Su Jin grabbed his phone, gritting his teeth against a splitting headache.
He had set an alarm before crashing, but a quick glance at the screen told him he’d been out for less than two hours.
He sat on the bed for a while, slowly accepting the reality of what had happened.
Rising to his feet, he crossed the living room to the window, faint curses still coming from upstairs and downstairs.
Peering down at the courtyard, Su Jin felt his tense muscles relax a fraction.
It was exactly as he’d calculated; no one had come looking for them yet.
Sealing an entire apartment block inside their own units meant someone was bound to call for help eventually.
But their calls for help would not be urgent yet, leaving him enough time.
Many people in the building were retired and would stay home in weather like this anyway.
As for the working-class tenants, most would just call in sick, and anyone thinking about hiring a locksmith would abandon the idea the second they saw the downpour—to say nothing of calling the fire department.
His forged flyers warning about contaminated rainwater were also doing their job, even if a phone call to verify them could expose the lie.
Human psychology was predictable; people would rather be safe than sorry.
It was like handing someone an anonymous note claiming someone had contaminated their cup; even if they doubted it, no sane person was taking a sip.
Combine that paranoia with the emergency broadcasts echoing across the city, and the messages people received should help keep them calm.
Even if firefighters did arrive, he believed he could still buy time.
He had a gun, and he had long since made peace with violently resisting arrest. He thought he could delay them.
Seeing nothing amiss in the residential complex, Su Jin lifted his binoculars and focused on the distant streets.
A deep frown immediately carved itself into his face.
Apart from the occasional passing car, there were only two or three pedestrians on the street.
Two wore raincoats, while the third held an umbrella… until that person suddenly dropped the umbrella on the ground.
Their gaits were unnervingly stiff, their dragging, lethargic pace completely unnatural for people caught in a downpour.
Zombification… based on their motor functions, the infection had already taken hold.
Su Jin swallowed hard and pivoted the binoculars toward the residential tower across the street.
Most of the apartments hadn’t drawn their curtains, giving him a clear view of the people moving around inside.
The first two units seemed normal, but the third made his blood run cold!
In a fifth-floor living room stood a bare-chested, heavy-set man, his skin a mottled, sickly blue as he swayed stiffly by the glass, his face utterly devoid of life.
People were already turning into zombies. Infection had taken only a few hours.
The tap water was already contaminated.
Heart pounding, Su Jin hurried to the kitchen, opening another window and catching a little gray rainwater with a dipper.
He then went to the bathroom and brought back a thick-wire cage divided into two sections.
One side was a standard holding pen, while the other was rigged with a hamster wheel.
The cage had been prepared for this experiment.
With zombification now underway, he urgently needed to learn how these creatures behaved.
Using tongs, he dropped a rat into each side of the cage.
Taking a deep breath, Su Jin pulled on thick gloves, drew gray rainwater into a dropper, and applied an equal dose to both subjects.
While he waited for the rats to change, he took a toy four-wheel-drive car from his bag and began taking it apart.
The two worlds had followed similar paths, and the toy cars differed mainly in appearance.
He had liked toy four-wheel-drive cars as a child and knew how they worked.
He removed the shell, connected the toy car to the running wheel’s linkage, and powered it on. Now the wheel was motorized.
It would let him test the mutated rat’s stamina.
Half an hour passed, and neither rat had reacted.
Su Jin used the dropper to add another dose of gray rainwater to one rat.
Ten minutes later, the rat given the extra dose was the first to change!
It stopped its habitual whisker grooming and began behaving strangely.
The rat’s appearance had not changed, but it suddenly hurled itself at the wire mesh, apparently eager to attack him.
Thankfully, it was still just a rodent; even tongs could not easily cut through the thick iron wire.
Watching the mutated rat charge at the cage wall, Su Jin nervously stepped back and slowly sidestepped across the room.
Exactly as he feared… the moment he shifted, the mutated rat followed his movement, throwing itself at the corresponding side of the cage.
Su Jin gripped the Silver Gun tightly, watching for anything unexpected.
The mutated rat seemed eager to attack living things, but another rat was right beside it. Why fixate on him?
Two minutes later, he returned and reviewed the footage.
As soon as Su Jin left, the mutated rat changed direction and charged toward the rat in the running wheel.
Reviewing the clip, Su Jin formed a grim, working hypothesis.
It was strongly aggressive toward living things and seemed to prefer larger targets.
Furthermore, the subject seemed to track its prey visually, though he could not be certain.
He had yet to test the effects of auditory and olfactory stimuli…
Just as he was about to test that, something unexpected happened!
Two large lines of text suddenly appeared in his vision!
[New sample discovered. Available for retrieval.]
[After retrieval, the company will provide an item of equivalent value in compensation.]
Su Jin’s pupils widened, and his anxiety eased at once!
The company… the company was still there! It could still help him!
The words vanished, and everything looked normal again.
“Company! Recovery? How am I supposed to do that? Give me some details! I don’t understand! Can someone come talk to me?” Su Jin shouted.
Dead silence.
Su Jin grabbed his hair, forcing himself to take slow, shuddering breaths.
He should have known this damned company was never going to give him many hints.
If the company wanted to recover it now, there had to be a way. Surely he was not supposed to wait until the task was over.
But how the fuck was he supposed to send it? Mail it? Use the… briefcase?!
A thought struck him. Su Jin hurried to the sofa and grabbed his briefcase, his eyes bright with excitement.
That was it! The briefcase held a space of its own. If he put the sample inside, perhaps the company could receive it! It was worth a shot!
He licked his lips, rubbed his hands together, and rummaged in the briefcase.
He yanked out an extra-long screwdriver with a sharpened tip and stabbed it down at the mutated rat.
After several stabs, the mutated rat was dead.
He had no time to dwell on how tenacious the rat had been. He just kept prodding it with the steel shaft until he was absolutely certain it was a corpse.
Su Jin carefully lifted the carcass out with the screwdriver and dropped it into a plastic bag.
After wrapping it in several more layers, he shoved the bag containing the mutated rat into his briefcase…