Ten minutes later.
The woman tilted her head back and poured a whole bag of chips into her mouth.
She then twisted open the bottle cap and gulped down the water.
While she was wolfing down her food, Zhang Ye quickly surveyed the room.
This was indeed a machine room.
All around the room, equipment had ceased to operate.
But as for which machine was the power generator, he had no clue.
He had assumed that Huang Zhigang would wait at least until he had secured the generator before making a move, but that fat bastard was completely impatient.
But how did a woman end up here?
Seeing her disheveled state, she must have been here for a while, probably more than two days, otherwise she wouldn't be this ravenous.
After silently setting instructions for the two zombies, Zhang Ye rose and walked towards the equipment.
If the woman tried to attack him, the two zombies nearby would ruthlessly break her limbs without hesitation.
Zombies aren't known for being compassionate, and a bloody wound only incites their fervor for work.
Cables as thick as fingers were tangled everywhere.
Despite looking for a long time, Zhang Ye couldn't find any equipment that even remotely resembled a generator.
He started to worry; no wonder the system asked him to recruit new staff.
The company indeed needed some professionals!
Finding a female electrician was definitely out of the question.
Which woman nowadays would be so silly as to learn electrical technology?
If all else failed, he could only go downstairs and bring the male electrician up to help identify which one was the generator.
"I'm done eating."
"Is there any more?"
As Zhang Ye was pondering, he suddenly heard the woman speaking; her voice was hoarse and deep, with an inexplicable magnetism.
He unconsciously uttered "Oh" in response but didn't pay much attention to her.
"I'm talking to you!"
"Is there any more?"
"I'm hungry!"
Zhang Ye finally couldn't help it and turned to look at her, "I've seen beggars, but never one so brazen."
The woman instantly got angry, her beautiful eyebrows standing on end.
"Who are you calling a beggar?"
"Don't think you can look down on people just because you have something to eat!"
"I'm borrowing, okay? Do you get it?"
"Once I get out of this damned place, I'll definitely repay you!"
As she spoke, she seemed to suddenly remember something, her pupils dilating, followed by a scream tearing through her throat.
"It it it it!"
"They're not human!"
"You you you too—"
"You guessed it."
Zhang Ye, who had unknowingly moved close to her face, intentionally smeared his face with blood to look especially ferocious.
"Actually, I-also-am-not-human."
Having said that, he suddenly opened his mouth wide, pretending to bite towards the woman's neck.
"Ah ah ah!"
"Help, don't eat me!"
The woman immediately began to scream and struggle.
But no matter how much she twisted, her incredibly long legs were like noodles and just couldn't stand up.
"Hahaha!"
"Just kidding, I'm not a zombie."
Zhang Ye laughed enough and was about to return to searching for the generator when he suddenly froze.
The woman's neck and thighs seemed to be different shades.
The skin on her neck wasn't exactly white but was a healthy wheat color, which showed she must exercise frequently.
However, her long legs were pitch-black.
It was as if they had been stained with ink.
Something was off.
"Let me ask you, how did you get stuck in the machine room?"
Zhang Ye finally identified the blind spot in the problem and stared at the woman as he asked in a deep voice.
The woman's pupils were somewhat scattered, clearly terrified.
A pack of sandwich biscuits was floating in front of her.
"Crunch, crunch."
"Um...."
"Is there more?"
She licked the corner of her mouth, her face still showing traces of fear, but she had regained her composure.
Zhang Ye's mouth twitched a few times, obviously surprised by her adaptability.
"You're not scared anymore?"
The woman's eyebrows twitched, and she immediately puffed out her chest.
She said defiantly, "I wasn't scared, you get it? It was just a bit of panic!"
What's the difference between this and being scared!
Zhang Ye muttered to himself, but forced a gentle smile on his face.
"You haven't answered my question yet, beauty."
"This is the machine room, if I'm not mistaken, apart from the hotel's electrician, ordinary people can't get in here."
The woman didn't speak, her gaze fixed on the backpack behind him.
Whirr.
Zhang Ye directly emptied all the contents of the backpack in front of her.
The woman's eyes instantly narrowed with joy, and she reached out to grab something but was blocked by two burly arms.
She glanced left and right at the several faces covered in blood and swallowed.
"I, I just wanted to leave the hotel," she said.
"But the stairwell on the first floor was locked from the outside, and the elevator was stopped."
"And then?"
"Huang said there was a backup generator in the machine room."
"He brought quite a few people up to restore the hotel's power supply."
"That way, not only could we use the elevator to get to the storeroom, we could also go directly to the underground parking lot. There are cars there, and everyone could leave the hotel."
Zhang Ye's gaze remained on her, "What about you?"
The woman seemed a bit embarrassed, scratching her cheek and leaving several black streaks.
"I study electrical engineering."
"Huang brought so many people with him just to get me up here."
"Only I can restore the power supply to the hotel."
As she spoke, her tone suddenly became agitated again, and she kept cursing the hotel's general manager Huang Zhigang.
"But that damn fatso!"
"He actually abandoned the others and ran away!"
The sequence of events was simple.
Huang Zhigang had brought a dozen people to the ninth floor.
This place was originally without guests, but no one expected that there would be a service worker in the bathroom who had turned into a zombie.
The two men who went to relieve themselves were the first to succumb.
Then there was chaos, people fled in all directions, and Huang Zhigang, who had been hiding in the back, locked the stairwell door with his men, turning the rest into bait for the zombies.
And the woman's name was Luo Xin.
She took the opportunity of the zombies chasing after others to escape into the machine room and then got trapped here.
"Two days!"
"For two whole days!"
"Do you know what I've been through these past two days!"
Luo Xin blindly stuffed biscuits, ham, and other snacks into her mouth, occasionally taking the time to vehemently curse Huang for being worthless.
Zhang Ye listened quietly, a lot of his confusion now resolved.
No wonder Huang Zhigang insisted on bringing people up here.
But he still had one question.
"You've been in the machine room for two days already, didn't you think of restoring the electricity first?"
No sooner had Zhang Ye finished speaking than a flicker of surprise showed in the woman's eyes.
"Are you stupid?"
"If I restored the power to the hotel, wouldn't Huang just escape in the elevator?"
"If he ran away..."
"Then wouldn't I really be trapped here to die?"