保护措施 Protection

一天之中的黄金时段是第五声和第六声钟响期间。那是我最喜欢的时段，也是坊木区大多数人收工下班的时间。虽然他们累得骨头都要散了，但他们已经完成了一天的劳动。工作已经结束，等待他们的是温热的美餐和温馨的家。这里的人们都很友善，坊木区总是洋溢着善意，穿过岩缝灌入我的凝胶身体。我能感到一位父亲散发着父爱，赶着回家去看他新出生的儿子。我还品尝到了一对夫妻的热切期待，今晚他们要去边境市场享用一顿浪漫晚餐。

The golden hour between fifth and sixth bell. That’s my favorite time of day. It’s when most people in the Factorywood finish their work shifts. They’re bone tired, but they’re done for the day. Work is behind them. A hot meal and home are ahead. The people here are nice, and I always feel good squeezing my gelatinous body through the cliff-cracks seaming the rocks around the Factorywood. I feel love emanating from a man going home to his newborn son. I relish the anticipation of a married couple looking forward to a romantic dinner in the Boundary Markets.

他们的思绪浸润着我，感觉很美，就像是温暖的热水浴，不过太多太热烈的情绪也会让我应接不暇。在人群中总是会有一些不那么高兴的人。毕竟，生活在祖安并不容易。有的人正在治愈自己受伤的心，而有些人一想到下一个班次的工作就万念俱灰，只剩下炽烈的憎恨。我同时吸收着好和坏，因为我就是如此诞生的。有的时候坏的感觉会让我生气，但我对此也无能为力。我的父母教导我偶尔感觉坏是没关系的。如果没有坏，你就无法真正明白好。

Their thoughts soak into me. It’s nice, like a warm bath, though I tend to stretch out pretty thin when things get too hot. There’s always a few people in the mix who aren’t so happy. After all, life in Zaun can be hard. Some people are nursing broken hearts, while others can’t stomach the thought of another shift and feel nothing but seething resentment. I absorb the good and the bad, because that’s the way I was made. The bad feelings sometimes make me angry, but there’s nothing I can do about that. My parents taught me it’s okay to feel bad sometimes. Without the bad you can’t properly savor the good.

我跟着人潮前进，人群开始向四面八方散开。有一些残存的坏感觉流进了我的脑海，所以我决定要做一些好事将它们冲淡。我顺着通风管网向下渗漏。这些管道有许多裂缝，我早就该修一修了，只是一直没机会过来。我路上顺便收集了一些金属碎片，每当路过裂缝就将金属片从体内排出，然后加热身体外层，将金属片熔接填补管道裂缝。封堵完毕后，洁净的空气再次从上方的皮尔特沃夫气泵站流入祖安。希望这样一来，下面的许多街区都能少几例枯肺病。

I follow the crowd until people start to go their separate ways. A few lingering bad feelings drift through my thoughts, so I decide to do something good to push them out. I seep down through a network of cracked vents I’ve been meaning to fix for a while, but just hadn’t gotten around to. I collect fragments of metal in my body as I go, extruding them from my amorphous form wherever there’s a crack, then heating my outer layers to weld them in place. With the cracks sealed, clean air from the pump station higher up in Piltover flows once again. Which hopefully means fewer cases of lung blight in a good many of the streets below.

我沿着通风管滑到最底部，来到了地沟区的上层。这里并不那么美好。许多人都穷困潦倒，但仍然有许多人想要夺走他们微薄的财产。地沟的污水池里掺满了毒素和炼金铺子排出的废水，让我想起了自己被当做实验样品的孤独日子。我尽量逃避那段回忆，因为我会生气。而我生气的时候，偶尔会弄坏东西，虽然我不想。我不喜欢那种感觉，所以我静下心来淌进了我最喜欢的岩缝中，这里正处于天光交易所七扭八歪的旧宅下方。这里总是很友善。人们结伴出行、浏览商品、会见朋友、共进晚餐，或者前去欣赏某家讽刺剧团在这座地下城市的巡回演出。这里的气氛温暖平和，让人沐浴在祖安所有的美好中。

The bottom of the pipe brings me out in the upper reaches of the Sump level. Things aren’t so nice here. Lots of people don’t have much of anything, and there’s plenty who want to take even that from them. The sump pools, full of toxins and runoff from the chem-forges, remind me of the time I spent alone as a specimen in a laboratory. I try not to think of that time, because it makes me angry. And when I get angry I sometimes break stuff, even though I don’t mean to. I don’t like feeling like that, so I ease myself into my favorite cleft in the rock, the one running beneath the twisting rookeries of the Skylight Commercia. It’s always nice there. People out together, browsing the galleries, meeting friends, dining or going to see one of the companies of players that tour the undercity with their satirical works. The atmosphere warm and friendly, it’s the perfect place to bask in all that Zaun has to offer.

但就在我穿过街道下方的同时，一道突兀的剧痛荡漾着穿过我的身体。恐惧和痛苦的波澜搅动着我的凝胶身体。我不喜欢这感觉，这种感觉格格不入，本应属于底层的地沟区。那里才是坏事多于好事的地方。这里不应该发生这种事！这种不好的感觉不断浸入，我开始变得气愤。我顺着感觉的来源向下寻去，我要阻止这感觉继续扩散。

But as I pass beneath the outlying streets, a spike of anguish ripples through me. A tremor of fear and pain disturbs my liquid flesh. I don’t like it. It feels out of place, like something I’d expect to find deeper down in the Sump. That’s the place where bad things happen more often than good things. It shouldn’t be happening here! I get angry as more of the bad feelings soak into me. I follow them down, wanting to stop them from spreading.

我挤进一家铁匠铺下方陈旧的管道中。我的胶体填满了旧地板下方的空间。灯光斜着穿过地面上的铁栏杆地漏。愤怒的声音从上方传来。叫嚷声中夹杂着一个男人的哭泣。我将身体顶向地漏。我的凝胶团块分裂开来，随后又在地面上汇聚复原。我尽力用最快的速度在铁匠铺中重新组合出正常的形态。

I push my body from the corroded pipes running below a metalsmith’s shop. My bulk fills the space under the warped floorboards. Light shines in angled beams through the louvers of a grille set in the floor. Angry voices come from above. Shouts and the sound of a weeping man. I press my body against the grille. My gelatinous mass breaks apart, only to reform on the other side. I push hard and quick, re-establishing my form inside the shop.

铁匠铺的老板正双膝跪在一个女人身旁，她腹部受伤严重，血流不止。他跪在她身旁，一只手伸向另外四个男人，他们已经将铁匠铺变为一片狼藉。我知道他们这种人。我在地沟里总能看见他们这一类恶霸，专门欺压良民百姓，逼他们交钱消灾，不然就砸烂他们维持生计的工具。

The owner of the shop is on his knees beside a woman who bleeds from a deep wound in her belly. He kneels at her side, one arm outstretched toward the four men standing in the wreckage of his shop. I know these kinds of men. I see them all the time in the Sump; thugs who force good-hearted people to pay up or face seeing their livelihoods smashed.

铁匠铺里的灯光来自一盏灯笼，挑灯笼的人穿着屠夫的围裙，另一只手的位置粗劣地安装了一把肉钩。另外三个人都是普通的混混，肌肉发达头脑简单，穿着帆布连体服，戴着放大护目镜。看到我逐渐高大的身躯，他们全都呆若木鸡。我将身体胀满，青绿色的四肢凝聚着力量，我在自己觉得合适的地方咧开了一张嘴。

The interior of the shop is lit by chem-lanterns, one of which is held by a man wearing a butcher’s apron and who has a meat-hook crudely fixed to the stump of his other hand. The other three are mere brutes, slab-muscled simpletons in canvas overalls and thick magnifier goggles. Their eyes grow stupidly wide with shock at the sight of me rising over them. I bloat my body, greenish limbs swelling with power as I form a mouth where I think it ought to be.

我想让这些人好好体会一下疼痛的感觉。我知道这种恶毒的情绪来自他们，但我不在乎。我就是单纯想伤害他们，就像他们对别人做的一样。

I want to really hurt these men. I know it’s their emotions I’ve been feeling, but I don’t care. I just want to hurt them as badly as they hurt these people.

“让你们吃不了兜着走，”我开口说道。

“This is gonna get messy,” I say.

我的右臂射出一拳，将第一个恶霸狠狠击飞。他摔到了门旁边的金属立柱上，一动不动。第二个恶霸挥舞着厚重的铁棍，这是地沟拾荒人常用的特大号扳钳。铁棍不偏不倚地打中了我，立刻被我柔韧的身躯吸了进去。我伸手把他从地上拎了起来，然后甩到屋顶的横梁上。他跌落在地，四肢扭曲的样子连我都会觉得不正常。第三个恶霸扭头要逃，但我双手向上把住横梁，向前一跃，双脚踏在他后背上。我将他踩扁的同时，他们的头领用屠夫的肉钩沿着我后背正中间狠狠地划了一道口子。

My right arm shoots out, smashing the first thug from his feet. He slams into the metal stanchion by the door and doesn’t get back up. A second thug swings a heavy iron club, a sump-scrapper’s oversized wrench. It hits me in my middle and is promptly swallowed by my pliant flesh. I reach down and pluck him from the ground, hammering him up to the latticework girders of the ceiling. He drops back down, his limbs bending in ways even I can tell they shouldn’t. The third thug turns and runs, but I reach up and stretch my arms toward the girders. I spring forward and hammer my feet into his back. I squash him to the ground as their leader slices the blade of his butcher’s hook down the center of my back.

好疼！噢，真的好疼。这疼痛让我的身体失去了聚合力，我变成了一团绿色粘液洒落在地板上。有那么一会，我完全失去了空间感，从一千个不同的角度观察并感知着世界。恶霸站在我身上，狰狞的笑容露出一嘴残缺的牙齿。他杀了我很高兴，充满了消灭生命的骄傲。

It hurts! Oh, how it hurts. The pain causes my body to lose cohesion. I fall to the floor in a shower of liquid green ooze. For a moment, I lose all sense of spatial awareness, seeing and feeling the world from a thousand different perspectives. The thug stands over me, a gap-toothed smile splitting his stupid face. He’s glad he killed me, filled with pride at his destruction of a living thing.

这种由毁灭而生的喜悦像狠毒的魔药一样渗入了我全身。我不想要这种感觉，他们不是这么教我的，但为了帮助眼前这两个人，我必须利用体内这股暴怒。我必须化愤怒为力量，对抗这些恶人。散落的球团逐渐重聚起来，他一直都没意识到自己并没有彻底地干掉我。我从地面冲了起来，扑到他身上，然后凝聚密度的重心，像打桩机一样急冲过去。我带着他撞向了铁匠铺的墙，身下的血肉和骨骼在冲击中断裂粉碎。

His pleasure at this destruction courses through me like a hateful elixir. I don’t want to feel like this, it’s not what I was taught, but to help these people I need to use the wrath that fills me. I must turn it against these men. My scattered globules reform in the time it takes him to realize he hasn’t killed me as thoroughly as he thought. I surge from the floor and crash into him, altering my density to that of a thundering piledriver. We smash into the wall of the establishment, the flesh and bone beneath me disintegrating at the force of impact.

我把自己从血染的墙上拽了下来，那股愤怒开始消退。我把自己的身体塑造成人形，随后感觉到了身后这对夫妇散发出的情绪。丈夫带着恐惧和惊讶看着我，而妻子则在对我微笑，不过我能感到她正承受巨大的痛苦。我跪在她旁边，她抓起我的手。手很软。她的感激让我一下子就平静下来。

I peel myself from the bloody wall, feeling the anger slowly drain from me. I form my body into something man-shaped as I feel the mixed emotions emanating from the couple behind me. The man looks at me with a mixture of fear and trepidation. His wife smiles at me, though I can feel her tremendous pain. I kneel beside her and she takes my hand. It is soft. I am immediately soothed by her gratitude.

我点了点头，把手放在了她肚子上。我浑身散发出热量，在她的伤口处注入了一丝胶质。这一部分将永远与我分离，永远无法再生，但我依然心甘情愿，她将因为我的奉献而存活下来。我身体的一部分修复了她的伤口，粘合了断裂的组织，帮助了腹腔内部的再生。丈夫用手轻抚着她的伤口，惊讶地看到她的皮肤如获新生。

I nod and place my hand on her stomach. Heat spreads from me as I ease a sliver of my form into her wound. I’ll be leaving a piece of me behind, a piece I’ll never grow back, but I give it willingly, knowing she will live because of me. The portion of my body within her repairs damaged flesh, knits ruptured tissue and stimulates regenerative growth in her stomach lining. Her husband wipes his hand over her wound, and gasps to see her skin is pink and new.

“谢谢你，”她说道。

“Thank you,” she says.

我没有回答。我无法回答。动用这种力量让我精疲力竭，现在的我极其脆弱。我放松身躯，沿着铁栏地漏回到地下管道之中。我只能勉强维持自己的完整形态，顺着岩壁的裂缝流淌，回到老地方，在那里我可以再次沐浴在美好的情绪里。我需要休息。我需要感受祖安的一切美好。

I do not answer. I cannot. Expending such power drains me, leaves me thin. I allow my cohesion to loosen, flowing back down the grille and into the pipes. It is all I can do to maintain my form as I pour down through the cracks in the rock, heading toward the places I know will be awash with good emotions. I need to renew myself. I need to feel all the good Zaun has to offer.

我需要感受活着。

I need to feel alive.

我需要感受。

I need to feel.