Chapter 22: Bone Spurs

The ambulance drove straight into the depths of the psychiatric hospital and then vanished without a trace.

When the City Fire squad reappeared, they were already back at Containment Site C03.

"Doctor! The mission was a failure!"

The Doctor adjusted his monocle and remained silent. He had already seen the situation in perfect detail through the camera mounted on the squad leader’s body.

"You’ve worked hard. Go and get some rest."

With that, the Doctor dismissed the squad leader, Dart, and returned to his study of Lu Xiao’s hematopoietic stem cells. Dart silently retreated from the office and returned to the team’s training room. Seeing him return, Xiaoyu hurried over.

"Captain! Did the Doctor say anything?"

Dart shook his head. The rest of the team breathed a sigh of relief. They all held a certain fear of the Doctor, but it seemed he did not intend to hold them accountable for the failed mission.

Elsewhere, Lu Xiao was fiddling with the bone spike. It felt heavy in his hand, and he could feel a faint, pulsing vibration, giving him the distinct impression that the object was alive. This piqued his curiosity.

"Ivan didn’t even say how this thing is supposed to be used!"

Ivan had merely called it a work of art, but it was clearly more complex than that. Lu Xiao pondered for a moment, recalling the cultivation novels he had read where magic artifacts were bound to their masters with a drop of blood. A grin spread across his face.

*Thwack.*

Lu Xiao plunged the entire bone spike into his thigh. The object began to vibrate violently. Lu Xiao quickly pulled it out to examine it closely. The intricate patterns on the spike were now stained with his blood, emitting a faint, emerald-green light, while the azure gem at the tip pulsed with a halo of energy.

*Hum!!!*

A wave of intense vertigo struck Lu Xiao’s brain. He shook his head to clear the sensation; it came and went in a flash. Once his vision refocused, the bone spike had returned to its original state, showing no further changes. Lu Xiao pouted.

"Doesn't seem like much, does it?"

At that moment, throughout Containment Site C03, countless staff members collapsed to the ground, foaming at the mouth. They had been busy with their tasks when, suddenly, their eyes rolled back and they fell into a coma.

Only a few remained standing, the Doctor being one of them. Upon discovering the anomaly, he rushed to the monitors and initiated emergency protocols. Instantly, all corridors were sealed off by thousand-pound steel blast doors, and alarms blared throughout the facility.

In the living quarters for the "expendables," some noticed something was wrong. Because their area was far from the containment chambers, they hadn't felt the effect, but the sirens echoing through the base were impossible to ignore.

One expendable looked on with deep, contemplative eyes. "The alarm has gone off three times in just one week! Something must have happened," he muttered to himself.

There were over a hundred expendables like him here. They wore identical yellow vests and lived in prison-like cells. Unlike actual prisoners, however, they were kept in solitary confinement. They were referred to as expendables, meaning they were not viewed as human beings.

These people shared two traits: first, they were all heinous death-row inmates; second, a man in a black suit had approached each of them with the same question: "Do you want to live? I can take you to a place where, if you survive for thirty days, you will regain your freedom."

These inmates, already facing execution, were happy to trade their final days for a chance at another month. Whether they would truly regain their freedom didn't matter to them. But after arriving, their mindsets had begun to shift—after all, everyone wants to live a little longer.

However, they soon realized it was a complete scam. They were brought here to serve as test subjects for researchers, forced into solitary contact with terrifying anomalies to test their properties. A single moment of negligence meant death. As for the promise of freedom after thirty days? No one knew if it was real, because no one had ever managed to survive that long.

Several expendables exchanged glances through their bars, then turned their attention to the tactical guards stationed at the entrance.

"Officer, what’s going on now?" one of them whistled and called out.

The guard’s earpiece crackled with the Doctor’s voice: "Stand by at your positions."

Receiving the order, the soldiers relaxed slightly. One soldier walked over to the inmate who had whistled and slammed his gun butt against the bars. "Shut up!" He had nothing more to say; to him, these people were merely expendable material. Seeing the soldier's cold attitude, the inmates exchanged knowing looks.

Elsewhere, the Doctor had finally found the cause. Watching the playback of Lu Xiao’s surveillance footage, his lips twitched. In the video, as soon as Lu Xiao plunged the bone spike into his leg, the staff members began to collapse one after another, as if their souls had been ripped away in an instant. In the footage, Lu Xiao looked like he was about to do it again.

The Doctor quickly grabbed his microphone. "S292, stop!"

In the containment cell, Lu Xiao froze at the sudden voice. "Mr. Doctor?" he asked, sounding confused.

...

Soon, the Doctor arrived at Lu Xiao’s containment cell. After watching the surveillance video, Lu Xiao sheepishly hid the bone spike behind his back. The Doctor pushed up his monocle.

"S292, this item is far too dangerous. It must be placed in containment."

Lu Xiao refused firmly. "Mr. Doctor, this is my personal property."

The Doctor did not intend to use force; he had his own principles regarding anomalies. He preferred not to provoke them, believing that doing so could lead to uncontrollable consequences.

"Then you must take great care of it. Do not let it come into contact with blood!"

The Doctor was certain the spike had been activated by Lu Xiao’s blood. He didn't care if it would have the same effect with someone else's blood; he simply didn't want Lu Xiao to trigger it again.

Lu Xiao grinned and tucked the spike away. "By the way, Mr. Doctor, are there any missions lately? When can I go to the real world?"

The Doctor was about to shake his head when he remembered the failed mission of the City Fire squad. "Oh! As it happens, there is one."

Upon hearing this, Lu Xiao became visibly excited. "Then what are we waiting for? I can’t wait!"