Chapter 4324: Man of Steel (36)

"Hello, I am Shiler Andael Rodriguez, the owner of the bar nearby." Shiler handed his business card to the two men in front of him.

The two men sitting across from him were both tall; one was sturdier, the other thinner; one looked older, the other younger.

"Hello, Mr. Rodriguez. May I ask what this is about?" the older one spoke first. He had a Spanish accent, and his English was somewhat slurred.

"It's like this. We are a pharmaceutical company currently selecting candidates for a drug trial. You two have purchased medicine from our affiliated pharmacy before, right?"

The two looked at each other. One nudged the other with his elbow, then put on a look of sudden realization and said, "Oh, it seems so. We were sick before."

"It's like this: regarding your illness, we have a specific medication that can be provided to you free of charge. We will also pay you for participating in the trial. However, you must cooperate by keeping a reaction log. Are you willing?"

The older one opened his mouth to refuse, but the younger one quickly pulled him back and asked, "How much money?"

"15,000 USD per phase of the trial," Shiler replied.

Both men gasped in unison.

"Normally, if there are no major adverse reactions, there are four phases in total. You can receive a total of 60,000 USD. However, this money isn't easy to earn; you must write a detailed diary every day, including what you did and how you felt."

"Fine, we'll do it. Give us the medicine," the younger one said.

Shiler took out a contract from his bag, then produced a medicine bottle. After having them sign the contract, he left his email address, handed the bottle to them, and said, "I will pay a 5,000 USD deposit first. The rest will be paid after each phase of the log is completed."

The two nodded repeatedly and signed the contract without even looking at it. Shiler smiled and took the contract as he left.

"Why did you agree?" the older one asked. "The medicine for humans doesn't work on us."

"But it won't poison us to death either," the younger one said. "If there's no reaction, we'll just make it up. How would he know how we feel? That's 60,000 dollars! With that money, we can rent an apartment."

The older one sighed and said, "That makes sense. Washing dishes has no future; we still need to find a proper job."

The two took the medicine back to the restaurant kitchen. They looked at it but didn't take it to heart, because they were worried the other party might perform blood tests, so they took the medicine anyway. However, they felt no reaction after taking it. The younger one began to fabricate the report.

After writing a bunch, the older one came over to look, shook his head, and said, "This won't do. Anyone can tell this is made up. Give it here, I'll write it."

Fortunately, English is a phonetic language; once you learn the 26 letters and can speak the language, spelling daily words is basic. Plus, given their status as undocumented immigrants, misspelling words was normal. As long as it was readable, it wasn't difficult.

"You can't just write a bunch of fake feelings; that's too easy to spot. Didn't he ask us to write about all our reactions? Then start from the morning: write from waking up to working, then to resting and eating. If you write less about the feelings, it won't be as easy to debunk."

"That makes sense," the younger one nodded, saying, "You're quite experienced."

"That's right. I wrote plenty of reflection reports while imprisoned in the Phantom Zone. Zod read so many of my reports, yet he never learned to reflect himself."

Indeed, these two were the Kryptonians who had defected from the Kryptonian flagship. They had traveled all the way from the New Mexico desert to California, and finally to the center for undocumented workers in Los Angeles, Ding Pangzi Plaza.

Because they were tall and sturdy and their English was passable, they had successfully found work washing dishes in the back kitchen of a Mexican restaurant.

In fact, this work was very easy for them. As professional soldiers on Krypton, their training volume was immense. Even while imprisoned with Zod, they hadn't slacked off on training. Standing for 10 hours to wash dishes was a breeze.

However, they hadn't come to Earth just to work illegally. They needed to live well, so they planned to save money, rent an apartment, and then find a better job.

Just as they were wondering how to earn more money, the drug trial opportunity came knocking. What else was there to say? They signed up.

In fact, they had gone to buy medicine before because they felt a bit unwell. They couldn't quite describe it, but they felt lightheaded and had dropped plates several times.

They bought medicine on their day off, but soon realized human medicine was useless for them; they still felt unwell. And this trial medication seemed to be the same. It had no effect and caused no adverse reactions.

They felt a bit guilty when handing in the first log, but Shiler didn't look at it closely and paid them anyway, which made them breathe a sigh of relief.

But by the second phase, things weren't so simple. They suddenly discovered their strength had increased.

After crushing seven plates in one day, they were finally fired by the boss. The younger Kryptonian squatted on a street corner, dejected, and said, "I don't know what's wrong; I just can't seem to control it..."

The older one, however, was lost in thought. He said, "Do you remember when we inhaled the gemstone powder on the ship?"

"You mean when the General fired that shot..."

"Exactly. Although we were standing the furthest away, we still inhaled some. Maybe the gemstone has strengthened us."

"So we're going to have superpowers too?!"

"You're thinking too much. Those two who mutated were hit directly by the shot; what use is the little bit we inhaled?"

"But even so, our strength is much greater than before."

"What good is strength? Didn't we still get fired?"

"That's true. Sigh, these human things are too fragile; the plates are as thin as paper. In that case, it would have been better not to be strengthened."

"It's a good thing we took the drug trial job, otherwise we really would have starved to death."

"Hurry, hurry, go write the second phase report. This is our only source of income."

Half an hour later, Clark looked at the second phase report and sighed with pity, his fingers flying across the keyboard as he wrote:

"Claude (pseudonym) and Jia (pseudonym). Two such hardworking and excellent model employees couldn't survive a night of cold rain in Los Angeles. They were sick and very weak. They bought medicine, but it didn't work. They still had to go to work while running a fever. Unfortunately, because Jia had no strength in his hands, he dropped a plate. They were fired on the spot. And just like that, they ended up homeless..."

Half an hour later, Clark called Lois again and said to her, "Take a look at my new draft..."

Lois paused for a long time before saying, "I read it, Clark. Your writing is not bad. But..."

"But what?"

"Are you sure the two undercover sources you found are real undocumented workers?"

"Uh. Is there a problem?"

"Either they fabricated a report to fool you, or they hid the truth and sent you a beautified report."

"What do you mean?"

"First, the climate in Los Angeles is mild; rain shouldn't be enough to give someone a cold. Second, neither a cold nor a fever would make someone's hands shake enough to break a plate; only being high on drugs would do that. Finally, going to a pharmacy is out of the question. Undocumented workers who have just arrived wouldn't dare go to a pharmacy; they'd be arrested..."

"Oh, God." Clark frowned and held his forehead, saying, "You mean they lied to me?"

"Wait," Clark added, "Shiler lied to me!!!"

After hanging up the phone, Clark immediately went to find Shiler to settle the score. But he couldn't find Shiler at all; the damn liar had run off quite quickly.

There was no other way, so he had to go find those two people. Since he knew Shiler had contacted them, he had to go ask them what the truth was.

But those two were no longer working at the original restaurant. Clark asked the boss, but the boss wouldn't answer him.

He wandered around the street, and naturally, he was spotted. Before long, an old man wrapped in a coat approached him and asked, "Sir, who are you looking for?"

"Um. I want to find two friends of mine. Both men, one about this tall, a blond white man, and another about this tall, a black-haired white man. Both speak with a Spanish accent."

The old man rubbed his hands together, signaling for money. Clark was somewhat helpless but gave it to him. The old man said, "I've seen them. They were fired from that restaurant two days ago. If nothing goes wrong, they should be camping in the woods nearby. Be careful when you go there; some people might have guns."

Clark wasn't afraid of guns. But he was stunned the moment he walked into the woods. There were dozens of tents of all sizes, surrounded by scattered household trash, and quite a few people sitting there.

Seeing a stranger approach, they all turned to stare at him, but not with vigilant gazes; rather, they were somewhat numb, as if they were just looking for the sake of looking.

Clark felt his skin crawl. He listened closely and heard all sorts of incoherent babbling from people high on drugs. The stench kept rushing into his nostrils. Clark couldn't help it and had to walk into the woods to find them.

He looked to the left and saw a man lying on the ground, holding an empty canned food bottle in his left hand. He looked to the right and saw a woman with her body bent at a strange angle, still wheezing from her mouth. The feeling everyone gave him wasn't human; they were like monsters wearing human skin. Could it be that some kind of alien had already invaded?

Clark felt that finding those two people was no longer important; he had to figure out what was going on in this tent area in the woods. The federal government had been busy staring at that spaceship in low Earth orbit, but had they been backstabbed long ago?!

Just as Clark was feeling horrified, he suddenly heard the cry of a baby. He turned his head and saw a woman holding something bloody in her hands. That thing still had a small tail hanging from it.

Clark had never hated his super-vision so much. Because the moment he focused, he saw that the "small tail" was the baby's umbilical cord, still dripping blood.

?? This was also witnessed by the author.