Umbrella III

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Chapter 15: Umbrella III

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Natalia soon joining him in Woodbury took a lot of load off his shoulders as she helped him deal with things, allowing him some free time to... Well, take New York and its surroundings as his playground.

And just like that, some time passed, declaring the end of the first month since the start of the game of awakening.

In the past month, the people of Umbrella Sanctuary barely had any rest, but luckily, or as Silver expected, the awakening points they attributed to Endurance came to the rescue.

Everyone knows of what's going on out there, the death rate, and the danger outside, so they knew not to waste time, and worked their hardest... None wanted to give up on the safety of the sanctuary.

In just a little bit less than a month, the prototype of Umbrella Sanctuary took shape as with the help of the mud controlling awakener, they were able to form what can basically be called a river of mud around the town.

The mud river was about twenty meters wide, and the mud is somewhat special as it's very sticky, so expect passing through it is extremely difficult.

The more you struggle, the worst it becomes until the mud simply envelopes you whole and brings you down to the depths. It was mainly used as protection against normal zombies.

And Silver hopes it can be expanded way more as fast as possible, becoming at least fifty meters wide, although that's difficult. Awakeners don't have infinite energy after all.

Well, Silver might as well have infinite energy as amongst them all, he did the most work. After making sure there won't be a big problem in the town, he set out alone.

He'd much rather stay and just hole himself in some laboratory but his logical mind says otherwise as he left the town, although not too far away.

Silver's goal was all the towns, villages nearby and even hamlets, and there were several, such as Harriman, Monroe, Central Valley, Highland Mills, Washingtonville, Cornwall, New Windsor, and Salisbury Mills.

All of these were visited by him, performing a thorough clean up of the surroundings while not only bringing more manpower but also more resources.

The population of Woodbury, or as it's called now, Umbrella Sanctuary has reached a whopping two thousand individuals... Yeah, human resources are a rarity in Doomsday.

And that's something Silver saw through long ago, thus why he instructed the Umbrella researchers to put some focus on another field when it comes to the T virus.

Speaking of which, Silver left them with another task which was turning some medical and other suitable rooms into research labs, which was relatively easy, and now, he found himself in the main lab.

Before him stood three individuals, Albert, Natalia, and Larry, the latter was of course tied to a table. He's a zombie after all.

"The vaccines are useless, or I believe they'll be useless if we finish their development," Natalia stated, keeping him up to date on their recent discoveries.

"No matter what we did, the immune system couldn't react fast enough to stop the virus," Albert added with a frown, "Even if the virus is recognized by the immune system, the latter is still not fast enough to contain the virus before even one cell is infected, and one infection is enough for the virus to win."

"For whatever strange reason, once an infected cell experiences a division, which happens in minutes in infected cells, the immune system will no longer regard the child cell as a threat, although the antibodies can contain the infected mother cells, but that only serve to delay the infection." Natalia further added.

"How long? The delay, I mean," Silver questioned.

"It roughly doubles, sometimes even triples the needed time for the transformation," Natalia responded.

Vaccines work by stimulating the immune system to recognize and defend against specific infectious diseases, but unfortunately, the T virus seemed to have evolved against that, Silver realized.

"What about the other thing?" He then asked.

"You were right!" Just hearing that made Natalia jump out of excitement as she was about to deliver a piece of information that would certainly drive anyone else insane with horror, and even Albert could sight with frustration at her antics.

"I call it the Hive Brain!!" Natalia said and continued, "When most of the cells of the brain are infected, they seem to form some kind of connection, almost like they gain consciousness, although I would the zombie at this point still only has the intelligence of a beast."

And that was the somewhat expected danger that stopped Silver from injecting himself with the Virus. The virus is a gift from the game but it's no gift on a silver platter. He has to work for it.

"And it works how?" Silver narrowed his eyes.

"I... I don't know," Natalia's excitement died down as she shook her head, "I feel like it would need years to fully understand how it works exactly as even after observing various zombie brains, I didn't notice anything out of order... It just happens suddenly."

"It just happens suddenly?" Silver narrowed his eyes, "It couldn't be something like quantum entanglement? But if that's possible, wouldn't something like the Hive mind become possible?"

"Quantum entaglment?" Albert frowned, knowing enough about the concept to realize that if that was true, then humanity's future is bleak... No, does humanity even have a future?

"Hah... Hahahaha hahaha! *Cough cough*" The soft laughter not only stunned Albert, but it also surprised Natalia, especially since it was coming from Silver, and it felt like it had been years since she last saw him laugh.

Hell, he had forgotten what's laughter like to the point that even laughing for a little bit made him lose his voice as he started lightly coughing.

"Hah, excuse me, it's been a while since I laughed so loud," Well, he certainly didn't laugh too loudly but to him, that was loud and intense as he never likes to speak loudly or raise his voice, "I'm just so happy."

"Explain?" Albert was curious beyond belief. He saw no good thing in the idea of the Hive Mind, so what did Silver see that he couldn't?

"Hmm, let's just say that our future depends on the cloning project and most important of all, the rehabilitation project," Those were the two classified tasks that Silver left for Albert and Natalia to personally oversee.

"This... Could it be?" Natalia's eyes brightened, thinking back about Silver's numerous ideas, including the rehab project which was fascinating, and putting things together made her mind buzz.

They went deeper into the main labs, reaching a secure chamber, in which there were several things, several large containers and tubes, some small containers, holding infected samples among other things.

"Yeah, I should've prepared more samples, maybe a hundred more?" Silver remarked as he sensed the progress of the projects through his domain.

"???" Albert's mouth twitched. They already had to deal with a whole hundred samples, barely able to make time for it, yet he wanted to add a hundred more?

The samples are actually cells of various individuals, including Silver's. There were hundred infected samples, but the difference is that they weren't any normal infected samples, but they had the Silver Effect around their atomic nucleus. And out of the hundred samples, only seven remained.

The original goal of the experiment was to basically rehabilitate the virus as its purpose is to evolve which requires energy, and the Silver Effect can seemingly create energy or generate it somehow, the perfect combination which should allow the virus to evolve.

And the way it evolves is by division, so the duo of Albert and Natalia sought to only take the child cells and destroy the mother cells, rinse and repeat until either something in the core of the infected cells changes or the Silver Effect has some effect on it.

It was an experiment, and Silver even hoped that the infected cells would somehow grow to be addicted to the Silver Effect and that he'd somehow get control over them? Thus the project name, Rehab.

However, the concept of the Hive Brain and the Hive Mind changed his mind, things will be easier than expected.

Silver just got to have the virus for himself. The fact that they can divide and even replicate the Silver Effect is ridiculous, especially since he can still control the replicated Silver Effect.

"The possibility of rehab is actually very high as if generation after generation, the infected cells became used to being self-sufficient, they may grow to be more stable." Natalia shared her discoveries, "In fact, they're already more stable."

"Indeed," Albert nodded as he brought out one of the containers which was housing a rat, quite the big rat, and it seemed to be quite calm, looking like it's hibernating.

"The rat is infected with one of the latest generation samples, and in contrast to the older generation ones which are very aggressive, it's very stable, although if we handed the rat any source of energy, it certainly doesn't say no."

That's not much in Silver's ridiculously imaginative mind as he was seeking something far far higher than that, but it was a first step.