Site Base, underground garage.
Levi looked at the black, tactical-style anti-riot armored vehicle before him and nodded in satisfaction.
This was the basic vehicle that came with the C-Class personnel.
The ten C-Class personnel were already fully armed, wearing black combat fatigues and carrying standard M4 rifles.
They radiated an aura of fearlessness that was daunting to behold.
C-Class personnel produced by the system had locked loyalty.
Even if Levi ordered them to jump into a pit of fire, they wouldn’t blink.
“Move out.” Levi sat in the command seat of the armored vehicle, monitoring the outside situation through the onboard screens.
As the High Administrator, while he needed to be at the scene to ensure nothing went wrong, he didn’t need to be the one charging the front lines.
The armored vehicle’s engine roared to life as it drove out of the apartment building’s underground garage.
…
Nights in Hell’s Kitchen were never peaceful.
In a dark alleyway, a man in a dark red skintight suit with a horned devil mask crouched on a rooftop.
Daredevil, Matt Murdock.
His hyper-enhanced hearing scanned the surrounding blocks like radar.
The whispers of drug dealers, the footsteps of muggers, the heavy breathing of addicts…
these sounds composed the symphony of Hell’s Kitchen.
Suddenly, Matt’s brow furrowed.
He “heard” something different.
At St.
Mary’s Abandoned Hospital two kilometers away, the heartbeats of several homeless people—which should have been there—had suddenly become extremely weak a few minutes ago before…
completely vanishing.
It wasn’t the silence of death, but something far more bizarre.
It was as if living beings had instantly turned into pieces of rotting meat.
Immediately after, the roar of an engine he had never heard before entered his range of hearing.
“A professional tactical squad?
Gang war?” Matt wondered.
The sound of that engine was incredibly precise, certainly not the kind of modified car the gangs in Hell’s Kitchen could get their hands on.
“I’ll go check it out.” Matt flicked his billy club, transforming it into a grapple, and swung through the night like a ghost toward the abandoned hospital.
…
Outside the gates of St.
Mary’s Abandoned Hospital.
The black armored vehicle braked hard, stopping steadily at the graffiti-covered entrance.
The doors opened, and Ada Wong jumped out first, pistols in hand, scanning the surroundings alertly.
Following her, the ten C-Class personnel filed out, quickly establishing a defensive perimeter.
Levi was the last to exit.
He wore a black trench coat over a bulletproof suit with a pair of sunglasses, looking every bit like the leader of some mysterious organization.
“Sir, there is a strong smell of formalin and decay in the air,” Ada Wong reported coldly, her nose twitching.
Levi nodded, thinking things were looking bad.
That fellow, the Plague Doctor, worked fast.
“Everyone, night vision on.
The target is in the underground morgue.
Remember, don’t let any strangers get close.
If you encounter…
individuals acting strangely, open fire immediately.
Aim for the head.” Levi issued his orders.
“Go!
Go!
Go!” The C-Class squad leader signaled, and the team quickly breached the hospital lobby.
The interior was even more grim than the exterior, with waste paper and medical trash everywhere, and dark red bloodstains remaining on the walls.
The group pushed rapidly toward the basement.
Just as they reached the stairs leading down, a skin-crawling dragging sound came from below.
*Screeech—Screeech—* It sounded like someone was dragging a heavy corpse across the floor.
“Halt!” Ada Wong raised her hand, signaling for the team to stop.
The next second, several figures stumbled out of the darkness.
They were homeless men, but they no longer looked human.
Their skin was a sickly grayish-white, their eyes rolled back to show only the whites, and their bodies had been crudely sewn back together, with green pus oozing from the wounds.
The necks and chests, which should have sustained fatal wounds, were now rising and falling in a grotesque parody of breathing.
Levi recognized them instantly.
The “cure” the Plague Doctor spoke of was turning people into these zombies that only obeyed him!
“Roar—” The lead burly zombie let out a guttural howl and lunged toward Ada Wong with startling speed.
“Open fire!” Levi shouted.
*Bang!
Bang!
Bang!* Gunfire erupted in the narrow corridor.
The C-Class personnel’s rifles spat tongues of fire, pouring a rain of bullets into the zombies.
But it was useless.
The zombies were shredded, yet they continued to charge forward, oblivious to the pain.
Unless their spines were severed or their heads destroyed, they wouldn’t stop.
“Hmph, a bunch of defective products,” Ada Wong scoffed, moving forward instead of retreating.
Her long, slender legs exerted sudden force as she leaped into the air, delivering an elegant 360-degree kick to the burly zombie’s head.
*Snap!* With a crisp sound, the zombie’s neck was snapped, its head lolling uselessly.
As she landed, Ada Wong held her pistols and, without even looking, pulled the triggers in both directions.
*Bang!
Bang!* Two bullets accurately entered the eye sockets of two other zombies, exiting through the back of their skulls in a spray of black blood.
Instant kills!
The entire sequence was fluid and filled with a sense of violent beauty.
Levi watched from behind, clicking his tongue in amazement.
As expected of Auntie Ada, her combat prowess was off the charts.
The remaining zombies were shredded by the concentrated fire of the C-Class personnel, falling to the ground in heaps.
…
On the hospital roof.
The newly arrived Daredevil, Matt Murdock, happened to witness this scene through a broken window.
His face was full of shock.
“What are those things?
The dead returning to life?” Matt’s worldview was being shaken.
He had seen mutants, gang wars, and even assassins trained by ninjas, but he had never seen such a thing—the dead rising, indifferent to pain.
What shocked him even more was the black-clad squad.
Whether it was the woman’s skill or the soldiers’ coordination, they displayed an extremely high level of professionalism.
They faced those monsters without a hint of fear, as if they were used to it.
“Who the hell are they?
A secret SHIELD unit?” Matt wondered.
He didn’t act rashly, choosing instead to remain lurking in the shadows to observe.
Inside the hospital.
Having dealt with the blocking zombies, Levi and the others pushed deeper.
Soon, they reached the deepest part of the basement—the morgue.
Pushing open the heavy iron door, an even stronger smell of chemicals hit them.
The originally cluttered morgue had been cleared to create an open space, with a simple operating table placed in the center.
A figure in black robes stood with his back to them, carefully suturing something on a corpse by the light of a dim candle.
Hearing the door open, the figure stopped.
He slowly turned around, the pale bird-beak mask looking exceptionally eerie in the candlelight.
“Have more patients arrived?” 049 asked in his characteristically elegant, cello-like voice.
He wasn’t alarmed by the guns pointed at him; instead, he looked at Levi and the others with interest.
“No…
the scent of the Pestilence on you is…
very faint,” 049 tilted his head, seemingly puzzled.
“Especially you.” He raised a black-gloved finger, pointing at Levi in the center.
“You carry a scent that is…
very familiar, yet very repulsive.
Are you a doctor?
Or another form of the Pestilence?” Levi took a deep breath, forcing down his nervousness.
Dealing with this high-intelligence containment breach, pure force wasn’t the optimal solution.
He stepped forward, past the C-Class defensive line, and looked directly into the bird-beak mask.
“I am the High Administrator of the Foundation,” Levi’s voice was steady and powerful, echoing in the empty basement.
“Plague Doctor, your surgery ends here.
This is not medieval Europe.
Your treatments have not been authorized by us.” Hearing the word “Foundation,” 049’s body visibly stiffened.
Although the Foundation was appearing for the first time in this universe, as a contained entity summoned by the system, his subconscious seemed to have been implanted with a certain level of awe—or perhaps wariness—toward the Foundation.
“Authorization?
The progress of medicine does not require the authorization of mortals.” 049’s tone remained haughty, but he didn’t attack immediately.
“I am saving them, rescuing them from the inevitable Pestilence.
You do not understand.
This Pestilence is spreading…” “I do understand,” Levi interrupted, beginning his pitch.
“What you call the Pestilence is merely your collective term for death and a certain unknown concept.
But your surgeries are not perfect.
Look at those things outside; they are not life, only walking corpses.” “Come with me.
The Foundation has better laboratories and more samples for your research.
Perhaps…
we can even help you find a way to truly cure the Pestilence.” Levi dangled the bait.
Dealing with this kind of research maniac, the best way was to provide research conditions.
049 fell silent.
He stared at Levi for a long time, seemingly evaluating the truth of the offer.
Just then, the Daredevil on the roof, wanting a better look, accidentally nudged a piece of broken tile.
*Clack.* The sound was light, but in the silent basement, it was like a thunderclap.
049 suddenly looked up at the ceiling, a flash of violent rage in his eyes.
“There…
a rat is hiding!
He is…
infested with the Pestilence!!!” Before the words had finished, 049 moved.
His speed was incredible, like a great black bird, lunging straight for the ventilation duct entrance!