ars

Here is a recap for those returning to this story from three years ago:

Spoiler

Hong Sheng invented a metal canister that serves as a lure for zombies; its purpose is to buy time and allow people to escape while it distracts the zombies.

To test it, Hong Sheng went with Lu Hao into the field. The invention worked, but as they returned, they heard a girl's scream in the fog. Lu Hao went to investigate, leaving Hong Sheng in the car with another SG member.

Hong Sheng then noticed something was wrong, and as the SG member tried to drive them out of the fog, found out they were stuck driving in a loop. Hong Sheng and the SG member tried to fight off the zombies following them, but destroyed the car in the process. The SG member died, and Hong Sheng was stranded on the road.

Yu Qiu, the girl whose scream had alerted the team in the beginning, discovered Hong Sheng. She dragged him away to safety, and the two tried to find Lu Hao. Lu Hao, in the meantime, had encountered a strange man who looked entirely human--except he was a zombie. The zombie had overpowered Lu Hao, and trapped him for an unknown amount of time.

Hong Sheng and Yu Qiu fell through into a cave. Chased by zombies, they found themselves in a dead end. Yet Hong Sheng saw a door at the end of the tunnel, one that no one else seemed to be able to notice. When he pushed through the door and brought Yu Qiu to safety, he saw the person at the other side of the door:

Ji Ling.

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Ji Ling and Hong Sheng stared at each other. Hong Sheng’s eyes were empty and dark, while Ji Ling’s flickered with emotions so subtle that they were impossible to grasp.

It was Yu Qiu who broke the standoff.

“Hong ge, do you know this big sister? Did you bring us to her hideout?” Hope lit up Yu Qiu’s face. She turned an amazed expression on Hong Sheng, clearly believing that he had just saved them.

Hong Sheng’s gaze did not leave Ji Ling’s. No one knew what he was thinking. Then, his gaze suddenly flickered to the ground. He parted his lips and said, “Lieutenant Ji. It is a good thing you are here.” He lifted his dark eyes, turning them on Ji Ling once more. “Is this place safe?”

Ji Ling stared at him for a moment, a stiff smile on her face. Hong Sheng only returned a placid expression, and then, a beat before the silence dragged on too long, Ji Ling’s expression morphed into one of natural concern. “Yes, it should be. Hong Sheng, little lady, please take a seat. I’ll go grab a medical kit.”

Ji Ling bustled off to another room. Yu Qiu started moving toward a seat on the couch immediately, but when she noticed that Hong Sheng had not budged, she looked back and hesitated. Hong Sheng was sweeping his gaze around the room, and only after he had seen everything did he walk toward the sofa. Yu Qiu followed and sat down next to him.

“Hong ge, I can’t believe we made it. I thought we were goners for sure.” Yu Qiu fiddled with her fingers, the tension in her shoulders relaxing. She asked Hong Sheng, who stared ahead without responding to her, “Is the big sister also part of the SG? Is this one of your secret bases? Is that why you knew that door was there? I didn’t see it at all. I never would have thought there would be a secret base hidden there! Does this mean that we’re finally safe? Are we…?” The terror of the past days was finally at its end. Her eyes watered. She raised the back of her hand to her eyes and scrubbed the tears away.

Hong Sheng hadn’t responded to any of her questions. By now, Yu Qiu understood that this big brother was a bit taciturn and not very fast at speaking, so she just kept fidgeting with her fingers and waited.

Ji Ling returned, a heavy plastic box in her hands. She set it down on the coffee table, opening it to reveal medicines, bandages, patches, and other medical supplies. As she opened the kit, she asked casually, “How did you get here, Hong Sheng?”

Yu Qiu’s eyes brightened at the sight of the beautiful older sister. She had a trustworthy and reliable air around her, and coupled with the miraculous getaway, this made Yu Qiu feel like everything was now going to be okay. She jumped in before Hong Sheng could say anything, saying, “Sister, this big brother and I were running from some zombies outside. You should be careful. They’re not low-level, and they’re right outside the door. Thankfully zombies can’t open doors! Sister, Hong ge said that his unit leader is missing and we need to find him. Do you know where he is? Do you think you can help us?”

Ji Ling’s calm and smiling expression changed into one of concern. “Unit leader? Hong Sheng, do you mean Lu Hao was with you?” She directed this question at Hong Sheng.

Hong Sheng had taken some disinfectant and bandages from the kit while Yu Qiu had been talking. He had started applying the medicine and wrapping his own wounds first, and when Ji Ling turned to him, he said, “Lu Hao went by himself. He didn’t come back.” His gaze was lowered, focused solely on the patches he applied over his scrapes. “Lieutenant Ji. There is something strange in this area. Lu Hao may be in danger. You have the best chance of finding him.”

Ji Ling was quiet for a moment. Then, she got out of her seat. “I understand. I’ll go out and look for him. In case there are dangerous zombies around, I have some help.” She turned her head to look off into another room. As if on command, a figure rounded the corner and entered the room.

He was a tall and slender man, his skin exceptionally white, his hair and eyes exceptionally dark. He smiled at Hong Sheng and Yu Qiu. Even though the man was beautiful, for some reason, his smile seemed empty. A chill ran down Yu Qiu’s spine, though she didn’t know why.

Hong Sheng’s dark eyes lingered on this figure, but without questioning anything, he simply nodded. With that, Ji Ling smiled. She exited the room from the door Hong Sheng and Yu Qiu had entered from. After a moment of staring at the two on the sofa, the man followed her.

Hong Sheng and Yu Qiu were alone in the lobby.

Once he’d finished tending his own wounds, Hong Sheng handed the disinfectant and bandages to Yu Qiu and stood. Clearly, he wasn’t going to help her apply them. “Where are you going, Hong ge?” Yu Qiu called out, seeing Hong Sheng move away.

She watched him open his backpack and take out some sort of can, or thermos, made of metal. Yu Qiu opened her mouth, wanting to ask what it was, but Hong Sheng looked at her with a dark and empty gaze. For some reason, this made Yu Qiu feel cold, like she shouldn’t say anything. So she didn’t.

Hong Sheng took the can and walked to the entrance of the lobby. He seemed to fidget with it, then set the can in a corner near the front door. Once he was done, he walked away like he was going to check out the rest of the secret base.

Since he didn’t say a single word this entire time, Yu Qiu figured she’d just ask him about it later. She hummed and started treating herself. First tried her best to treat her twisted ankle, then worked on the other wounds. She swiped disinfectant over the heavy scrapes she had gotten from falling. Some of them were so big that they needed to be wrapped with gauze. Yu Qiu struggled to unravel the gauze and wrap it around her arm, and after a while, she could only pout and give up.

“Hong ge, I need some help with this bandage. Could you lend me a hand?” she called out.

She waited for a bit, fiddling with the gauze. Her senses were high enough to let her hear Hong Sheng’s approaching footsteps. A moment later, he reappeared around the corner. He wordlessly approached and helped wrap the gauze around Yu Qiu’s arm.

“Thanks, Hong ge.” Yu Qiu smiled sunnily, admiring her now-patched up limbs. “Where did you go off to? Did you find something?”

Hong Sheng asked, “Can you break down a door?”

Yu Qiu made a bashful expression. “Hong ge, that’s…” It was slightly awkward for her, a young girl, to be asked by an adult man if she could break down a door for him… but she eventually answered, “If it’s just a normal door, I can.”

Hong Sheng nodded. He turned and walked off again, but this time he stopped and looked back a little, as if waiting for Yu Qiu to follow him.

Like a clueless little chick, Yu Qiu limped after Hong Sheng. The lobby turned into several long hallways, all of them looking so identical that each turn they took made Yu Qiu’s head spin. The walls were concrete and the only lights were the occasional bare lightbulb installed in the middle of the halls. It was a strange, almost prison-like area.

As they progressed, a creeping, uneasy feeling settled over Yu Qiu. It was like a voice telling her to go back, to run as quickly as possible. Her instincts as an ability user kicked in, and by the time Hong Sheng finally stopped before a metal door, Yu Qiu’s feet were planted several meters away at the corner of the hall.

Hong Sheng looked at her. His empty gaze shook Yu Qiu’s heart. She gulped down her fears and unstuck her feet from the floor, timidly stepping closer to the door. The closer she got, the more uneasy she felt. “Hong ge, this is…?”

Hong Sheng said, “Open it.”

Yu Qiu looked at him. There was nothing she could read from his face. For a moment, her terror kicked in. But a second later, she shook it off. Now that she thought about it, Hong Sheng had only started acting this way after they had entered this hidden base. After… he had seen that big sister.

Feeling as if she had just brushed past the edge of some big, lurking mystery, Yu Qiu trembled and withdrew her thoughts. She faced the door in front of her and hesitantly reached out, testing out a few pushes and knocks against it. The door was made of solid metal. It definitely wasn’t easy to open for a normal human being.

But, even if a level 3 ability user like her couldn’t punch through metal, she could melt it.

Yu Qiu put her hand on the door’s latch, circulating a fiery heat through her fingers. After a while, the metal of the lock softened enough for her to push the door open.

The room in front of them was dark.

Hong Sheng stepped inside. Yu Qiu didn’t dare, only watching as Hong Sheng looked for a light switch. When he finally found it and flipped it on, several lights flickered to life in the large, circular room, illuminating the container in the center—a large glass cylinder anchored to the ground with metal, with many tubes and wires connected at the top.

It was something straight out of science fiction, like what you would see in an alien movie. Or…

Yu Qiu froze, her heart pounding as she stared at the broken glass of the container—glass that had exploded outward, like whatever was inside of it had broken out and escaped.

…Something straight out of science fiction. Or—like something out of a zombie movie.

What kind of facility was this? What kind of thing had been inside that testing tube? What were all of those computers and documents and folders for? As Yu Qiu’s world was thrown into disarray, Hong Sheng walked around the room, picking up folders, flipping through them, and sliding some of them into his backpack.

Hong Sheng was calm, like the surface of an untouched lake. He didn’t seem surprised by anything at all. As she watched him, Yu Qiu thought in her head: that’s right, this wasn’t very strange at all. It had already been so many years since the zombie apocalypse started. There were many scientists conducting tests to figure out what caused the zombies, or even what caused the abilities in ability users. She just never expected to encounter a hidden laboratory like this and see such an eerie place with her own eyes.

But even while she rationalized the existence of this underground facility in her mind, Yu Qiu’s instincts still screamed that something was wrong. She couldn’t bring herself to take a single foot into the room, and all of her senses were sharpened to their peak, her ears pricked and the hairs at the back of her neck standing on end.

That was how she was able to hear it.

A scraping sound. A faint, barely-audible noise from a long distance away. It came from behind her, past the concrete wall at her back, past the many hallways she had just walked through, and past the lobby she had just been sitting in.

At the entrance of the hidden base, the heavy sounds of uneven footsteps scuffled past the creaky metal doors. A low, rattling moan accompanied them.

The moan of the zombies struck an ice-cold fear into Yu Qiu’s heart.

“H-Hong ge.”

Yu Qiu trembled, an oppressive fear weighing down her entire body.

“Hong ge, there are zombies coming through the front door.”

ars

Hi hi!

It's been a few years since I posted. This story has been collecting dust in my mind for a long time, but I received a message on Discord from someone who wanted to know how it ended, so I wrote some more after all.

The story quality may not be too good. Plot holes and inconsistencies will pop up. I'll try my best to do the emotional character moments justice though, as I'm sure the romance is the big draw here, right? haha (sweat)

Thanks again for remembering this story. I hope to leave behind something you can enjoy.