The Decaying Dream of America: I Assemble Corpses and Confront Madness

The only light source in the room came from the table lamp on the corner of the table, its flame flickering uneasily and casting the shadows of the clutter piled on the wall into swaying monsters.

Lin Zheng ignored them.

He selected a willow-leaf-shaped scalpel from his tools; the blade reflected a cold, starlike light under the lamp.

His movements were decisive, precise, and steady; an autopsy he was very familiar with presented no challenge to him.

The blade cut into Josh's sternum from the top, gliding smoothly downwards to the pubic symphysis.

There were no unnecessary movements, not a single tremor.

He had practiced this process countless times, both on those nameless "Gundam" parts and in his own mind.

Every cut, every separation of tissue, is a way of calibrating one's chaotic mind.

This is his anchor, a ritual to maintain sanity in this crazy world.

He cut open the costal cartilage and used bone shears to open the chest cavity.

The internal organs had an abnormally pale color.

He checked them one by one and found no obvious physical damage.

Everything points to a more hidden cause of death.

He turned his attention back to the needle mark on the inside of his wrist.

He carefully cut through the skin and fascia along the blood vessels in the arm with a scalpel, exposing the hair-thin nerve bundles.

Then, he saw it.

Under the light, some nerve fibers appear as eerie, translucent crystals.

They appear out of place in normal biological tissues.

This is not a morphology that any known lesion would produce.

Lin Zheng gently picked up a small piece of crystallized nerve with tweezers and placed it into a prepared sample dish.

His breathing remained steady, but his heart skipped a beat.

He knew that he had once again stumbled upon some unconventional realm.

His gaze finally settled on Josh's head.

This is the final step, and also the most crucial one.

He used a surgical saw to draw a circle on the skull with a chillingly skilled technique.

The moment he opened the skull, he smelled a faint chemical odor similar to ozone.

The brain's shape was relatively intact, but its surface was covered with a very thin, almost invisible gelatinous substance.

He held his breath and probed very gently with a probe and tweezers.

He parted the folds of the cerebral cortex, and deep in the temporal lobe, his fingertips felt a tiny, hard, foreign object.

He stopped all movement.

He found it.

It was something smaller than a grain of rice, embedded in the intricate network of neurons, and had a dull metallic sheen.

A tiny implant.

Using the finest tweezers, it took him a full five minutes to completely peel it off and place it in another sample dish, taking care not to "harm" Josh Vick as much as possible.

The physical evidence is complete.

Lin Zheng let out a long breath, and the white mist dissipated in the cool air.

His spirit, honed to the point of sharpness during that intensely focused dissection, had become as sharp as the blade in his hand.

Now, it's time to see the world through the eyes of the dead.

He removed the outer glove, which was stained with tissue fluid, revealing the clean inner layer.

He reached out and gently placed his cool palm on Josh's forehead.

The world was turned upside down in an instant.

There was no chaotic screaming or torrent of pain as expected.

Instead, it is replaced by a cold, orderly, precisely controlled fear.

My field of vision was filled with a blinding pure white.

Shadowless lamp.

The air was filled with an aggressive smell, a mixture of disinfectant and ozone.

Unable to move, his body was firmly secured to a metal bed by leather straps.

A blurry figure stood at the edge of the field of vision, dressed in a white robe, its outline outlined by the light as if it were a deity.

Professor Finch.

The name echoed from the depths of my memory, carrying with it both awe and fear.

"Data flow is stable."

An unfamiliar, electronically processed voice echoed through the space.

"The subjects' emotional response threshold is approaching the critical point."

A complex chart flashed before my eyes, filled with blinking lines and incomprehensible symbols, with data refreshing like a waterfall.

"Emotional reactions are overflowing."

This will cause the cascading failure.

"Continue," another voice said, devoid of any emotion.

A stinging sensation came from my wrist.

The liquid was injected into the blood vessels and flowed throughout the body with the blood, causing nerves to scream in agony wherever it went.

But the body is unable to react in any way.

"Initiating Phase Three."

Professor Finch's voice rang out for the first time, deep and authoritative, carrying an unquestionable authority: "The rational dissociation procedure... is beginning to attempt 'stripping'."

"Stripping".

Lin Zheng felt that his thoughts were being forcibly pulled away from his emotions by an invisible force.

Joy, sadness, anger, fear... these emotions that form the foundation of personality are being turned into lines of code that can be deleted.

He can "see" them, but he can no longer "feel" them.

The world is fading, turning into a gray space made up of pure logic and data, leaving only reason.

But the next moment, even this gray space collapsed.

"The subject's neural impedance collapsed."

Professor Finch's tone carried a hint of disappointment, "Yet another... failure."

Failed product.

This word is a death sentence.

"Marked, awaiting processing."

The voice said, "Follow the standard procedure."

The last thing you see is a pair of hands wearing black gloves pushing something into his vein.

The next moment, a void of darkness instantly swallowed everything.

Lin Zheng abruptly pulled his hand back, staggered backward, and crashed heavily into the stone wall.

He covered his mouth and gagged violently, a warm, rusty smell wafting from his nostrils.

nosebleed.

He slid down to the floor against the wall, the hard touch coming from behind him giving his chaotic senses a real anchor.

He gasped for breath; the experience of being "stripped" had almost ripped his reason apart.

He looked up and his gaze fell on the two sample dishes on the wooden table.

One is a crystallized nerve, and the other is a tiny implant.

The fragments of his lingering dream and the physical evidence before him were rapidly pieced together and reassembled in his highly active brain.

Implants are tools for monitoring and execution.

Crystallization is the physical trace left after a failed "peeling" process.

Josh Vick was the victim of this experiment, a "failure" that was carelessly discarded.

Professor Finch.

Reason is stripped away.

He learned why his classmate had died.

More importantly, he glimpsed the depths of an ivory tower called "University," where chillingly insane research was conducted using human beings as materials.

He leaned against the wall and slowly stood up.

He walked to the table and began to clean up the scene methodically.

He used surgical needles and thread to perfectly suture the incisions on the corpse, the stitches were so fine that no trace of dissection could be seen at first glance.

Although he will likely be the one to dissect and reassemble these bodies, it's always better to be safe than sorry.

He wiped away all the bloodstains on the table and floor, and put all the tools and gloves he had used back into his toolbox.

He covered Josh's body back with a white sheet, restoring it to the way it had been brought in.

After doing all this, he picked up the two sample dishes containing the key evidence and carefully placed them in the inner pocket of his jacket, close to his chest.

He must make Josh Vick disappear completely from the official records.

Only by becoming an anonymous figure can he avoid being tracked down and prevent anyone from discovering that a portion of his organizational samples has fallen into his hands.

This is disrespectful to the dead, but it is the only way to protect oneself as the living.

He walked to the door of the storage room, took a deep breath, and then pounded on the door.

Footsteps sounded outside the door soon after, the latch turned, and the door opened.

Reverend Isaac stood in the doorway, looking at him with concern.

"it's over?"

"it's over."

Lin Zheng's voice was a little hoarse, but his tone was calm. "It's a neurological disorder. There are no additional risks. It can be treated according to the standard procedure."

"That's good."

The pastor nodded and breathed a sigh of relief.

Lin Zheng didn't say anything more, just nodded, picked up his tool bag, and walked out of the storage room.

The sky outside remained overcast, making the candlelight inside the church appear even dimmer.

He didn't turn back, but walked straight through the quietly lying white silhouettes towards the church doors.

Pushing open the heavy wooden door, a gust of cold wind mixed with rain rushed in, instantly clearing his feverish mind.

His face was as pale as paper, but his eyes were unusually bright.

He knew that from this night onward, Miskatonic University would no longer be just a temple of knowledge in his eyes.

That was a hunting ground.

He must find the hunter named Finch before he becomes the next "failure".