The Fallen Merman - Chap 213
The helicopter landed in the middle of the Lawrence Mountains. It was snowing heavily today, and it had to be forced to land and hike into the mountains.
The black panther jumped out of the helicopter, the black windbreaker was blown up and down by the cold wind with snowflakes, he put his hands in the pockets of the windbreaker, raised his eyelids, the golden cat’s eyes folded into a vertical line, indifferently identified the direction for a while, and slowly moved towards the west Walk slowly.
He stepped on a row of footprints in the rough snow, only one deep and one shallow, because he was seriously injured.
It is impossible to grab something in Rimbaud’s hands without peeling off the skin. This is still when Rimbaud stopped halfway and was too lazy to chase.
Black Panther personally heard Rimbaud say to the headset microphone: “randi, there is no need to waste your energy because of such a small stone, I brought you from the bottom of the sea there are many bigger treasure chests, you can choose a red one and give it to you. Forget them, I just want to go home and make out with you now.”
He smuggled out of the country all the way, and stopped at the island before being picked up by someone. After flying to Canada, he boarded the reserved helicopter and took the gems to his destination after several turns.
After walking for nearly an hour, some snow-covered architectural spires gradually emerged among the rugged mountains, with a warm glow from the windows.
After walking for another ten minutes, I got a glimpse of the whole building. There is a whole castle in the mountains covered with white snow. The castle spires are continuous, the light blue bricks and tiles are close to the snow, and every window exudes warmth.
Although the terrain is remote and hidden, buying such an entire building also requires strong financial resources, and the daily maintenance costs are staggeringly high.
The black panther approached the main entrance with a cold body, and a puppet deacon standing at the door bowed politely to him. The doll deacon was dressed in a decent tuxedo and white gloves. Except for the spherical joints on the limbs, it looked the same as the white people of ordinary people, with a lifelike demeanor. The depiction of faces and figures by puppeteers can be described as genius, comparable to sculptors in the world today.
The black panther didn’t say much, stepped on the ground lightly, hooked the bulge on the outer wall with both hands, and quickly turned in.
The wall is not high, but it isolates the blizzard outside. There is no snow inside the wall, and the temperature is very warm. There is a puppet old man sweeping the floor, and a puppet gardener is maintaining the roses in the garden.
The black panther looked back at the sky outside the wall, and it was actually a clear, cloudless blue sky. It’s like an isolated world here.
The puppet deacon waiting outside the door gracefully walked in, closed the door, swept the snow off his shoulders, nodded to the black panther, and invited him in.
After entering the corridor of the castle, the doll maid in the house hurried over, handed Black Panther a cup of hot cocoa, and led him to the reception room to sit.
The surroundings were silent, and none of these doll servants seemed to speak, and could only do things according to the preset program.
On both sides of the corridor there was a door that was hidden at intervals. The black panther took advantage of the puppet maid’s inattentiveness, pushed open a door, and glanced inward.
The layout inside looked like a kindergarten classroom. There were a few small children sitting sparsely on some short tables and chairs. After smelling the smell of strangers, they turned their heads and stared at the black panther.
Some of them have a big mouth like a toad, some have spiders on their lower bodies, some have almost transparent bodies, and some have wings on their backs. All are experimental.
And in front of the blackboard in the kindergarten classroom stood a puppet teacher wearing a Lolita dress, writing a few simple English words on the blackboard.
Black Panther looked at a few rooms. In addition to the children’s classroom, there was also a dollhouse and a normal adult room. He also saw a mature dragonfly experiment standing by the window and playing the violin. She was wearing a simple white dress. Two pairs of translucent dragonfly wings hang from the thin back.
She glanced back at Black Panther, stopped the hand that was playing the piano, gave him a defenseless smile, and released a little pheromone as a polite greeting for the first time.
From her pheromone, Black Panther judged that her level was very low and her aggression was extremely weak. Generally speaking, such an experimental body would be used as feed for a powerful experimental body, and would not survive so long.
The corridor is very long and there are many rooms. The Black Panther made a rough calculation. There are hundreds of experimental subjects and larvae in one corridor room alone. The entire castle building is similar to a small city, and it can accommodate at least tens of thousands of experimental subjects. .
The doll maid led the black panther to the reception room, bowed and left silently.
A female alpha is reclining on the sofa in the reception room, wearing a green satin cheongsam, long gold and blue peacock tail feathers hanging down on the carpet, flicking a snow-white feather fan, the fire burning in the fireplace beside her cheeks Shows a warm red light.
Qi Shenggu raised his eyes to see the black panther, and covered his mouth and nose with his fan and coughed a few times.
“You’re sicker.” Black Panther sat down across from her, his back straight and his index finger wearing a gemstone ring tapped lightly on his knee.
Qi Shenggu shook his head: “I got out of the training cabin ahead of time. It’s considered a congenital deficiency. It’s not good. It’s very annoying. Where have you been in the past few years, day.”
Black Panther is silent.
“Have you found the driver?” Qi Shenggu glanced at the sapphire ring on the black panther’s index finger, raised his eyebrows and looked at him curiously: “I thought your driver would be Satan.”
Black Panther tilted his head, obviously he didn’t want to talk about this matter, and changed the subject coldly: “You plan to stay like this forever.”
“There’s nothing wrong with staying here. Although there are many children, the house is big enough to not be noisy.” Qi Shenggu laughed and coughed again.
Black Panther was not good at chatting, and soon fell silent again.
“He asked me to give the puppeteer a gem. Where are the Knicks.”
“He hasn’t been out of the workshop for three days. I asked the little devil to call him.”
—
In the closed but spacious workshop, tools for making puppets are arranged in an orderly manner, wooden display stands are arranged on the walls, and many unfinished puppets are placed on them, with different postures and expressions, but they are still No coloring, and no clothes to cover a spherical joint.
There is a suede non-slip mat on the table. This mat has been used for many years, and the toner and bright oil on it cannot be wiped off. Under the old wrought iron table lamp, the puppet master is working hard.
He was wearing a leather apron and a pair of thin black half-palm gloves. The silver loupes with carved patterns were stuck in his deep eye sockets. The mechanical core of the doll.
The shape of the mechanical core is very similar to that of a human heart. It is a slender and complicated frame made of copper. There should be a red core inside to drive the whole. The chip inside the core is engraved with the combat memory transplanted by the experimental body, including the weapon structure. Knowing, melee combat knowledge and slaughter tendencies, Eris’ factory setting is a riot experiment, named after the goddess of discord, Eris, and it is his mission to provoke war.
As long as there is war, the arms business will become more and more profitable. This is the original intention of the Red-throated terrorist organization to purchase such an experimental body.
The main vessel holding the chip is a heart-sized ruby, sculpted by CNC machines in the institute’s deep-sea pressure well and filled with argon gas between the chip and the gem.
It is difficult for buyers to find gemstones of the same quality and carat number to make imitations. The research has a lot of money and chooses such a material as the container that carries the core, just to prevent buyers from pirating or repairing their products. drop, go back to them and buy a new one.
However, the inside of this mechanical core has been completely damaged. The ruby on which the chip was placed was blown to shreds, and more than half of the chip was burned. With the skill of a puppet master, only the outer frame of the mechanical core can be restored. Tens of thousands of precision copper wires And the chip constitutes a blood vessel similar to wrapping the heart, and the puppeteer has been repairing it day and night for three days.
He moved the mattress from the bedroom and put it in the corner of the workshop, but it hasn’t been used yet. He is human after all, and his body wears down quickly by working non-stop.
Three hours later, the puppet master raised his head and slowly took off the loupe from his eye socket. He felt sore when he closed his eyes, straightened up, and the cervical spine and waist made a creaking sound.
The puppet master glanced at his feet habitually, and wanted to tell the sleeping Eris to move away from his feet, but the feet were empty, and the puppet master was stunned for a moment, and then he put the goggles on the table stiffly, and stood up. He got up, and his bloodshot turbid eyes glanced at the corner.
There was a tattered ceramic doll lying flat on the mattress in the corner. Half of his face was shattered, and the remaining half of his face was covered with cracks. He had no lower body, and only one right hand was left, resting on the broken body. On the front of his chest, more than half of his chest was also shattered, and he could easily see his empty chest cavity, which was empty inside.
The makeup on the baby’s face was wiped off, the silver hair was removed from the root one by one and put into a ziplock bag, and the broken eyeballs were also removed, leaving only the empty eye sockets, he is now just a scrapped The puppet, no different from the moldy limbs in the sack, even put them together so that it’s hard to tell which one is him.
“Eris.” The puppet master called him.
The tattered puppet moved and responded to his voice, but it was only a movement, no different from the neural reflexes of a skinned frog.
But the puppet master showed a relieved expression, and the tightly wrinkled brows stretched out, leaving a shallow wrinkle between the brows.
Tuk Tuk.
There was a knock on the door, and the puppet master glanced out, and under the crack of the door was the little sprite’s tiptoe.
“Knicks, he…here.”
The puppet master responded, took off the leather apron and gloves, put them on the table, locked the workshop and walked out.
Walking into the reception room, the puppet master saw the ruby placed on the table by the black panther at a glance. With his accurate judgment of the material, the carat size of this ruby was enough to serve as the new core of Eris.
“As entrusted by him, I am only responsible for handing things over to you.” Black Panther said, “Pay the money to IOA.”
“IOA?”
“The gems were stolen from them.”
“…”
Black Panther had nothing else to say and turned to leave.
“Wait a minute.” The puppeteer stopped him, took out the medicine box from the bottom of the table, picked out a scalpel and a set of sewing needles, “Take off your shirt.”
Black Panther frowned, but the man in front of him looked friendly, and his orders were irresistible, as if his hands and feet were being manipulated by a puppet, Black Panther took off his shirt as he said.
Rimbaud had left three deep claw marks on his shoulders, too severe to heal on their own, and blood was still seeping out, soaking his shirt.
The puppeteer skillfully used a scalpel to remove the rotten flesh from the edges of his wound, then stitched it up with medical needles. This is his line of work, and his skillful skills are engraved in his mind and will not be easily forgotten.
The black panther clenched his teeth subconsciously, but found that there was no pain, which was a bit unexpected.
“My companion ability, the hand of creation, you won’t be hurt if you remove your organs, and the stitching is easier.” The puppet master cut the sutures, put away the medicine box, and let him see the unconcealed tiredness on his face. Looking very haggard.
“You go.”
Black Panther was stunned, glanced at the perfect seam on his shoulders, picked up his trench coat, and left with the doll maid.
After sending the Black Panther away, the puppet master picked up the ruby on the table and returned to the workshop without saying a word.
I opened the door of the workshop, kicked something, looked down, and saw a tattered ceramic doll lying beside the door, struggling to support her body with her elbows, her only right hand grabbed the corner of the puppet master’s trousers and pulled it. Pulled, raised his head, looked at the puppet master with empty eyes, his face was expressionless, but people could see through his panic at a glance.
The puppet master sighed lightly, bent down to pick up Eris, fixed him to the bust frame with clay, and placed it on his workbench, so that he could have a support point to straighten his upper body.
Then put on your apron and gloves again, and sit down to work.
As the puppeteer was about to put on the goggles to continue tinkering with the core, a ball-jointed ceramic hand reached over and covered his eye, the ceramic was cold and ice applied to his bloodshot and swollen eyes from overuse.
In this short darkness, the puppet master couldn’t help but think of the night when the operation to **** the experimental body started a few days ago. He looked at the emptied doll store shelves, and felt a little shaken and hesitant.
He is human, and occasionally doubts his firm goals and lifelong aspirations.
But at that time, Eris came close to him and said, “I don’t care if you are right or wrong, I will always fight for you.”
In the store, Qi Shenggu often quarrelled with Eris, and the vicious woman often spoke harshly, never caring whether she was in front of the client: “The Knicks are just using you to complete their revenge against humans, like him. What is something a person can’t give up? Who do you think you are, he just uses you, why are you happy?”
The puppeteer felt that she was right.
But Eris always retorted: “He didn’t use me, he just needed me.” He was so speechless that he could only roll a few mocking eyes.
The lamp’s light only illuminates this side of the workbench.
The puppeteer removed Eris’ damaged head, placed it on his leg and fixed it, and pressed a fine grinding needle against the inner corner of the front of the doll’s head, grinding it down little by little.
It takes a lot of patience to do such delicate work as the lacrimal gland, and it took the puppet master seven hours to complete.
After finishing, the puppet master straightened his back, moved his sore neck, and put his head back in place.
It was completely dark outside, the snowstorm outside the house was getting heavier, and the humming like wolf howls circled outside the window. The decorative fireplace in the room was still burning vigorously, and the sound of the flames sounded quiet and warm, making people want to live in such peace forever and never go out.
The puppeteer closed his eyes and rested for a while, lifted the ruby, roughly calculated how to cut it in his mind, then put it aside, used tweezers to pick out a tiny chip from the drawer, and held it under the lamp to examine it.
This is the battle chip of the Athena shield, the same version that Eris used before, and can be replaced by Eris. This chip was picked up from the ruins at the risk of his escape from the pharmaceutical factory. The chip is complete, which means that the combat memory, weapon use and slaughter tendencies it carries are still intact.
The puppet master stared at the small chip on the tweezers, and for a long time came out.
He thought for a long time, silently put the chip back in the drawer, picked up the ruby on the table, put it in the drawer, and locked it.
He reached into his pocket, clenched the scalpel in his pocket, hesitantly, rubbing it slowly, as if contemplating a major decision.