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Chapter 10: The Line-Up
No, no… this isn’t right.
Calm down, Robin. Take a step back and analyze the situation carefully.
Hands clasped behind her back, Robin paced back and forth in front of the shelter door. The curly-haired man ahead of her—and the horde of zombies trailing behind him—turned their heads in unison, tracking her every move like synchronized marionettes.
"How long are you going to keep pacing? Why don’t we just wait here for someone to close the door?" the curly-haired man muttered, annoyance creeping into his voice.
"No one else is coming," Robin replied flatly.
"Don’t be so sure about that. I mean, you showed up out of nowhere from the corridor, didn’t you?"
Robin didn’t respond. She forced herself to focus, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the grotesque figures shuffling behind the man. The zombies bore an unsettling resemblance to humans—it was easier to think of them that way.
This place was bizarre. There was the curly-haired man who could compel people to queue against their will, plants gone berserk, tablets with internal biological structures, and now a zombie virus. Anything seemed possible.
Perhaps those infected by the virus could still be saved.
Robin had always prided herself on her resilience. Back in school, she’d earned a reputation for having nerves of steel after witnessing a guard’s death—a traumatic event that had hardened her against fear. She quickly confirmed that the zombies were fully absorbed in their orderly procession, showing no signs of breaking free. With that reassurance, her mind began racing again.
The top priority was clear: escape and survive.
The shelter door resembled the kind of round, heavy vault doors often seen in movies—thicker than Robin’s arm and impenetrable once closed. Inside, there were sufficient food and water supplies to last until rescue arrived, and the light on the internal communication phone blinked steadily, indicating it was operational. However, no matter how much she shouted, there was no response, and the light labeled “Control Room” remained dark.
But this life-saving door, weighing several tons, couldn’t be shut manually, let alone have its locking mechanism engaged by sheer human strength.
The cold, unyielding control panel responded to Robin’s visitor pass with a simple message: [Please locate a C-level or higher employee of The Management Bureau to activate the console].
Well, that was just great. This shelter now served only as a source of psychological comfort, nothing more.
Mud Truck, as an insider capable of casually tossing classified documents around, surely knew all this. So why had he sent her through this specific location?
Her gaze shifted to the corridor clogged with the line of undead. They weren’t even halfway through the escape route yet; this wasn’t the end.
Of course—not the end. To contain the “Doomsday Seed,” military forces would soon arrive to conduct a carpet-bombing operation. Perhaps the lethal radiation would activate alongside it. Staying inside the shelter wouldn’t guarantee safety—it wasn’t designed to withstand the fallout from the Doomsday Seed’s containment breach!
So Mud Truck’s decision to send her past this unsealed shelter carried deeper significance.
According to the curly-haired man, she’d been unconscious for roughly five minutes. That left less than half an hour before the window for escape closed completely.
Should she leave immediately? Or investigate further?
Where exactly did the next leg of the route lead again...?
Abruptly, Robin stopped pacing and fixed her gaze on the curly-haired man, who was muttering under his breath. "Are you a containment object or an employee?"
"Me?" He squirmed under her scrutiny. "I suppose I’m both, if you must ask. I do have a containment number." His tone soured. "But I hate that damn number. Everyone here insists on calling me by it. If you must address me, call me ‘Ray.’ instead of CVA-D-9013."
"I see..." Robin clenched her fist and smacked it into her palm. "Now I understand!"
"What exactly do you understand?" Ray grumbled, convinced that the jittery woman in front of him was the one who should’ve been locked away.
"Boss designed the escape route to pass through here for a reason—to uncover why no one uses this shelter. No, scratch that—he wants me to investigate the truth behind the viral outbreak in this area!" Robin straightened her posture, slipping seamlessly into the role of investigator. "These soldiers didn’t fire a single shot before they were infected, leaving no one to stop the zombies from running rampant. Something fishy is going on here!" Without realizing it, she’d switched from referring to Mud Truck formally to calling him “Boss.” Turning to Ray, she asked, "Under normal circumstances, how is this shelter supposed to function?"
Impressed by her composure, Ray felt his own anxiety ease. He thought back carefully. "Employees enter the nearest shelter and wait for the rapid-response team to handle the situation. I participated in their safety drills once. Normally, after the alarm sounds, someone comes to escort me inside. But this time, I waited for ages and no one came, so I ventured out myself. All I found were corpses along the way, so I ended up waiting here."
Robin crouched down, dragging her finger across the floor to mark a spot. She gestured for Ray to come over, but instead, he stepped into the shelter.
"Whatever you do, don’t look at the back of the last zombie in line—or you’ll end up joining them."
Ray led the way, the string of zombies obediently following behind him like a macabre conga line. Once Robin covered her eyes to avoid accidental glances, Ray weaved through the shelter in loops, ensuring the final zombie in line remained trapped inside. Satisfied, he emerged with a map of the facility’s layout.
As the saying goes—when life hands you the ability to make people queue, use it to maintain some semblance of order.
The Management Bureau had explained to him that it was a form of cognitive contamination, something to do with memes something—or so he gathered, though he didn’t fully understand. Whatever the case, people who saw his back would involuntarily fall into line behind him, forming a long, snaking queue. If no one forcibly interrupted the process, the line would just keep stretching indefinitely. He had long since grown accustomed to having a crowd trailing behind him, and at this point, even if the ones lining up were zombies, it didn’t faze him. As long as they were busy queuing, they couldn’t do anything else.
"You can open your eyes now," Ray said, pointing to the map. "My room is here, and we’re currently here."
"Ah, I see. So the contamination from ‘C-888’ spread from this direction..."
Robin recalled the open containment chamber she’d seen upon exiting the stairwell.
"Don’t be ridiculous. A dangerous pathogen like the zombie virus wouldn’t possibly start with a C designation!"
"Huh?" Robin blinked in confusion.
Time was running short, and she couldn’t afford to pore over the mountain of documents in detail. However, she skimmed the profiles of the most high-priority containment objects. Ray’s reminder jogged her memory—the zombie virus was indeed classified as Class B.
Then what was the escaped “C-888”? And where had it gone?
When Robin posed the question, Ray hesitated, his eyes darting around as he offered a vague response.
"I’ve seen people in hazmat suits entering with feed and small toys—like the kind you’d put in a hamster cage. They’d leave within minutes, claiming the air inside was toxic. Probably some kind of anomalous animal. I don’t know the specifics of the CD classifications, but safer things tend to be stored in higher floor levels—like me."
"So maybe it fled because of the zombies..."
Robin exhaled in relief, recalibrating her theory about the virus’s origin.
Thus, the highly dangerous virus originated from the lower floor levels but erupted en masse on B2. According to the records, the zombie virus acted swiftly, transforming victims into shambling horrors within seconds. Transmission occurred not only via bites but also through aerosolized particles—if the victim inhaled a sufficient quantity.
Ray had approached the shelter from the southern corridor, encountering only corpses and no zombies along the way. Meanwhile, Robin had taken the eastern route, which teemed with undead hordes.
On the same floor, large-scale infections coexisted with untouched areas—an anomaly begging explanation. Most zombies appeared to have emerged directly from rooms, while soldiers succumbed without resistance. The trio trailing Ray stood out as exceptions—they bled from every orifice, cause unknown—but none bore bite marks. Their gas masks hung unused on their utility belts, and their weapons remained holstered. Employees hadn’t even left their offices. Had they been instantly infected before hearing the evacuation alarm?
Viruses don’t walk or strategize. They can’t ensure precise delivery to targets without being diluted or dispersed.
Moreover, the virus needed to reach the upper floors before the soldiers donned their masks.
Slowly, Robin tilted her head upward, her gaze locking onto the wide ventilation ducts embedded in the ceiling. A chill ran down her spine.
Yes, Facility 031 was underground, equipped with a powerful ventilation system.
This was deliberate sabotage.
Someone had orchestrated two containment breaches simultaneously. Before the Doomsday Seed broke loose, they unleashed the zombie virus too, using the ventilation system to disperse it throughout the building. The employees never heard the alarm triggered by the Doomsday Seed’s containment failure—they were silently slaughtered by an invisible killer.
Perhaps the perpetrator lacked sufficient quantities of the virus, releasing it only in select areas of B2. Hence the eerie absence of survivors in this particular shelter.
Good God, who could this mole be?
Cold-blooded and utterly indifferent to human life, this person was the real monster.
Lost in thought, Robin felt a vibration against her back.
Startled, the female engineer reached for her tablet. As the screen lit up, all message logs reappeared.
Boss had defeated the insider and was back online!
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