Chapter 9 — Midnight Snake Knocks On The Door

He smiled bitterly.

"That sounds really funny. The project was led by me, and in the end I couldn't even get the complete data."

“I didn't come here to help them.”

“I came to tell you that number 7 has escaped again.”

I was stunned.

“When?”

“Four days ago.”

“It bit the sampler to death and broke through the wall of the base.”

“The Northwest base is much larger than our small research institute, and the security forces are more stringent, but they still underestimate it.”

“It's bigger than three months ago, smarter, also…”

He paused, as if searching for the right word.

“More desperate.”

“What a desperate, pained, constantly hurt creature can do, I can't imagine.”

I sat down in the chair, my mind completely blank. It escaped again. It got hurt again. Who will it go to this time? Does it still remember me? Or will he hate me, hate the fact that I handed him over to those people in front of the cafeteria? Deputy Principal Tran took out a USB from his pocket and placed it on the tea table.

“This is the entire experimental record of number 7 at the Northwest base.”

“I made a copy. The original has been destroyed.”

“If someone comes to ask you, you decide what to do.”

He stood up and walked to the door, then turned to look at me.

“It will come back to find you.”

“No matter where you are.”

After he left, I sat alone in the room for a long time. The sky outside is gradually darkening. Downstairs came the noise of children who had just finished school. I picked up my phone and searched for news about the Northwest base. There isn't any information available. Such a big story was completely hidden. That night, I dreamed. I dreamed of a giant black snake crawling through the Gobi desert, crawling through the city's underground sewer system, passing countless intersections. Its entire body was full of wounds and its scales were broken. The streetlight reflected in that person's eyes. It's looking for someone. Someone once gave him a fish when he was most hungry. PART 20 When I woke up from the dream, the clock showed three o'clock in the morning. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, my heart beating as fast as a drum. The house is very quiet. The streetlight outside made the curtains glow slightly. Everything is very normal. Too normal. It's so normal that I can hear my own breathing, hear the refrigerator's compressor start to work, hear the bed make a soft sound when the person upstairs turns over. There was another sound. A sound that does not belong in the night, should not appear in this place. It came from the kitchen. Very light, very small, like something was touching the floor. One hour. One hour. Another sound. I sat up from the bed, let my bare feet step on the cold floor, and walked step by step towards the kitchen. The living room is dark. The shadows of the furniture were stretched by the streetlights. The kitchen door was ajar, no lights were on inside. I put my hand on the door handle, took a deep breath and pushed the door open. The refrigerator door is open. The light in the cooler illuminates half of the kitchen. The freezer door is also open. Inside were some Ho fish I just bought at the market yesterday. Two children are missing. On the floor next to the refrigerator was curled up a black snake. It's bigger than three months ago. The rough body is almost as large takes up the entire kitchen floor. The black scales were covered with large and small scars. Some wounds have healed, some are still bleeding. On its side was a dirty bandage that was about to fall off. Hearing the noise, it raised its head. The horizontal human eyes look extremely tired under the refrigerator light. It looked at me. Looked for a long time. Then, it opened its mouth, using a much more fluent voice than three months ago to say a sentence.

“Lin Vi, I'm back.”

It moved its body to the side, revealing what was hidden behind. Those were three tiny black snakes curled up. They haven't opened their eyes yet, their scales are still soft, like three thin black strings wrapped around each other. The big snake bowed its head, used the tip of its nose to touch the smallest snake, then raised its head to look at me. For the first time, an emotion appeared in that person's eyes that I had never seen before. Not hunger. Not painful. It's a deeper and softer feeling. When he opened his mouth, his voice was very light, as if he was afraid of waking his children.

“Help me.”

The tip of the tail began to gently pat the ground. Bang. Bang. Bang. It wasn't until the army men came to the door that I confirmed the most brutal detail from their conversation. They didn't take the bone marrow. What they took were its eggs. RUN OUT OF.