Yang Rong brushes away the dust accumulated on a years-old transceiver. He makes quick work of the cables, links up the antenna and tunes on. With a gloved hand, he adjusts the frequency and watches as dial flicks upward. He taps the microphone and clears his throat.
“Shi Luo.”
The response comes in ten seconds later, the static overlapping a distinctly male voice. The person on the other end speaks in a nice, modulated volume – pleasant to the ears, the kind of voice heard in professional white-collar settings. Crisp, clear, intelligent. It also holds some authority.
“…Yang Rong?” The person fuzzes out before reconnecting. “How rare for you to contact me. Is the world ending or are you perhaps dying?”
“Evidently, both,” he replies, tapping his fingers on the living room table. “I am in some sort of predicament. Is this line tapped?”
“You wouldn’t come looking for me otherwise.” Shi Luo doesn’t sound preoccupied – rare, really, considering how demanding his day-to-day schedule is. As the radio frequency stabilizes, there is the sound of a pen scratching on paper. “And no one can access through my personal line. So? What can this government tool do for you, Colonel? You’d never call unless for some laborious task.”
“As perceptive as always, Dr. Shi,” Yang Rong says with a slight grin. “I mean to ask – how far have you gotten in human hybrid research?”
A brief pause. Shi Luo stops scribbling on his notepad. Yang Rong can imagine him taking off his wire-frame glasses, folding it and placing it neatly on his desk. Prim and proper as always, the doctor would massage his nose bridge and then, if Yang Rong were there in person, he’d be met with a judgmental expression – eyebrows raised and everything.
“Which part of it?”
“Hypothetically…” Yang Rong finds the right words. “Suppose there has been an encounter with a strange cre—person who is speculated to be some sort of feline. More information is unknown, but they are fully conscious of their animalistic side and though they aren’t able to control it, they exhibit natural human behavior outside of it. As an expert in your field, has there been any precedent? Say, a person able to withstand the radiation for long periods of time, or perhaps… a person born with it?”
“Well yes,” the doctor answers slowly. “There is obviously—"
Yang Rong sighs and bobs the mic impatiently. “You know what I mean.”
He can already imagine the exasperation in the other’s face. Shi Luo, for all that he is a professional, top of the field doctor, is relatively more relaxed with Yang Rong. The comms goes silent for a while longer. The man is obviously thinking – and for him to think this hard, this hesitantly, the answer is already clear.
“Colonel Yang,” the man says seriously. “This information isn’t disclosed to any single person. Neither head researchers nor government officials. For me to make an exception… Tell me, are you asking as a colonel of the force or are you asking as Yang Rong?”
The title of colonel – he’d always been bound by it, ironically, despite the numerous advantages he holds over any common civilian. Yang Rong was born into war without any dictation and he hadn’t questioned it. His duty has always been clear and simple. Strangely, however, as he thinks of a certain young man with cerulean blue, glimmering gold eyes, the prettiest features he’d ever seen, he’s hesitant to… What was he planning to do? Lock him up and send him away to be dissected?
That delicate face and his sotto voce, Noah doesn’t seem dangerous at all. That same mellow voice is even more tender in a caramel-toasted room.
The conversation from last night rings into his memory – “there are many things that deter me from going back,” Noah had said with a tremor. The image of the younger man biting his lips, curling his fingers in an attempt to hide his nervousness… and then his red-rimmed eyes just looked extra hurt. Had he cried before?
The feeling bubbles into something more than curiosity. Is it pity? Yang Rong holds up his right hand and examines the marks on his finger. There are just two tiny pricks, not enough to hurt him at all. Such tiny fangs wouldn’t do a thing.
It’s unlike him to be so conflicted over these insignificant matters. It would be simple, really, to throw away someone who he knows isn’t exactly bona-fide human.
Shi Luo, still waiting on the other end, sounds peeved. “…Are you still there?”
Yang Rong replies as he rubs on the bite mark. It’s started to scab already. “Personally, as Yang Rong, I would like to ask for advice.”
“Advice?” The doctor speaks with a tilt in his tone. He has an inkling of what Yang Rong is trying to convey and it’s only been a couple of minutes. As expected, intelligent minds are easy to converse with. “Then let me hear it.”
“I found a human hybrid and he hits all the checkmarks for red-level radioactive – unnatural appearance, hints of aggression, physical manifestations of—" He cuts himself off. He’s starting to talk with his colonel voice and not his conversational voice. “My point being, despite all the nuances, he doesn’t seem dangerous… to an extent. I need to figure out what to do with him. Send him to the Nexus? Have you to take a look at him? Let him go entirely?”
Shi Luo is oddly silent. A small shuffle is heard, then the sound of an item – his pen, probably – dropping onto the ground. How odd for the doctor to lose his composure.
“Unnatural appearance?” the doctor asks with a light cough. “…How unnatural? Hard on the eyes? There have been cases where the mutation process is stalled, resulting in some very interesting mixes. For example, a human-centipede with a bulging antenna or a human-Bumbous with a cracked stinger.”
Yang Rong is a tad confused. “Not like that. He looks very human in that regard. No extra arm or leg, though I do question whether he’s hiding a tail. I wasn’t really asking for human-bug references, Shi Luo. I was more so asking for advice on what to do with him.”
“Right,” replies the doctor. How odd yet again. “No extra arm or leg. What was that about his appearance again?”
The colonel checks the time on his watch. It’s hardly nine in the evening and Shi Luo shouldn’t be that tired to the point of veneering off-topic, but he guesses it’s no harm to describe the flower boy. “Silver hair, heterochromatic eyes, pale as hell, skinny, shorter than me by at least half a foot, has a perpetual frown on his face… Hey, are you listening?”
The reply comes slowly. It sounds like the doctor had dropped yet another, much heavier item onto the floor and stubbed his toe from the pained groan that he lets out. After recovering, Shi Luo responds, “Yes, I am listening.”
“And?” Yang Rong repeats impatiently. “What do I do with him?”
“Well,” the doctor starts, “what have you done to him so far?”
He raises an eyebrow only to remember that the other man can’t actually see him. “Not much. What makes you think I’d do something to him?”
“…I see.” It may be his imagination that he hears a small sigh of relief. “Yang Rong, to answer your previous question, if there has been a person born with a substantial amount of radiation in their body, we can only vaguely quote their lifespan with our lack of data. Of the more than 150,000 injected embryos, only fifteen have made it past fetal growth, five past one month, two through infancy and the last one is…”
“You’re saying impossible,” Yang Rong summarizes.
“Not impossible,” Shi Luo replies. “Extremely, extremely special.”
“Hm… I am inclined to think he is quite special.”
“Yang Rong.” There’s some forcefulness in the way his name is called. The colonel frowns. It’s never a pleasant feeling to be addressed so firmly by another alpha. Competition is brewing, only to be quelled when he reminds himself that it’s Shi Luo and not someone unfamiliar. The doctor continues after the lull. “Don’t take him to the Nexus. You’re aware there isn’t a well-factored correlation between DNA and immunity, so a case like his, the hybrid you’re referring to, isn’t much reference to go on. This means you’d be sending a potentially harmless person to be dissected and locked up for the rest of his life.”
“Intriguing,” he muses. “You’re oddly defensive of him. Here I thought a researcher like you would be more interested in taking him apart.”
“This conversation isn’t between a doctor and a colonel,” Shi Luo responds. “You’ve said it yourself that it’s a personal matter.”
“It’s true. Anyway, I’ll ponder on it. I just thought his situation was quite similar to—”
“To yours?”
Yang Rong hums. “Yeah. What do you think?”
“Uncertain,” the man tells him.
“Why aren’t you asking me about his background?” Yang Rong stares at the transceiver despite knowing fully well his conversation partner isn’t going to manifest in front of him. Long-distance communication is a hassle to deal with and he’s still concerned the signal would suddenly break off. “Shouldn’t you be more curious about where I found him, where I’m keeping him at this moment and what he’s doing – which, by the way, I’m inclined to tell you he’s conked out from drugs.”
Shi Luo chokes suddenly. “He’s what?”
“You heard me. He shot up some drug up his veins and he’s been dead for over two days. Hardly a record for him, but no less concerning.” Yang Rong snaps his fingers and adds as an afterthought, “I also contacted you to ask if you know what this… XA-027 is. There are dozens of bottles of them in my backpack among more strange pills and… Hm, long story short, the pretty boy is impeding on my mission and is a pain in the ass to take care of.”
“…XA-027,” Shi Luo repeats robotically. “A benzodiazepine in-testing. Think of it as anti-anxiety medication but for the purposes of sedating aggressive anomalies. It alters the brain’s chemical—”
“No need to get technical on me,” Yang Rong cuts him off. “I merely want to know if he’s going to stay dead.”
“The condensed answer is probably not,” Shi Luo says. “The more complex answer is there may be adverse effects that linger for an unknown period of time in the likelihood the drug does not match his… constitution, so to speak. How is his condition right now? Does he have a fever? What’s his temperature? What about pulse and is he—”
“He’s fine,” Yang Rong interrupts. It’s Shi Luo’s inner doctor, asking a thousand and one questions that go in rigmarole. “No obvious physical signs of distress. I took really meticulous care of him – made sure he was still breathing in the middle of the night and everything.”
Shi Luo sighs again in relief – and is it really his imagination that the doctor seems too distressed about this? For the two plus decades they’d known each other, Yang Rong had always gauged him to be level-headed, professional and confident.
“Yang Rong,” the man murmurs. “Take good care of him, alright?”
“Shi Luo.” He comes to a conclusion. “You—”
“—If you’re done seeking advice from me, I’d like to do a yearly check-in with you,” the doctor says. There’s some noise coming in through the background. Shi Luo has visitors and the conversation will have to be postponed. “One question before we cut off contact for another millennium – how is your body after spending so long out in the field?”
“Same as usual,” he replies.
“Remarkable,” Shi Luo laughs lowly. “I’m more keen on dissecting you apart. Wouldn’t it be interesting, Colonel Yang, to see what your body is made of? How about you also take a dose of XA and report to me?”
Yang Rong gets one last word in before the line is terminated, tells the doctor a politely-coded “maybe next time” which directly translates to “fuck you,” and then flicks the switch off. The transceiver, a real ragged one, had functioned miraculously smoothly during the ten minutes. Minus some hiccups here and there, this model is sure convenient for long distances. It’s no wonder this military base hadn’t needed to replace it for at least a year…
Yang Rong shakes these pointless thoughts away. His agenda is too packed for him to be distracted. He sighs and walks out of the small, cramped room.
“Ah, Colonel!” Li Jiayun spots him as soon as he makes way down the hall. The redhead quickly hands him a piece of paper and says in a single breath, “We’ve been issued to recover some freshwater anomaly before we reconvene with the brigade. The most concentrated area is by the Paramus coast fifty miles away. We’ve mapped out the more efficient paths we can take. Would you like to cross through the hill or take a roundabout way through the plains? The latter might delay the journey threefold. Another option is to pass through the 41st District commune but we’ve received recent reports of mid to high-tier threats roaming the area. The 580th, 591st and the 602nd Units have felled, so if I may forward an opinion, it’s best to…”
The female soldier goes in tangents without waiting for him to reply. Yang Rong receives the drawn map and glances over it. Exceptionally detailed, as expected of Li Jiayun and Jae as well, from the neat handwriting. The image is grayscale, but it doesn’t deter the quality. He has no doubt they’d spent hours drafting the routes, labeling the danger zones and annotating the wide area.
He only responds simply. “I’ll settle on a decision tomorrow noon.”
“It would also be helpful for us to drop by a supply station. This base doesn’t store even half of the equipment we need for underwater retrieval. If the supplier unit doesn’t arrive by midnight, we have to improvise something else.”
Not favorable, but in case they’d have to go spearfishing for live sculpin, it’d be suicide without proper gear. Yang Rong nods. “What is the likelihood of getting us a vessel?”
There’s little chance they’d get a massive naval ship, that’s for sure. A smaller vessel might be doable or at least a yacht, motorboat, or even a kayak boat would be better than snorkeling in below freezing seas. Li Jiayun pulls out a small memo pad and jots it down as reminder.
“I’ll ask for one, but I don’t know if it’s possible. Oh, and Colonel, you’ve been requested a total of twenty-three times the past week. Here are some places they want you to investigate: 65.2020 N, the Erunium valley has been breeding wolf spiders, 62.0128 W, the Biomic plains are overrun with snowshoe hares, 59.3600 N, the…”
“Noted.”
“Additionally, your presence has been requested in the city summit meeting to be held two months from now,” the soldier says while checking off one last item on the extensive list. “Your summons has been pushed back until then.”
Yang Rong hums an affirmative. “Alright.”
