Chapter 40 Part 1

"Si Nan!"

"Si Xiaonan—!"

"Rong-ge is here to pick you up, come out!"

The shouts echoed through the long, pitch-black street. Zhou Rong put down the megaphone he had just dug out from the ruins of a store. He scanned the surroundings through his infrared scope. Within a hundred-meter radius, humanoid figures quickly gathered at the sound. As far as the eye could see, there was a dense mass of flickering, ghostly shadows.

Zhou Rong picked off a few Zombies that had been drawn by the sound behind him, fired his grappling hook gun, and quickly climbed up a utility pole.

The moment he left the ground, the Zombies swarmed forward, reaching their hands up blankly with all their might.

Shouting back and forth in the streets and alleys was arguably the most dangerous and inefficient method right now. Zhou Rong knew the best course of action was to find a safe, hidden shelter, rest, stay warm, and wait for dawn, only starting to move again when visibility improved. But he knew Si Nan couldn't wait.

He couldn't spend the deadly long night alone, in this terrible state, in the most dangerous heart of the city.

Zhou Rong took a sharp breath of the icy air, using the piercing pain in his lungs to stay awake. He narrowed his eyes like a beast hunting in the dead of night. "Potential antisocial personality, schizophrenia, unpredictable behavior, do not use any form of stimulus to restore his senses…"

"A mixed-blood Omega," he murmured.

His gaze drifted into the void. On the afternoon of their first encounter, inside the besieged parking garage, the young man, completely covered by a motorcycle jacket and helmet, had looked up from the street, his eyes meeting Zhou Rong's from a distance.

"Is that you?" Zhou Rong asked softly, just as he had secretly done countless times. He raised his hand, wanting to pinch that soft cheek, but all he touched was the bone-chilling winter wind.

"Rong-ge was wrong. I didn't mean to look down on Omegas, and I'm willing to respect your opinion."

"If you're willing to come back..."

"As long as you come back, Rong-ge will let you choose for yourself..."

Zhou Rong closed his eyes, allowing himself to sink into regret and sorrow for only a brief moment. A few seconds later, he opened his eyes again, forcing himself back into a combat state. He fired the grappling hook gun from the top of the utility pole and quickly moved on to the next block.

·

Meanwhile, a kilometer away.

In a certain residence.

The soles of boots crunched on the shattered glass covering the floor, making a soft rustling sound.

As the sound was made, a shadow in the corner of the room stirred. In the darkness, a decaying, grayish-black face turned, its turbid eyes rolling as if it had smelled fresh human flesh.

A figure, cloaked in a blast of cold wind, staggered into the room, seemingly oblivious to the deadly danger in the corner.

"...Ugh..."

Air leaked from its mostly rotten chest cavity. The Zombie shakily got to its feet, its predatory desire skyrocketing under the stimulation of the sweet Omega Pheromones. It pounced forward, grabbed the newcomer fiercely, and bit down hard!

The taste of flesh and blood instantly filled its rotten mouth. However, before the Zombie had time to take a second bite, a crisp snap came from its cervical vertebrae.

The Zombie's head lolled to the side at a strange angle. Then, the newcomer grabbed it with one hand, swung it around, and smashed it hard against the wall, splattering brains across half of it.

Si Nan let out an indistinct groan. He vaguely felt a sharp pain in his wrist but couldn't see clearly what had happened. He raised his hand to touch it and felt something wet and fleshy.

'I've been bitten by a Zombie,' a thought flashed through his subconscious.

This was actually very strange, because his entire being felt ethereal, as if he were walking on clouds. Disordered halos and spots flashed before his eyes, his mind switching back and forth between reality and illusion. He couldn't even remember who he was, nor could he tell if he was standing, sitting, or had already fainted.

But he just knew he had been bitten by a Zombie.

With a loud clatter, he fell to the ground, his back against the damp, filthy wall. He tremblingly straightened his long legs, a tearing sound accompanying each breath from his chest.

'Bitten again,' he thought.

…

"You've been bitten again," someone said, word by word, full of anger.

It was a young, blond-haired, blue-eyed man in camouflage. He wasn't much older, looking to be in his early twenties, but due to his good family background, he already wore a military rank on his shoulders. A mixture of arrogance, disgust, and anger floated in his eyes.

Si Nan leaned against an electric chair. He was wearing a white T-shirt, his frame having the characteristic slenderness of an adolescent boy in his growth spurt. His head was tilted back carelessly.

"So? Are you going to punish me?" He probably hadn't had a haircut in a while, but his messy bangs couldn't hide the bright, mocking look in his eyes. He said nonchalantly, "Bring it on."

Probably provoked by this attitude, the man grabbed him by the collar and roared, "Do you think this is to harm you? You're a monster to begin with! What other path is there for you besides accepting experiments and special training! If Father had thrown you into an orphanage back then, you'd be a lowlife working at a convenience store or delivering takeout now!"

Si Nan raised an eyebrow. "Oh? So in your eyes, the definition of a lowlife is delivering takeout? You really are a well-bred young master."

The man opened his mouth to curse, but Si Nan curled his lips with malice.

"I thought that after my 'filthy and lowly' mother, as you put it, died, your father, who was so grief-stricken that he drank all day, was the real lowlife..."

With a crisp slap, the man struck Si Nan, knocking his head to the side. A trickle of blood slowly seeped from the corner of his mouth.

"..." The boy gasped for a couple of breaths, then turned his head back to smile at him.

"Or maybe, you, who resents your father on one hand while trying so hard in vain to gain his approval on the other, might be even worse than a lowlife..."

He thought he was about to get slapped again, but the man raised his hand and froze it in mid-air. After five seconds of dead silence, he suddenly roared furiously, "Electrocute him!"

As soon as the words fell, a blue light crackled and flared. Si Nan's body convulsed and he fell backward, his limbs spasming uncontrollably.

The electrocution ended a few seconds later.

But Si Nan didn't wake up. He remained motionless in that position, slumped deep in the chair's backrest. For a long while, there was no movement, not even the rise and fall of his chest.

The man waited for more than ten seconds, suspicion finally appearing in his eyes. He cautiously stepped forward and paused for a moment before reaching out to press the pulse on the side of his neck. Under his fingertips, he felt an abnormally weak beat beneath the delicate skin. He then tentatively placed his index finger under the boy's nose; his breath was as faint as a thread, almost imperceptible.

How could this be?

"A few of you, come here," he said curtly into the walkie-talkie on his shoulder, then unlocked the handcuffs on the boy's wrists.

At that exact moment, Si Nan's previously pale, slender, and lifeless fingers clenched into a fist, the veins on the back of his hand bulging.

Realizing something was wrong, the man quickly stepped back, but a fierce gust of wind rushed towards him like lightning. Si Nan grabbed the armrest, turned, and got up, kicking the man into the corner of the room!

A loud crash shook the ground. The man cried out in pain, caught off guard. Immediately, a heavy weight pressed down on him. He jolted and opened his eyes to see Si Nan leaning over him, one knee pressed against his chest, viciously grabbing the collar of his camouflage uniform.

Cold sweat dripped from the boy's pale forehead; the aftereffects of the electrocution hadn't fully faded. Yet the pain coated him in a bewitching, dazzling light, an unconscious, potent attraction that made it impossible to look away.

"Are you afraid of me?" he asked with a smile.

The man's breath caught in his throat. Intense humiliation and anger, along with another sudden, turbulent, and unmentionable emotion, rendered him speechless on the spot.

"You're afraid of me, this monster, but you also want to possess the monster's power—"

When Si Nan smiled, a small white tooth was revealed at the corner of his mouth. On a handsome boyish face like his, it was actually quite playful and attractive.

But if you looked into his eyes, you would only feel a chilling terror, as if witnessing a demon shrieking as it awakened from the depths of hell.

"Stupid and unaware, greedy and unaware," the boy whispered in his ear. "All of you will pay the price."

The laboratory door behind them was thrown open. Guards rushed in, pulling the boy away with a flurry of hands. Someone else came forward and carefully helped the man up from the floor.

Someone was shouting, someone was roaring. Si Nan didn't hear any of it. He didn't even see the indescribable gaze the man cast on him from across the crowd. As he turned, he had already forgotten whether he had received a harsher punishment that day. All he remembered was the twisted pleasure deep in his heart.

All of you will pay the price.

And I don't care about anything.

Because fate has taken everything to the grave, leaving me with nothing, so I don't need to care about anything.

·

6 AM.

The night swirled up from the earth. At the edge of the sky, a vast expanse of grayish-blue appeared, like faded patches on a black cloth after being washed, gradually expanding in view.

Zhou Rong, holding his gun in one hand, hid behind a transformer box in the corner of an alley. He licked the back of his hand, which had been scraped when he fell from the second floor, and exhaled a white puff of air, utterly exhausted.

On the road not far away, Zombies were gradually emerging from the darkness, shambling in groups and letting out hoarse roars.

Another new day in the apocalypse.

"Si Xiaonan..." Zhou Rong panted and murmured, "Give me a little more courage, I'm begging you."

The Zombies seemed to have discovered something. They all turned and began to crowd into the alley. Zhou Rong gritted his teeth, rose from behind the transformer box, and pulled the trigger. The first few Zombies fell at the sound of the shots, but more of the living dead excitedly stepped over the bodies of their own kind, scrambling to pounce on him.

Zhou Rong broke into a frantic run, his roar using almost all his strength: "Si—Xiao—nan—!"

·

"Si Xiaonan—!"

In the messy rental unit, Si Nan suddenly twitched in his unconscious state, his eyelashes fluttering as if about to open.

The first ray of daylight shone through the window lattice, illuminating the headless body of a Zombie, the dried, blackened skeleton of an infant in the corner, a wall splattered with putrid blood and brains, and under an overturned desk, a digital clock still blinking with a faint green light.

6:12 AM.

The daylight gradually sharpened at an extremely slow pace, spreading across the floor in a dim, narrow band of light. At the end of that band, the mangled bite mark on Si Nan's wrist was slowly drying, scabbing over, turning into a purplish-black scar, and beginning to flake off.

Beneath the scab, new, tender skin was revealed, not yet having completely faded from pink, quietly bathing in the misty dawn of a new day.

Si Nan squeezed his eyelids shut. A few minutes later, he opened them again and sat up blankly.

"...Anyone here?" he rasped, looking around.

The rental unit was dead silent. There was no answer.

"Zhou Rong?" he asked quietly. "Rong-ge?"

Si Nan got to his feet. His head felt muddled, and he walked unsteadily to the window. In the gap between the city buildings, the first ray of dawn suddenly flashed on the eastern horizon, making his pupils contract unexpectedly.

As if a bolt of lightning had split his muddled mind, everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours flashed back before his eyes—the collapsed concrete slabs at the construction site, Yan Hao whose wrist he had twisted, Zhou Rong's urgent calls, the teeming, endless horde of Zombies...

The last thing fixed in his memory was the searchlights sweeping back and forth over the city, the helicopter roaring loudly as it broke through the clouds and flew toward the distant south.