The mercenaries moved without waiting for anyone to catch their breath.
James “One” Shade raised a hand in a brief, silent signal, and the squad began stepping down the cold concrete stairwell in disciplined unison.
“Keep up,” Jie muttered over his shoulder.
His voice barely carried over the metallic clatter of the squad’s gear as he fell into step right behind the rear guard, his leather jacket creaking with every step.
“Don’t lag behind.”
Alexandra pulled her backpack straps tighter against her chest, her fingers hooked into the thick nylon webbing as if holding a shield.
She kept her feet moving and matched her pace to Lan, who walked beside her with quiet, rigid focus.
To her right, Zha took long, hurried strides.
His head turned constantly, staring up at the rusted utility pipes hanging low overhead.
Behind them, Gang breathed heavily through his mouth and wiped a sheen of cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
Young Xiaoyi practically hugged the wall, wide-eyed and trembling.
They descended deeper into the facility.
The air grew colder and thicker, carrying the sour, metallic tang of damp iron and standing water.
Every dozen paces, an amber emergency strobe hummed from a wall fixture, casting long, jumping shadows across the concrete floor before fading back into the dark.
Alexandra kept her eyes fixed on the backs of the mercenaries’ tactical vests.
Recognizing the general setting offered no comfort.
The physical reality of the place—the flaking orange rust on the steel bulkheads, the ice-cold droplets of moisture hitting the back of her neck, the heavy, indifferent rhythm of six soldiers who had no idea what waited in the dark—twisted her stomach into a tight, sickening knot.
She wasn’t watching a movie on a screen; she was breathing the cold, stale air of an underground tomb.
Up ahead, One signaled a halt before a heavy steel door set into the concrete.
Kaplan reached out and hit the wall toggle.
With a low, heavy hiss, the door slid apart along its lower track.
The mercenaries moved through the gap immediately, weapons raised at low ready, flashlights cutting sharp white beams through the gloom.
The newcomers followed, stepping over the raised threshold into a massive, low-ceilinged hall.
Steel floor grating clanked hollowly beneath their shoes, echoing over the faint sound of still, dark water sitting in the shadows below.
Massive support pillars rose into the gloom overhead.
Along the far wall stood a long, dark row of heavy glass cylinders, rising toward the ceiling like dormant pillars.
The B Dining Hall.
One turned back toward the rear of the column and gestured toward J.D., Rain, and Jie.
“Stay here and watch the prisoners. Keep them in this central area and guard the exit. The rest of you, move up.”
“Understood,” Rain grunted.
She leaned back against a steel support pillar near the open doorway, her submachine gun resting across her chest while her dark, cold eyes locked onto the shivering group of rookies.
J.D.
took up position on the opposite side of the entryway, holding his weapon at the ready.
Beside them, Jie casually leaned against the wall and reached into his pocket for a cigarette.
The remaining mercenaries turned and swept toward the far end of the hall to secure the route ahead, leaving the newcomers standing under the watchful eyes of their three guards.
Alexandra stepped carefully across the steel grating, her sneakers making a faint squeaking noise on the damp metal.
She kept her distance from Rain and J.D., avoiding their gaze entirely.
While Zha, Gang, and Xiaoyi huddled together in the middle of the space, whispering nervously in the chill, Alexandra let her feet carry her toward the long row of glass cylinders along the perimeter wall.
She stopped two feet away from the nearest tank and tightened her hands on her backpack straps.
The glass felt cold, coated in a fine layer of condensation.
Inside, suspended in thick, yellowed liquid, floated a massive, skinless creature.
Its exposed muscle tissue showed a dark, bruised red, its head was a swollen, sightless mass of brain matter, and long curved talons were folded tightly against its chest.
A Licker.
Alexandra took an involuntary step back as her heart gave a violent, sickening flutter against her ribs.
Seeing a digital monster on a screen was nothing like standing two feet away from a real one—feeling the ice-cold air radiating off the cylinder, seeing the raw density of its body, and knowing that it was alive inside the fluid.
She looked away, staring down at her own hands to steady her breathing.
The cold numbers of the Main God’s system surfaced in her mind:
Ten ordinary zombies = 1 reward point.One Licker = 100 reward points.Scenario completion = 1,000 reward points.Permanent return to real life = 50,000 reward points.
A hundred reward points for a single creature.
To earn that many points from standard zombies, she would have to stand in front of a horde and personally kill a hundred of them.
But right now, this monster was floating helpless inside a glass jar, completely dormant.
The temptation flashed through her mind for a brief second before cold, hard reality shut it down.
She was nineteen years old.
She had no body armor, no combat training, and no useful weapon in her hands.
Standing in front of a biological horror and thinking about attacking it was pure suicide.
Anxious to see if she had anything even remotely helpful, Alexandra slipped her backpack off her shoulders, set it down on a metal supply crate, and unzipped the main pocket.
Her fingers sifted through the mundane clutter inside.
A half-empty plastic water bottle.
A small, spiral-bound notepad with a pen clipped to the cover.
A crumpled receipt from a coffee shop.
A tube of lip balm.
A half-empty pack of mints.
Near the bottom corner, her fingers brushed against something small, cold, and metallic.
She reached down and pulled it out.
It was a cheap black butterfly knife—a four-inch balisong.
Alexandra unlatched the handle and swung it open with a quiet, metallic clack.
The short silver blade gleamed weakly under the emergency light.
She stared down at the balisong in her palm, a sudden, quiet friction stalling her thoughts.
Where did this come from?
She frowned slightly, running her thumb along the cool black frame.
She had never owned a butterfly knife.
She didn’t know how to flip one, had never bought one, and had no memory of ever putting a blade like this into a bag.
Her gaze shifted from the knife back to the open nylon mouth of the backpack sitting on the crate.
She had been carrying this bag on her shoulders ever since waking up on the floor of the train, clutching its straps instinctively in the panic of arrival.
She had simply assumed it was hers—that it contained her things, her life, her clutter.
But looking at it now, in the cold light of the containment hall, she realized she had never actually checked.
She had no recollection of packing it, no memory of carrying it before waking up here, and no idea where it had come from.
Whose bag is this?
The thought hovered in her mind, strange and unresolved.
But there was no time to pull at the thread.
She was standing in an underground research facility surrounded by armed mercenaries and dormant bio-weapons; investigating a missing memory about a backpack wasn’t going to keep her alive.
She forced the question to the back of her mind.
She looked back down at the tiny four-inch blade.
Whatever its origin, the knife itself was hopelessly inadequate.
Right, she thought, a dry, bitter feeling catching in her throat.
A four-inch blade against that.
It wasn’t a real weapon, but having a piece of steel in her pocket felt marginally better than having completely empty hands.
Alexandra closed the blade with a flick of her wrist, latched the handle, and shoved it deep into her front jeans pocket.
She still needed something longer.
Something heavy enough to keep a rotting corpse away from her face.
Keeping her head low and her movements slow, Alexandra walked along the perimeter wall, scanning the utility fixtures set into the concrete.
Near a secondary service door, mounted inside a red metal emergency housing behind a glass panel, she found what she was looking for.
A full-sized industrial fire axe.
Alexandra paused, checking over her shoulder.
Rain and J.D.
were focused on the middle of the room where the other rookies were gathered, while Jie was slowly exhaling a cloud of blue cigarette smoke toward the ceiling.
None of them were watching her.
She reached out, caught the latch on the emergency panel, and pulled.
The box opened with a faint metallic click.
Reaching inside, she gripped the smooth wooden handle with both hands and lifted the axe out of its steel brackets.
It was heavier than she expected.
The top-heavy weight of the steel head pulled down hard against her wrists, straining her arms as she brought it down toward her side.
She lowered the steel head until it rested lightly against the floor grating.
She didn’t know how to fight with an axe.
She had never swung a heavy tool in her life, and she certainly lacked the strength to go around chopping through bone like an action hero.
But holding the solid wooden handle gave her a small, physical sense of grounding against the overwhelming terror in her chest.
She gripped the middle of the handle firmly, keeping the blade low against her leg.
“Hey. Veteran.”
Lan’s voice cut clearly through the low hum of the hall.
Alexandra turned her head slightly.
Lan had walked away from Zha and Gang and was standing a few feet in front of Jie, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her expression cold and analytical.
Jie didn’t shift his stance.
He took a slow drag from his cigarette, exhaled smoke through his nose, and looked down at her with narrow eyes.
“What?”
“Those tanks,” Lan said, gesturing with her chin toward the long row of glass cylinders along the wall.
“What are those creatures inside them?”
Jie took his cigarette out from between his fingers.
“Lickers. Mutations caused by the virus outbreak here. Dangerous predators.”
Lan stepped a half-step closer, keeping her voice low so the two mercenaries standing nearby wouldn’t hear her over the dripping water.
“They’re locked inside those containment units right now, aren’t they? Completely dormant.”
“Yeah,” Jie said flatly.
“And?”
“If we know what they are, and we know they’re a threat… why don’t we destroy them right now?” Lan asked, her voice calm and logical.
“They’re helpless in there. If ten ordinary zombies are worth one point, and one of those things is worth a hundred… we could break the glass right now while they’re asleep. We could clear the danger early and earn reward points without taking a massive risk.”
A few yards away, Zha and Gang turned their heads, having overheard the conversation.
Zha’s eyes widened slightly as he looked between Lan and the row of tanks, clearly running the arithmetic through his head.
“She… she makes sense,” Gang muttered, rubbing his heavy chin with a rough hand.
“If those things are going to wake up later, why not smash the glass now while they can’t move?”
Jie let out a short, harsh laugh that held zero warmth.
He tossed his cigarette butt onto the steel grating, crushing it under his boot.
“You rookies really think you’re smart?” Jie growled.
He held up one finger.
“First off: look at the guards.”
He flicked his eyes toward Rain and J.D.
“Those soldiers don’t know what a Licker is,” Jie said.
“They don’t know what God’s Dimension is. To them, those tanks are company property. You walk up to one of those cylinders with a heavy tool and start trying to smash the glass, what do you think happens?”
Lan’s mouth tightened into a firm line.
“They shoot you,” Jie said flatly.
“They don’t care about your theories. To them, you’re a civilian destroying facility equipment. You try to smash those tanks, and they’ll put a bullet in you before you finish your swing.”
Zha swallowed hard, taking an involuntary step back.
“And that’s not even the main problem,” Jie continued, holding up a second finger.
“The main problem is the Main God.”
Lan frowned slightly.
“The Main God?”
“You think you can cheat the system?” Jie sneered.
“You think God hands out free points? The moment you deliberately change the story to farm points or skip a danger, the Main God cranks up the difficulty to balance things out.”
“Increases it how?” Lan asked.
“Accidents,” Jie warned grimly.
“Things go wrong. Unexpected problems show up, or the environment turns against you. Every time you try to outsmart the scenario, the system hits back to equalize the threat.”
Jie stepped forward, resting his shoulder against the pillar as he looked over the group.
“Our biggest advantage isn’t guns or strength,” Jie said, his eyes fixing on Lan, then shifting to Zha, Gang, and finally Alexandra, who was standing quietly by the wall with her axe.
“It’s knowing how the story generally moves. We know what kind of dangers exist. The second you start changing major events for extra points, you blow that advantage completely. You turn a situation you understand into something unpredictable.”
He straightened up, crossing his arms.
“So if any of you are thinking about playing hero,” Jie growled, “forget it. Stick to the group, stay close, and stay alive.”
Alexandra stood quietly in the shadows, her fingers tightened around the wooden handle of her axe.
Jie was cynical and aggressive, but his warning aligned completely with what she had already concluded.
Trying to manipulate the plot for points was a terrifying gamble.
Her foreknowledge wasn’t a weapon to conquer the scenario; it was just a fragile margin of safety to help her avoid getting caught off guard.
“Clear!” a soldier’s voice echoed from the far corridor.
“Move out!” One barked from the darkness ahead.
“Maintain formation!”
Rain and J.D.
immediately unlimbered from their positions, gesturing sharply toward the exit.
“Alright, move it!” J.D.
snapped at the rookies.
“Let’s go!”
Zha motioned for Lan and Gang to follow, and the newcomers hurried across the hall toward the open doorway.
Alexandra adjusted her hold on the heavy fire axe, carrying the head low near her knee as she crossed the wet threshold, leaving the silent containment tanks behind in the dark.
They entered another service passage.
The walls were clad in industrial steel, and the air felt cold against Alexandra’s face, carrying the sharp scent of circulating air currents.
The group moved in a tight, hurried column.
The continuous sound of their footsteps echoed off the metal floor in a fast, rhythmic cadence.
Alexandra walked near the back of the rookie pack, her muscles tight, her eyes constantly darting toward the dark service hatches and ceiling grates they passed.
The weight of the heavy axe in her hands pulled at her shoulders with every step, forcing her to constantly shift her grip to keep her arms from going numb.
She didn’t possess an exact map of the facility, nor did she know precisely how events would unfold now that new people were walking among the soldiers.
But she knew they were getting closer to the part of the scenario she remembered.
The automated security corridor was waiting up ahead.
She remembered the sheer brutality of it from her fan knowledge—the glass walls, the sudden lockdown, and the lethal laser grid.
She didn’t know what specific sequence of commands or orders would push people inside it, or how circumstances might shift around her.
I know the laser corridor is coming, she thought, her palms feeling clammy against the wood of the axe handle.
I just don’t know how I’m going to survive it.
Up ahead, the hallway opened into a circular control area.
In the center of the far wall stood the heavy blast door leading toward the computer core.
The mercenaries fanned out into position, flashlights cutting long arcs through the cold air, while the rookies huddled together near the entrance archway, staying close in the damp chill.
Alexandra stepped back against the cold steel wall, resting the heavy head of her fire axe on the floor grating.
She tightened her backpack straps over her shoulders, her yellow eyes fixed on the massive door ahead.
Yeah, she thought.
I am thoroughly fucked.