Autophagy

Hearing Aston's words, Marcus' expression changed slightly. He looked at the syringe in his hand for some time.

"Shit..." He muttered. "Well, whatever," he said. He then stabbed the syringe to his neck. He injected the liquid into his body. His body froze up for a few seconds. Shortly after, he dropped the syringe to the ground. His mouth started twitching uncontrollably alongside his body.

Purple veins started popping out of his body as his face flushed. Marcus hyperventilated for more than five minutes, his stomach bulged just like Aston's had done. The bulge started climbing up his Trachea. Shortly after, he started puking uncontrollably. Amidst his puke were batches of worms stuck to each other, squirming continuously.

As Marcus finished puking, Aston came forward and poured a white chemical into his puddle of puke. The worms in the puke quickly turned into smoke and dissipated into the room. Song Lei took out a mop from the room's cleaning cabinet. He mopped the floor and made it as clean as new.

When Marcus finally calmed down, he wiped his mouth and got up from the ground.

"Are you okay now?" Aston asked. Seeing Marcus nod, he continued by saying, "That's great then. Now that we've cleansed your body, we can proceed to the next step of our plan."

Both Song Lei and Marcus nodded. After leaving the room, they held each other's hands and started walking again. Because they were three people now, they had to be more careful than before.

Finally going back to the lower floor, they all breathed a sigh of relief. With all the noises and its disgusting stench, the highest floor of the orphanage was incredibly disturbing. Breathing in the fresh air, they heard footsteps coming from the lower floor.

Looking at each other, they all nodded and spread to the three sides of the staircase. Song Lei and Marcus stood to the left and right of the staircase respectively, while Aston stood a few steps up the stairs. As the footsteps came closer and closer, they all held their breaths and tensed their muscles.

Shortly after, a silhouette came up to their floor. He seemed confused as he stood in his place for some time and looked around. Unfortunately, the corridor was too dark for him to notice the trio that was laying in wait.

Deciding that there wasn't anything weird, the silhouette turned around and walked onto the floor. As soon as his back was exposed to Aston, Aston jumped and wrapped around the silhouette's neck. At the same time, Song Lei and Marcus charged in. While Song Lei pinned down the silhouette's limbs, Marcus proceeded to close the silhouette's mouth close.

With Aston choking the silhouette, he lost his consciousness in no time without making any sounds. They quickly pulled him into dorm room 1407 and laid him on the bed.

This person had blonde hair with a crooked nose. He had a ghastly pale skin tone, making him look like a ghost. From what Aston could remember, this person was called Blake. He was one of the more popular trainees, although not much compared to Clark.

"You do whatever you want to do," Song Lei said to Aston. Their aim in kidnapping this person was to get Aston a new test subject. Aston wanted to experiment on a person that was infected by the worms during the night. This was important as he would be able to inspect the worms in their active state.

After laying down Blake on the bed, Aston took out a monocle with blue glass and weird engravings on it. It was made out of two golden rings attached to each other. Seeing this, Song Lei raised one of his brows and looked at the monocle.

"What is that?" Song Lei asked. Aston raised the monocle to his eye and looked at Blake with it. He started adjusting the monocle by turning one of the rings as if he was trying to adjust a camera lens.

"It's a tool I recently made," Aston said. "It shows people's souls."

Hearing Aston's words, Song Lei's mouth twitched. He was getting amazed every time Aston showed him his incredible inventions.

"How does it look?" Song Lei asked. Aston didn't answer and held out the monocle to Song Lei. Song Lei took the monocle and held it up to his eye. He then looked at Blake to test it.

The monocle's blue lens made everything look a bit dimmer, however, there was a small ball of light with a diameter of five centimeters right in the middle of Blake's body. Although a bit blurry, it was much clear compared to the other objects.

Not thinking that this was all, Song Lei started adjusting the lens just like Aston had done. And as he expected, with a little bit of trial and error, he managed to make the ball of light look more clear. The ball of light seemed more like a dent in reality. From time to time, a purple worm would come out of it and enter it back. Every time it did so, the ball would dim a little bit and recover quickly.

"This is interesting..." Song Lei muttered. Aston didn't give an answer as he was busy taking blood from Blake.

After Song Lei was done with the monocle, he gave it to Marcus for him to experience it too. After Marcus started going through the same process as Song Lei. It was currently around 1 a.m and they would have to wait a long time for Aston to finish his job.

In the meanwhile, Song Lei pulled a chair next to the window and started watching the festival again. It was the same as ever, with all kinds of sins and atrocities being committed, the festival was mindblowing even for Song Lei. The fact that these people who were relatively normal during the day would go crazy every single night was puzzling to Song Lei.

'Who is doing this?', 'What are their ambitions?' were just a little part of the questions Song Lei would like the answer to.

After watching the festival for some time, Song Lei felt a pat on his shoulder.

"I'm done," Aston said with a smug smile on his face.

"If I know you well, that smile means that you've achieved your goal," Song Lei said. The first time they had gone to Marcus' side to recruit him, Aston had said that he would need a test subject that was completely infected. He also said that he needed to experiment during the night, however, he hadn't told what he was going to figure out.

"I've managed to finish our standardized weapon," Aston said. "At least the blueprint of it."

"Really?" Song Lei said. Although he wasn't showing it, he was very interested in the blueprints. From what he could understand, this weapon could even be useful in the New World. "Can I look at it?"

"Sure. You wouldn't be able to understand much though," Aston said as he handed the sketches of the weapon to Song Lei. On the paper were the drawings of the weapon from different angles alongside a lot of calculations Song Lei couldn't understand.

"There's no need to," Song Lei said as he snatched the paper from Aston's hand. On it was a weird-looking dagger's drawings. The dagger's general shape was pretty standard, however, there were weird, purple engraving on it made by a material Song Lei had never heard of before. This material was called 'soulite'. "What is this material?" Song Lei asked while pointing at the name of it.

"Oh. That's the reason why we went through all this trouble just to get this test subject," Aston said. "It was made from an infected person's blood."

"What does it do?" Song Lei asked.

"I'm still not sure about its exact chemical properties, however, physically and chemically, it is very similar to steel," Aston explained. "However, there's a small difference between the two," he said. He took the paper from Song Lei's hands and turned it over. After taking out his pen, he started drawing on the paper again.

"From my calculations, I've managed to find out a way to interact with souls. Normal material can't come in contact with the soul because of the dimension difference," Aston said. He drew a stickman on the paper and continued by saying, "Think about it, would this stickman be able to interact with you, let alone harm you? Not really. This case is very familiar with the dimension difference between us and our souls."

"So this weapon of yours is of a higher dimension?" Marcus asked. An awkward smile appeared on Aston's face when he heard the question.

"Of course not. That's impossible currently. In the future? Maybe," Aston said. "This weapon will be able to slightly tug on the higher dimension. Just a little bit. And that's exactly what we need."

"What do you mean by that?" Song Lei asked.

"These soul worms are incredibly fragile to physical contact," Aston started explaining.

"When they are met with a slight vibration in the soul, they will quickly start pouring out of it to save themselves from danger. That protection mechanism, however, will be their demise...."