Chapter 117: Rescue
A hoarse voice, thick with tears, trembled in the cold wind.
's blade stopped less than a centimeter from the boy's neck, the thin frost condensed on the edge giving off wisps of chill that reflected the terror brimming in the boy's three eyes.
The air seemed to freeze.
and raised their guns, closing in from two directions, muzzles steady on the boy, but their eyes also carried a trace of shock and doubt.
Was this thing a human or a ?
" , this..." lowered his voice.
Just moments ago, the scan results from had come through the trio's earpieces—the boy in front of them was most likely still human.
And rationally speaking, if an wanted to disguise itself, it wouldn't leave such a glaring flaw.
But the extra eye undeniably existed, and that was a real problem.
didn't answer . He just stared at the boy, brows tightly knit.
He could tell that the extra eye wasn't a disguise—it had truly grown out of flesh and blood, and he could even see the fine blood vessels around the edge of the eye socket.
Just then, hurried over from the rear of the convoy, carrying a medical kit.
He glanced at the eye on 's face, his expression unchanged. He deftly pulled on gloves and drew out a blood collection needle.
"Don't move. Just drawing a little blood to confirm your condition."
shrank back in fright, but at the slight frown in 's eyes, he froze in place.
The icy needle tip pierced his skin, and dark red blood was drawn into the test tube.
Then took the tube and ran back toward the convoy.
A few minutes later, his voice came through the earpiece to and the others.
The blood test results were likewise close to a normal human's—just severely malnourished.
With further confirmation, finally sheathed his short blade.
"What's your name?" then spoke, his tone calm and level.
Startled by the sudden question, the boy's lips trembled for a long time before he squeezed out a few words: "Zhao... ."
"Thud."
A chocolate bar landed at 's feet.
kept his gun raised, but his tone had softened considerably: "Here! Eat something first."
Across from him, looked down at the neatly wrapped chocolate bar, then up at this group of fully armed people whose expressions he couldn't read, and for a moment didn't dare pick it up.
"What are you standing there for? If we were going to make a move, we'd have done it already." relaxed a little too, his tone still wary, but no longer cold.
Only then did dare to bend down and, trembling, pick up the chocolate bar.
He clumsily tore open the wrapper and practically wolfed the whole bar into his mouth.
The rich sweetness exploded on his taste buds, and that long-missed happiness that came with high-calorie food instantly shattered his taut nerves.
"Wah..."
Then his tears fell—silently, one drop after another, all three eyes crying at once.
He crouched on the ground, chewing in big mouthfuls while wiping at his tears, as if afraid his tears would make people dislike him.
"You... who are you people?" After a long while, he finally raised his head, a faint, carefully restrained hope he didn't dare entertain shimmering in his three eyes.
" , , , ." crouched down, bringing his eyes level with the boy's. "My name is . I'm the captain of this team."
"Dawn... ..."
murmured the words to himself, his expression growing hesitant and uneasy.
The next second, he steeled his heart, dropped to his knees with a heavy thud before , and began to kowtow.
"Please! Please save them! My brother... my brother is dying!"
"Get up! No kneeling!" grabbed his arm, the force light but just enough to lift the boy up. "We're the government—we don't need people to kneel.
Lead the way. We came here to save people!"
***
The convoy didn't continue forward. Instead, it established a temporary defensive perimeter on the spot.
took only , , and with him, following on foot through several streets clogged with ruins and abandoned vehicles.
Along the way, told their story in fragments.
They were students at a nearby middle school. When the disaster broke out, they were saved by a doctor sister named " ," who set up a temporary base in a department store building nearby.
"Everything was total chaos then. A lot of classmates and teachers..." His voice dropped. "Later, Sister Yutang led people to pull the dozen or so of us out."
"Sister is especially amazing. She has a kind of... ability," gestured. "She can heal injured people, and fast.
Even if someone's been bitten by a , as long as they haven't fully turned, she can save them!
We later established a base in , right over there—" He pointed toward the southeast.
Hearing this, and the others exchanged glances, surprise in their eyes, but they didn't interrupt the boy's account.
"Then something happened." 's lips pressed into a thin line. "We left. Came here. Survived on our own."
"What happened?" couldn't help asking.
's eyes dimmed. He didn't answer directly, only quickened his pace.
"And the eye on your face..." changed the question.
"I don't know either," 's voice carried a hint of bewilderment and fear. "About a month ago, a... a monster far bigger than all the flesh-ball monsters we'd ever seen came here from the southwest.
The eyes all over its body were white, not colorful like other monsters'."
"After it came, it stayed in the north of the city, eating zombies nonstop.
And from then on, more and more zombies with eyes on their heads appeared in the city.
Later, fog formed around where that big thing was staying, and it never dispersed."
"Then one day," 's fingers clenched the hem of his clothes, "we started growing eyes on our bodies."
"No warning at all?"
"No. We fell asleep, and when we woke up, they were there." shook his head, touched the extra eye on his right cheek, his tone bitter. "I'm one of the lucky ones. Mine grew on my face—ugly, but it doesn't get in the way of work.
Some people have them on their backs. They can't even sleep."
"My brother... an eye grew in the palm of his right hand. When he clenches his fist, the pain is unbearable."
was silent for two seconds, then asked one final question: "Does that eye have vision?"
hesitated, then finally nodded. "It can see. But the world it sees is different."
"What do you mean?" asked, puzzled.
"The world it sees is blood-red. Buildings grow out of a stretch of scarlet flesh, and in some places, even though there are buildings, it can't see them."
thought for a moment, then gave this answer.
looked up at the drone flying alongside them, and at the same moment, 's voice came through his earpiece.
[The white giant should be the third-stage form of the , but the one in the fog might already be at the fourth stage. For that anomalous ability, you can ask for more intel; later, collect blood samples from all the survivors here. has already departed and will carry the blood samples back to the research center for study.]
Hearing this, nodded silently.
They crossed two streets, turned into an alley, then climbed over a half-collapsed wall.
stopped at the entrance to a semi-underground garage, glanced back at them, then knocked on the iron door in a specific rhythm.
A moment later, the door was pushed open a crack from the inside.
The underground garage was very dim, lit only by a few emergency lights powered by batteries, their glow faint.
The moment they stepped inside, a damp smell mingled with blood and medicine hit them in the face.
By the light, they could make out twenty or thirty figures sitting or lying in the corners, all young—all seemingly in their early teens.
Most were gaunt and sallow, their eyes numb. When strangers entered, a flicker of fear surfaced in their indifferent gazes, but they barely reacted, as if they didn't even have the strength to be afraid.
On their bodies, they all bore more or less of those extra eyeballs—some on the sides of their necks, some on the backs of their hands, some behind their ears.
" !"
A voice rang out from behind the crowd.
A short-haired girl stood up, blocking the way in front of the children.
She looked fifteen or sixteen, not tall, but she stood very straight.
On her left cheek was a festering scar that ran from her cheekbone down to her jaw—clearly old, never properly treated.
In her hand, she clutched a broken water pipe tightly, her gaze tense and fierce, like a stray cat with its hackles raised.
"Who are they?"
"Sister !" called out anxiously. "They're good people! They came to save us!"
The girl called ignored him, only staring hard at , not saying a word.
paid no mind to her hostility, merely signaling behind him to put down the medical kit.
"We mean no harm," he said. " 's brother has a high fever, right? If we don't deal with it soon, his will be in danger."
The girl called 's gaze moved back and forth between and the medical kit on the ground, clearly still hesitating.
Seeing this, hastily pulled the girl aside and explained something in a low voice.
"How can you just trust anyone like that!" kept her voice low, but the anger in her tone was unmistakable. "At the very least, you should have come back to discuss it first!"
"I'm sorry, sis. I... I was too anxious. It's my fault." hung his head in dejection.
"How many times have I told you! Stop keeping 'sorry' on your lips—it's useless!" The girl glared at him with bitter disappointment.
This exchange wasn't kept very quiet, so and the others, who were standing by, heard every word clearly.
At first listen, it was almost amusing—clearly still a child, yet desperately trying to play the "adult."
But only felt a pang of sadness. Behind some kinds of "maturity" was simply fate's helplessness pressing down too early on tender, young shoulders.
"Your wariness is justified," spoke up at the right moment, cutting off their dispute. "But before judging whether someone is friend or foe, at least look at what they've done."
He signaled and to distribute food and water.
As fragrant compressed biscuits and purified water were handed to those children, a chorus of swallowing saliva filled the basement.
In the end, the craving for food overpowered fear and wariness.
watched her companions wolfing down their food, and though she still kept her face stiff, she no longer blocked the way.
In the corner, 's younger brother, , lay curled up in a pile of rags.
The boy was about eleven or twelve, his face flushed bright red with fever, his lips cracked and dry.
His right hand was wrapped in cloth strips, and through them, the closed extra eyeball in his palm was faintly visible.
His breathing was rapid and shallow, his forehead frighteningly hot.
immediately stepped forward, quickly examined , and fed him fever-reducing medicine.
Soon, the boy's rapid breathing steadied.
"It should just be a high fever from an ordinary infection. Nothing serious." said a few words to reassure the worried .
Hearing this, 's entire body relaxed. He plopped down onto the ground and grinned foolishly.
The atmosphere in the basement finally eased.
Having eaten and regained a bit of strength, the children now looked at and the others with less numbness in their eyes, more curiosity, and extremely restrained hope.
"You've... really been through a lot, surviving on your own." looked at these children, the oldest no more than seventeen or eighteen, and sighed with genuine admiration.
"It's not that we're capable," the girl called pursed her lips and shook her head. "It's Sister Yutang who saved us."
"Sister Yutang?" recalled the doctor sister had mentioned earlier. "What happened to her?"
At the mention of that name, the atmosphere in the basement, which had just eased, instantly grew heavy again.
Beside him, 's fists clenched suddenly, a chilling hatred seeping into his voice.
"Sister Yutang... she was captured by those bastards!"
"What do you mean? Explain clearly." 's tone was calm, but he keenly caught the way both children's bodies tensed at the same time.
"Don't worry. We're the government. If you've suffered injustice, we will not sit by and do nothing."
The girl took a deep breath and began to speak.
"At first, Sister Yutang led us in taking over and built a base. She had an ability. She could heal wounds and cure illnesses. She was incredibly capable.
Later, she kept going out to rescue people and bring them back, and the numbers grew..."
"There was a man, named... ." Her lips twisted into an arc of disgust. "When he arrived, he had two broken ribs and internal bleeding. Sister Yutang went through a tremendous effort to save his ."
"The first day, he even said Sister Yutang was his lifesaver, and that he would go through fire and water for her without hesitation."
"The second day, he started accusing Sister Yutang, openly and in subtle ways, of not needing to keep going out to rescue people," picked up the thread, his eyes full of hatred. "Saying the department store had limited supplies and couldn't support idle people—that every person she saved was harming everyone else."
"Pah!" The girl spat. "'Everyone's resources' my ass! Which of those supplies, which of that base, wasn't obtained through Sister Yutang leading people to plan and bring back? In the end, it all became resources they took for granted!"
"And then?" could already guess the rest of the story, but he asked anyway.
"Then that man roped together a bunch of people and staged some kind of vote," sneered coldly. "The thirty-plus people Sister Yutang had saved all stood on their side. It was nothing but a farce staged by a pack of beasts!"
"After seizing power, they drove all the elderly and all children under seven out of the base, saying that keeping dead weight meant not treating everyone's lives as lives."
's voice trembled with anger, her nails digging into her palms.
"We wouldn't accept it. We wanted to fight back, but that man could actually control zombies, and many of our people were bitten."
"Then... we escaped under Sister Yutang's cover, but she was captured by them." 's teeth ground audibly. "They said... since Sister liked saving people so much, she should contribute her strength for 'everyone's survival.'"
"Those animals!" slammed a fist against the wall nearby and cursed.
said nothing, but he had already moved to the garage exit, practically wanting to go find those animals' hideout right now.
's expression barely changed, but anyone who knew him would know that the calmer he appeared at this moment, the greater the fire burning in his heart.
"How many of them are there? Where are they?" he asked coolly.
"There are... quite a lot of them. That man who can control zombies built his own camp around the department store," continued. "He said he was going to build humanity's final bastion, but in reality, it's nothing but doing whatever he wants, lawless and unchecked, using his ability to force people to obey him just to stay alive.
Anyone who didn't submit and couldn't get away would be fed to the zombies he keeps."
[The drone has arrived at the target area. Confirmed: the other side numbers approximately twelve hundred, holding a small number of firearms, with simple defensive fortifications.]
At the same moment, 's voice sounded in 's earpiece.
At this very moment, and his men were far from the only ones burning with rage—if not for concern over innocents, would have already leveled the place with missiles.
"Understood." nodded.
"Boss? What do we do next?" asked.
"First, take the children back," turned around. "Then... we go kill those beasts!"