It took only a single week for humanity to realize that their carefully crafted laws, morals, and social order needed very little time to shatter completely.
A week of the global outbreak, and everything had broken down.
In the early days of the apocalypse, people only had to worry about avoiding the mindless infected roaming the streets.
But as survivors began awakening strange, supernatural talents, the mindless dead were no longer the sole top predators in the ruined city.
The military forces stationed at the Northern Settlement could not secure the entire perimeter on their own. They desperately needed the extra firepower provided by civilian Awakeners.
However, not all civilian Awakeners were willing to take orders from officers or serve under military discipline. Some refused out of arrogant overconfidence in their new powers, while others harbored deep, lingering spite against authority figures.
The military grouped these independent, unregistered Awakeners together under a single label. They called them Rogues.
The recognized leader of the Rogues in the Northern territory was a man known simply as the Professor. He was a tall, lean man in his late twenties with neat, slicked-back dark hair and thick, round glasses resting on the bridge of his narrow nose.
He wore a surprisingly clean white lab coat over a dark tactical vest, making him look like a strange mix between a top research scientist and a battle-tested mercenary.
Right now, the Professor was standing a few feet away from Summer at the checkpoint, staring down at her with intense interest.
"Fascinating..." the Professor muttered, his dark eyes trailing slowly along her pale body, taking in the glowing red pupils and the dark crimson veins on her cheeks.
"You are honestly telling me she is a good zombie? I never thought we could group infected monsters by their behavioral patterns. I always considered every single one of them as bad."
"No, no, Professor! Look at her, just see this!" Angela stepped forward, reaching out both hands to pinch and pull Summer’s full, pale cheeks outward. "Do you really think this super cute girl right here is a bad zombie?"
"Obviously... yes," the Professor replied, casually shrugging his shoulders. "A monster is a monster."
"I am not a bad zombie," Summer stated, her voice clear, even, and remarkably calm.
"Oh?" The Professor blinked, pushing his glasses up his nose. "She can talk too?"
"I have a mouth too," Summer added, taking a small step forward. "Look... gaah!"
She opened her small mouth wide, puffing her chubby cheeks and showing off her sharp, glistening undead fangs in a desperate attempt to look intimidating.
"Pft..." The Professor let out a sudden, genuine laugh, shaking his head. "Alright, fine. I will reluctantly consider you as a good zombie."
"You are smart," Summer noted with a slight nod.
In her mind, the invisible, hovering ’Food’ icon that had briefly appeared above the man’s head instantly dissolved, replaced by a neutral ’No Comment’ tag.
He had passed her initial test.
"But..." The Professor paused, his amused smile fading into a serious line as he looked around at the military checkpoint. "Will the ordinary people living inside this settlement also consider you like that? Most of the survivors in this camp lost more than one loved one to your kind, you know."
"What do you mean by ’your kind’?" Ella interjected sharply, stepping up beside Summer and glaring at the taller man. "Summer is nothing like those mindless monsters outside!"
"Well, physically speaking, she looks like one," the Professor pointed out reasonably, tilting his head. "Except maybe a much cuter, smaller version of one. But still, she will never be welcomed here by the masses. The moment she walks through those gates, people will scream."
"Then I will silence the screamers..." Summer said as a matter of fact, almost choking the tall man. Angela gave her a slight glare, shutting her mouth.
Angela then shifted her posture, clasping her hands together and adopting a classic, overly dramatic pouting expression.
She looked up at the Professor with wide, pleading eyes, putting on her best damsel-in-distress face. "Oh, come on, Professor! Can’t you use your huge brain and help her out? Just a little bit?"
Ella and Illas silently pulled Summer a bit further from Angela, as they didn’t want her cringe to spread. Not knowing Summer always adapted to what she saw, depending on if it worked.
"Why should I?" The Professor scoffed lightly, brushing a speck of dust off his white coat. "She may be a precious friend to you all, but to me..."
Without warning, the entire atmosphere around the Professor shifted violently.
Summer’s crimson eyes widened as a massive, suffocating pressure focused directly onto her small frame.
The sheer weight of the mental and physical intent crashing down on her was multiple times higher than the pressure emitted by the Psychokinetic Feral Boss she had crushed earlier.
This man was insanely strong.
Yet, the most surprising fact to Summer was that despite the overwhelming scale of his power, his intent contained absolutely zero killing intent.
He was testing her.
The Professor’s mental threat level in Summer’s mind shifted upward toward small caution, but that was as far as it went.
She did not feel threatened, she felt challenged.
Summer activated Shadow Mirage.
Whoosh!
An icy gust of wind swept through the dust. In the very next millisecond, the Professor’s calm, analytical expression shattered completely.
Before his brain could even process her disappearance, he felt a small, ice-cold hand wrap tightly around the front of his throat.
A second later, his feet completely left the concrete floor as Summer lifted his entire body effortlessly into the air by his neck.
This was the exact scene Vincious Jerald saw as he rushed out of his command tent alongside Leader Imani.
"Stop it right now!" Vincious roared, his authoritative voice echoing across the open checkpoint.
Summer gave the older General a casual side-glance, her crimson eyes filled with quiet defiance. "Who is this old hag? Like I will do what you said. Hmph."
’Old... what?’ Vincious could hardly keep his expression while Imani let out a stifled laugh.
In that single brief moment, Vincious felt a sharp headache coming on as he understood an annoying truth.
This zombie girl was going to be an absolute pain in the ass to control.
Up in the air, the Professor struggled for a few seconds, his hands gripping Summer’s arm, before his body suddenly went completely limp and stopped moving altogether.
Summer frowned down at the limp man. Sensing no heartbeat or breath, she hastily unclasped her fingers and threw his body onto the hard ground with a dull thud.
Panic instantly surged into her undead heart. She spun around to face Ella, Ilas, and Angela, wildly flailing her iron-clad arms in the air.
"I... I didn’t mean to kill him!" Summer stammered, her cheeks puffing out as she almost started crying from stress. "I didn’t even use any strength! I never expected a strong human like him to be so weak!"
She desperately did not want to lose her newly made friends by looking like a mindless murderer.
But as she rambled, she noticed the three girls were not looking at her with fear.
Instead, their eyes were wide as they stared at something right behind her back.
In complete confusion, Summer turned back around.
Standing right behind her, completely intact and brushing off his white lab coat without a single scratch on his neck, was the Professor.
Seeing Summer’s bewildered expression shift from sheer panic to utter disbelief, the Professor hurriedly raised both of his hands high in the air, taking a step back in clear surrender.
"I accept defeat," the Professor declared with a dramatic, breathless laugh. "Your speed is entirely outside the realm of human logic. Oh well, you are a zombie after all."
Summer paused for a second, processing his words, before a bright, beautiful smile broke across her pale face.
"You know your place," Summer said proudly, giving him the sweetest, most innocent smile he had ever seen in his life.