Alexandra checked the handgun, verifying the magazine was seated.
She had the ammunition Rain gave her, plus two fragmentation grenades tucked into her belt.
Her thumb stroked the smooth metal casing of one pin.
The cramped layout meant a single grenade would clear a dozen of the undead.
“Look at you three, surviving like little champion field mice after screwing up the timeline,” Jie said, sneering at Zha, Lan, and Xiaoyi.
He tapped the face of his black watch.
“Check the screen. Is One’s name still on the timer? No. Main plot restrictions are lifted. Free roam now. You can do whatever you want, as long as you breathe through it.”
He took a drag from his cigarette and blew grey smoke into the damp corridor air.
“If I were you weaklings—no reflexes, no muscle, no firearms experience—I’d cling to the back of the mercenaries all the way to the Red Queen’s chamber. At least you won’t get chewed on out here.”
Zha and Xiaoyi exchanged glances.
Lan offered a faint smile.
“You actually care under all that rough attitude, don’t you?”
“Care?” Jie spat on the metal floor.
“Don’t flatter yourself, girl. I just don’t want your dead weight ruining my reward points. Make no mistake—out here, there are no good guys. If it keeps me alive, I’ll drop any of you in front of a horde without blinking.”
Down the hall, J.D.
slammed his shoulder against a locked security door and racked the bolt of his submachine gun.
“Halt! State your identity or I will fire!”
Slow, dragging footsteps echoed against steel grating.
Shadows lengthened along the walls as human figures shuffled out from steam-filled alcoves.
Their skin hung pale and decaying, eyes milky grey, jaws slack and dripping dark fluid.
Oh God, they really look like that up close, Alexandra thought, her stomach twisting into a tight knot.
Okay.
Deep breath.
Stay in the middle.
Let the mercenaries draw the initial heat.
If I can stay back, maybe I can pick off a few without getting eaten.
Behind the body armor, she thought, shifting her footing.
Put the heavy body armor between me and the steam.
She raised her pistol, expecting her wrists to shake.
Her hands trembled and her heart hammered against her ribs, but as she settled the sights on the nearest zombie, the movement came easily.
She frowned.
She wasn’t trained for this.
Not that she knew of.
She knew basic firearm handling, but she’d never been good with weapons.
Apparently her hands hadn’t gotten that memo.
Alexandra squeezed the trigger.
The gunshot cracked in the corridor, the bullet striking an approaching corpse square in the neck.
Damn it!
Too low!
She winced.
“Okay, calibration shot,” she muttered, shifting her sightline upward.
She fired again.
The bullet punched through the forehead of a male zombie, dropping it instantly.
Alexandra stared.
That felt…
surprisingly easy.
Another zombie lurched into view, and her body moved to follow.
She tracked right, firing three rapid shots.
Three corpses collapsed onto the grate.
She shifted her footing for a clear angle and kept firing, barely aware of how fast she was moving.
By the time her magazine clicked empty, ten zombies lay motionless on the floor.
“How did you know headshots were the only way to put them down?” One asked.
He stepped beside her, ejecting a spent magazine from his rifle.
His eyes narrowed.
“Your first two shots were off, but after that, every round hit center-head.”
Alexandra froze mid-reach for her belt.
Oh brilliant, Alex.
Absolutely brilliant.
Why don’t you just hand him a copy of the DVD while you’re at it?
“Oh! Well—” Her voice squeaked, heat rushing into her cheeks.
She rubbed the back of her neck.
“I used to play a lot of survival horror games back in California! Resident Evil, Silent Hill, arcade light-gun games. You always aim for the head in those, so I guess it was just… muscle memory? Except, you know, without the actual muscle part. That sounded better in my head.”
One stared at her, expression unreadable.
He looked from her face to the pile of dead creatures, then down at his own rifle.
Without another word, he turned back to the corridor and called out headshot orders to his team.
Alexandra let out a quiet breath, slitting a fresh magazine into the magwell and slapping the base plate home.
Thank God for airsoft models back home, or I wouldn’t even know how to release the catch.
“Unbelievable,” Xiaoyi muttered, leaning his back against the wall.
“She lies without blinking. Must be nice.”
Alexandra rolled her eyes, ignoring him.
Oh, somebody’s jealous.
Down the hall, J.D.
struggled with a heavy manual override wheel on a thick blast door.
That’s the door, she thought, her pulse spiking.
The moment that opens, the elevator shaft horde rushes out.
No time to argue.
Move!
She sprinted forward, planted her right foot against the frame, and threw herself sideways, driving her left boot into J.D.’s vest.
The movement came together clean and fast.
Her balance held through the sideways leap, and for one startled instant Alexandra had the impression her body had done the hard work for her.
J.D.
went down.
Okay.
Apparently I can do that now.
The momentum sent the heavy mercenary tumbling backward, well clear of the doorway.
A sharp POP echoed as J.D.
hit the deck, groaning as his right shoulder dislocated from the impact.
“Sorry!” Alexandra yelled as she hit the ground, rolling across the grate.
She pulled the fragmentation grenade from her belt, yanked the safety pin, and raised her arm.
Wait.
The blast door was only halfway open.
Throwing it now meant it would hit the heavy steel plate and bounce right back.
“Shit!” she gasped, pulling her arm back.
She waited three seconds as the door slid into the wall, revealing a wall of grey flesh and reaching hands inside the dark shaft.
She hurled the grenade straight into the center, grabbed J.D.’s dropped submachine gun from the floor, and opened fire to keep the horde back.
“Get down!” she screamed, diving behind a metal crate.
The grenade detonated with a deafening roar.
Shockwaves rattled the wall panels, sending smoke, metal shrapnel, and dark blood flying through the opening.
None of the debris reached Alexandra behind her cover.
The remaining mercenaries opened fire into the doorway, sweeping away the surviving zombies until the shaft fell silent.
A cold, mechanical voice echoed directly inside Alexandra’s mind:
“Rescued team member J.D. Granted one Rank C Side Quest and 1,500 Reward Points.”
Alexandra let out a long sigh, resting her forehead against the cool metal of the crate.
Holy crap.
I actually pulled that off.
“Damn it… thanks for the save, kid,” J.D.
groaned, clutching his shoulder as he pushed himself up with his good arm.
His face was pale, but he looked at her with genuine gratitude.
“Don’t mention it,” Alexandra said, her hands shaking as she handed the weapon back to another soldier.
“How’s the arm?”
“Dislocated, pretty sure,” he grunted.
“Looks dislocated. Get Kaplan to deal with it,” she said, stepping back toward the squad.
She pointed toward his belt.
“And give me two more of those frags. Trust me. We’ll need them.”
A few yards away, Xiaoyi panicked, stammering through an explanation to the mercenaries after accidentally blurting out something about “points” and “penalties.” Zha jumped in, covering for the teenager by claiming Xiaoyi was in shock and repeating lines from video games.
One lowered his weapon and turned toward the squad.
“Fall back to the Red Queen’s chamber! Move! Back to the main terminal!”
Thank God.
“I’m heading back with the squad,” she told Zha.
“That firefight emptied my tank. I need a minute to breathe.”
While Zha’s group got separated and pinned down by a secondary cluster of infected, Alexandra stayed close to the middle of the mercenary formation.
They burst through the double doors into the primary control room, and the moment she cleared the threshold, her knees gave out.
She collapsed onto the floor, rolling onto her back and drawing in deep, ragged breaths.
For several seconds she simply lay there, breathing hard.
Then Alexandra flexed her legs and looked down at them.
She had sprinted through a nightmare, thrown herself sideways through a doorway, rolled across a metal floor, climbed into a ventilation opening, and kept moving through the whole mess.
Back home, she was active enough, but she wasn’t an athlete.
She looked at one leg, then the other.
Hmmm.
Apparently adrenaline had a weird effect on her girls.
She didn’t remember them being this…
present.
Alexandra blinked, then shook her head.
“Okay,” she muttered between breaths.
“Either adrenaline is doing some really weird things to me, or I’m in considerably better shape than I remember.”
She pushed herself upright with a hand against the floor.
The thought was strange enough that she let it go.
A second later, the doors slid open again.
Jie shoved Zha, Lan, and Xiaoyi inside just as pale, bloodstained hands clawed at the frame.
The heavy steel doors slammed shut, locking out the horde.
“Not bad at all…” Jie said, sliding his Desert Eagle back into his waistband with a dark chuckle.
Zha leaned against a computer console, chest heaving.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jie glanced at the mercenaries gathered near the laser corridor, inspecting the remains of their fallen comrades.
He leaned close to the newcomers, lowering his voice.
“The first movie is always the most dangerous for rookies. It’s about mindset. First, you accept reality. I’ve seen dozens of fresh spawns die because they thought this was an elaborate TV show or a lucid dream. They die fast, and they die screaming. But you guys—especially you, Zha, and the girl—you adapted. You suppressed the panic and kept moving. That’s rare.”
He drew a pack of cigarettes from his jacket, flicking a lighter open.
“Second, overcoming fear isn’t enough to guarantee survival. In this first run, you’re just baseline humans. If you’re lucky and you know the plot, you might squeeze through, but the mortality rate is still sky-high. Survival in the first realm is an elimination filter. If you make it back to God’s Dimension, you get access to enhancements, weapons, stats—like my physical upgrades, or an infinite-ammo sidearm. Get it?”
Jie lit a cigarette and offered one to Zha.
“So, congratulations, rookies. How does it feel to still have a pulse? Pretty intense, right? Like an adrenaline rush straight to the brain.”
Alexandra sat up from the floor, wiping a streak of smudge from her cheek.
“Hey, watch the locker-room talk. Ladies present.”
Lan nodded in agreement, crossing her arms.
Xiaoyi reached a hesitant hand toward the cigarette pack.
“Brother Jie, can I get one too?”
Jie looked down at the boy with cold eyes.
“A kid like you smoking? Please. I can smell the baby formula on you from here. Sit in the corner and keep your mouth shut. If you want to see tomorrow, stay close and don’t make waves.”
Xiaoyi pulled his hand back, staring at his shoes.
“Brother Jie… I’m at negative ten points right now. What happens if I can’t fix it?”
Jie stared at him, then laughed.
“Zero kills and a ten-point penalty? Man, your luck is trash! Don’t worry, kid. Completing the scenario grants a flat one thousand points. But remember this—if you’re still in the red when the timer hits zero, the system erases you instantly. Poof. Gone.”
Xiaoyi’s face turned ashen.
Zha placed a heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder to steady him.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
Heavy pounding rattled the main security door.
Alice’s voice carried through the intercom.
“Open the door! Let us in! Hurry!”
The mercenaries rushed toward the control panel.
Before anyone touched the manual release, Jie stepped forward, pulled the lever, and yanked the heavy door open himself.
Alice and Matt tumbled through the gap, breathless and bruised.
Dozens of decaying hands reached through the narrowing space.
Jie gritted his teeth, brought up his handgun, and fired four quick shots, shattering the arm bones of the lead zombies before slamming the door shut.
One grabbed Alice’s arm.
“What’s the situation outside? Is the entry corridor clear?”
Alice shook her head violently.
“It’s completely swarming. They’re flooding the access route. We can’t go back.”
A heavy silence fell over the room.
Kaplan sat on an equipment crate, holding his head in his hands.
“We’re trapped. There are no secondary exit routes built into the Red Queen’s core facility. We’re dead.”
Spence looked around frantically.
“Can’t we just stay here? If we don’t report back, the surface team will send a rescue squad down. This room is reinforced! I am not going back out there!”
The mercenaries exchanged uncomfortable glances.
Spence frowned.
“What? What did I say wrong?”
One let out a long sigh.
“Our standing orders were to retrieve the Red Queen’s main processing board and seal the Hive completely. Remember the blast doors at the surface elevator? If we don’t return to the upper staging area within three hours, the surface automated defense systems trigger a permanent lockdown, sealing the Hive forever.”
One slammed his fist against the wall.
“Those corporate bastards up top… now I know why they gave us that timeline. They knew what was down here!”
Zha and Jie exchanged a quick glance, looking down at their watches.
The three-hour countdown was ticking away rapidly.
They had to survive until the lockdown completed without getting bitten, scratched, or cornered by the horde.
And worst of all, the Lickers were about to break containment—monsters that standard pistol rounds could barely slow down.
Spence grabbed Kaplan’s vest.
“No! They can’t do that! Are they planning to bury us alive down here?!”
Rain, clutching her bandaged hand where dark blood seeped through the cloth, leaned against the terminal console.
“To contain a biohazard leak, total isolation is standard procedure. If we die down here, the secret dies with us.”
The room sank into silence.
Spence slumped against the wall, his rage turning into mute terror.
“Half a mile underground… and they tell us this now?”
Alice stepped past the silent soldiers, reaching onto the table and picking up the heavy metal case containing the Red Queen’s circuit boards.
She turned toward the central laser corridor.
“Stop crying about it,” Alice said sharply.
“We need to find another way out, and that means getting answers.”
One took a step after her.
“What are you doing with the main board?”
“Rebooting her,” Alice replied without slowing down.
As the mercenaries and the main characters filed into the glass-walled chamber, Zha turned to Jie, who leaned against a pillar with his eyes closed, taking slow drags from his cigarette.
“You’re not going inside to watch?” Zha asked.
Jie blew a thin stream of smoke toward the ceiling.
“Why bother? It’s not like I haven’t seen this play out before. Instead of wasting energy watching the story happen, I’d rather rest my legs so I can blow away a few more of those corpses when the doors open again.”
Alexandra leaned back against the cool steel plating of the console, sliding her spare magazines into order along her belt.
Rest while you can, Alexandra thought, glancing toward the dark corridor.
Because once that thing turns back on, we’re really screwed.