"What!" Su Jin's heart hammered against his ribs. He lunged toward Fu Hu, his eyes wild. "Are you serious?"
"Dead serious!" Fu Hu’s voice cracked with rising adrenaline. "I couldn't believe it myself at first. Qingdai shot that kid point-blank. She took one look and knew instantly the brat was a Disguised Infected."
"And she checked the rest of us," Fu Hu continued, "Our crew is completely clean. No one here harbors any malice toward her. We can finally distribute the guns and arm up without watching our backs!"
"This is..." Su Jin’s head dropped, his manic energy abruptly giving way to a hollow, breathless whisper. "This is phenomenal... finally..."
Every single day in this hellhole had been a grind, with the bad news constantly burying the good.
They had barely scratched the surface of understanding the Disguised Infected and the Zombies, yet every bloody encounter dragged them deeper into a suffocating despair.
But now, a foundation for a stable team. A sliver of an actual future. The dawn had finally broken!
The company hadn't made a mistake choosing Qingdai. She really was their golden ticket out of this nightmare...
Su Jin snapped his head up, the exhausted manager vanishing, replaced by the ruthless survivor. "Those two missing Disguised Infected are still out there, and we are flying blind regarding their abilities. With that kind of threat in the shadows, we cannot risk Qingdai’s safety. Our logistics aren't perfect, but we have enough."
"I'm calling it. We stop waiting. Tonight, we load all the Supplies into the vehicles. At first light, we haul ass straight for the military district! Any objections?"
"None!"
"Excellent! Let's go check on Qingdai and secure that little girl's corpse, then we immediately mobilize!"
....
The group marched back to the small tree looming beside the Community Activity Center.
Fu Qingdai stepped out to meet them.
Su Jin beamed at her, the expression stretching tight across his tired face. "Qingdai, your ability actually awakened?"
She nodded vigorously, a radiant smile cutting through the grime on her face.
"Brother, I felt it! It was overwhelmingly clear—pure, concentrated malice. When I looked at her, it was like her very face twisted into something else entirely!"
Su Jin sucked in a sharp breath. "You know, I remember you mentioning earlier that Cheng Du gave off a weird vibe. I brushed it off at the time, but if that was..." He slowly dragged his gaze over to Cheng Du.
The rest of the group swiveled their heads, staring holes into the man.
Cheng Du physically shrank, throwing his hands up. "Hey! What are you looking at me for?! Qingdai just got this ability, she’s basically a beta tester! It was definitely a false positive!"
"Qingdai, scan me again. Look closely. Am I a threat?!"
Fu Qingdai squinted at him, then shook her head. "No, you're fine. Honestly, whatever I felt from you before... it didn't feel dangerous. Maybe my radar was just glitching."
"You." Su Jin jabbed a rigid finger at Cheng Du's chest. "From now on, you keep your distance from Qingdai. If I catch even a whiff of sketchy behavior from you, I will end you."
Cheng Du’s face crumpled into a mask of pure misery. "Director, that cuts deep! I was just worrying about your mental health earlier, and you... I'm a good guy!"
"I know you're probably fine, which is why I'm taking the conservative approach of just threatening you," Su Jin replied deadpan. "If it were anyone else, I would have already put a bullet between their eyes."
Cheng Du slumped over, utterly defeated by the logic.
Dismissing the idiot, Su Jin strode over to Ding Ling's battered corpse.
He drew a short, tactical knife and hovered it over the girl's arm. "I'm going to make a few test incisions to gauge her muscle density. If anyone has a weak stomach, turn around now."
They were still in the dark about the full combat capabilities of these premeditated assassins, but analyzing their raw biological strength was critical intel.
This 'child' possessed terrifying physical durability. A skull dense enough to wedge a bullet was a biological nightmare.
That alone elevated her from a nuisance to a lethal threat.
Watching Su Jin lower the blade, Fu Qingdai immediately threw her hands over her face, peeking morbidly through her spread fingers.
The absolute second Su Jin’s steel bit into the flesh of Ding Ling’s bicep, Fu Qingdai’s pupils dilated in raw terror!
That suffocating, icy wave of sheer malice washed over her again, radiating directly from the "dead" girl on the ground.
It was faint, but undeniably present.
Without the slightest hesitation, Fu Qingdai shrieked, "Director, watch out! She's—"
She didn't even get to finish the sentence. Su Jin’s survival instincts hijacked his body. His right hand snapped the knife upward in a vicious blur, driving the blade directly through Ding Ling’s throat and shattering her cervical vertebrae.
Simultaneously, his left hand plunged like a spear into the gory bullet wound in her abdomen, his fingers locking violently around her spine.
With a sickening crack, he ripped the spinal column clean apart!
Never losing momentum, he brought his right knee crashing down with the force of a sledgehammer, utterly pulverizing her pelvis.
The Disguised Infected convulsed violently. With her neck snapped, spine severed, and pelvis turned to dust, a massive geyser of dark blood erupted beneath her, and the thing finally, truly died.
It took less than a single second. The sheer, explosive brutality of Su Jin’s overkill combo left the entire group frozen in shock.
They stared at him like he was the real monster.
What kind of ungodly speed and power was that?
Fu Hu was reeling, his eyes drifting up to the blazing midday sun.
He had personally witnessed how dense that girl's bones were, stopping bullets cold. Yet the Director had just crushed them to powder with a single knee strike!
Was this the terrifying peak of the Director’s strength when bathed in direct sunlight...
Yanking his blood-soaked hand free, Su Jin shot a hyper-focused glare at Fu Qingdai.
"Report."
She squeezed her eyes shut, dragging in a ragged breath. "I don't know! I shot her seven times, she was completely dead! Her malicious aura was totally gone!"
"But the second your blade broke her skin, it flared back up... maybe she was just playing dead?"
"Hmm... perhaps," Su Jin muttered, wiping a splatter of gore from his cheek. "We need to rigorously stress-test the parameters of your ability. Later, I’ll find a Zombie for you to practice on. If that doesn't trigger it, I'll figure out a way to trap a live Infected for target practice."
He turned, his cold eyes sweeping over his stunned subordinates.
"Consider this a free tactical lesson. These mutated freaks do not operate on human biology. From now on, standard operating procedure: once a target is down, you mutilate them."
"Stab the heart, sever the brain stem, and decapitate the corpse. Only then do you confirm the kill."
"Memorize it. We're writing it into the company handbook. The 'Post-Mortem Overkill' rule is now mandatory."
"It's not over yet!!" Sun Ya suddenly screamed, pointing a trembling finger. "Little Li, look at her arm!"
Su Jin whipped his head around, his eyes locking onto the mangled corpse's forearm.
The flesh on the lower half of the seemingly normal arm was splitting open. A grotesque, flesh-colored worm, roughly the size of a human forearm, was tearing its way out.
The thing moved with nightmare-inducing speed. Before anyone could blink, it hit the dirt, its eight spindly legs blurring as it scurried frantically toward the shadows.
Su Jin drew his sidearm and dumped five rounds at it, the gunshots deafening in the courtyard, but the worm was already out of range.
"Old Sun, Old Wei! Grab Qingdai, fall back to the center, and seal every single crack and window!" Su Jin roared, his blood boiling as he broke into a dead sprint. "Old Fu, Cheng Du, on me! We hunt!"
So much for a goddamn lucky break.
In this apocalypse, problems didn't just rain; they poured acid!
An infected parasite that could detach and survive independently?
If it was just a mindless symbiote, they could squash it. But if that repulsive thing carried the host's actual consciousness? That was a tactical disaster!
The three men tore after the creature, firing on the run as they sprinted a hundred yards across the compound.
The worm violently zigzagged through the brush, its fleshy skin aggressively shifting colors, camouflaging itself against the dappled sunlight and shadows.
Less than ten yards later, it completely vanished into the terrain.
Su Jin skidded to a halt, the veins in his neck bulging with pure rage.
Gone... it had active optical camouflage. There was no tracking that.
"Director, what's the call?" Fu Hu panted, sweeping his barrel through the empty brush.
"Fall back to the center," Su Jin ordered, his voice dripping with venom. "Tell the old men to barricade the doors and stay strictly away from the walls. Coat the floorboards in flour! If they see a single footprint, blast it with the shotgun."
Fu Hu nodded and bolted back toward the Community Activity Center.
"Cheng Du, you're with me—" Su Jin's voice hitched, his bloodshot eyes drifting slowly from the treeline up to the rooftop of an adjacent building.
Cheng Du swallowed hard and followed his gaze.
Standing right on the ledge, bathed in the glaring noonday sun, was a woman. Her dress whipped violently in the wind, a picture of deadly, arrogant grace.
The muscles in Su Jin's jaw jumped. A feral, deeply unhinged smile slowly stretched across his face.
"Look at that. Another one wants to play manager," Su Jin hissed, his eyes dead and cold. "Courting death."