Mutagen

Day 23 – 9:32 AM – Ungos River, Barangay Daraitan, Tanay, Rizal

"Guh."

Mark groaned while enduring the sticky and disgusting feeling as he removed the flesh tentacles that coiled on his body. With the exception of his head and right arm, his whole body was covered in sticky and rotten smelling fluid that covered the flesh tentacles of the dead witch. No wonder the flesh membrane that covered the interior of the airplane made too much squishing sounds. It seemed that the flesh matter the witch created was composed with a higher percentage of this sticky plasma like liquid than the actual flesh content.

Luckily, the stinky liquid was not corrosive or it would have been worse.

"Well, that's a close one right? Yep. It is, I think."

Mark murmured as he looked around the area.

The ten meter radius from the body of the dead Mutator was carpeted with disgusting flesh tentacles. About thirty percent of the tentacles were even scattered into the river.

As he expected, she had something like an all-area attack when she was in a pinch or maybe, her ability was just activated like that due to her panic. It seemed that even though the witch was insane, she was still able to feel emotions and think to some extent. However, that also made an opening for Mark to attack. To release all those tentacles, she must have expended a lot of her energy or she would still be able to dodge his surprise attack even just by reflex. After all, she was able to react to the crossbow bolts flying towards her, why would she not able to dodge the slower [Blood Whip] if she had not expended her energy?

While Mark was looking at the dead body, he noticed that the tentacles started to shrivel producing an even more disgusting smell. The smell was like a rotting dead body. As he hurriedly took distance, he saw that the tentacles started to rot at a visible rate leaving only her dead body with dismembered limbs.

It made Mark panic and ran towards the opening at the broken tail of the airplane. He ignored the sticky and disgusting feeling on his body and ran inside. If the tentacles shriveled and rotted like that, would the interior of the airplane be affected in a similar way?

When Mark entered the airplane once more, he was relieved a little. It seemed that he flesh membrane and tentacles in the interior of the airplane was also affected by her death but not as drastic as the flesh tentacles outside. The flesh membrane was still pulsing but it was weakening at every pulse. It was good that he still had some time to spare.

As he wondered why the change was different, Mark got an idea. It must be because of the sunlight. Looking how the exterior of the airplane was free of this flesh membrane and the tentacles that shriveled was also outside which told that it could have really been the case.

"Is… She… Dead…?"

The semi-transparent woman asked when Mark returned.

After Mark nodded to her question, he saw that she had a mixed expression on her face. It contained both relief and sadness.

"Can you tell me what happened now? Or should I remove you from that wall first?"

Mark asked. He knew that if he wanted a living [Blood Child] he should wait if an infected would gave birth to one first. As he did not know if he slitting their wombs open would affect it negatively, waiting was the only safe choice until the flesh wall totally shriveled and rot. Well, once that happened, he would just adopt to the circumstances. While waiting, he could inquire the woman about the events that happened in this airplane.

At his question however, the woman shook her head.

"I'll… Tell… Don't… Re…move… I'll… Die… Imme…diately…"

Her breathing was ragged and her words were separated by short pauses. There were even times that her sentences were incomplete which made it hard to understand what she was saying exactly.

However, it was not that hard to understand what she meant.

It seemed that the flesh membrane was not only there to restrict her and the Biters but also maintained their lives. Now that she mentioned it, Biters were living infected and like Janette, they would still eat when they were hungry. The Biters here however were constricted and there was no way for them to hunt for food. In this case, the witch might have provided them the nutrients their bodies needed to keep living.

The semi-transparent woman started to tell… Unexpectedly, it was not only hers but also the witch's story.

Her name was Melanie and the witch was surprisingly her twin older sister Melinda. They were in this flight returning from America when the Outbreak started. The reason they came to America was because of the genetic mutation of females in their family which caused them to be unable to become pregnant and bear children. Unexpectedly, Melinda miraculously bore a child and that was one of the reasons they went to America.

The girl who was named Miracle was a blessing to their family. Not only that the girl was born from a Melinda who was supposed to be unable to become pregnant but the baby girl was also normal and free from their family's genetic mutation. Due to that, Melinda cherished her about one year old baby more than her own life.

Unfortunately, when the outbreak struck, the people in their plane did not turn into infected immediately but the first once were those from the front seats of airplane, namely, the pilots, attendants and the people in the Business Class cabin.

Some grew claws on their fingers, one had his hands dismembered and a pair of claws made of bones replaced it, there was a family of three that got their bodies fused together and there were also others. There were also does that looked disgusting due to their stretched bodies, melted skin and growing tumors on their bodies.

Their sudden mutation caused the people in the economy class to panic and caused a stampede as everyone tried to run away from the turned passengers and airplane attendants. At that time, Melanie and Melinda who was seated at the middle of the economy class did not manage to evacuate in time and was trapped in the stampede of people.

Not only that, but the people near the front started to turn despite not being bitten which caused the chaos inside to escalate. Later on, the plane started to lose altitude and started to plunge into the mountain range.

Melanie and her sister were not able to escape immediately, and they were pushed aside by the panicked people as if they did not matter at all. Because of that, Melinda was pounced on by one of the infected causing her to lose grasp of her precious Miracle. The less than a year baby was thrown onto the floor and…

She was stomped into meat paste by the panicking people.

Melanie even forgot to help her older sister as she saw what happened to her niece.

She stared in shock for seconds before she managed to turn her head towards her older sister. Looking at Melinda's face, it seemed that she did not even feel that her neck was being torn off by the man that pounced on her. But then, the man left Melinda after a single bite and pounced next at Melanie. She tried to defend herself and managed to shake the man off by stabbing his eyes with a pen but she was still bitten on her wrist.

Melanie approached her sister and tried to help her up just to see that she was turning. Her arms elongated along with her skin turning into something that looked like splashed with acid. During Melinda's struggle with the pain she was feeling, her long arm pushed Melanie away with inhuman strength. Melanie hit her head somewhere and she fainted.

The next thing she knew was that her body turned into something like this and she was embedded into that wall with almost all passengers hanging on the ceiling and the walls. She never thought that the person who made this was her sister who made the females as seedbeds in revenge for what happened to her poor daughter.

In the first few days, it was still fine and even though Melanie could not move even if she was removed from the wall, she was still fine. Her body was too weak and she could not even lift her own head. Melinda kept her there and conversed with her just fine. Even though she did not want to stop this despite the protests of Melanie, she was still able to converse.

However, that change overtime when she started to become insane and it was triggered when the first baby came out to be a living blob of gelatinous blood. As she lost herself, Melinda even started to treat her own sister the same way.

As for the next thing…

There was no next.

The flesh wall continued to weaken and so as Melanie. She was right about it being the thing that was maintaining her life. She could not talk anymore and was just holding into a thread of life left in her.

While she told the story, some of the infected started to give birth. Unfortunately, among the twenty [Blood Children], only two were alive.

Melanie saw what Mark did and how he treated the two [Blood Children] as something important. At that time, she squeezed her last words.

"Please… Take… Care… Them… Mir… acle… too…"

She stopped moving after that.

Mark removed her from the flesh wall that started to wither and laid her semi-transparent body on the floor. Unexpectedly, when he removed the tentacle from her genitalia, one of the [Blood Children] inside her womb slipped out. The [Blood Child] was alive and healthy.

'It can also be called a miracle, isn't it?'

Someone like her who should not be able to give birth at all gave birth to a healthy living being.

The flesh membrane inside the airplane started to die out and the infected being bound fell on the floor one by one. Unexpectedly, the mutated ones immediately died while the normal looking biters fell on the floor weakened. Still, these infected gave Mark a different vibe compared to the common Biters outside. He then decided.

He picked up four younger looking females and a male among the Biters while he killed off the rest. Each of them had a good body state except for being weakened. He bound their arms and legs using shackles made of [Blood Metal] from the blood he harvested from the other infected. Using these five infected, he would try to see if they could birth for more blood children.

When the tentacles were removed from the genitals of the pregnant infected, the contents of their wombs were flushed out. Among the almost a hundred remains, he found three more living [Blood Children]. It looked like that the ratio for the living [Blood Children] was too low after all.

Mark then proceeded to smash the heads of the mutated infected that the [PsyCrystal] on his arm reacted to. In the end, he found five pebbles which allowed him to create two [Physical Crystals] on the spot. With the two crystals, one goes for Melanie while the other goes for her sister Melinda. During the process, it was very uncomfortable. The crystal heated up too much although not hot enough to burn his skin and flesh.

He picked up Melanie's body and carried it along with the six [Blood Children] he found and made his way towards the Business Class Cabin. Melanie's last words gave him a clue about the supposed to be dead baby.

In the Business Class Cabin, the flesh wall was still not withered for some strange reason. Looking at the middle of the cabin, there was an aquarium like structure made of thin film of see through flesh being supported by flesh membrane that was stronger than the ones found inside the other parts of the airplane. It looked like an organic pod that could be seen in alien abduction movies. The pod was filled with slightly reddish sticky liquid.

Inside the center of the pod, was a [Blood Child]. Different from the others however, the body was not shaped like a formless blob but it looked more like a human baby made of blood. One thing Mark was sure though, it was alive.

Looking at Melanie's dead body, Mark asked.

"So, this is Miracle right?"