Little Pink Starfish

An Zhe hadn’t slept in over twenty hours.
If counting from the moment Madam Lu’s incident occurred, it had been five or six hours already—it was now midnight.

He hadn’t told the doctor anything. After the time limit expired, the colonel lost all patience and ordered torture by force.

The interrogation room was fully equipped. Human torture methods didn’t result in blood and gore—very civilized. It was electric shock.

—The feeling of electric currents running through the body was like thousands of venomous ants gnawing simultaneously at every nerve under the skin.
Pain.
Pain he had never experienced before.

An Zhe closed his eyes, gasping for breath, body trembling, forehead drenched in cold sweat. Every inch of skin twitched.

Had the spores been treated like this in the lab? Maybe.

In that endless pain, he nearly lost all consciousness. His mind was blank, as if filled with thoughts he couldn’t quite catch—he vaguely felt they were important.

He didn’t know how much time had passed. The torment stretched every second like a lifetime.

In a daze, he suddenly heard a shout from the hallway outside—

“Doctor—the magnetic frequency is rising!”

The shout hit like a thunderclap, jolting him awake. The atmosphere in the interrogation room changed abruptly too.

An Zhe’s heart pounded. The magnetic frequency was rising—the magnetic frequency was rising—

It meant the underground base was saved. And it meant Lu Feng was coming back—if he was still alive.

He heard the doctor’s urgent voice: “It’s rising? How much? Can it return to normal frequency?”

“Don’t know,” someone replied. “But auroras have already appeared. Frequency fluctuations show the base is undergoing manual tuning. He should be safe.”

“My god…” The doctor’s voice trembled. “It really… really can be saved. What about communication? Is it back? Contact the military immediately, activate emergency channels. What happened here—I must tell Lu—”

“Doctor,” Seran’s voice interrupted, quiet. “I just received urgent military orders—we are not permitted to contact the colonel in any form.”

A pause. Then the doctor asked, “Why?”

“I… don’t know,” Seran replied. “Maybe because of Madam Lu and An Zhe.”

In that instant, An Zhe suddenly remembered what he had been thinking about all along.

He was the one who stole the critical sample.
Madam Lu was the alien species who infected all of Eden.
And he and Madam Lu were both directly connected to Lu Feng.

He wasn’t clear-headed, but in that moment, from somewhere came a surprising calmness. He coughed a few times and weakly said, “…I’ll talk.”

The current stopped. His mind cleared a bit. Now he deeply regretted discussing Eden, Madam Lu, the queen bee with the doctor—but he believed the doctor would understand his intent.

But the side effects of the electric torture were too severe. He could barely speak. His head was foggy. His body shook and retched. Finally, the doctor opened the door and gave him a cup of glucose water.

An Zhe felt a little better.

“What I said earlier was false. I’m an alien.” He said, “There’s a kind of wave that induces non-contact infection. Aliens can sense it. Five days ago, I encountered Si Nan at the Lighthouse and was infected. I destroyed the inert sample because you said… it was important to humans. Then, to evade capture, I hid in Eden. Madam Lu treated me kindly. I was affected by breeding season, and with her as the center, infected the women there.”

The doctor looked at him, frowning. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying, I’m an alien that has acquired human consciousness. I was infected five days ago.” An Zhe’s voice was soft but resolute. He knew it was a poor lie, but he believed the doctor would understand.

The doctor froze, his voice trembling, “You—”

Suddenly, white mycelium spread through the air. The doctor’s eyes widened, but the next moment, the mycelium forcibly wrapped over his nose and mouth. When a person is suffocating, they reflexively open their mouth to breathe. The mycelium seized the chance to enter.

After a violent cough, the doctor’s gaze went blank. The next moment, he collapsed forward, unconscious.

Seran drew his gun in a flash!

“When Lu Feng comes back, or if the military asks, just tell them what I said earlier…” An Zhe looked at Seran, voice tinged with a plea. “Then say I lost my mind and attacked the doctor. You shot me dead. My body disintegrated. I never existed.”

Seran pointed the muzzle at him. “…Why? What are you?”

“I…” An Zhe glanced at the adjudicator’s emblem.

He was a mushroom. But he couldn’t say that.

He was about to leave anyway. It didn’t matter how anyone saw him anymore.

He had only been able to enter the base because an adjudicator chose to trust his instinct, chose to believe him. He understood the rarity of that trust.

If Lu Feng returned and learned the truth—that his mother harbored deep hatred and disappointment toward the base’s system, that she had half-willingly turned into an alien, and destroyed all of Eden. And then, even the one he’d kept close, the one he’d trusted—was an alien who had coveted the sample from the start—

What would Lu Feng do? Could he accept it?

An Zhe didn’t know, but he didn’t want Lu Feng to face it.

Not because he cared how the base saw Lu Feng—they weren’t that close, and Lu Feng had bullied him plenty.

It was just…

He just thought Lu Feng was a really good human.

Madam Lu had said Lu Feng would never come to a good end, and her only regret was not seeing the day he went mad. Then… Lu Feng never wavering—that was An Zhe’s only wish left in this human base.

Madam Lu was gone. No one could confirm anything now. Let tonight’s events be seen as just an ordinary infection incident.

“I lied,” he whispered. “I’m no longer human.”

Bang! Seran’s bullet hit the wall to An Zhe’s right. The next instant, An Zhe staggered—his clothes fell to the ground, but his body vanished. Only a pale blur appeared before Seran, then vanished again like an illusion.

An Zhe darted into the ventilation shaft behind Seran. He didn’t care how Seran would interpret it. He rushed through the tangled duct system, blindly pushing through until he emerged into a room with a window—a deserted office.

He opened the window in human form. The aurora hit his face. He jumped down using the windowsill, rapidly transforming into mycelium and sliding down the wall.

The aurora had only just appeared. Power hadn’t been fully restored. Outside was empty—no people, no surveillance. He shifted back to human form, wearing a cloak made of mycelium, and ran.

Someone might be chasing him. This was the most tense journey of his life. He passed through the entire main city, returned to the outer city, and retrieved a backpack from an abandoned supply station—inside were simple clothes, compressed biscuits, and a map. The map was the most important.

With the backpack in hand, he followed the rail tracks out. It was a long way. He walked through the night, but that was fine.

When the aurora faded and the eastern sky turned faintly red, An Zhe reached the outer gate.

The inspection station, adjudication court… all the buildings at the gate looked the same as when he’d arrived, just now sealed shut due to the emptiness of the outer city. He walked to the base of the wall, climbed atop an armored vehicle, and reached out—his fingers turned to mycelium and grasped the wall.

Perhaps due to days of solar wind, a strange scene appeared on the wall—it was evenly coated in sand, the fine grains fused with the steel, interlocked. When mycelium touched it, pale sand drifted down, but beneath it was still more sand.

After a slow climb, An Zhe stood atop the wall. At that moment, he felt something twitch beside him. Turning, he saw beside a heavy machine gun two human-sized black bees. A few others perched nearby—likely ones that had recently flown from Eden.

The gray bee startled at his movement. Its wings vibrated, ready to take off. An Zhe pressed his lips together and made a decision—

The next moment, part of his body turned into agile, weightless mycelium. He threw himself forward, wrapping around the black bee’s body, burrowing into its bristly back.

Startled, the bee’s wings buzzed. It shot into the sky.

An Zhe clung tight. The cold morning wind rushed his face. He squinted and looked back at the human base—sunlight had risen, spilling golden brilliance over the grey city.

Suddenly, he heard a roar growing nearer.

His eyes widened—far off, a black speck grew larger. A familiar aircraft silhouette—PL1109, its dark shape gilded by dawn’s light. Two wings of escorts flanked it. Its speed slowed as it prepared to land.

—Lu Feng had returned safely. Though rescuing the underground base had seemed an impossible task, the colonel always seemed capable of anything.

The sound stirred the black bee to fly faster. Wind whipped An Zhe’s cloak.

Looking back, despite the wind stinging his eyes, An Zhe smiled.

He remembered that first time at the gate—how the human adjudicator looked up from afar, cold green eyes under a black cap.

Madam Lu’s roses had withered. But he hoped the colonel would always be that colonel.

—Goodbye.