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Chapter 1096 Silent Space

On the seventh day of drifting, the escape pod became a metal cell in the universe, its outer shell making slight crackling sounds under the stellar radiation, like some creature grinding its teeth in its sleep.

Zhao Wuji lay flat in the maintenance cabin with crisscrossing pipelines, his neuroglia weaving a cold web in his veins - those blue lines had spread to his clavicle, and pulsating under his skin brought a strange feeling of fullness.

He stared at the equation he had carved on the wall with his acidic blood. New branches were constantly corroded from the edges of the numbers, like a growing tree.

The system light curtain was suspended next to the formula: [Antibody fusion progress: 79%].

Suddenly, there was a sound of mechanical operation from the direction of the hibernation capsule, and Ripley's life support system automatically injected the second dose of sedatives, which was the third time in 24 hours. He slid to the observation window and saw a black spot that was splitting in the ice crystals on her eyelashes.

The fifth milliliter of inhibitor was dripped into the distillation device converted from a welder, and the liquid formed a film with a mother-of-pearl luster in the petri dish.

Zhao Wuji licked his cracked lips, but a metallic smell rose from his throat—the glial cells were transforming his salivary glands. When he mixed the last drop of the alien embryo extract into the inhibitor, the liquid suddenly stood up and pierced his eyeball like a transparent needle, softening the moment it touched the iris, and bringing a cold sting when it seeped into the pupil.

His vision suddenly became terribly clear. He could see every speck of dust floating in the air. They rotated in slow motion, and their trajectories formed the pattern of the company's logo. The vibration frequency of the ventilation system filter turned into a digital code in his ears, which translated into a repeating [Survival rate: 93%↑].

The silence was broken.

It wasn't coming from outside the cabin, but from inside the body - some new organ was forming behind the rib cage, making a wet sound as it moved. Zhao Wuji opened the emergency medical kit, and the moment the scalpel cut open the skin on his flank, he saw silver-blue membrane tissue wrapping around his liver, like the most delicate biological armor. There was no blood, only pearly mucus shrinking slightly at the edge of the incision.

【Antibody fusion completed】

[Gained Passive Skill: Acid Resistance] The sudden severe pain made him bite the tip of his tongue, and blood dripped onto the calculator. The number displayed on the LCD screen turned into a countdown: [00:07:59].

The starry sky outside the porthole began to distort.

It was not an illusion, the stars were indeed moving slowly, like beads being moved by invisible fingers.

When Zhao Wuji crawled to the control console, he found that his shadow was half a beat slower than the actual movement - the lagging shadow left a dark blue fluorescent track on the cabin wall, forming unfamiliar hieroglyphs. When he touched these light traces, the circuits of the entire escape pod suddenly hummed, and glial cells oozed out from various interfaces, interweaving into a three-dimensional star map in the air. A red dot was approaching, not a rescue ship, but something larger and colder, and its trajectory drew a spiral like a DNA chain on the star map. Ripley in the hibernation pod suddenly twitched violently, and the shadow under her clavicle had grown to the size of a fist, and the outline vaguely showed the curvature of the spine.

The last modification of the welder is completed.

The original metal shell was completely covered by glial tissue. Now it was like the glowing tentacles of some deep-sea creature, pulsating slowly in Zhao Wuji's hands. When he aimed his "weapon" at the hibernation capsule, a human face suddenly appeared on Ripley's chest - not an alien, but Ash's face, with the alloy skull clearly visible under the skin. The face opened its mouth, but it was White's voice that uttered: "The board of directors thanks you for your service."

Silver light flashed, and the observation window of the hibernation capsule suddenly became opaque. A holographic projection of the company's transfer document appeared on the surface, and the number at the end of the amount column was rising wildly. Zhao Wuji's arm raised uncontrollably, and the glial lines were completely synchronized with the spacecraft control system. At the moment the countdown returned to zero, two lines of contradictory instructions appeared on his retina:

【Return immediately】/【Eliminate evidence】.

The darkness came at just the right moment. Not the darkness of the universe, but a more primordial, womb-like darkness. In this dense nothingness, Zhao Wuji heard two heartbeats—one his own, the other coming from a newly born organ in his body.

When the rescue ship's mechanical arm grabbed the escape pod, he was using his teeth to tear open the skin of his forearm, and the silver-blue nerve bundles flashed in the wound, accurately cutting off the monitoring line of the hibernation pod like an exposed circuit. The last thing he saw was the blood mist he sprayed on the top of the pod, each drop condensed into a perfect sphere in zero gravity, with a miniature, sleeping alien embryo wrapped inside.