48 Hours a Day

Other than checking out the place during the day, Zhang Heng spent the better part of the day attempting to assemble the CT scanner. Thank goodness his efforts were not in vain. It took him about 20 minutes to get to the morgue, but he managed to assemble the CT scanner that he wanted.

And scanning the body was not that complicated as well. Even a layman like Zhang Heng could learn to operate it from manuals he downloaded from the internet.

What he received next, however, was the raw image from the CT scanner. He would need someone professional to process and analyze the image. Zhang Heng then pushed the CT scanner aside and waited quietly for the Infinite Building Block effect to expire. As for Bai Qing, she was staring at her mother. The lady’s eyes were closed, and she looked like she was asleep. The horror on her face was gone too. She looked like she was in peace.

After 45 minutes had passed, Zhang Heng looked at the time on the phone, dismantled the Lego CT scanner, and put the bricks back into his backpack. He then said to Bai Qing, “We are leaving now.”

“Let me take another look, just one look.” Bai Qing said.

Zhang Heng did not rush her after hearing her request. He just stood at the side quietly.

Half a minute later, Bai Qing zipped up the body bag and pushed her mother back into the freezer. She suppressed her grief and asked, “What shall we do next?”

Zhang Heng looked at Bai Qing’s slightly red and swollen eyes and shook her head. “There is nothing else for us to do for the time being. Go back and rest first. I will send the image to a friend that works in the hospital. When the results come out, I will contact you again.”

“But I can’t sleep now.” Bai Qing said.

“You have to try to sleep because this is likely going to be a long battle.” Zhang Heng said, “In my experience, whether you are looking for your mother or saving your father, you need sufficient physical strength to support you till the end of this battle.”

“Will you stay with me then?” Bai Qing bit her lip.

Initially, Zhang Heng wanted to go home to prepare for the follow-up investigation. Still, considering that he had not slept for almost the entire whole night, it was difficult for him to say no after looking at Bai Qing’s current mental state.

“Yes, I will stay,” Zhang Heng finally said. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”

Since the funeral home was at the city’s outskirts, it was almost dawn when they returned to the express hotel. Zhang Heng bundled up all the information that he collected and composed them into an email. Due to the fact that he was worried about those aliens had fully penetrated human society, he had to go to the hospital to verify that his friend was still his friend. To be safe, he also called his parents, who lived far away in Europe, asking them to find someone they knew to help analyze the CT image.

He then drew the curtains, and the room became dark again.

“Sweet dreams,” Zhang Heng said to Bai Qing, who was on the bed.

Seating himself on the chair under the window sill, he leaned his head against the wall with his feet propped on the other chair.

About a quarter of an hour later. He heard Bai Qing asking from the other end of the room. “Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Zhang Heng replied in the dark.

“Can you… come closer?” Bai Qing asked softly.

“Sure.”

After Zhang Heng finished speaking, he moved the chair to the side of the bed. Before he sat down, he heard Bai Qing spoke in a hoarse voice.

“…A little closer.”

So Zhang Heng laid down on the other side of the bed and then asked, “Is it better now?”

Bai Qing did not answer him. She just stretched out her hand, touched Zhang Heng’s face, and asked with a hoarse and crying voice. “Why, why did this happen to me…”

Her palms were ice cold, and her voice was filled with sadness, like a lost puppy under the heavy rain, not knowing where to go.

“Sorry for getting you involved in this,” Zhang Heng apologized.

In the real world, Bai Qing did not need to experience the separation of life and death from her loved ones. She was still happily attending classes at the university, and after all, this was just one of the events in this dungeon. Usually, such an event was linked to the assigned quest.

Zhang Heng held Bai Qing’s hand and said softly, “Don’t worry, it will be better when you open your eyes again.”

…

The next time Bai Qing opened her eyes, Zhang Heng was gone. Soon, she heard the sound of water.

When she was still sleeping, Zhang Heng took a cold shower and analyzed the information he collected. After he got dressed and walked out of the bathroom, he found out that Bai Qing had woken up. And his face was blushing.

Nothing happened between the two, even though they slept together. Although they were lying on the same bed, they were fully clothed. Having no other thoughts, Bai Qing just wanted to find someone she trusted to stay with her. Likewise, Zhang Heng had no other intentions towards her as well.

He uncapped a bottle of mineral water and tossed another to Bai Qing.

“The results of the CT scan is here.”

To Zhang Heng’s surprise, it turned out that his unreliable parents were more effective than his friend that worked at the hospital. They sent the result back to him in two hours. An hour and a half later, his friend that worked at the hospital sent Zhang Heng his results.

The two sets proved similar. The image’s three-dimensional reconstruction showed that the corpse’s bones and blood vessels were almost indistinguishable from that of an ordinary human body. Only its brain managed to attract the analysts’ attention.

“What does it mean by an abnormal fourth ventricle?” Bai Qing walked to the computer.

“The fourth ventricle is an anatomical structure located between the midbrain, pons, and cerebellum. The fourth ventricle’s content was mainly cerebrospinal fluid connected to the third ventricle, the subarachnoid space, and the central canal of the spinal cord. The fourth ventricle of an ordinary person has a quadrangular pyramid shape. But the fourth ventricle on the CT image is twice the size of an ordinary person, and it has a very neat hemisphere,” Zhang Heng said.

“Hmm?”

“Let’s put it this way, the analysts who saw the CT image believed that such a neat hemispherical shape could not be formed naturally. It is more like an industrial product. In other words, it was manufactured artificially. In addition, the CT image also shows that the top of the skull has traces of cutting, and it was healed after that. The radius coincides with the fourth ventricle.”

“What does this mean?”

“This means that there are many possibilities, and it is not possible for us to draw any conclusions yet.” Zhang Heng said, “But one thing is certain. The brains of the people who have been replaced are different from those of ordinary people. Look here.”

Zhang Heng pointed at the fourth ventricle on the CT image. There was an irregular-shaped shadow at the bottom of it.

“What’s that? Is it a tumor?” Bai Qing squinted, trying to figure out what that was.

For some reason, the shadow creeped her out.

“I don’t think so.” Zhang Heng said, “It looks like some kind of organism. We are one step closer to the truth.”