Chapter 300: You Paid With Your Lives, I Will Thank You

The words dropped like a bombshell, startling Hector Grant and his subordinates. The color drained from all of their faces.

Hector refused to believe it. “Sierra, you can’t just throw around accusations like that.”

Even if Dr. Hayes was a research fanatic who could be a little extreme at times, there was no way he would actually be in league with the zombies and Aberrant Beasts. Besides, it wasn’t as if they hadn’t encountered zombies and Aberrant Beasts before. They were mindless entities. They couldn’t even manage the most basic communication, let alone cooperation. Her claim sounded utterly absurd and completely incomprehensible.

Sierra Sullivan raised an eyebrow. “Whether I’m talking nonsense or not, you’ll know if you just ask Dr. Hayes. I’m sure someone of his standing wouldn’t stoop to lying about something like this, right?”

Hector immediately looked over at Dr. Hayes. Though he didn’t say a word, his gaze was more conflicted than ever before. He hadn’t just met Sierra yesterday; he had a fairly good grasp of the kind of person she was. There was absolutely no way she would make baseless claims about something of this magnitude.

But Dr. Hayes…

Hector’s mind was a chaotic mess. He felt as though a million thoughts were racing through his head, yet simultaneously, his mind was completely blank. Just as he was entirely at a loss for what to do, Dr. Hayes finally spoke up.

“You truly are clever to have guessed it,” Dr. Hayes said, looking at Sierra with admiration. “Even if an ordinary person had thought of this, they would probably dismiss it immediately and never say it out loud. Not only did you voice it, but you stated it with such absolute certainty. That proves your brain functions differently from the rest. If I used you for my experiments, I wonder what kind of results I would yield…”

Dr. Hayes’s voice gradually faded into an obsessive mutter, his words tumbling out faster and faster. The look in his eyes as he stared at Sierra began to gleam, as if something dark and manic was about to burst forth. The previously cold and detached Dr. Hayes had been replaced by a raving lunatic.

Seeing him like this didn’t particularly surprise Sierra. In fact, she felt that this version of Dr. Hayes perfectly fit her stereotype of a mad scientist. The old Dr. Hayes had always felt like he was missing something. Now she knew what it was: pure insanity.

Hector, on the other hand, was utterly dumbfounded by the doctor’s little speech. Or rather, he was scared stupid.

“Dr. Hayes!” Hector’s voice was stern, yet laced with sheer disbelief. “Do you have any idea what you’re saying? Weren’t you helping everyone improve their strength? What did you just mean by ‘experiments’? What on earth are you doing?”

“Hector!” Dr. Hayes turned his head slowly to look at him. “You’re a good man, and you’re quite smart, but you’re just… too naive. Who told you that the authorities are strictly the good guys? What gave you that delusion?

“We are all human. Is there really such a massive difference between government officials and ordinary survivors? As long as someone is human, they will have selfish desires. They will do things they shouldn’t just to satisfy those desires. Did you really think that just because someone works for the government, they are immune to such temptations?

“Let me give you a piece of advice: drop that naive mindset in the future!

“Although, if everything goes according to plan, you won’t have a future anyway. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a very long time, and I certainly won’t allow any accidents to happen now. You are offering up your lives and your bodies for the sake of humanity and scientific research. For that, you have my gratitude.”