Mutagen

One of the younger soldiers asked Major Lopez after Mark and his group left leaving two trails of blood on their path from the two bodies Emika bound in her vines.

The Major on the other hand replied another question.

"What do you think Rael?"

"It\'s against the law?"

Private Rael replied.

To the young soldier\'s reply however, Major Lopez shook his head.

"If it was six days ago, you\'re right. Now however, the country\'s law could only apply inside the settlements the government founded. Here outside, we are all equals. Only those who have strength can dictate the rules here."

Not only Rael heard that but other soldiers too making them fall into contemplation. Major Lopez patted the young soldier\'s shoulder.

"You all needed to adjust. Besides, you all heard what happened. None of these people are innocent. That Chameleon only received what he deserved. It\'s an issue between their groups and we don\'t have the right to interfere as long as our side was not implicated in any way. Actually, I won\'t have any qualms if he killed all these trash. We\'ll have less useless people to feed that way."

The nonchalant attitude the Major had in his voice when he sentenced the members of the syndicate to death made everyone around that heard him reveal troubled expressions. Even though he had a point, many of them still felt that it was unnecessary.

The Major then clapped his hands taking everyone\'s attention.

"Stop thinking about unnecessary things! We still have things to do! We need to leave this place before dark or none of us will see the sun tomorrow!"

Major urged everyone to efficiently use the time they had to prepare. Furthermore, there was still the need to bring the hostages here and prepare to leave. Those people held by the syndicate might not be in good shape for travelling but none of them had the choice if they wanted to survive. Probably, just hiding in some place as the large horde passed by might possibly save some people but the opposite could also be possible.

Another thing they needed to do was…

Think of what to do about Jumper who did nothing in the whole fight and surrendered without qualms afterwards. None of them knew what was going on in the mind of this man.

***

"Odel, you tell Carlo to fetch his sister."

Mark said as they watched the vehicles that left before return. With what happened earlier, it was impossible that the people inside that van in front of the clubhouse did not see everything. Given that, Carlos\'s sister would surely not go with them even if they said that they knew her brother. It would be better if Carlo was the one to face his sister.

"Emika, cover the bodies tightly, we don\'t want Janette and the other one to go crazy."

Mark turned towards the little dryad.

"Okay~!"

"By the way, you slipped out didn\'t you? Your mother is angry."

Emika did not reply but her face paled. She looked at Mark and noticed something.

"Nee~ Uncle. Isn\'t that heavy?"

She pointed at Mark\'s back. There, the oversized beetle was still latched on his back.

"Not really. It\'s kind of itchy though."

Mark replied before knocking on one of Fein\'s legs and made the beetle go down from his back. At the beginning, he wanted Fein to become as a means of escape if he was suddenly besieged by the three Mutators at the same time while Abbygale and Odelina were not able to aid him. However, the third Mutator did not attack at all while the other even severely injured their leader. Even though he said all those words when Chameleon berated him, Mark knew that Jumper had no plan to join the fight at all.

The only thing the beetle had been a help for was directing the sneak attack Chameleon tried to make. Though it was not impossible to do even without Fein, it became easier since more than half of his back was blocked by the beetle making the areas Chameleon could attack very limited.

Finally, the other vehicles arrived and stopped in front of them. Mark nodded to Odelina to tell Carlo the news. Hearing that his sister was actually here, Carlo did not waste any time and set off with Sundra to check. Carlo\'s face did not look happy though. He would rather not see his sister here. It was not because he did not want to see her but finding any of his family members here could simply mean a bad news afterwards.

While Carlo went to look for his sister, Mark was thinking of what he should do with the bodies of these two Mutators. He could either store the ability of one since he only had one empty Physical Crystal left and feed the other one to either Janette or...

\'What\'s her name again? Ah, right I never asked them.\'

Mark realized that he had forgotten to ask about the name of Harvey and Monique\'s infected daughter.

In the end, he concluded that Chameleon\'s body was useless.

His advanced camouflage might be good sounding but it was an ability that could only be used while naked. Chameleon\'s body that was bound by Emika\'s vines was fully naked. It was just that Emika never needed to see everything her vines could bind or it would be inappropriate to let the girl do so.

Chameleon\'s ability could only hide his body and the clothes and weapons were excluded. This ability could not be used while bringing anything whether it be clothes or weapons. Doing so renders the ability useless. Without weapons and without protection, this ability could only hide the user while being prone to danger.

Mark could not feed Chameleon\'s brain to the infected girls too. As the nature of these girls was all a mystery to him, the chance of them becoming out of control and attacking people was not zero. If by any chance that they acquired an invisibility or camouflage ability, it could spell disaster in many ways.

Black Devil\'s ability however was very precious. Since it could render his body impervious to bullets and give tremendous strength, he would rather keep it for use later.

The only thing he needed to do now was to find a place to extract Black Devil\'s ability… Or, maybe not.

Mark took the bag containing the jar of crystals from inside the vehicle and looked at Emika.

"Emika, can you make something like a room or a dome using your vines?"

"Hmmm~ let me try!"

With great enthusiasm, Emika made her hair grow longer and longer before creating a small yurt shaped structure about two and a half meters in diameter. At the center inside the yurt was Emika who could not move. Even though her vines could support it, it seemed that it would be hard for her to walk around while maintaining the structure. Looking at the beads of sweat on her forehead, it looked like she was doing her best to do it for the first time.

He\'ll surely reward this girl for her effort to help. A frozen chocolate bar should do it.

"Emika, this is enough. Move Chameleon\'s body outside."

"Okay~!"

It did not take long for Mark to complete the procedure. The yurt made of vines however seemed to have attracted the attention of everyone around that they started to gather.

After making Emika remove the yurt, the only thing revealed was Black Devil\'s dead body on the ground in front of Mark and Emika. Unexpectedly, among the people around them was Janette who Mara was trying to pull back without avail. Janette saw the dead body and kneeled beside it and started sniffing the body but she did nothing else. She looked at Mark with a sad expression on her face.

Mark was surprise to see her make that expression but also felt helpless at the same time. Janette really saw him as her source of food for some reason and because she was his precious specimen, he was obligated to do so. There was still Chameleon\'s body hidden by Emika but it was a no go.

\'How about I kill jumper and feed him to Janette?\'

That sinister thought suddenly popped out of his mind.

However, it was already late. Jumper did not make a move on him and fully surrendered to the soldiers. During that time Chameleon was narrating all his deeds and history, Jumper had no reaction to it and did not look him with hostility. Rather, it felt like everything that Chameleon said had nothing to do with him.

At the moment, Jumper was being asked questions by the soldiers and it seemed that he readily answered everything he knew.

Mark patted Janette\'s head.

"Next time alright?"

The weak disappointment on Janette\'s consciousness finally replaced with agreement. She even rubbed her head on his hand on her own. It somehow felt like he was raising a kitten. He was also amazed how fast her consciousness was developing. By the looks of it, making Mara take care of her affected her a lot since Mara did not alienate her for being an infected and still treated her as her sister and as a human.

After that, Mark dumped Chameleon\'s body back to the soldiers. He did not mind what they would do with the body as long as they did not leave it in the open. In the end, Chameleon\'s body was put inside a body bag and put inside the front most dump truck as that vehicle had the most space left to use. Compared to the other bodies, Chameleon\'s body was still a good specimen no matter how battered his body became after Mark\'s torture.

The other dead bodies were burned in a dug hole and Mark dumped Black Devil\'s body in the same fire despite the protests of the soldiers. He could not let them know that Black Devil\'s body was nothing but a dead infected now. Since Black Devil\'s brain was damaged before his Mutation was extracted, he did not turn but considering what happened to Dominador, Black Devil would likely turn into one if his brain was not damaged by the bullets.

Everything else went smoothly after the threat was eliminated. Mark also managed to take a nap while the survivors in Citta Italia finished their delayed preparations. It was the same for the people that became hostages. The injured received the best treatment the medics and doctors of the military could give. Among those injured people was SP02 Agbayani who was the Mutator from Firenze. Apparently he had a clash with Black Devil before and ended up being beaten badly. No wonder why the righteous policeman was not around.

Carlo\'s sister, Carmela confirmed his fear. Aside from her who was treated terribly by the members of the syndicate along with the other women they captured, all their family members ended up being killed by the heartless thugs or by the mindless infected. Even though that the siblings had a reunion after the apocalypse started, their reunion was very far from being festive. Carlo\'s mind was in turmoil from both sadness and anger.

The soldiers, the police and the government officials also heard the stories of the women and the people taken as hostage. Enraged, they all ended up in a consensus. With the exception of Jumper who was a Mutator and agreed to comply with the soldiers, the other members of the syndicate were brought into an execution. The execution was more brutal. Not wanting to waste ammunition on these people, they were all tied with disposable ropes and were thrown to the fire alive along with the dead bodies.

More than two more hours passed and the preparations ended. Before anything like another swarm of flies or mosquitos appeared, the leaders decided to set off. If everything went smoothly on the way and according to the initial plan, they convoy would likely reach Bay City a few hours before midnight.