With this thought, Lisa Xi’s gaze rose to look at Hong Sheng, whose head was down.

Hong Sheng took back the notebook. He wrote another report for her. This time, detailing his encounter with Ji Ling, and the zombie man who looked exactly like a human.

The two of them considered this information silently.

They both thought, but didn’t say the dark reality in their minds.

Ji Ling.

Lisa Xi said, “Lu Hao went to investigate that lab with her.”

Hong Sheng shook his head. Lu Hao wouldn’t find anything even remotely related to the truth. Even if Hong Sheng had left any evidence behind, he was sure by the time Lu Hao got there, everything would have been emptied out. That person was very annoying when it came to fooling Lu Hao.

“What is she after? Does she really want to wipe out humanity?” Lisa Xi cursed. “This girl really thinks she has everyone eating out of the palm of her hand. The SG, the military, the mafia, even the zombies… fuck! Everything ties back to her!”

All of the powerful forces in the world were all netted in a web, and Ji Ling stood in the center. She was the spy who was the SG’s main point of contact with other powers, and in the SG, she had the unshakable trust of many survivors whom she had personally saved.

The two people in the lab solemnly realized that the people in the SG, and maybe even Lu Hao himself, might not believe them if they said—

That this perfect, lovely girl really didn’t give a damn about them.

That in this already horrifying, wretched world, something even more dark and sinister was brewing behind her.

“You trust me with this.”

In the end, Lisa Xi felt she had to say something.

“Why did you come to me?”

Hong Sheng was stubbornly looking down, refusing to communicate or make eye contact. But in the end, the answer was obvious. Lisa Xi was the researcher dedicated to making the vaccine for the zombie virus. If she wasn’t standing against the zombies, who would be?

Lisa Xi found a place to sit down, tired and weary. After all these years of fighting, only to find out that it was only by Ji Ling’s whim that they were all still alive.

After all, with her ability to avoid being sensed, she could easily bring down the entire base. She could assassinate the major leaders and destroy all of humanity any time she wished.

As for why she didn’t?

Maybe she wanted humanity to survive, but first she needed to let them have hope, then bring them to their knees.

Truly a scheming bitch.

Lisa Xi laughed coldly. She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes.

When she calmed down, she looked at Hong Sheng with a cold, determined face. “From now on, you’re my assistant. You’ll keep watch. I can’t accept lying down to accept defeat. Either we fight to the end, or we die having done all we could.”

And then, as if trying to tighten the lure around Hong Sheng, Lisa Xi pulled the corner of her mouth in a humorless smirk.

“After all, we’ll need to work together to convince Lu Hao.”

 

 

Meanwhile.

On Lu Hao’s side, he sat at the camp in the wilds. Over the past weeks, he had listened to the radio messages his people had sent from all over the region.

“C City is a ghost town.”

“I’ve heard back from the survivors at B City. They’re barely hanging on…”

“Nothing from M City.”

The reports had come in one after the other—the surrounding cities had cut off contact. Whether they had fallen, or their communications somehow couldn’t reach, Lu Hao didn’t know. But it became clear that the region around F City, including the SG base, had become like an isolated island, separated from the rest of the land by the vast number of zombies surrounding it. It was impossible to know if the other cities had suffered the same fate without his knowledge.

There were less than ten thousand people left alive in this region.

Very soon, the scales would tip. That number would go down to zero.

“Lu Hao,” Ji Ling said, her eyes worried and earnest, “We can’t afford to fight against the other forces right now. We have to band together to fight off the zombies. Otherwise, there might be no one left…”

She tried very hard to convince him, all while pretending to be soft.

The elite group of SG members had set up camp two days out of F City. Ji Ling had come along; her task was to sneak into the base of the military in F City and find information about the underground laboratories. At the same time, Lu Hao planned to discuss with the military leaders and give them an ultimatum.

Lu Hao found it strange how Ji Ling was so concerned with ‘keeping the peace’, when tens of thousands of people had already died under the hands of other humans.

She must have thought herself very clever, or Lu Hao very stupid.

Lu Hao looked out the window of the house they’d taken refuge in. One of the SG members had set up a barrier around the house to keep zombies from attacking. It was temporarily calm, but any moment could lead to a massacre. Lu Hao said, “You told me that the experiment to create obedient super-zombies was a failure.”

“Yes,” Ji Ling said, looking up at Lu Hao with a gentle worry.

Lu Hao smiled. It was a cold, emotionless one, and as he looked at Ji Ling, there was not a trace of joy in his eyes. “But look,” he said. “They didn’t succeed, yet so many people died anyway.” He threw a map of the region in front of her, and on it, dozens of red Xs crossed out former human strongholds. “They still haven’t succeeded, so who do you think they’ll target next?”

“Lu Hao! You can’t possibly think F City is behind this…”

“Ji Ling.”

The tone of Lu Hao’s voice made her stop. It was like the two of them stood on the tip of a knife.

Lu Hao said, slow and calm, “You’ve been getting in too deep. The SG has been your home for seven years.” At this, Ji Ling’s breath stopped. Her watery eyes did not move from Lu Hao, but the man seemed like he was miles away, even as he looked right at her. “Your choice is coming up. What you choose in F City should be the road you’ll follow to the end.”

Through all these years of surviving through hell, Lu Hao’s bottom line was very simple.

Treat human life with respect, and work together to survive.

The forces leading F City had trampled on this bottom line, and as far as he was concerned—anyone who supported them deserved to be cut off.

The two of them sat in silence after that. Eventually, one of the SG called Lu Hao over, and he left to go discuss with them. Ji Ling was left sitting in the camp.

Unseen by anyone, her fists slowly clenched tight, and the corner of her lip pulled in an deep expression of contempt.

 

 

When the SG caravan arrived at F City, the trucks and jeeps covered in zombie gore, the gates to the F City base reluctantly opened to allow them passage. The outsides of the vehicles were sprayed clean and lead to the vehicle storage, and Lu Hao and his crew got out to go into the human quarantine and disinfecting area.

The people working the ground had changed. Before, it used to be tightly managed by the military, but now the ones handling these procedures were ordinary ability users and survivors who looked gaunt and exhausted. Behind them were their overseers, dangerous-looking men with tattoos creeping up their shoulders and faces.

Evidently, the triad was now in power.

Lu Hao confirmed this when he walked into the meeting room, escorted by F City’s guards. The SG members were on standby outside the room, and as per the plan, Ji Ling had slipped away before anyone noticed her presence.

The man in the meeting room was dangerous.

In the physical sense, Lu Hao was still superior. But the man seated at the desk had the bloody aura of a cruel tyrant, the kind of man who would massacre hundreds without a care. Lu Hao could see that in his narrow, knife-like eyes. They stared at Lu Hao, looking more like a cold reptile’s than a human’s.

The man raised his wrist, revealing a gaudy gold watch wrapped over a leather-gloved hand. “I’ll give you five minutes,” he said. “Then you can take your survivors and fuck off.” The arrogance was bone-deep as the man put a smoking cigar to his mouth. Considering how far into the end of times this was, the man had obviously saved that cigar just to grandstand in moments like this.

Lu Hao didn’t bother asking who he was. The leader of the triad faction, the one who had taken over F City and pressed down the military, was a man known only to the outside world as Kai. They’d never met before, but Lu Hao knew a few things from Ji Ling’s reconnaissance. That meant Kai knew a few things about Lu Hao, too.

So Lu Hao cut to the chase.

“Our factions are the only strongholds left. Neither of us can survive the next zombie wave.”

The death of all humans in this area was soon to come. Lu Hao knew that the only way for either of their groups to survive was to break through the entrapment and escape to another location, and Kai surely knew that as well. But for a ruthless triad boss, it was likely that he would only take the most useful people with him, and everyone else would be left behind to die.

That was why Lu Hao said, “The civilians of F City will come with me. Agree, and my people won’t be hostile.”

But the triad boss wouldn’t agree so easily. Kai sneered at Lu Hao’s words. He took out the cigar from his mouth. The end of the cigar was bitten harshly, almost like it’d been cut apart where it met his mouth. “What an idiotic assumption. You think I’ll run?”

“I suppose if your experiment succeeded, you might have a winning chance,” Lu Hao said calmly. “If that zombie-like man can command other zombies, then even the tens of millions surrounding F City wouldn’t be an issue. Just curious if you think he’ll listen to you. How long do you think he would let humans survive, when the fifty-thousand survivors from last year have already dwindled down to just your people and mine?”

Lu Hao was making a bet with his words. He wagered that despite Kai’s position as the new head of F City, he wasn’t actually the one at the top of the chain. The zombie-like man whose power suppressed even Lu Hao could crush everyone if he so chose. He wouldn’t be subservient to Kai. He wouldn’t be under the thumb of any human faction at all. But the only reason why he hadn’t wiped out humanity completely, and the reason why he hadn’t even killed Lu Hao when he had the chance—was because he had another purpose.

Who knew if it was for research, or to fulfill someone else’s orders.

Kai stared at Lu Hao without saying a word.

It was a clear analysis of the situation. Indeed, if Kai were going to leave F City, there wouldn’t be any point in fighting against the SG just to keep them from picking up the trash he didn’t want.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kai said.

The triad boss grinned around his cigar, his teeth jagged, sharp, and distinctly inhuman.

“Neither of us will be leaving F City.”