Kangsandia Pharmaceuticals, an old, established medical company in Songdu.
Before the apocalypse, the medical tools and equipment it produced had kept more than half the hospitals in the lower districts running day to day, and the company itself had employed several hundred thousand people.
But then the apocalypse hit, and over half its workforce “retired” by turning into zombies.
On top of having already cut off material shipments to other star regions, Kangsandia still had no choice but to put out a commission to espers in order to fulfill Songdu’s Sinai Hospital order.
Bai Long and Fang Ling stood in the lineup, waiting along with the other espers who had taken the commission to receive their training.
A short, stout male manager in a respectable-looking black suit stood in front of them, his hair slicked back and gleaming with oil.
Liu Shao, the manager in charge of this commission of theirs.
“Once you enter the hospital grounds, you do not leave the team or move around on your own. You stay strictly within your assigned delivery zone. Don’t go looking at things or touching things. Just remember you’re delivery workers, that’s all.”
“The shift schedule has already been sent to each of you. For the next week, your work follows that schedule exactly.”
“Ten minutes from now, anyone scheduled to work today gathers with me at the front gate. Anyone not scheduled can go back to the dorms.”
Having said his piece, Liu Shao left first, not giving them any chance to ask questions.
Bai Long and Fang Ling compared their shift schedules.
The two of them had been split up. They weren’t in the same group.
“I’ll go scope things out first. Head back and wait for me.”
Bai Long was in the first batch, she could go to Sinai Hospital that very day.
“Okay. If anything comes up, contact me.”
Fang Ling and Bai Long had already exchanged star-ring numbers.
His shift was tomorrow, he and Bai Long were scheduled on alternating days.
That suited Fang Ling just fine, he needed a day anyway to do some mental preparation.
It was his first time working with this many strangers, and he was scared out of his wits.
After watching Fang Ling leave, Bai Long went to gather at the spot Liu Shao had named.
“These are your protective suits. You wear them the moment you enter the hospital.”
Liu Shao handed out the suits one by one.
Each suit had a small rectangular nameplate over the chest, engraved with each person’s name so no one would grab the wrong one.
“What’s the deal with this bird of yours? Hand it over to me for safekeeping.”
Liu Shao frowned at the little red bird on Bai Long’s shoulder, and reached up to snatch it away as he spoke.
Before Bai Long could even move, the little red bird lifted its beak first and viciously pecked the hand Liu Shao was reaching toward it.
Liu Shao was well into his forties, and his somewhat slack skin was instantly punctured into a bloody hole.
Blood spurted out in an instant.
“You—!”
Liu Shao clutched his hand, glaring furiously at the little red bird.
The little red bird didn’t back down in the slightest, its round little golden-bean eyes glaring right back into his.
“Sorry about that. This bird of mine will only follow me. If anyone else handles it, it pecks them.”
Bai Long flicked the little red bird’s head with a put-upon, helpless air.
But she clearly hadn’t used much force, its feathers only deflated a tiny bit.
Liu Shao was so angry his breathing turned heavy, his chest heaving, but there was nothing he could do to them. He could only warn in a low voice, “Once you’re inside the hospital, you’d better not let me catch you and your bird running around, or you’ll be in for it.”
More than angry, though, Bai Long was mostly surprised.
These people were all espers who’d taken the commission, but this Liu Shao was very obviously just an ordinary person.
Under normal circumstances, ordinary people either admired espers or respected them. And even if they did neither, their attitude shouldn’t be anything like Liu Shao’s.
Unlike the employment system before the apocalypse, in a commission the client and the esper stood on equal footing.
In other words, there were no bosses, no superiors and subordinates, it was more like getting paid to do a job, and once the job was done, both sides went their separate ways.
From the look of Liu Shao’s attitude, he clearly saw them as the kind of pre-apocalypse employees who had to watch his expression and play nice.
The little red bird picked up on Liu Shao’s hostility toward Bai Long. It flapped its wings a couple of times, then suddenly opened its beak at him.
Firelight lit up half of Bai Long’s face in an instant.
Warm heat traveled along her hair and spread through her whole body, yet didn’t scorch her in the slightest.
It was fire, real, genuine flame.
The flame came within an inch of Liu Shao’s face, singeing a stray lock of hair on his forehead.
The scorching little flame shot straight up onto Liu Shao’s faintly shiny scalp.
“Aaah! Put it out! Help! Somebody help!”
Liu Shao froze for a split second, then burst into a shrill, miserable scream, both hands slapping wildly at his own head.
“Hissss…”
White steam rose as ice-cold water doused Liu Shao from head to toe.
The fire went out, and Liu Shao got soaked.
His suit, drenched, clung to his body, outlining a decidedly un-shapely silhouette…
“Eww…”
The chief culprit, Bai Long, curled her lip with a faintly disgusted look and quietly edged away from him.
So unpleasant to look at, so unpleasant, couldn’t even bear to look.
Before Liu Shao could explode, Bai Long got the jump on him. “Manager Liu, a big man like you with such a big heart, surely you wouldn’t hold a grudge against a little bird, right? That would be beneath you.”
Liu Shao nearly couldn’t catch his breath, his whole face flushing red, his forehead going purple.
No telling whether it was from rage or from his own slapping.
Behind him there came the faint sounds of other espers who couldn’t hold back their laughter.
Each one of those sounds was like a jab to Liu Shao’s heart.
And the worst part was, there was nothing he could do to Bai Long.
The commission fee to hire the espers was all coming from Kangsandia’s boss. It had nothing to do with Liu Shao at all, he was just an employee working for the boss.
“You—! Fine, fine, fine. You just wait!”
Liu Shao was out of comebacks. After repeating himself, he instinctively clapped a hand over the sparse hair on the top of his head, terrified the little red bird would torch it again.
“Hm? Manager Liu, are you giving me a bonus for helping you put out the fire? Oh, you really shouldn’t have. Just transfer it straight to my card, thanks, Manager Liu.”
Bai Long stroked the bird’s head, rattling it all out in one breath without giving Liu Shao any chance to refute.
Liu Shao stormed off, thoroughly enraged.
“Putting on airs for him, huh.”
An esper with a buzz cut spoke up, but the voice was a woman’s.
Her voice was on the low side, slightly husky.
Bai Long turned and met her gaze head-on.
“Hi, I’m Avril.”
The buzz-cut esper—Avril, that is, extended a hand to Bai Long.
“Bai Long.”
Bai Long reached out and shook it.
“What a coincidence. So you’re the one who’s in my group later. I like your personality.”
Avril was a straightforward sort, expressing her fondness for Bai Long cleanly and without hesitation.
“I just can’t stand the way he throws his official weight around. Truly, money’s hard to earn and crap’s hard to eat.”
Avril stood beside Bai Long.
Her original teammate, like Fang Ling, was in tomorrow’s batch.
They weren’t given much time for small talk—Liu Shao, face dark, ordered them onto the vehicles.
Bai Long’s batch had ten people total, paired into groups of two, with each group escorting one supply vehicle.
As escorts, they had to travel along with the vehicles.
Bai Long and Avril climbed into the supply vehicle they were responsible for escorting.
The driving had to be handled by one of the two escorts.
Kangsandia wasn’t the least bit worried that these espers might drive off with the vehicle.
Because it wasn’t a particularly good vehicle anyway.
There was a huge Kangsandia company logo on the door, and the interior had a company-installed concealed tracker, the moment it left the preset fixed route, it would immediately sound an alarm and lock on.
It was called driving, but really, interstellar hovercars could all be set to auto-pilot.
The driver only needed to sit in the seat in case something went wrong.
“Can you drive?”
Avril asked before they got in.
Recalling her own glorious feat of driving straight into a hospital before, Bai Long glanced at the vehicle full of precious medical supplies and shook her head.
“Okay, then I’ll drive.”
Avril had no objection.
Bai Long was in no hurry to take the passenger seat. First she walked a circle around the supplies in the vehicle, inspecting them.
The cargo their vehicle was escorting was disposable syringes.
Box after box of intact, sealed syringes were stacked in the hovercar, lined up neatly in two stacks.
“Hm?”
Her gaze swept past one box of syringes, there seemed to be a hole on top of it?
“Avril, hold on a sec.”
Bai Long patted the door, signaling Avril not to start up just yet.
Avril came back out at the call. “What’s wrong? Is there a problem?”
She saw that several of the other supply vehicles had already set off.
“This hole, is it supposed to be there?”
Bai Long pointed out the spot for her to see.
The hole was right in the lower-left corner of that box.
“That doesn’t look right.”
Avril found it odd too.
The hole didn’t look like it had been there originally. Tucked away in the corner, it wasn’t conspicuous, you could even call it very small, not even as big as a fingernail.
“Just to be safe, let’s report it first.”
As she spoke, Bai Long went and found the staff member supervising off to the side.
“Don’t ship this box, then. There are spares in that warehouse over there. Go swap it for another box.”
After taking a look, the staff member pointed them to the warehouse.
Bai Long and Avril checked the cargo through one more time, and only after confirming there were no other holes or problems did they board the vehicle and set off.
Meanwhile, over in his office, Liu Shao was already seated, cradling a teacup, waiting for word from the hospital.
He had deliberately had someone tamper a little with the supplies in the vehicle Bai Long’s group was escorting.
A hole had been opened in a box, in a very inconspicuous spot, ordinarily no one would spot it without looking closely.
But Liu Shao had dealt with the hospital before the apocalypse and had handled plenty of supply-escort work, so he naturally knew the hospital would carefully inspect the goods on receipt.
When the hospital found the problem, his company could simply claim everything had been intact when it left the factory, it must have happened on the road during transport.
Thinking this, Liu Shao took a sip of tea.
Bai Long, was it? Once the problem surfaced and he fired her, he wouldn’t have to worry about the boss holding him accountable.
He’d make sure she didn’t get a single cent!
There was a knock at the door.
“Manager Liu, one of the boxes of syringes just turned up with a problem.”
The little assistant pushed open the door.
Liu Shao found it a bit strange.
Reported back this fast? Were the hospital’s inspections so quick today?
Before he could puzzle it out, he watched the little assistant open a holo-screen to show him a photo of the problem syringes.
It was exactly the spot he’d had tampered with.
Could it really have been this fast?
Liu Shao kept it off his face. “What’s going on? Which group was escorting this? Clearly that’s a failure to do their job properly.”
Of course he knew this was Bai Long’s group, and he’d already prepared himself to deal with Bai Long the moment the assistant confirmed it.
But the little assistant shook his head. “No, Manager Liu, this was the group Bai Long and Avril were responsible for. But it’s not that they failed at the escort, on the contrary, they discovered the problem with the supply box before they even left, and just swapped it for a spare before heading out.”
“Then fire—” The words Liu Shao had prepared suddenly stuck in his throat.
“Manager, you want to issue them a bonus, is that it? I’ve already got it ready. You just need to sign.”
The little assistant was clearly well-versed in the procedure for these matters.
The company had always given a certain bonus subsidy to employees who discovered product problems ahead of time, and Bai Long’s group was no exception this time.
Looking at the electronic document the little assistant handed over, the words “bonus application” printed on it stabbed painfully at Liu Shao’s eyes.
When Liu Shao gripped the pen to sign, his hand was shaking, he nearly poked a hole through the holo-screen.
This was company policy, the assistant had already prepared the application form, the other relevant department staff had probably received word too, and someone had likely even already told Bai Long and the others. It was all out in the open now, a done deal nailed shut.
He had to sign whether he wanted to or not.
“Manager, are you feeling unwell? Should you go to the hospital…”
The little assistant had meant to suggest the manager go to the hospital, but thinking of the hospital’s recent state, he shut his mouth instead.
Most of the people the hospital was taking in now were people who had turned zombie, which was to say, people who were basically as good as zombies already.
Sending someone to the hospital right now was no different from sending them to their death.
“It’s fine.”
Liu Shao was practically grinding his teeth to dust as he tossed the holo-screen to the assistant and told him to hurry up and get out.
How could this happen?!
In his rage, Liu Shao smashed the teacup, and the boiling water that splashed up scalded his leg.
Absolutely infuriating!
…
Bai Long still didn’t know she had a bonus headed for her account.
She was still trading information with Avril.
“This bird of yours is so amazing, it can even breathe fire. It’s a mutant, right? Watching it makes me want to go get one of my own. Where’d you buy it?”
Avril stared enviously at the bird on Bai Long’s shoulder, practically drooling.
A fire-breathing bird, so cool!
The little red bird shrank toward the back of Bai Long’s neck, pressing in close against her.
“Tweet!”
I am NOT going with you! Give it up already!
The little red bird was practically frantic enough to start talking.
“I didn’t buy it. I picked it up.”
Whatever it was Bai Long thought of, she lifted the little red bird into her hand and narrowed her eyes at it.
“Tweet~”
As if sensing something, it sat obediently and demurely in her palm, nuzzling affectionately against it.
A guess formed in Bai Long’s mind, and she said quietly, “I’ll settle accounts with you later.” Then she set it back on her shoulder.
Avril just assumed the two of them were close and didn’t think much of it.
The road from the company to Sinai Hospital was neither long nor short.
Bai Long and Avril’s group set off the latest, but by the time they reached the hospital gates, the third vehicle to arrive was still undergoing inspection.
The inspection went from the inside out, from people to vehicle to supplies, every bit had to be checked over in fine detail.
“Good thing you spotted the problem with that box. Otherwise we’d be making trips back and forth, and we still might not be done by nightfall. The inspection here takes way too long.”
Avril propped one arm on the window, watching, thoroughly bored, as the armed personnel checked over the inside and outside with their rifles.
Bai Long thought of Liu Shao.
Maybe the problem with that box of syringes hadn’t been an accident either.
If the supplies had been found to have something suspicious during inspection here, that wouldn’t have been so simple to resolve.
Looking at it this way, that hole was most likely old Liu’s doing.
Bai Long found herself a little speechless at the man’s tactics.
Just torching his hair really had let him off too easy.
After waiting over an hour, it was finally Bai Long’s group’s turn.
“Please step out of the vehicle for inspection.”
The armed personnel came up to the door of Bai Long’s group’s vehicle, while two others went to the back seat to inspect the supplies.
After Bai Long got out, the armed personnel in charge of inspecting her swept a device up and down over her several times.
“What are you here to do?”
“Deliver goods.”
Isn’t that obvious? You think we came here to eat?
Bai Long silently grumbled to herself.
Once they passed inspection, they didn’t move around freely. Instead, the armed personnel escorted them all together to a building within Sinai Hospital’s compound.
The other four vehicles weren’t there, they’d probably been split up and guided separately to wherever their supplies were needed.
Bai Long stood beside the vehicle, surveying her surroundings.
The Sinai Hospital complex was enormous, with over a dozen buildings of varying heights arranged in an interlocking pattern, distributed, for now she could tell, by location and sequential number.
Every building looked brand new, with clean gray-white exterior walls paired with glass doors and windows, exuding a solemn, dignified atmosphere.
There was a large expanse of lush green vegetation within the grounds.
Behind the inpatient building there was an even larger stretch of fresh green lawn. A pebble path wound across it, gazing out at it through a window must have made for a truly soothing scene.
Bai Long and the others were at Building One, with the large characters “Outpatient” marked above the door.
Seen from outside, the outpatient building was a soft gray-white, recently renovated walls, very clean. Row upon row of neat glass windows glinted faintly blue in the light, making it impossible to see what was inside.
The outpatient entrance, which should have been bustling with people, was different from what she remembered. Although there were people coming and going, most were white-coated workers hurrying along, or fully armed personnel pushing gurneys and escorting people who struggled desperately.
In just one fleeting glance, Bai Long saw obvious signs of zombification on the exposed eyes or skin of those being escorted.
Eyes bulging outward, skin tinged an eerie purplish-green, saliva drooling unconsciously from the corners of mouths…
The gurneys banged and rattled under their struggling, as if they might fall apart the next second.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. The teacher who was supposed to come had a surgery come up, so they sent me over instead.”
A young doctor walked over briskly, still wearing a protective mask over her face.
Her hair was tied carelessly behind her head, looking scruffy and tousled, with a few strands sticking out. Her skin was on the fair side, and you could clearly see the red marks the mask had pressed into her face. She also wore a big pair of black-framed glasses that took up nearly the rest of her face.
“It’s the syringes, right? Come with me.”
The young doctor wanted to help carry a box of supplies for them, but Bai Long and Avril each lifted three boxes, stacked together, with the greatest of ease.
The young doctor, mid-bend, didn’t know whether to go down or back up, dithering back and forth.
“Let me carry a few boxes for you.”
The young doctor looked a little embarrassed, hovering uncertainly between Bai Long and Avril.
“No need, little doctor, just lead the way. This much is nothing to us.”
Avril teased with a smile, even giving a little demonstration of how easy it was as she spoke.
“My name is Lin Xi.”
Hearing Avril call her “little doctor” embarrassed Lin Xi, the flush on her face deepening. “Actually, I’m not officially a doctor yet. I’m a resident in training.”
“Resident in training?”
Avril scratched her fuzzy buzz cut, not quite getting it. “I figured anyone in a white coat was a doctor.”
Lin Xi laughed softly. “Once I finish my residency in the second half of the year and officially join the hospital, then it counts.”
She was a very earnest girl.
Bai Long noticed that as she said this, her eyes were shining.
It seemed she really loved being a doctor.
…
Lin Xi led the two of them in through a side door of the outpatient building, avoiding any collision with the gurneys transporting zombified patients.
“These syringes need to go to the outpatient warehouse first. We’ll just take the elevator over.”
As she spoke, Lin Xi led them around a corner.
Most of her view was blocked by the supply boxes, but it didn’t affect Bai Long’s field of vision at all.
Liu Shao had said no looking around and no touching, but that was never going to happen.
Bai Long moved steadily forward on her feet, but her gaze had already swept the inside of the outpatient building thoroughly.
The consultation rooms that had once each required lining up were all closed off now, the consultation lamps above their doors gone dark.
The entire first floor seemed to have been sealed off.
The doctors walking around inside the outpatient building all wore protective suits like Lin Xi’s, with the same flesh-pressing masks.
“Hurry, hurry, this one’s zombification is really severe, it’s about to fully turn any moment now!”
“Move aside up front! Can’t you see we’re bringing a patient through?!”
“Stop sending them to the third floor! The third-floor consultation rooms are all full, take them straight to the wards!”
“Are there any doctors? There are a few people at the entrance saying they’ve got diarrhea and dizziness and want to see someone!”
The moment those words were out, no one responded for a good long while.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to take the case, it was that the whole hospital had practically become a zombie holding facility, the doctors all busy seeing zombies, with no one to spare for ordinary patients.
“You two wait here for me a sec. I’ll go take a look.”
Lin Xi told Bai Long and Avril with a touch of apology, then hurried off toward the armed person at the entrance.
“What’s the situation?”
“It’s a little girl. A few days back she ate something or other, and she’s been throwing up and having diarrhea for several days. Her mother couldn’t bear to see her like this any longer, so she brought her in to find a doctor.”
That armed person was a softhearted sort too.
Ordinarily no ordinary person should be allowed near the hospital at a time like this, but the little girl really did look like she was suffering, so he’d snuck over to find a doctor.
All of Songdu’s doctors were now gathered at Sinai Hospital, the other hospitals wouldn’t even open their doors.
If they weren’t truly at the end of their rope, no one would want to come to Sinai Hospital, full of zombies-in-waiting.
“That’s exactly why I wonder why they had to shut down the other hospitals. Wouldn’t it be better to keep two open to share the load?”
Avril wasn’t from Songdu and didn’t understand the point of arranging things this way.
Bai Long had pretty much finished taking in this floor.
The outpatient first floor didn’t have many consultation rooms, mostly testing rooms for things like blood draws, plus an information desk and a pharmacy.
She didn’t see any consultation rooms with doctors seeing patients.
They were probably still upstairs.
Bai Long planned to find an opportunity to take a look at the other floors as well.
Before coming, she’d asked Chi Zao and Chi Wan, their father was a brain doctor named Chi Shen.
She didn’t know whether the hospital still did consultations by department now, but knowing his name and his former department meant that, given the chance, asking other doctors gave her better odds.
Bai Long had just finished thinking through her later plan when she heard Avril grumbling again.
As for the arrangement of gathering all the doctors together, she actually had a rough idea of why.
After what had happened with the horrific situation at Ren’ai Hospital in District 64, Songdu’s choice to gather the doctors together was, in itself, a way of protecting the few remaining medical personnel.
“Maybe they’re afraid that in the end not a single doctor would be left.”
Bai Long answered softly.
“Why do you say that?”
Avril still didn’t quite follow.
“The places where the apocalypse first broke out were the major hospitals. Doctors and nurses were the people closest to the zombies from the very start, and no small number of them got infected. If they stayed scattered across all the different hospitals, then once not a single doctor was left, it really would be over.”
Seeing that Lin Xi wouldn’t be back for a while, Bai Long set the supply box in her hands down to one side.
Forget Songdu—District 64 alone had quite a few hospitals.
Even if the Star Alliance sent people to clear out the zombies from each hospital, there was no way they’d let so much fighting strength stay scattered everywhere to protect the doctors.
If the hospitals resumed normal consultations while protective measures were incomplete, then the moment a zombified person broke in, those doctors and nurses still wouldn’t escape death.
Gathering the doctors and nurses together for unified protection meant they could be protected with the least fighting strength.
“Then what’s the point of locking the doctors up here and still having people keep sending zombified patients in? Doesn’t that put the doctors in even more danger?”
Avril still felt it wasn’t right.
This way, the end result seemed to be no different, it had just turned into locking the doctors up together with the zombies.
Bai Long didn’t say anything, because she saw that Lin Xi had already come back.
The outpatient building was a fair distance from the hospital’s main gate, and from running back and forth, the wispy hair on Lin Xi’s forehead was damp with sweat.
“All right, let’s go.”
“You took care of it that fast?”
Avril was a little curious.
That child hadn’t even come into the hospital.
Lin Xi shook her head. “I just went to get a rough look at the situation. The girl is still very young, and I’m not a specialized pediatrician, she needs a proper pediatric doctor to see her.”
At this, the apology on her face deepened a few degrees. “Sorry, I might have to trouble you to wait a bit. I need to go find a pediatric doctor first and explain the situation to them.”
“You two apparently can’t move around freely inside the hospital, but I might be a while…”
Lin Xi was quite torn.
She really couldn’t put the little girl outside out of her mind.
“It’s fine. Just tell us the location and we’ll take it straight there and leave. We won’t wander around.”
Bai Long promised.
Lin Xi wavered in place for a moment, but not for long, almost instantly she made up her mind. “All right then. The warehouse is at the very top of the east side of the third floor. When you get there, knock, and there’ll be a doctor on duty inside.”
Having explained, she hurried off.
Bai Long and Avril took the elevator to the third floor, following the location she’d given.
Starting from the third floor, the consultation rooms grew more numerous.
But the consultation rooms looked very different from those of a normal hospital.
Outside what had originally been clean white consultation room doors, rows of sturdy iron bars had been installed, and on no few of the bars you could faintly make out bite marks.
At a glance, rather than a hospital’s consultation rooms, they looked more like a prison’s cells.
They trapped the doctors, and they trapped the zombies inside that could go berserk at any moment.
The two of them walked along the corridor heading east.
They’d only gotten halfway when they saw two armed personnel barreling straight toward them, pushing a gurney with a person strapped to it.
“Make way up front!”
Bai Long and Avril hurriedly stepped aside.
The armed personnel pushed the gurney and turned into a department on the other side.
Bai Long looked up and saw, written large above it, “Urology.”
Bai Long: …
All right then. Maybe zombification comes with reproductive issues too.
Fortunately the warehouse wasn’t far now. To avoid holding up any other gurneys coming through, the two of them quickened their pace and soon reached their destination.
“Thanks for your hard work.”
The doctor in charge of receiving the stock poured each of them a cup of water.
The two of them said thanks.
“Doctor, I wanted to ask, do you still treat zombies by department in the hospital now?”
Avril was a curious sort, and she’d noticed that gurney heading for urology just now.
“You mean to say that after turning into a zombie, they’ve got the same anatomy as a normal human?”
The doctor looked like he’d been at work a very long time, and didn’t mind chatting with them a while longer.
“After fully turning into a zombie, the body’s structure is no longer quite the same as a normal person’s. But for someone in the process of zombifying, the parts that are still normal still fall within the category of a normal human.”
“Huh? Then that zombie heading for urology just now was…?”
Avril grew more and more confused the more she listened.
Normal parts?
Don’t tell me that zombifying person was planning to take care of that particular matter before fully turning into a zombie?
“Oh, no, that’s not it. That person probably got his junk bitten. Doctors have recently found, from studying zombies, that as long as you cut off the bitten part as quickly as possible, you can curb the spread of the virus. He’s probably gone to have the thing cut off, hopefully in time.”
This doctor was clearly an extremely blunt sort of person.
The main thing was, it was the apocalypse, the hospital was in this state, and he couldn’t be bothered worrying about appearances anymore.
Bai Long and Avril: …
For a moment they couldn’t decide whether it was better for that guy to be saved or not.
If he wasn’t saved, he’d just be waiting to be reincarnated as a person again, if he was saved, he might be “starting over as a man” in another sense entirely.
Part of the reason they kept funneling zombified humans into the hospital this whole time was to let the doctors study the zombie condition as fast as possible.
The more patients the doctors had contact with, the greater their chances of finding a possible cure.
The delivery task complete, it was time for Bai Long and Avril to leave.
She walked with Avril to the elevator, then suddenly said, “I want to use the restroom. You go wait at the car first.”
Avril didn’t think much of it, just figured nature was calling, and nodded. “Sure, be quick. Don’t let anyone catch you.”
They couldn’t wander around the hospital. Now that the delivery was done, it would be trouble if any of the hospital’s other armed personnel saw them.
“Okay, I’ll be fast.”
With that, Bai Long headed toward the restroom she’d spotted on the way in.
Avril saw she really was going to the restroom, and once the elevator arrived she went down.
Bai Long stood at the corner, and after watching Avril leave, she went back to find the doctor who’d just received the goods.
The doctor found it a bit odd to see her return. “Is there something else?”
Bai Long hadn’t forgotten her main purpose for coming here, and asked quickly while there was time, “Doctor, I wanted to ask, do you know Dr. Chi Shen? He’s a brain doctor.”
“Dr. Chi? I know him. Why? Is there something wrong with your brain?”
The doctor glanced at Bai Long and muttered to himself, “Doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with her head, though…”
Bai Long: …
Bai Long hurriedly cut in. “No, no, I know Dr. Chi’s children. They asked me to pass along a few words to him.”
The doctor clearly knew Chi Shen and knew he did indeed have a son and a daughter.
This kind of somewhat private information, doctors generally wouldn’t share with outsiders.
Hearing this, the doctor, who hadn’t been home in a very long time, was touched.
He missed his own wife and kids too, and had no idea how they were doing.
He’d been locked up in this hospital for several months now.
“Dr. Chi is in the neurology department, on the sixth floor.”
The doctor didn’t know the delivery workers weren’t allowed to wander around, and pointed Bai Long straight to the way.
“If you’re going, you’d better hurry. There are more and more zombies being sent to the hospital lately. Dr. Chi and the others have all been assigned surgeries, after this, they might not have time to come out.”
As he spoke, the doctor’s gaze swept across the bars outside a consultation room, and a flicker of complicated emotion passed through his eyes, but it quickly returned to normal.
“Then when will Dr. Chi’s surgeries be finished?”
Bai Long couldn’t stay long—Avril would get suspicious, and would just have to come another time.
“Every night at ten, if they don’t have surgery, they go back to the dorms.”
The doctor sighed, but said nothing more.
Bai Long nodded, and after thanking the doctor, prepared to leave.
Before going, she tilted her head slightly. “Doctor, thank you all for your hard work.”
The doctor was taken aback for a moment at her words, then smiled again, unbothered. “Well, that’s what we doctors are for.”
He said it that way, but there wasn’t the slightest hint of complaint on his face.
Bai Long quickly returned to the first floor to meet up with Avril.
“That fast?”
Avril was a little surprised.
“Number one, quick in and out. I want to get back and rest already.”
As she spoke, Bai Long was already darting into the passenger seat, looking like someone in a hurry to get home and sleep.
The last shred of doubt in Avril’s mind vanished, and she got into the driver’s seat and started up the hovercar for the trip back.
On the way out of the hospital grounds, Bai Long propped up her head against the car window, her gaze falling outside, scanning building after building.
The doctors’ dorms most likely wouldn’t be in a very central spot within the grounds.
Outpatient could be ruled out first…
Emergency, the surgical inpatient building, the internal medicine inpatient building…
Just as the hovercar was about to drive out of the grounds, Bai Long spotted a small stretch of wall hidden behind several buildings.
Within a compound already layered with high walls, yet another stretch of high wall had been built.
There was no telling what lay inside the second ring of high walls, but given how heavily guarded it was, it was very likely the doctors’ dorms.
When she got back to the company to return the vehicle, Bai Long happened to receive a deposit notification.
It was the reward for catching the supply problem in time that morning.
Although it was only a hundred credits, even the smallest sliver of mosquito-leg is still meat—Bai Long wasn’t picky. She gleefully started planning to go eat something good that evening.
The supplies she’d brought back from District 64 were edible, sure, but they were mostly vacuum-sealed dry rations, not tasty.
With money in hand, she really did want to eat something fresh.
With the cash in hand, even looking at Liu Shao’s dark face made Bai Long feel cheerful.
And the thought that he was the one who’d signed off on it made her happier still.
On the way back, Bai Long was practically skipping with every step.
Thinking of Fang Ling still at home, Bai Long sent him a message saying she wanted to treat him to dinner.
He’d let her stay in his place for free and looked after her for a while, so Bai Long decided to return the favor, she asked what he wanted to eat.
Fang Ling said it was all up to her.
Considering his social anxiety, she figured he wouldn’t feel at ease eating out, so Bai Long simply opted for takeout.
Songdu truly lived up to its reputation as the former economic capital of the lower districts.
There were a great many restaurants and hotels of all kinds, and even though more than half had been destroyed, no small number still remained.
She ordered hotpot to go, along with the dishes she’d prepared.
When Fang Ling opened the door, he saw her carrying bags upon bags in both hands, with the little red bird flying alongside, a bag clamped in its beak.
“This much? Can the two of us even finish it all?”
Fang Ling watched Bai Long cover the entire dining table.
Now that the housing problem was solved, Bai Long’s funds weren’t plentiful, but they were a fair bit more comfortable than before.
That was why she’d bought so much to reward herself.
“Tweet tweet!”
The little red bird was very displeased that he’d forgotten about it.
Fang Ling hurriedly added, “And one bird.”
As he spoke, he’d already set the hotpot base on the table, then turned to give the dishes another round of prep.
“We’ll finish it.”
Bai Long watched his deft movements with satisfaction, happy to sit idle beside him and wait to eat.
A worthy good teammate of hers, indeed.
While the hotpot base came to a boil, Bai Long used her star-ring to contact the two Chi siblings, Chi Wan and Chi Zao.
The siblings replied very quickly.
【Chi Zao: Boss, did you find a place to live? You could honestly just stay at our place.】
【Chi Wan: That’s right, we’ve got a spare room at home, all cleaned up nice!】
【Bai Long: Thanks, I’ve already found a place. The reason I’m reaching out this time is to confirm a few things about your father with you again.】
Although she’d asked before going to the hospital, just to be safe she wanted to confirm one more time.
【Chi Zao: Boss, I’ll just send you a photo of my dad. If you really do see him, tell him you killed all his cacti. Then he’ll know it was us who sent you.】
Bai Long: …
Kid, you’re not thinking about what happens to your dad after he gets home at all…
On the other end, Chi Zao had already sent over the photo of Chi Shen.
The plan had originally been for him and Chi Wan to bring Bai Long to find their father, but who’d have thought the doctors would all be temporarily put under protection.
The two siblings had spent these past days hanging around outside Sinai Hospital whenever they had nothing to do, and apart from getting bitten and carted in, they hadn’t found the slightest opportunity to get inside.
They already felt terribly guilty, and now that Bai Long just wanted to learn more, they sold their old man out without the slightest hesitation.
What Chi Zao sent over was a work photo, the kind that looked like it’d be hung on a hospital wall.
The man in the photo was in his middle years, and you could see traces of Chi Zao and Chi Wan in his brow and eyes, with a few faint creases between his brows.
Although the smile at the corner of his mouth made him a handsome older fellow, the first impression he gave was still a very serious one.
With the photo, finding him later would be much easier.
After thanking Chi Wan and Chi Zao, and once again politely declining their offer to treat her to a meal, Bai Long looked at Fang Ling sitting across from her.
“Your esper power, are there any limits to it?”
Bai Long weighed her words. “If it’s not convenient to say, you don’t have to.”
Fang Ling said, “There’s nothing inconvenient about it. My power basically lets me set up portals, but I can only open them twice a day, and only to places I’ve been before.”
This limit might not be much for most people, but for Fang Ling it was fairly tricky.
After all, as a shut-in with social anxiety, he didn’t go wandering around when he had nothing to do, he just crouched at home.
So the places where he could set up a portal were comparatively very limited.
She’d originally wanted Fang Ling to just open a portal straight to Chi Shen’s dorm, but it looked like that wouldn’t work.
Bai Long picked up a slice of fresh beef with her chopsticks and put it into the pot.
The bright red spicy broth roiled, sending up wave after wave of fresh chili fragrance to the nose.
The tender red beef slowly turned white in the broth, its meaty aroma curling upward along the steam.
A big mouthful of beef went down, the meat springy and not the least bit tough, the flavor lingering on the lips and teeth.
Fang Ling took two cans of cola out of the fridge.
They were ones he’d scrounged from Hemu.
Last time he went to Hemu was also because there was no food left at home. So as not to starve to death, Fang Ling had put on a mask and gone to Hemu to restock.
With his power, going back and forth between home and the supermarket to restock was easy.
“Pssht—”
The cold cola hissed as it released its gas, beads of water condensed on the can’s surface.
The icy, refreshing cola paired with the numbingly spicy, savory hotpot, for a moment, it was as if they were back in an ordinary day before the apocalypse.
Outside the glass window, the night’s moon hung high in the sky.
Amid a desolate stretch of ruins, the city, encircled by walls of bronze and iron, glowed with shimmering lamplight.
Above those lights, in an exquisitely built high-rise, the steam from the hotpot fogged up the glass window, as if they were living in peaceful times.
Bai Long didn’t like talking about work while eating.
Only after they’d finished did she tell Fang Ling her plan.
“I want to go to the doctors’ dorms, I need your power.”
Fang Ling’s delivery destination tomorrow was an inpatient building very close to the doctors’ dorms.
“You just need to find a way to set up a portal point at the base of the dorm building. After that, I’ll figure something out.”