The heavy steel blast door of the Hive’s central mainframe room hissed shut, sealing the team inside the pristine, sterile light of the Red Queen’s core.
Outside, beyond the reinforced glass and the quiet hum of the climate control, the dead were still milling in the shadowed corridors.
Across the chamber, Alice was already hunched over the main diagnostic terminal, the heavy metal circuit housing set carefully on the rim of the console as her fingers flew across the interface to initiate the reboot cycle.
For a few moments, nobody said anything.
Then Jie looked across the room at the four newcomers.
“You all survived,” he said.
Xiaoyi looked up at him, still pale.
Zha was leaning against a console, catching his breath, while Lan stood with her arms folded.
Alexandra sat on the edge of a steel crate, nervously picking at a tiny thread on the hem of her vibrant red tennis skirt.
Jie’s eyes settled on her.
“You’re the one I don’t understand.”
Alexandra looked up immediately.
“Oh. That’s never a sentence you want to hear.”
Zha gave a tired snort.
Jie ignored it.
“You were shaking before you entered that corridor. You were shaking after it. Then you volunteered to go back into danger.”
Alexandra rubbed the back of her neck.
“Yeah, well… apparently I’m making questionable life choices.”
“You could have stayed here.”
“I know.”
“You chose not to.”
Alexandra glanced toward the sealed blast door.
Her expression tightened for a moment before she shrugged.
“Didn’t feel right.”
Jie studied her for another second.
He didn’t press the question.
Instead, he looked toward the others.
“Whatever your reasons, remember something. Surviving one scenario doesn’t mean you’ve figured this place out. The first scenario teaches you one thing above everything else.”
Xiaoyi swallowed.
“What’s that?”
“That the rules don’t care whether you’re ready.”
His gaze dropped briefly to Xiaoyi’s hands.
“And speaking of rules…”
Xiaoyi swallowed hard, breaking the tension as he spoke up, his voice trembling.
“What… what happens to me, then? I have negative points because of the penalty. If the scenario ends and I’m still in the red…”
Jie didn’t sugarcoat it.
“As I mentioned before, surviving the scenario gives you the standard completion reward. But if your total balance is negative when the scenario clears, God wipes you out. Instantly. Zero tolerance.”
Xiaoyi went paler, staring at his hands.
Alexandra watched him, feeling a sudden, sharp prick of pity.
The system is terrifyingly literal, she thought.
It didn’t care about intentions or bad luck; it was purely mathematical.
“Hey,” Alexandra offered gently, giving Xiaoyi a small, tentative smile.
“On the bright side… you have a really strong financial incentive to stay alive now? Like… maximum motivation.”
Xiaoyi let out a weak, breathy laugh, though his eyes remained wide with dread.
Alexandra immediately bit her lip, internally wincing at her own joke.
Great, Lex—real comforting.
While Alice continued monitoring the reboot sequence, One and Kaplan stood beside her, reviewing the local cache power distribution to ensure they could clear a route back out.
Alexandra stood up from her crate and smoothed down her pleated skirt.
She strolled over toward the interface console, keeping her distance like a curious spectator rather than someone stepping into a tactical debriefing.
“So,” Alexandra started, her voice airy, though her eyes were sharp as she looked at the glowing schematic of the Hive projected on the glass monitor.
“I’m no security expert or anything… but isn’t this place supposed to be, like, the most high-tech underground lab on the planet?”
One turned his head, giving her a brief glance.
“It is.”
“Right,” Alexandra continued, leaning her hip against the edge of a terminal while her fingers twirled a strand of blonde hair.
“So how does a virus leak out by accident? I mean, shouldn’t a facility like this have, like… fifty different containment protocols before an airborne pathogen hits the main AC vents?”
Kaplan paused, his fingers hovering over his portable pad.
He frowned at the code scrolling across the secondary monitor.
“She’s not wrong. The Red Queen’s primary directive is containment. A simple flask dropping in a lab shouldn’t trigger a facility-wide lockdown unless the primary seal was breached simultaneously with the ventilation override.”
“Unless it wasn’t an accident,” Alice said softly, her blue eyes narrowing on her diagnostic terminal.
Alexandra raised her eyebrows in exaggerated surprise.
“Wait, really? You think someone stole it?” She tilted her head, tapping her chin thoughtfully.
“If someone stole something like that, wouldn’t they need a way to protect themselves from it? Like… an antidote or something? Does the Red Queen keep logs of who accessed the vault before the lockdown?”
One’s eyes hardened.
He turned to Kaplan.
“Pull up the security footage from the main vault twenty minutes before the primary lockdown sequence was initiated.”
Kaplan rapidly typed a series of commands.
“Accessing local cache memory… bypassing primary core restriction using the backup override…”
The monitor flickered.
A grainy, black-and-white video feed appeared on the screen, showing the interior of the cold-storage vault.
A figure in a dark suit was carefully removing a metallic briefcase from the central rack.
The figure opened it, revealing rows of glowing blue and green glass vials.
The camera captured the man’s face clearly as he turned.
Matt gasped, taking a step forward.
“Spence?”
Spence, sitting slumped against the far wall with his hands zip-tied, stiffened instantly.
His eyes darted around the room in absolute panic.
“That’s—that’s not—I don’t remember that!”
“He took the blue vials—the T-virus—and the green vials,” Kaplan said, his voice cold as he read the secondary log data.
“He smashed one blue vial in the lab to trigger the contamination, sealed the door, and took the rest of the case with him.”
“The green ones,” Rain spat, her hand resting on her sidearm as she glared at Spence with lethal intent.
“That’s the antiviral serum.”
“So he released it on purpose to cover his tracks, stole the cure, and tried to skip town,” J.D.
grunted, shaking his head.
“Scum.”
Alexandra stepped back quietly into the shadow of the console.
Okay, good, she thought, her heart hammering against her ribs.
They figured it out.
She had simply asked the obvious questions any observant thriller viewer would ask, sidestepping the need to blurt out Spence’s identity or claim impossible knowledge.
Her memories had been right about Spence.
Seeing the cold reality of it sent a chill down her spine.
“What about those things in the lower levels?” Rain asked, turning back to the screen as Kaplan pulled up secondary biological readouts from the facility’s lower sector, labeled B Restaurant.
“The Red Queen mentioned specimen containment.”
“Biological research subjects,” Kaplan read from the local file.
“Designated ‘Lickers’ or ‘Crawlers.’ The file says… host bodies infected with the T-virus undergo rapid cellular mutation if provided with sufficient fresh genetic material. If left unfed, they revert to standard neural degradation—zombies. But if fed…”
“They grow,” Alexandra muttered under her breath, a knot forming in her stomach.
She didn’t understand the biological mechanics, but she remembered what they were and that they were horrible.
Seeing the write-up on the screen made it feel vastly worse than a movie prop.
They were hyper-mutating apex predators sitting right along their prospective escape route.
Thirty minutes later
“We have to move,” One announced, his voice snapping everyone back to attention as the terminal beeped, confirming the secondary power routing was operational.
“The backup system only controls basic door mechanics and power routing. It won’t have the AI’s tactical defensive systems active. We need to clear a path to the surface before the main doors seal permanently in under three hours.”
Spence, held by his coat collar, muttered something about being able to help.
“So you can shoot me a second time?” Matt muttered as he shifted his weight carefully, favoring the leg that had been injured during the struggle.
Kaplan had already checked the wound and wrapped it tightly enough to keep the bleeding under control, but he was clearly going to have trouble putting full weight on it.
Jie stepped forward, his expression grave.
He looked at One, then at his fellow veterans and the newcomers behind him.
“My group will stay here in the mainframe room. We’ll keep Spence secure until you clear the route or support arrives.”
One frowned, his sharp eyes scanning Jie.
“This room is secure for now, but if power fails completely, you’ll be trapped.”
“It’s the most defensible position in the facility,” Jie replied, his tone leaving no room for argument.
“Moving through the lower levels with a full squad of non-combat personnel increases the risk of drawing hostiles. We have rations, the doors are reinforced steel, and we can wait out the lockdown or secure a retrieval team once the surface team makes contact.”
To the mercenaries, Jie’s logic made tactical sense.
They already regarded Jie and his companions as some kind of specialized external team with their own methods and training.
Leaving part of the team in a secure fallback position was standard protocol.
Alexandra stood near the back, pulling firmly on the shoulder straps of her backpack to tighten them against her back.
Her heart beat a wild, ragged rhythm in her chest.
Stay here, her brain screamed at her.
Stay in the room!
It’s safe here.
The doors are reinforced.
The Red Queen isn’t fully back online.
You can just sit on a crate, eat a piece of jerky, and wait for the three hours to expire!
Her body was exhausted.
Her thighs ached from the sprint through the vents, and the back of her hands were dusted with grime and dried blood.
Staying behind was the logical, sensible, sane choice.
Then her eyes drifted to Rain, who was testing the tension on her wrist bandage, and J.D., who was checking his rifle magazine.
She looked at One, standing tall, completely unaware of what Alexandra remembered waiting in the dark corridors below.
They’re going to get slaughtered; the thought hit her with sickening clarity.
She remembered the general sequence of events from her memories.
The mercenaries were walking straight into a meat grinder.
Yes, she had already changed things—Rain was alive, J.D.
wasn’t bitten, the laser corridor hadn’t wiped out half the squad.
But that meant the timeline was completely unanchored now; she couldn’t guarantee what was waiting down there.
If she stayed behind in this room, she would be safe.
But One, Rain, J.D., and Alice would walk down into the dark, and some—or all—of them would die while she sat on a box in a clean, brightly lit room.
I can’t do that, she thought, a sudden, heavy dread settling in her stomach.
I literally won’t be able to sleep for the rest of my life if I just let them walk out that door.
The abstract rules of ‘God’ and system point calculations meant nothing to her in that moment.
She only thought of Rain’s dry snark, J.D.’s grateful look when she kicked him clear of the vent, and the horrific sound a Crawler made hitting flesh.
Alexandra took a small, hesitant step forward.
“I’m… I’m going with you guys.”
The statement fell softly into the room, but it immediately drew every eye.
Jie turned his head slowly, his dark eyes sharpening as he stared at her.
Lan looked up, her expression flickering with surprise.
One looked at Alexandra, his heavy brow furrowing.
“You don’t have to risk the trip. Jie suggested staying here.”
“Yeah, well… Jie isn’t actually the boss of me,” Alexandra said, offering a weak, nervous chuckle that died almost instantly.
She cleared her throat, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and rubbing the back of her neck.
“Look, I… I just think you guys might need extra eyes. Or a shooter. Or… whatever.”
“Are you sure about this?” One asked, his voice stern, testing her.
“Down there, it’s close-quarters, low light, and unknown biological threats. If you come, you follow my command structure. No improvising.”
“I am approximately zero percent sure this is a good idea,” Alexandra admitted, her voice trembling despite her efforts to sound composed.
“This is probably a terrible idea. Like, top five worst decisions of my life. But… yeah. I’m going.”
One stared at her for two long seconds.
He had watched her move through the laser corridor with startling grace, react with lightning speed to save Rain, and put ten rounds cleanly into ten moving targets without missing a single shot.
In his mind, her hesitation was just the natural caution of a specialized operative assessing a high-risk route.
“All right,” One said with a single, crisp nod.
“Fall in behind Rain. Keep your weapon raised.”
As One turned back to Kaplan, Alexandra caught Jie watching her.
He leaned against the console, studying her with an unreadable, intense scrutiny.
He knew she was frightened—her shoulders were tense, her hands nervously gripping her backpack straps—yet she was choosing to step out into the hazard zone anyway.
Great, Alexandra thought, her face flushing as she quickly looked away.
He definitely thinks I’m a complete freak now.
Or a crazy person.
Fantastic.
Lan walked up beside her as Alexandra adjusted the weight of her bag on her back.
“You don’t have to do this, Alexandra,” Lan said, her voice low enough that the mercenaries couldn’t hear.
“You’re terrified.”
Alexandra looked at her for a second, then glanced toward the dark corridor beyond the reinforced door.
“Because…” She hesitated, chewing lightly on the inside of her cheek.
Then she looked back at Lan.
“Okay, this is going to sound incredibly weird.”
Lan raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve been saying weird things since we got here.”
“Fair.” Alexandra took a breath.
“If I survive this, let me take you on a date.”
Lan stared at her.
Alexandra immediately started talking faster.
“Not because I think we’re suddenly in some tragic life-or-death romance movie. Although, technically, we are in a life-or-death situation, so I guess that’s not completely—”
“Alexandra.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you asking me out right now?”
Alexandra’s face went bright red.
“Apparently.”
A tiny smile tugged at the corner of Lan’s mouth.
“You’re terrified.”
“I am literally losing my mind right now. My knees are like jelly.”
“And you’re asking me out.”
“I figured if I die, I’d rather at least have been honest about the cute girl.”
Lan actually laughed, quiet and surprised.
Alexandra rubbed the back of her neck, suddenly fascinated by the floor.
“So… if we both survive, date?”
Lan looked at her for another moment before giving a small nod.
“We’ll see.”
Alexandra blinked.
“Is that a yes?”
“It’s a maybe.”
“I’ll take a maybe.”
She glanced over at Rain, who was racking the slide of her submachine gun.
Her smile faded slightly.
“Because if I sit in this room for three hours knowing what’s out there, I’ll throw up. And… they’ve been nice to me. Mostly.” She sighed, running a hand through her blonde hair.
“Just… try not to let Xiaoyi do anything stupid while I’m gone, okay?”
Lan looked at her for a moment, then nodded slowly, a trace of quiet respect in her eyes.
“Good luck.”
A semi-translucent stream of pale text flickered directly across Alexandra’s field of vision:
[Side Quest Triggered: Escort Directive]
Objective: Ensure the survival of the remaining mercenaries (One, Rain, J.D., Kaplan) until exiting the Hive facility.
Reward: 1,000 Reward Points per surviving mercenary upon scenario completion.
Failure Penalty: None.
Alexandra blinked rapidly, staring at the floating text as it faded away.
You’ve got to be kidding me, she thought with absolute disbelief.
Now it gives me a quest?
After I already made the terrible decision?
She wasn’t going to turn down four thousand potential points—a useful chunk toward the fifty-thousand-point ticket back home to California, back to her drama classes, her agent, and her normal life.
But the sheer absurdity of the timing made her want to laugh hysterically.
“Kaplan, override the blast door locks and bring down the security grid on the main corridor,” One ordered.
“Routing secondary power now,” Kaplan replied, typing rapidly.
The heavy steel blast door of the mainframe room unlatched with a heavy clunk, and the far door at the end of the laser corridor clicked open, unlocking the exit route.
On the secure side of the threshold, Jie, Zha, Xiaoyi, and Lan stood together, watching.
Xiaoyi looked bewildered and awed, watching Alexandra step into line behind Rain.
Zha gave a short, respectful nod.
Jie remained silent, his arms crossed, watching her with that same sharp, calculating expression.
Alexandra took a deep breath, tightening her grip on the pistol.
She looked back through the opening one last time, giving the remaining group a brief, awkward wave, before turning to face the dark, silent hallway ahead.
She was scared out of her mind, but as the heavy blast door sealed behind them, cutting off the mainframe room, Alexandra Pierce stepped forward into the dark.