The Tentacle Monster I Brought Home Always Says It Wants to Fix My Bones at Night - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

That night was the first time I witnessed how worthless a human life becomes when capital and monsters join forces.

Four men were lying in wait in the fire escape.

They were dressed in plain clothes, but their movements were professional. They weren’t carrying stun batons, but rather some kind of long, slender silver syringes.

Motiao practically exploded in an instant.

Its body, which was originally only as long as an arm, suddenly extended like dozens of pitch-black streams of water lashing out simultaneously, slamming hard against the walls.

With a muffled thud, the nearest man was knocked over before he could even let out a grunt.

Motiao shielded me entirely behind it. My back was pressed against the cold wall, my ears filled with the sounds of heavy breathing and frantic footsteps.

Those men had clearly handled this kind of situation before.

They didn’t go for Motiao’s main body; instead, they closed in specifically on me.

One of them barked, “Don’t touch the sample! Secure the host first!”

My head buzzed.

Host?

Could what Su Jingyao said be true?

Before I could wrap my head around it, a needle was already lunging toward my neck.

Motiao lunged forward like a madman, taking the hit for me.

The moment the transparent liquid was injected into its body, its entire form went into violent spasms. A circle of pale white rapidly bled through its black surface.

I heard a sound like glass being crushed bit by bit.

It was in so much pain it couldn’t even type out words. It could only rely on instinct to wrap around my ankle and drag me down the stairs.

“Miss Han, don’t run.”

Su Jingyao walked slowly down from the landing above.

The emergency lights reflected off his face, which could no longer maintain even a shred of gentleness.

“Pei Yuming was just too naive to think that stopping the project would save anyone.”

“But do you have any idea? Once this thing successfully matches with a human brain, its commercial value is simply immeasurable.”

“Emotion management, pain control, nerve repair—which of those isn’t a market worth trillions?”

The more he spoke, the more excited he became, his eyes even gleaming with fervor.

“What does sacrificing a few people matter? They weren’t living lives of any value anyway.”

My heart constricted painfully.

In that moment, I suddenly remembered the names in the experimental logs.

Outsourced workers, interns, volunteers.

They were all the people easiest to sacrifice, the ones no one would ever bother to ask questions about.

Just like me.

Just like so many people who are just desperately trying to survive.

My hands and feet went cold, but in that instant, I suddenly wasn’t afraid anymore.

Because I finally understood that the truly terrifying thing about these people wasn’t their wealth or power.

It was that they never viewed other people’s lives as lives.

I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the hallway and hurled it at Su Jingyao.

“Fuck your market and all its trillions!”

He was caught off guard and stumbled back as it hit him.

Motiao seized that split-second opening, suddenly wrapping around my waist and flinging me through the gap in the stairwell railing directly onto the platform of the floor below.

I fell so hard my vision went dark, and my shoulder nearly dislocated.

But it was because of that fall that I saw a half-open equipment door at the end of the platform.

Motiao dragged its wounded body along and shoved me inside, its tentacles quickly tapping a code into the keypad by the door.

The door locked.

Soon, heavy pounding echoed from the other side.

I slumped on the floor, gasping for air. It took me a long time to realize that this was actually Deep Tide Biotech’s temporary showroom, located right below the restaurant.

The walls were covered in product posters and conceptual diagrams.

On the central screen, a slogan was scrolling by:

“Let all exhaustion become quantifiable, harvestable, and optimizable value.”

I trembled as I read it.

Motiao collapsed at my feet, its body color growing paler and paler.

I scrambled to pick it up, and for the first time, I truly felt it burning up.

It wasn’t its usual coolness.

It was a temperature like it was about to burn out.

“Pei Yuming, Pei Yuming!”

I didn’t dare call it Motiao anymore.

It raised a tentacle and tremblingly touched the corner of my eye.

Only then did I realize I was crying.

It typed very slowly, squeezing out the words one by one.

“The console.”

“Third cabinet on the left.”

“Inside is the Termination Program I left behind.”

“If it doesn’t end tonight, they will keep coming for you.”

My throat felt tight with pain. “What about you?”

It paused for a long time.

“I might not come back.”

I held it close, my heart feeling as if it were being squeezed hard by a giant hand.

Clearly, three months ago, I had just picked up a palm-sized little monster.

But in this moment, I knew more clearly than anyone else that I couldn’t bear to let it die.