Plague Doctor

Gu Jun could never have imagined that the best and sweetest sleep he would ever have in his life would be inside an isolation room. It had been three days since they returned to Earth. At the time, the sixteen of them had waited beside the banyan tree until the people from the Action Department came over in heavy protective gear and handed them some water and dressed them in protective gear. Then, all of them were escorted to the cleansing quarantine vehicles that had arrived. The things that they had brought out with them were confiscated, including the Carlot Scalpel.

The vehicle did not travel for long before they arrived at Lai Sheng Company’s lair in the mountain. If they carried a virus with them, they had to prevent it from spreading. The Engineering Department had already set up some isolated rooms there and other necessary amenities. At the same time, the members of different departments were rushing there with their equipment. Ever since then, the sixteen of them were separated. Everyone was given the best and warmest care. There was food and entertainment, but they were barred from seeing each other.

Gu Jun had the best sleep of his life on this single bed inside this quarantine room. That afternoon, he was led out of the room to conduct a series of physical checks. In history, the Indians had perished from the virus that the Europeans had brought with them. No one could tell if the Demon Hunters had brought any life-threatening diseases back with them from the abnormal space. Therefore, over the past two days, the Demon Hunters had been given all sorts of tests inside the camp, from their skin to their colon. Of course, there were DNA tests as well, to compare their current selves to their DNA make-up before they entered the banyan tree. That was the part for the physical check-up, which was followed by the mental check-up.

Gu Jun had already heard this from Xue Ba. Every time the members of Special Mobile Force came back from a mission, they would need to go through an S-value assessment. There were no exceptions. Phecda would not believe verbal claims that someone was not crazy. In Xue Ba’s words: “People who have lost their mind will not realize they have lost their minds.”

The psychologist responsible for the review of Gu Jun this time was still the familiar face, Sister Liang, Liang Jiahui. Even through the heavy protective gear, her smile was as warm and as kind as he remembered. Overall, the review was quite comfortable. First, Sister Liang started with a chat about movies, and she followed up with topics that were completely unrelated to the mission. The only relevant thing was the two triggering scenarios she showed him. One was watching his teammates being consumed by monsters, and the other was Gu Jun falling into the decaying mud and being unable to get out.

During these triggering scenarios, Gu Jun felt quite stressed, but Sister Liang helped him walk through them, and he came out of it feeling much more relaxed. Ultimately, how he scored during the test, Gu Jun was not told. After the test, he was sent back to his room. Gu Jun made use of this time to rest while arranging the clues that he had and his emotion. Because of that, he did not feel bored.

It was not until the afternoon of the third day that Gu Jun was once again brought into a different clean room. There was a long office table and chairs. It looked like a modern office space, but he knew that this was the interrogation room.

“Ah Jun, good afternoon.” Eight middle-aged members in protective gear were already waiting behind the office table. They all had smiles on their faces. First, there were some introductions. The team was made up of pairs from the Investigation Department, Review Department, Medical Department, and Scientific Research Department. They were all experts at interrogation.

“Good afternoon.” Gu Jun chose the opposite couch and sat down. He was collected. He was prepared to be questioned from all sides and had come up with the answers.

“Other than us, this chat will be monitored by Commander Yao and the rest.” Chen Yaoyan from the Investigation Department pointed at the camera in the corner. This kind-looking middle-aged man sat in the middle. He appeared to be the lead interrogator.

Gu Jun looked toward the camera and nodded. He was not surprised. In fact, it would not surprise him if the whole of Phecda was watching him, observing his every move.

“Next, we need you to tell us everything that happened from the moment you entered the banyan tree hole in Gu Rong Village to when you returned here.” Chen Yaoyan’s tone-started to get serious, but he still projected that camaraderie like an old friend just showing concern for Gu Jun. “Tell us… all the details, conservation, your feelings, thoughts and motives you can remember. It does not matter about their relevance. Just tell us everything that crosses your mind. We will not interrupt you. You have all the time you need.”

The other interrogators nodded slightly. Their eyes on him were equally even.

“Okay.” Gu Jun paused before he started his story. “When I entered the tree hole, I saw some dancing lights. It felt very strange…”

At the same time, inside the meeting room of an admin building at Eastern City’s Phecda, Yao Sinian, all the vice commanders of the emergency unit, and Prof Qin were watching the live feed of the interrogation. As Gu Jun expected, the interrogation was observed by the people from headquarters as well.

The people looked much better. There was a stability about them after the celebration. They did not conduct an interrogation at the first given notice because they did not want the Demon Hunters to get offended or give tired answers. After this kind of mission, review and recovery of S value was more important, and this would figure into the authenticity of the members’ answer during interrogation. By now, Yao Sinian’s team had listened to the version of the story from the other fifteen members of Demon Hunter. Their version matched up perfectly. Even in the details. They already knew basically what had happened. The only thing that still eluded them was what had happened after the Demon Hunter left. What did Gu Jun stay behind to do? They especially wanted to know about those five pages of parchment that Gu Jun noticeably did not bring out. Also, the banyan tree channel appeared to have collapsed already.

Both of these incidents were very important, but in terms of suggestive questions with regards to suspicion on Gu Jun, all fifteen members had shown implicit trust in Gu Jun.

“I have personally tested his trust before,” Lou Xiaoning said openly. “I put the gun to his head. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he left me to die, but he did not. According to others, he did hesitate at the start, but that was probably due to the influence inside the underground tunnel. I’ve experienced it myself. That feeling can truly mess with your mind!”

In terms of Gu Jun’s medical contribution on this mission, Uncle Dan had nothing but praise. “Other than the time we had to conduct an emergency procedure on him, we conducted three operations, and honestly, every time, I was his assistant. Ah Jun really has the safety of his teammates in mind, and he is always ready to take responsibility. When the decision was made for Ah Mo to have both legs amputated, no one said anything, but if he failed to clean the parasite, he would have taken all the blame. But he was not afraid. He is a good doctor because he is the kind of person who puts the interests of his patient first.”

Even Captain Xue had plenty of good things to say about Gu Jun, but when it came to the incident about the parchments and the channel in the banyan tree, Xue Ba was silent for a moment.

“I honestly have no idea what he did back there,” Xue Ba finally concluded. “But to choose to be the last one to leave requires great courage because all of the team members were at the verge of breaking down then. All of us could not wait to leave that godforsaken place.

“Put it this way, Ah Jun’s instinct when it comes to that place is far more accurate than any of us. I might have a different opinion to him, but I would follow his instinct because his instinct is far more important than mine. In fact, it is far more important that these suppositions of rationality and logic during these aftermath analyses.”

The last sentence of Xue Ba was a warning for the interrogators. ‘None of you were there; you will never fully understand everything.’

The Demon Hunters had stated their stance, and Phecda was going to hear the version of the story from Gu Jun himself. Yao Sinian, Prof Qin, and the rest were listening to Gu Jun quietly—how he could sense the spell, his understanding of the foreign spell, the new embedded memory triggered by the scalpel, how Lai Sheng Company wanted to sacrifice them, and how he countered with his newly-gained memory.

Gu Jun went through the sequence of events slowly and calmly. He was collected, sincere, and brilliant. Was he hiding part of the truth? The group could not tell from, but from Gu Jun’s past history, the chance of that was very high. Finally, Gu Jun reached the end, the part where he stayed back at the abnormal space alone. Be it in the Eastern State, the headquarters, or the interrogation room, everyone saw that Gu Jun was still as open and collected as ever.

“I use a QN-202 rocket launcher to blow up the parchments and then burn down the whole banyan tree forest. Finally, I use a c4 to blow up the channel right before I escaped,” he explained casually like he was describing the weather. “Our civilization still does not have the ability to deal with the other diseases from that world. My instinct told me that there were too many dangerous viruses there. It is not some kind of newfound land but a death trap.”

There was not a trace of regret or loss in his tone. “The place has to be destroyed so that was what I did.”

The eight interrogators present were silent.

Inside the meeting room, Yao Sinian, Leader Meng, and the rest looked at each other.

They had thought that Gu Jun would come up with excuses like the parchment disintegrated after the spell was used, the banyan tree forest collapsed on its own, or he had no idea what happened after he left the channel. However, Gu Jun went with the complete opposite path; he did not leave anything to the imagination.

“Why would I destroy them?” Gu Jun asked as if to himself. “I am a firm believer in movie tropes. In horror movies, most of the time, you need cowardice to survive.”

‘Really?’ The group was silent. ‘But your actions showed no sign of cowardice. If anything, it’s the complete opposite.’