“Damn it!” Lu Hao grit his teeth. He struggled his way to his feet, like he was starting up a rusty machine.

The next time he saw that zombie, he was going to tear it to pieces.

That disturbingly human-looking zombie’s attack had left him paralyzed for at least thirty minutes. In that time, anything could have happened to the girl Lu Hao had been trying to save.

Lu Hao fought against the numbness in his body and focused his senses. There was something strange about this fog: it was blocking his perception. Lu Hao couldn’t find any trace of another person throughout the valley, not even a zombie. He couldn’t even sense Hong Sheng and Zhang Luo in the truck. It was this reason why he’d been trapped in the forest with that zombie. But for what reason did the zombie trap him here, then abandon him without even killing him?

Lu Hao investigated the pile of corpses the zombie had left behind. Judging by the clothing, these were scavengers. Perhaps they’d even been making their way to the SG camp when they’d been killed. Lu Hao left them there. He didn’t have time to bury their corpses.

Digging into his jacket pocket, Lu Hao unearthed the communicator. It had been radio silent this entire time. “Hong Sheng? Zhang Luo?” Lu Hao tried to contact his team, but there was no response.

Sense blocking and signal blocking. Whatever was behind this fog was powerful. Frustrated, Lu Hao put away the communicator. He had to break out of this strange area as fast as possible.

He realized that he’d been trapped in some sort of spatial loop. Only something with a powerful spatial ability could construct such a thing. It aggravated Lu Hao to realize this—how the hell could zombies of this magnitude set up camp this close to the SG base? He’d let his guard down.

But that just meant that when he got out of here, he had to eliminate these zombies with extreme prejudice.

A spatial ability user’s domain wasn’t infallible. It consumed a lot of energy, and harming the user was enough to make the domain falter. But Lu Hao suspected he wouldn’t be able to find that zombie in this space, so he had to go with the second option of escaping—
—Destroy everything until the space broke.

Heavy bolts of lightning surged around Lu Hao’s feet. When Lu Hao raised his head, his eyes sparked with blinding white energy.

A storm raged with Lu Hao in the center. Lightning shattered the earth and turned trees into ash. The world itself seemed to buckle beneath the rapid and powerful strikes. There was a veil desperately defending against the onslaught, but the lightning pierced the veil, and it burst.

Lu Hao stood in a forest.

There was a road several kilometers to the north. Zombies, all level six or below, ambled between the trees. There were no living humans in the area. The scent of smoke reached Lu Hao’s highly-tuned senses.

One second, Lu Hao was in the forest. In the next few moments, he raced onto the road.

There had been an explosion.

The remains of the SG truck were still burning, the gas fire unwilling to go out. Burnt zombies littered the ground. They looked to have been blown up by an explosive. Lu Hao found Zhang Luo’s corpse nearby. He’d been eaten and killed before he could turn into a zombie.

Hong Sheng wasn’t here.

Lu Hao reached into the flaming remains of the SG truck with his bare hands and pried the door open. He didn’t see a human body among the metal wreckage.

Immediately Lu Hao’s eyes scanned the ground for tracks. They zeroed in on traces of a body being dragged. He found impressions of boots against the dirt—they were small. A girl’s. And then there were two tracks: the girl’s alongside a man’s.

They lead into the forest.

Lu Hao’s heart started to beat faster. He could sense now how many zombies lurked in this area. There were too many for Hong Sheng to handle. Without thinking about it, Lu Hao’s body broke into a run as he chased down the trail of Hong Sheng and the girl. They had made their way to the side of the mountain, and then they had started going east—back toward the strange zombie and the pile of corpses, and where Lu Hao had first heard the girl’s scream.

But they hadn’t been able to make it to where Lu Hao had gone. There was a ravine along the path. Lu Hao smelled a trace of blood and jumped down to investigate. Some level 4 and 5 zombies approached, and he disintegrated them with a twitch of his hand.

Hong Sheng and the girl had fallen into the ravine, and the trail of blood lead deep inside a cave.

Lu Hao followed the trail to the end, and there, at the end of the cave, he saw—

A rocky stone wall.

It was a dead end, and yet there was no sign of Hong Sheng or the girl. Lu Hao’s brows furrowed, and he took a closer look. There was a burnt zombie on the ground. It seemed to have been chasing after people before being killed in self defense. The trail of blood clearly led to the end of the cave, yet there was nothing there. No bodies, no corpses, not even a pool of blood. Just traces of blood drops falling on the ground like breadcrumbs.

And those breadcrumbs stopped at the end of the cave.

If there were a spatial user, they could have hidden in their space. That would explain the disappearance. But since there was only Hong Sheng and the girl, and the girl seemed to have burned the zombie. That meant she had a fire ability, not a spatial one. Neither of them could have escaped through that method. Unless they had been abducted by the spatial zombie Lu Hao had encountered? Lu Hao’s pupils shrank to pinpoints at this thought.

Without realizing, Lu Hao’s fists started trembling. Traces of lightning sparked from his fingers.

It was then that Lu Hao heard a familiar noise. A very, very faint beeping sound. It was the beeping which came from Hong Sheng’s experimental lures, the canisters which mimicked human heat to try and distract zombies. It was coming from somewhere in front of Lu Hao.

But in front of him was only rock—wasn’t it?

Lightning ran up Lu Hao’s arm. He walked to the end of the cave and reached toward the rock. When his fingers brushed the surface, his brain told him, this is the end of the cave. You’re touching rock. There’s nothing here. Beneath your fingers is stone.

But the beeping was right there.

So Lu Hao walked forward, ignoring how his brain told him he was walking through irrefutable, solid rock—and then suddenly, he wasn’t in the cave anymore.

He had passed through the ‘rock wall’ and was in an underground metal room. In front of him was a door with an intercom panel at the side—but the door was wide open, and next to it was Device 002, beeping in alarm.

Every zombie Lu Hao came across turned into spatters on the ground. He was in the cooler, following the faint trace of human presence, when he pulled open the inconspicuous sliding door and found them.

Hong Sheng and the girl suffered from hypothermia. The girl’s wasn’t severe, but Hong Sheng, whose body temperature was always lower than normal to begin with, was on the brink of no return.

Lu Hao acted as fast as he could. He got them warmed up gradually, without shocking either of their bodies with intense heat. The girl woke up first, and after she realized Lu Hao was the SG leader, she started crying in relief. But then, upon seeing Hong Sheng was still unconscious, her tears turned fretful.

“Hong ge… Hong ge…” Yu Qiu anxiously called him. Hong Sheng was bundled in Lu Hao’s arms so that Lu Hao could transmit some of his body heat. However, there were several layers of clothing between them to prevent the intense heat Lu Hao radiated from scorching Hong Sheng.

Lu Hao’s brows furrowed at the familiar way Yu Qiu called Hong Sheng. But that was something he could deal with later. Hong Sheng was slowly warming, his blue lips less frightening than before, but he still wasn’t in the safe zone. “Can you move?” Lu Hao asked. Yu Qiu blinked at him tearily and nodded, and with that, Lu Hao told her, “You have two options. Run with me back to base, or climb on my back.”

“H—How far is the base?”

The distance was several kilometers too far for the young girl to run with her swollen ankle. Yu Qiu’s lip quivered and she approached Lu Hao to hitch a ride on his back. Lu Hao held Hong Sheng tightly in his arms, and with these two passengers, he quickly jogged out of the underground base.

Hong Sheng’s breath was terribly shallow. Each wavering intake felt like a claw raking against Lu Hao’s chest. How could he have been so late? If Hong Sheng hadn’t been smart enough to set the alarm, then he would already be…

A deep anger and grudge settled in Lu Hao’s chest, his eyes turning cold as he thought of the spatial zombie that had beaten him, and even the girl on his own back. All of these risks, and his own damning incompetence, had lead him almost losing Hong Sheng.

This entire situation was incredibly suspicious. If he were rational, he would have spent more time in the area to investigate clues before anyone had a chance to clean things up. But with Hong Sheng’s life in the balance, Lu Hao had to prioritize getting him to safety first. He’d return later to figure out just what the hell had been going on here.

Hong Sheng stirred halfway through the journey. His head was nestled next to Lu Hao’s neck to prevent him from being lashed by the wind, so Lu Hao couldn’t see him when he awoke. Yu Qiu, however, gasped softly.

“Hong Sheng,” Lu Hao spoke. “You’re going to be fine. Don’t worry. I’m getting you back to base. Just hang on, okay?” Hong Sheng’s trembling hands weakly gripped Lu Hao’s jacket. Lu Hao felt a slight nod, Hong Sheng’s disheveled hair brushing against his neck.

“Hong ge…” Yu Qiu’s soft voice drifted from behind Lu Hao. And then Lu Hao sensed that Hong Sheng mouthed something to her, his neck muscles moving, breaths softly leaving his mouth, but no words spoken aloud. Lu Hao’s eyes narrowed briefly, wondering what it was that Hong Sheng secretly told the girl. He couldn’t figure it out before Hong Sheng drifted back toward unconsciousness. The weight in his arms was negligible, and Hong Sheng’s limp form seemed as fragile as paper as Lu Hao nestled him close.

Lu Hao arrived back at base shortly. The guards were shocked to see him come back without Zhang Luo and the truck, and a Lu Hao stormed his way to the medical ward. The doctors flew into a flurry to get Yu Qiu looked at and Hong Sheng under care. Lu Hao stared them down for a good while, and once he was satisfied that Hong Sheng was being properly warmed, he turned to where Yu Qiu was being examined by a nurse.

After a moment to rein himself in, Lu Hao’s eyes lost their dark and severe look, turning calm and magnetic. As the nurse took the thermometer out of Yu Qiu’s ear, Lu Hao said to her, “Tell me happened to you and Hong Sheng.”

ars

Added some more fluff in here compared to my first draft. Also went back to read the original oneshot I'd made that lead to this spinoff. I think... it was written in 2015.................

I'm so old, guys. My bones are creaking.