The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 11 The Source

Three hours after the cruiser left Langton Harbor, the land completely disappeared behind the horizon.

Perfit stood at the stern, watching the coastline of Victoria gradually shrink, blur, and finally merge into the gray sea through the fog.

The wind on the deck was cold and harsh, making the hem of her coat flutter loudly.

She didn't stay on deck for long—not because she couldn't stand the wind, but because she had someone else she needed to see.

That person hadn't left his cabin since boarding the ship.

The cabin was located on the mid-deck of the cruiser, near the officers' mess.

When Perfitt walked down the iron stairs, Belfast was already waiting in the corridor.

The head maid held a file bag containing the timeline of the spread of the withering disease in the Rus Empire, which she had the Naval Intelligence Bureau compile the day before yesterday—from the fire at St. Petersburg to Vice Admiral Chertsov's hijacking and escape, with each known time point marked on the map in red ink.

"Is he inside? Knock on the door," Perfit instructed Belfast.

Belfast reached out and knocked on the door for her.

When the hatch opened, the first thing Perfit smelled was a strong vodka odor.

Then she saw Lieutenant General Chernzov.

The distinguished commander of the Ross Empire sat on his cot, his back against the cold iron bulkhead, his hands resting on his knees.

He was wearing the old military uniform he had worn all the way from Ross to Viktoria, the cuffs were worn out, and the gold thread on the epaulettes had come loose in several strands.

His eyes were bloodshot, clearly indicating he hadn't slept well for days. But when he looked up at Perfit, there was no intoxication or dazedness in his eyes as Perfit had expected—on the contrary, he was as awake as someone who had just been dragged out of a nightmare.

"Miss Brandlis," he greeted her in Victorian with a heavy Ross accent, his voice hoarse but his enunciation clear, "please have a seat. This room is a bit small, I apologize."

Perfit sat down in the only chair opposite him and placed the file folder on his lap.

Belfast stood outside the door and did not come in.

"Lieutenant General, I need to obtain some information from you before arriving in the Old World." Perfit didn't beat around the bush, directly pulling out the timeline of transmission from the file bag and spreading it out on the low table between the two of them. "Regarding how the wilt disease initially broke out in the Rus' Empire—you mentioned in your first telegram that there was an abandoned hospital in the Predelshensk district, could you elaborate?"

Chernzov remained silent for a few seconds.

He reached out and picked up an empty tin glass from the low table, twirled it in his hand twice, and then set it aside.

"That hospital wasn't exactly a regular hospital," he said in a low voice, as if recalling a scene he didn't want to remember but couldn't forget. "It used to be the infectious disease branch of St. Petersburg General Hospital, which specifically treated wounded soldiers who had been withdrawn from the Southern Front."

But by the third year of the war, the empire no longer had the money to maintain it, so it was converted into a military medical training base, and later simply became a warehouse for storing medical waste.

After the fire, the fire department discovered while clearing the rubble...

He paused, his fingers unconsciously clenching the fabric of his military uniform on his knees, "and discovered that the door to the underground morgue was open."

"The morgue?" Perfit looked up.

"The old morgue. It was built centuries ago with a stone vaulted roof and has relied on natural ventilation for cooling for decades. The fire burned through the ventilation ducts on the ground, and the temperature inside the morgue rose very high, but it didn't burn inside; it only burned the door."

"The bodies inside weren't burned, but rather suffocated by the high temperatures for many days—" Chertzov looked at the map on the low table, as if trying to burn a hole in the mark representing St. Petersburg, "and they're out. The first people bitten on the first two streets around the hospital ruins didn't survive the night."

Perfit did not respond immediately.

She located the Pledershinsk district on the map and circled a general area with her finger: "So the source isn't on the front lines, it's in the capital. And it wasn't a deliberate act of dumping, it was a natural accident."

The fire destroyed the physical barriers of the underground morgue, and the bodies were activated by the high temperatures.

"I don't understand what physical isolation is, but when the underground morgue was opened, our military doctor found a vertical shaft about three meters deep inside, with very ancient characters carved on the shaft wall."

It is not Roswen, nor is it any official language of the Empire.

The military doctor consulted several priests, who said it might be a tomb from an earlier period.

The church says that the shaft was once a sealing point from ancient times—it was later hollowed out to build a morgue.

The fire destroyed the last bit of the seal below, and those things awoke.

Upon hearing this, Perfit unconsciously withdrew his finger from the map.

She recalled the Jade Record's analysis of that thing: the residual power after the annihilation of divinity, a curse that does not belong to any existing deity.

If the shaft Chertzov mentioned is indeed some kind of ancient sealed point, then the wilt disease is not a pathogen that evolved naturally, but something that was sealed away by the creations of the previous era until it was released by chance.

She marked this clue in her mind and then continued asking questions.

How quickly did it spread from St. Petersburg to other cities? When did the Ross army discover that it had already begun to spread?

A hard-to-describe expression appeared on Chertzov's face.

That wasn't fear, but a kind of pain that was closer to self-blame.

"In the first week, we thought it was just an isolated incident following the fire. In the second week, the entire Pledelshchensk district fell. One of my regiments was transferred there to seal off and isolate the area, and in less than four days, it lost half a battalion."

The bitten person was initially able to control themselves, but soon developed a high fever, became delirious, and then started biting others. The commander did not immediately order the execution of the infected soldiers because they were all on his side—”

He paused for a moment.

"Later, that regiment was disbanded. The infection rate was too high, and all 300 remaining members of the regiment were quarantined; not a single one survived."

Perfitter paused for a few seconds, then pulled a blank form from the file folder and quickly jotted down a few numbers on it.

She designed this form herself before setting off, specifically to record the spread rate of wilt disease in different environments.

In the remarks column of the form, she wrote: Incubation period less than 36 hours. Infection rate higher than survival rate within military units. Lack of personnel purification measures.