Chapter 84: Night, the Parasites
Night fell.
Black smoke billowed from the factory's chimneys, then completely blended into the darkness and disappeared, adding to the already severe air and environmental problems of the world.
The strong smell of formaldehyde and the acrid smoke constantly assaulted the senses.
Jake had been waiting here for a long time.
The factory had closed for the day, with only a few workers using cranes to move huge metal containers. They had to transport these materials to other cities overnight.
In the dim light, the loading workers didn't notice the small creatures clinging to the metal walls of the containers, waiting for a ride.
These creatures looked strange, like arthropods without exoskeletons, with about ten legs and a tail more than twice the length of their bodies.
They looked like disgusting worms, or snakes with legs but no scales.
One worm moved on the container, seemingly looking for a comfortable spot.
Just then, a glass jar suddenly slid down, trapping it inside.
The glass jar trembled, and the creature, unable to hold on, fell from the metal plate into the glass.
"Got it!" Jake immediately slammed the lid back on.
Watching the little creature struggle inside, Jake shook it vigorously, causing it to collapse, dizzy and disoriented.
"Is it broken?"
He glanced at it, unsure if it was still conscious.
"Or did it suffocate?"
As the lid was reopened, a flesh-colored bolt of lightning suddenly shot out, its target Jake's eyes!
"Whoa!" He reached out and grabbed the creature.
The parasite, sensing its inability to escape or successfully invade the human's brain, tried to burrow into Jake's arm through a vein.
"Not happening!" Jake raised his other hand and slapped the creature hard.
The force of the blow, combined with the strength of his combat suit, nearly turned the parasite into pulp.
Carefully placing the parasite into the glass jar and sealing it, Jake sighed, looking at the disgusting, flesh-colored worm that was truly done for this time. "Yeah, this one's definitely finished."
He placed the jar at his feet and picked up another one to continue his parasite-catching operation.
This was no easy task; one wrong move and he might be parasitized by this incredibly fast little thing.
"I'm not going to let my right hand turn into something else..."
...
In another part of the city, in an ordinary residential house, another fleshy worm sneaked in. It entered through the window, bounced twice on the floor.
This was the bedroom of a middle-aged couple. The man lay on the bed, eyes half-closed, a silly smile on his face. He might be dreaming of a cute schoolgirl in a sailor uniform, or perhaps a female teacher, but definitely not the worn-out woman lying next to him.
The worm quickly crawled across the floor, came to the bed, and reached the man's pillow.
Suddenly, the worm accelerated and burrowed entirely into the man's ear.
Something suddenly invaded his ear canal, longer than it should be possible to fit. The sleeping man awoke instantly, his eyes wide with pain, bloodshot from the agony.
"Ugh, ugh..." he tried to cry out, but found himself powerless, only writhing in silent agony.
After a while, the man finally stopped moving, as if nothing had happened.
His wife, awakened by his struggles, muttered a few irritated words before turning back to sleep, completely unaware that her husband had died without her noticing.
This scene played out repeatedly in different locations throughout the city. The worms were tiny and moved so quickly that almost no one noticed the person lying or sitting next to them was already dead.
They were now merely parasitized corpses, or rather, they had become another species—parasites, new creatures controlled by the worms!
Izumi Shinichi lay in his room, listening to music through his headphones, thinking about what had happened to Murano Satomi during the day.
He actually had feelings for his childhood friend, but the man in the black suit who suddenly appeared seemed to have unintentionally become a formidable rival. Thinking of the man's appearance and clothing, he realized he was completely outmatched.
Slightly agitated, Shinichi listened to loud music through his headphones.
Suddenly, something seemed to fall from above onto his face—a small creature, its soft body tickling his skin.
He twisted his face without opening his eyes, when suddenly he felt something crawl into his nostril.
Startled by the intrusion, Shinichi immediately opened his eyes.
There was something like an earthworm in his nostril, and it was burrowing inside!
It felt like it was halfway in!
Terrified, Shinichi quickly grabbed the exposed half of the strange creature and yanked it out, throwing it away.
"What the hell is that?!" he cried out in alarm, grabbing a book from beside his pillow and searching for the creature he had thrown on the floor. "Where did it go?"
But the creature was too small to find immediately.
Suddenly, whoosh.
The creature shot upward rapidly, heading straight for Shinichi's face.
He instinctively raised his right hand to shield himself.
Perhaps the creature's trajectory was too fast and too powerful, for it plunged headfirst into Shinichi's hand!
Shinichi frantically tried to pull the leech-like thing out of his palm, but it was too fast; in the blink of an eye, it was completely beneath his skin!
By the time he realized what was happening, it had completely penetrated into his blood vessels!
A huge, worm-like bulge could be seen writhing constantly beneath the skin of his wrist.
The worm writhed incessantly in his blood vessels, as if preparing to swim upstream and burrow into his brain.
Shinichi panicked, but instinctively he grabbed the headphone cord from the bed and tightly wrapped it around his right arm, creating a tourniquet to prevent the worm from advancing further.
The worm continued its struggle against Shinichi.
Just as this battle between man and parasite reached its peak, "Shinichi, what are you doing?" It was Shinichi's mother.
"A worm, a worm crawled into my arm!" Shinichi showed his right arm, hoping his mother could help him.
"What are you doing?" Although she didn't believe it, Shinichi's mother still came closer to see what was going on.
But when she grabbed Shinichi's arm, she found nothing there.
"Are you alright?" she asked, rubbing his arm with concern.
Then, as if she'd discovered the problem, she grabbed Shinichi's phone and listened to the loud music. "You had that weird dream because you fell asleep listening to this stuff, didn't you?"
"Goodnight," Shinichi's mother said, turning and leaving his bedroom.
Was this a dream?
Shinichi raised his right hand; it was indeed no different from usual, and even the sharp pain of the strange thing burrowing into his arm seemed to have never happened.
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