48 Hours a Day

Zhang Heng’s clone curiously glared at the knife stuck in his thigh, his face showing no sign that he was in any pain. “It seems I have to take back what I said before,” he said calmly. “You are no smarter than your peers. Since you already know what I am, you should know that such torture wouldn’t affect me. If you are intending to use such means to extract information, I advise you not to waste your energy.”

“No, don’t get me wrong, I did this because I wanted to. There is no other purpose.” Zhang Heng stopped for a moment. “Okay, let’s go to the next topic. Before that, let me ask you a warm-up question.”

“And what would this question be?” The clone rolled his eyes.

“I want to know what medium you used to contact your people?”

“What do you mean by the medium that I use?” The clone rubbed his chin on his shoulder.

“Think about a bat’s ultrasonic soundwave.”

“Oh, you must be worried that I might’ve told the others about my capture, right?” the clone grinned. “But you already know the answer to this question, don’t you? You deliberately captured me and went to the internet cafe for a while. Besides saving your little girlfriend, you wanted to see if my people were aware of our differences. You are quite smart. Although pointless, you did buy yourself some time to escape. However, you will still not end well.”

“Really?”

Zhang Heng didn’t comment on the reply. He then asked the second and most important question:

“Where did you keep the people you guys have replaced?”

“Interesting, but what makes you think those people are still alive?”

“You better answer me now,” Zhang Heng emphasized.

“Otherwise?”

The clone laughed when he heard that. “Admit it. You have no means to threaten me. The reason why I am willing to chat with you is that I’m feeling bored.”

“Better not be too sure,” said Zhang Heng. He opened up the side of his schoolbag and took out a tempered glass jar.

Inside the jar were four hideous creatures that looked like the unholy child of a three-eyed dinosaur shrimp and a lamprey. They scurried along the glass wall of the jar, trying to open the lid. Zhang Heng had sealed the jar with some tape, and there was no escaping for those tiny monsters. The moment Bai Qing saw the peculiar creature, she almost threw up her breakfast. She had no idea how Zhang Heng could hold the glass jar without his hand twitching.

“Come and say hello to your allies.”

Zhang Heng had captured these four alien lifeforms after killing the four people that ganged up on him in his school. He had to crack open their heads locate them. Although the clone’s expressions were well controlled, the revelation must have had a significant impact on him since he had stopped talking.

“With all due respect, you guys are much weaker than I thought,” Zhang Heng said. “I exerted a little strength on one of your allies, and his calf broke.”

“High-level lifeforms have always paid more attention to the development of intelligence,” the clone said. “We don’t need strong bodies to be at the top of the food chain. Humans perceived dinosaurs as apex predators with advanced physical functions. To us, however, they are nothing but prey.”

“I find that hard to refute,” Zhang Heng said, “but when I put you into this glass bottle, I wonder if you can still say it out loud with confidence.”

“If you’re using them as blackmail, forget about it. We don’t value interpersonal relationships as much as you humans,” chirped the clone, his emotions seemingly sorted out.

“Really? Why did your allies risk their lives to rescue you last time?” Zhang Heng turned to Bai Qing. “Help me get the gas,” he said to her.

Mouth covered, the latter dug out a can of portable liquefied gas from the package on the side of the backpack, then plugged in the portable stove and handed it to Zhang Heng. This thing was usually used for cooking in the wild, allowing for the convenience of a proper fire without the luxury of a real kitchen.

Zhang Heng put the tempered glass jar on it and ignited the portable cooker with a lighter. After a while, the rapidly rising temperature began to irritate the four ugly creatures inside of it. They started to tackle the glass jar even more violently. However, as Zhang Heng’s clone said, perhaps they added all their attribute points to intelligence that resulted in their lackluster physical fitness. As a result, their bodies couldn’t match up to the strength of the tempered glass jar.

After a while, they stopped moving. All four aliens gradually dropped to the bottom of the glass jar, with their limbs curled up like cooked cockroaches. Zhang Heng didn’t assume that these things would die so easily, though—judging from the corpse from the freezer, they would enter a state similar to hibernation or apparent death once their body went below their adaptive temperature.

“Enough,” the clone suddenly spoke. For the first time, he was angry and began sounding warnings. “You gain nothing by annoying us.”

“It depends on how cooperative you are. Tell us the whereabouts of the people you replaced, and I will turn off the fire.”

The clone lowered his head in thought. It seemed he was weighing the pros and cons of the choice he would be making.

“Okay.”

“I want to know what you guys have planned for me as well,” Zhang Heng added. The moment he ended, the clone’s mobile phone rang.

It should be the owner of the Internet café. He was going to ask him why he brought Bai Qing out. Zhang Heng put the phone next to the clone’s ear. “You know what to say, right?”

…

Ten minutes later, not did Zhang Heng discover the whereabouts of those they had kept alive, but he now gained a general understanding of the aliens’ organization. That said, most of them were irrelevant. Zhang Heng knew that his clone would never divulge the secrets beneath Workshop No. 3 since it was the crux of their survival and reproduction.

Even if Zhang Heng killed it and his four allies, the clone would still refuse to tell him anything. In fact, even if it knew that Zhang Heng had been to Workshop No.3, mum would be the word.

Till the end of the conversation, Zhang Heng never once mentioned the glass factory and blue-green algae. This confused the clone to a certain extent, making it think that Zhang Heng and Bai Qing were still unaware of their core secret. Under such circumstances, it was willing to sacrifice some intelligence in exchange for a chance for him and his allies to survive.