Calista looked at the two trusted aides before her and felt steadier.
This plan was the result of many days of careful thought.
After Lorenzo's betrayal, the near-death ordeal at Sentinel Station, and the absorption of this sizable military force, Calista had come to understand something clearly. She could no longer rely only on her friendship with the Reapers and her bond with her sister to hold the team together.
Power needed checks and balances. Loyalty needed structure to protect it.
Prevention was always better than fixing the damage afterward.
Before the two National Guard units developed a strong sense of belonging to Rock Fortress, she had to use systems to make sure they could not form an independent power center.
It was not distrust. It was necessary.
What Calista wanted was an army that followed her and Rock Fortress alone, not a "guest force" that might develop different ideas because of old loyalties.
"Then we'll proceed with this." Calista made the final decision. "Leah, Rickson, put it in place as soon as possible. Within a week, I want to see the mixed squads working together and starting to form real combat strength. I also want progress reports on the training plan and helicopter maintenance."
"Yes!" Leah and Rickson answered at the same time, with no objection in their eyes.
After the meeting, Calista stood alone by the window of the command room, looking down over the entire base.
New members, new strength, new structure.
Under her will, Rock Fortress was becoming stronger, and more… completely hers.
...
After her lunch break, Calista felt much better. Even the wound on her left hand, which had repeatedly split open, had been reduced to a fresh pink scar thanks to Ethan's excellent stitching and her own enhanced healing ability.
Calista did not delay. She went alone to Dr. Jenner's underground laboratory.
In the core area of the lab, Dr. Jenner was hunched over the high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry system they had brought back from Sentinel Station. His eyes were almost glued to the screen, and his fingers flew across the keyboard.
His already messy hair now looked even more like a bird's nest. The dark circles under his eyes were heavy, and he looked as if he had spent another sleepless night in a state of excitement.
Dr. Evans was there too. Since there had not been many injuries or illnesses lately, he came over to help whenever he had free time.
At a nearby workbench, Dr. Evans was carefully handling several petri dishes containing cell samples in different states.
When he saw Calista come in, he looked up and gave her a gentle smile. "Calista, you're here. How did you rest?"
"Much better, Dr. Evans." Calista nodded in response, her gaze shifting to Dr. Jenner, who was completely absorbed in his new equipment. "The doctor looks energetic."
Dr. Evans smiled helplessly. "Ever since you brought the equipment back, he's barely closed his eyes. Especially after Danny secretly brought back those small core storage units and specialized interface tools from Sentinel Station. Honestly…"
As if hearing his name, Dr. Jenner suddenly lifted his head. When he saw Calista, he immediately waved her over like he was presenting a treasure, his voice urgent.
"Calista! Come look at this! This equipment is incredible! And the data fragments Danny brought back… they're incomplete, but the encryption protocols and databases inside are a tremendous help for understanding the structure of the Wildfire Project!"
He gestured excitedly at the chromatograph screen, which was filled with complicated peaks and valleys. "Look here, and here! The analysis of your blood sample is more than ten times clearer than before.
Those unusually active immune factors, and the metabolites we couldn't identify before… now we can at least locate their molecular weights and some of their functional groups!"
Calista walked over to the screen and looked at the curves and numbers that were practically unreadable to her. She asked directly, "So what exactly did you find? About my blood, and its effect on walkers."
At that, Dr. Jenner's excitement faded a little, and his expression turned serious.
He led Calista to a reinforced glass observation window nearby.
Behind the window was a small sealed chamber. Inside was an ordinary walker, uselessly pounding against the reinforced glass.
"We conducted a controlled experiment," Dr. Jenner said, lowering his voice. "We injected a tiny amount of your highly diluted serum into an ordinary walker of this type."
He pointed at the walker in the observation room. "Then we observed the same disturbing changes as last time."
Dr. Evans added from the side, his tone grave. "The walker, or rather, the small remnants of its nervous system, seem to have been 'activated.'
That walker no longer wanders aimlessly and attacks like the others. It tries to find weak points in the observation room. Its movements are still clumsy, but the feeling is… almost like it became a little smarter."
Calista looked at the walker behind the glass. Its cloudy eyes would occasionally fix on Dr. Jenner or on her, instead of remaining in the frenzied, unfocused state typical of other walkers.
That subtle difference sent a chill crawling up her spine.
"Your blood, Calista." Dr. Jenner turned around and looked at her with burning eyes.
"It doesn't simply attract walkers. To a certain extent, it can stimulate the residual neural activity inside walkers, activity that should have been completely dead. It may even…
give rise to some extremely primitive form of 'cognition,' or perhaps a biological instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm. This completely contradicts our current basic definition of walkers as organisms!"
He took a deep breath and continued, "And this attraction goes both ways. Walkers crave your blood, and your blood seems able to make them… slightly different. This is an extremely dangerous and uncontrollable feedback loop."
Calista fell silent, absorbing the shocking information.
That meant her blood did not just attract monsters. It might also "create" even more troublesome ones?
What the hell was this Wildfire experimental vaccine?
"What about the mutants at Sentinel Station?" she asked, thinking of those even more terrifying things.
Dr. Jenner shook his head, frustration showing on his face. "We have too few samples, and we lack their original viral data or more complete live specimens for comparison.
We can't determine whether your blood has a similar effect on them, or whether the effect would be stronger and even stranger. Ideally, we need more mutant samples, or we need to find the original viral strain and data from Phase Three of the Wildfire Project!"
Calista fell silent.
Mutated walkers. Unless something unexpected happened, they should all be gone by now.
The ones left were probably all in France.
Dr. Jenner's gaze turned feverish again as he stared intently at Calista. "France, Calista! The clues point to France! Everything we need is there!"
A brief silence fell over the laboratory, broken only by the low hum of the equipment.
...
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