Mermaid Effect

"Anyway, your wound needs some treatment."

Rogers said to Rand.

He took the key from Rand's trembling hand and opened the door for him.

There was an obvious sound of water coming from the direction of the aquarium. After hearing the sound, Munster quickly poked his head out from behind the aquarium wall.It rested its blue head on top of the Alec panel, watching Rogers and Rand without moving.

"Haw... chirp?"

Some inexplicable sounds rolled out of its throat, but in this state Rand found that he had no extra energy to deal with it.

He found some "venison" from the refrigerator and handed it to Munster, trying to divert the little monster's attention in this way.But he soon found that Munster, who had always seemed to have a strong appetite, showed a lack of interest this time.

It just poked its head out, gently sniffed Rand's hand with its wet mouth, then turned around and jumped back into the aquarium.

At the bottom of the water, it clawed at the transparent wall of the aquarium, where it continued to stare at Rand with a strange gaze.

"Hey, Munster? What happened?" Rand yelled at it, and then he looked back at Rogers, and said in an illusory tone, "Rodgers? Munster doesn't look right...it didn't eat... ...It stands to reason that it should like this thing..."

Probably because Mick's experience made him feel the shock. At this time, his eyes were as illusory as a sleepwalker, and his spirit was very trance, with a strange fragility.

He looked like a person made of thin glass, as if with a light tap of a finger, that thin and transparent outline would be completely shattered into powder.

Rogers rubbed his eyebrows, then he sighed, reached out from behind again, and took the things in Rand's hand aside.

"Don't worry, it looks normal. If you must be worried, you can check its mouth later. Maybe there are debris stuck between the teeth. By the way, I got some newly developed crawling pets. Toothbrush, I think you might need..."

Rogers babbled like a rambunctious girl, but there was a very special calm in his voice.

Then he pressed Rand on the sofa, and skillfully found medicine to treat his wounds.

Under such circumstances, Rand unconsciously relaxed his spirit. He was very depressed. Naturally, he revealed the fact that he was attacked by the former victim...

Turning his back to Rand, Rogers' eyes instantly became cold and hard like frozen black crystals.

"So, you really forgot everything."

Rogers blinked. He turned his head and looked at Rand inquiringly.

Rand's breath stopped, and every muscle in him became as tense as a stone.He's nervous, even though he's trying to hide it.

"...I don't understand what you're referring to," Rand said dryly.

"Those things, those things that happened when you were kidnapped, don't you remember at all? I heard that you were kidnapped for two full years? During such a long period of time, don't you have anything to remember? thing?"

Rogers was talking, he lowered his eyes, he came to Rand, and couldn't control his eyes on the finger marks on Rand's neck.

As time went on, those marks became more conspicuous and terrifying on Rand's skin.

But when Rogers finished disinfecting and applied ointment to the purple-red mark due to congestion, he couldn't help but gently put his fingers on the mark.

Rand shivered unconsciously because of the coldness of his fingers.Rogers clearly felt his heart beating faster, and at the same time, the temperature of his cheekbones was also rising.

Even in the fantasy, the sight of choking a human neck, oppressing his trachea and forcing his body to struggle without oxygen, gave Rogers an indescribable pleasure.

He even thought that he might show that unseemly side in front of Rand-of course, in the end he refrained, he just kept those finger marks firmly in his mind like a miser. The gold coins are locked in their own safe.

In reality, his behavior was so secretive that even Rand didn't notice it.

The latter was biting his lip subconsciously at this time, avoiding Rogers' gaze.

"I don't know, Rodgers, I did forget everything, although many people insisted that it was just a self-excusation, knowing that many people knew that the kidnapper was 'good' to me at the time, and they felt that I had been turned into Being part of that 'family', there have been a lot of people saying that I was there when that person did the murder... and I can't even really deny that, I've lost my memory..."

There was a strong sense of guilt in Rand's tone.

As he himself said, in fact, even he himself could not confirm whether he really became an accomplice during that period of blank memory, as some people said.

Some media once managed to obtain the materials involved in the case that year, which was a video recorded by the victim's baby monitoring device.

In that room, Lina Makinson, the deranged man known for his cold blood and cruelty, treated Rand as tenderly as he would treat a crystal flower.And the most frightening thing is that in the video, people actually heard Rand speak.

He called out the word to Lina—"Mom."

In fact, the FBI's internal psychological evaluation team had already made an evaluation of Rand's condition at the time. During the two-year kidnapping life, he was likely to be brainwashed and controlled.

Of course, this conclusion was quickly changed by Wen Sen with money, and it never appeared in the information accessible to the public.

Rand was just a victim, and he was just that way from beginning to end-now, this is the unified caliber of all media for the kidnapping of "Lilith" 16 years ago.

And Rand didn't know what Vincent did in it...

Rogers patted his face.

"Hey buddy, pick yourself up, it's not your fault," he said to Rand, and after a brief hesitation he took out a pen and jotted down a cell phone number on the back of the magazine.

"Before this, I was hesitant to give you this number. His name is Alfred Worden. I can guarantee that he is the best psychiatrist in the whole northern hemisphere. He recently hosted a very successful Gao’s new experimental project, and the content is mainly aimed at the loss of human memory... If you think you need, or want to try to retrieve memory, you can call him.”

Rand looked at Rogers with his eyes wide open. He found sincere concern on the latter's face, and he also had a wonderful feeling that Rogers was very happy to see him recover his lost memories... This is the same as Vincent and Caroline is just the opposite. Rand has always known that they are very resistant to Rand's idea of ​​trying to retrieve his memory, especially Caroline, who insists that it will affect Rand's current life.

Not long ago, Rand himself felt that finding those buried memories might not be a good thing for him now.But when he actually confronted the victims of the tragedy, he became uncertain.

Rogers left after helping Rand heal all of his wounds.

"I know that what you need most now is not companionship but solitude...if you don't count the little guy next to you."

He smiled and pointed to Munster.

By the way, he also left some plastic bags, which are said to be the special fish food for carnivorous fish recently developed by his studio, and the toothbrush for reptiles that he mentioned before.

It has to be said that Rodgers made Rand feel better.

After he left, Rand made himself a cup of coffee and turned on the TV, but couldn't concentrate.

It seemed a little too quiet in the room.

After a while, he suddenly realized what was missing in this space-the sound of water, the sound of chirping.

Munster was uncomfortably quiet today.

Rand couldn't help but returned to the aquarium again. He squatted down and carefully observed Munster in the aquarium. Its scales were still brightly colored, and its size seemed to be bigger than what he observed last time. Some, but it didn't have the lively energy that gave Rand a headache before.

Rand had to pat the aquarium wall.

"Do you think you're coming out?"

He whispered to Munster,

Munster slowly emerged from the water, and Rand hugged it (even though it made his clothes wet), noticing that it was a little heavier than before.

After this period of feeding, Munster's body length is close to [-] centimeters. Its scales are very fine and hard, and it feels cold and smooth to the touch.Sometimes Rand would see something sliding under the red-striped skin behind its eyes, like a human pupil dilated and contracted in the light, but the thin film made it difficult for him to really see it. See what that thing is doing.

At this moment, Rand found that there were some wrinkles on the surface of the two spots, and the film began to turn white and harden, as if it was about to fall off.

"Damn, what happened?"

Rand frowned tightly, and he stretched out his hand to try to peel off the small piece of skin that was about to fall off, but Munster immediately let out a sharp scream.

It struggled crazily in Rand's arms, and Rand felt a sharp pain in his arms and shoulders, which was the pain caused by Munster's claws hooking into his skin and scratching the scars.But at this moment, Rand couldn't care about it at all. He was taken aback by Munster's abnormal reaction. The little monster who loved Rand's embrace had never shown such fierce resistance, and at the same time——

"boom--"

Suddenly from outside his balcony came the muffled sound of something hitting the glass window.