it concern you?"
Will tilted his head. He retracted his gaze from the distance and looked at Dr. Murin instead. Under Dr. Murin's stare, Will reached out, abruptly snatched the lit cigarette straight out of Dr. Murin's hand, and stuffed it into his own mouth to eat it.
As he chewed the cigarette butt right in front of Dr. Murin, an exaggerated fissure tore open across one side of his face, the split of his mouth stretching all the way back to his earlobe.
"I don't like it... You humans are so strange. Why do you always engage in self-destructive behavior?"
Dr. Murin stared at the inhuman creature before him, his entire body stiffening. No matter how many times he witnessed it, seeing the various grotesque, inhuman states and actions Will displayed was something Dr. Murin, as a human being, simply could not stomach.
After enduring it for a few seconds, Dr. Murin lowered his voice and snarled, "What the hell do you actually want?"
"Just coming out to say goodbye to you before I go to dinner," Will said, putting on an aggrieved look. "On TV, family members who are close to each other always greet each other when they leave the house."
"Get out. Get out right now."
Dr. Murin laughed out of sheer rage. He strode away toward the woods outside the mansion without giving Will another glance.
"...Humans really are weird," Will muttered, tilting his head as he watched Dr. Murin's retreating back.
Once Dr. Murin had vanished from his sight, Will's body began to distort and change. With a movement that no human could ever replicate, he leaped onto the roof, disappearing into the darkness in a few bounds. He was heading in the direction of the ocean.
Apparently, the "dinner" Will spoke of meant hunting for food in the sea.
Dr. Murin couldn't care less what Will was going to eat—whether he was eating people or eating fish, he couldn't control any of it anymore anyway. Previously, he had always believed he was the one "raising" Will, but now it felt much more like Will was "keeping" him.
Ever since realizing he was entirely under Will's control, Dr. Murin had become utterly nihilistic about everything. He no longer cared about his experiments, stopped fighting with the conservative moderates in the laboratory, and was even too lazy to show up for work. Because he had been holed up in this mansion, many people assumed he had gone missing.
Dr. Murin didn't bother to clarify the rumors. He believed that if he truly disappeared, it might actually be a good thing.
This brand of non-violent non-cooperation had left Will somewhat frustrated. Evidently, some of Will's methods of manipulation had failed to work on Dr. Murin (and at the same time, Dr. Murin's physical health was declining). In light of this, Will had been forced to take a step back. He agreed to grant Dr. Murin a degree of freedom, and under the scientist's immense pressure, Will promised not to monitor or manipulate him at every waking moment. This finally gave Dr. Murin some room to breathe.
A headache—it was still a splitting headache.
Dr. Murin walked mechanically through the woods. The silence of the forest and the cold air hitting his lungs temporarily numbed his pain, making him feel a fraction better.
*Why did things turn out like this?*
Dr. Murin walked deeper into the trees. He looked up through the gaps in the canopy and saw the bright moon. For a moment, he was dazed. Staring at the moonlight, a single question crossed his mind: In this entire universe, does anyone besides humanity actually care whether humanity goes extinct or not?
However, in the very next second, Dr. Murin didn't even have time to mourn the world or indulge his melancholy. He was suddenly jerked behind a small hill by a sudden force, nearly scaring him out of his wits.
"Ah—mph!"
"Hush, hush, hush! Be quiet, it's me."
The person covered Dr. Murin's mouth with a hand, pinning him down against the slope, and whispered, "I'm going to let go of my hand now, so don't scream. I don't think either of us wants to draw Will back here, right?"
Dr. Murin finally saw the face of the person pinning him down, and his pupils dilated in absolute shock.
After a beat, he nodded, ceasing his struggle to signal the man to release him. The person hesitated for a moment before finally taking his hand away.
"I remember. Your name is 'Lansi'."
As expected, Dr. Murin didn't scream. He looked closely at the face above him and muttered, "You're Wen Yu's..."
Perhaps remembering that Wen Yu was already dead—and that even his body was gone—Dr. Murin cut himself off, leaving the sentence unfinished.
"That's right."
Lansi didn't get up. He kept Dr. Murin pinned to the ground, wary that the scientist might suddenly bolt. He asked bluntly, "What is your actual stance on Will?"
At the mention of Will, Dr. Murin's posture immediately tensed. "What are you trying to do?"
"I'll say it to you straight," Lansi said with absolute seriousness. "I just came from the northern island. Did you build that prison?"
Dr. Murin's eyes widened. For some reason, he suddenly averted his gaze to stare at the moon behind Lansi, and his lips began to move in a rapid whisper. Lansi listened closely for a moment and realized Dr. Murin was reciting the periodic table of elements.
Lansi: "..."
"Don't worry, I'm not one of Will's spies" Lansi pressed on over the background noise of the periodic table. "I want to kill Will... and right now, you're the only ally I can find. Since you managed to build a prison like that, you must have been planning this for a long time."
Dr. Murin shifted from the periodic table to reciting chemical formulas, his eyes locked onto Lansi. In a brief pause between equations, he asked, "Why should I believe you?"
"You're memorizing the periodic table to block Will from reading your thoughts, aren't you?" Lansi guessed. He was thoroughly surprised, and at the same time, felt a wave of genuine admiration for the man.
As expected of the former head of the laboratory; he really was brilliant.
"You should believe me because I used to be human, and I don't want humanity to perish." Lansi looked directly into Dr. Murin's eyes. "To tell you the truth, I am the mermaid you've all been looking for."
With that, Lansi pulled back his coat, exposing the patch of fine, iridescent white scales shimmering along his waist.
"My God..."
Staring at the white scales, Dr. Murin let out a breathless gasp. He slowly reached out a trembling hand, wanting to touch them, but Lansi slapped it away.
"If Will doesn't die, I'll eventually be in deep trouble too. That's why I want him dead," Lansi said, pulling his clothes back down to cover himself. "You might think it's stupid of me to expose my identity to you like this... but I had no choice. Choose the lesser of two evils. Isn't this enough sincerity?"
Dr. Murin paused, his mind shifting to recite prime numbers while he weighed the situation. A minute later, he let out a long sigh and gave a bitter, weary smile.
"If you can help me, that would be wonderful." He raised his head, his eyes severely bloodshot. "I've been tortured enough... For my sake, and for the sake of humanity, Will must die."
Dr. Murin knew that in the eyes of some, he was entirely devoid of morals and principles. But he firmly believed that every atrocity he committed was for the future of the human race. His ultimate bottom line was the survival of species.
Because of this, he could conduct human experiments without a shred of hesitation, or sacrifice segments of the population without batting an eye. To him, these were merely necessary casualties required to secure a more glorious future for mankind, and his conscience was perfectly clear.
However, Will's existence threatened to erase that future entirely.
Therefore, even if it meant dying alongside Will, and even if it meant plotting with a dangerous creature like Lansi, Dr. Murin knew Will had to be destroyed. Whether Lansi was a mermaid or something else entirely didn't matter at all anymore.
---
Will returned to the mansion.
To his surprise, when he walked in this time, he found Dr. Murin sitting at the kitchen table, methodically chewing on a cold sandwich.
"You're finally willing to feed yourself." Will smiled, walking toward the table. As he moved, seawater dripped continuously from his body, pooling onto the floor.
Dr. Murin ignored him entirely. He kept chewing, his cold gaze briefly darting to the wet tracks Will was leaving across the room.
"Are you in a good mood?"
Will was entirely used to Dr. Murin's hostility. He sat down across from the scientist and noticed a piece of paper resting on the table. It was covered in dense, meticulously written formulas, and in the bottom corner, a single figure was heavily circled.
"It looks like you've finally solved the final hypothesis for this equation. Congratulations." Will couldn't comprehend a single symbol on the paper, but that didn't stop him from curving his lips into an exaggerated, human-like smile of "joy" for Dr. Murin.
"Heh."
Dr. Murin swallowed his food and offered Will nothing but a cold, mocking sneer.
"Don't force a laugh if you don't understand human emotions. You make me sick, and I'd rather not vomit up my food."
"Okay."
Will shrugged nonchalantly, already entirely immune to Dr. Murin's mockery.
"Have you been working on this the whole time?" Will asked, feigning a casual tone.
"Tomorrow, I'm going to the biotech company," Dr. Murin said, abruptly changing the subject.
*Going to the company?*
Will froze for a moment. "You aren't going to the lab?"
This time, Dr. Murin didn't bother to answer. He got up, placed his empty plate into the sink, and walked straight toward his bedroom. As he left the kitchen, he ignored Will entirely, reaching out to flick off the light switch as he walked out.
"Hey, really, would it kill you to clean up after yourself?" Will sighed, left sitting alone in the sudden darkness.
After a moment, Will stood up and walked over to the sink. He picked up a sponge from the counter, muttering to himself in the dark:
"Remember to clear out the food scraps, otherwise..."