Contamination Overture

Chapter 1

Sun Ying walked down the wide, cold corridor in her blue protective suit.

Two others walked beside her, dressed in the same uniform, name tags and titles clipped to their chests. No one spoke, no one looked sideways — but the Containment Rooms on either side were impossible to ignore.

They were packed with people, some still human-looking, some not — a few so far gone that only slick, grasping tendrils remained, dragging themselves up the clear walls of their cells.

Sun Ying let out a slow breath and told herself to get used to it.

After all, this was the Contaminant Control and Containment Center — and she was The Doctor's intern here.

They wound through the corridor and around two more turns before they finally reached their destination.

This was a temporary screening checkpoint the center had set up. Survivors pulled out of contamination events with no apparent symptoms were sent here for a week-long isolation. Only once they cleared that were they transferred to a human settlement.

'How many do we have today?' the senior doctor at the front asked.

'Five,' Sun Ying said quickly. 'From five different contamination events. One of them is on their last day of isolation.'

All three of them visibly relaxed at that.

Surviving a contamination event without getting infected was rare enough. Staying fully normal was rarer still — most survivors would show signs of Aberration within seven days, and fewer than one percent actually made it out of the Containment Center within the week. Were they really about to see a Miracle today?

The thought put a little warmth in everyone's chest.

The senior doctor pushed the door open. Stepping inside, Sun Ying saw the person they'd been talking about — he was sitting on the narrow single bed, and looked up at the sound of them entering.

He was, without question, a very good-looking man. Pale skin that seemed almost to glow under the containment center's harsh white light. Eyes dark as ink, with a small beauty mark beneath the corner of one. A mouth that curved naturally upward, and a pair of bright, slightly slanted eyes that held a faint smile even when his face was still — the kind of face that made you feel immediately at ease.

The senior male doctor glanced at the live readings on the wall.

'Shen Wang. Day seven of isolation. Contamination Level: 51%.'

The senior doctor frowned. 'That's high.'

'When he was first brought in it was 88%,' the male doctor said, reading from the file. 'It's been dropping steadily ever since. No signs of Aberration at any point, cognition fully intact. The attending thinks the elevated Contamination Level might mean he's recently awakened an ability.'

'An Aberrant?' The senior doctor flipped through the earlier test reports. 'Where was he picked up?'

'The contamination event seven days ago — Grade-B Contaminant, Plum Rain. He's the only survivor.'

Sun Ying listened to the two of them talk while she filled in the readings by the book.

Contamination Level 51%, heart rate 73, psychological status stable, mental status stable... aside from the Contamination Level being outside the normal range, he was almost unsettlingly calm — as if nearly dying in a contamination event and then being locked in this half-human, half-nightmare place for a week wasn't anything worth losing sleep over.

She was almost a little impressed.

'Looks like everything checks out except confirming whether he's an Aberrant,' the male doctor said with a nod. 'He's probably been through something bad before. That's the only way someone gets this calm.'

'Calm is good.' The senior doctor signed the report.

'So many people have let fear speed up their contamination and turned into monsters. Mental stability is one of the most valuable things you can have right now — even we doctors need nerves of steel.'

After signing, she knocked on the wall to get the attention of the person inside.

'Mr. Shen, your readings are looking great. You can leave tomorrow.'

He seemed to hear her. Sun Ying watched him smile — a quiet, easy smile on an already striking face, and somehow it made him even harder to look away from.

'He's cleared. Next one.' The male doctor pulled out the next file.

The three of them turned to go, but they hadn't taken more than a few steps before the alarm cut through the air and made all of them jump.

Red lights strobed through the corridor, layering a cold, tense pulse over the already stark white of the containment center.

'Warning — patient escape in Containment Room C052!'

'Warning — all medical personnel, proceed to the shelter immediately!'

'Warning — security in the vicinity, respond to Containment Room C052 immediately!'

The male doctor swore under his breath. The senior doctor's expression, half-hidden behind her protective visor, wasn't much better.

Patient escapes almost never happened at the containment center. When they did, it meant the patient had deteriorated badly — probably Aberrated into a Grade-E Contaminant or higher. That was the only scenario where they'd have the capability to break out.

Which meant: whoever had just escaped was extremely dangerous.

'Come on, shelter, now!' The senior doctor reacted first, waving them toward the safety signs.

Sun Ying stumbled after them and caught her breath once they reached the shelter entrance. 'C052 — patient was flagged as high-alert in Contamination Zone C, currently classified as moderate Aberration.'

The male doctor looked at the senior doctor. 'Isn't Zone C pretty close to the screening checkpoint?'

She frowned at that. 'It is. But there's a specialized isolation barrier between the contamination zone and the screening area, and Aberrant Humans have simple behavioral patterns — they tend to move toward the center of the contamination zone looking for food. We've got attractants set up there.'

Even so, she wasn't fully at ease. She headed into the monitoring room and pulled up the feed for Containment Room C052.

The containment room was empty. No visible wall damage. But the white single bed inside had been torn to shreds, like something large and feral had been caged in there. Sun Ying stared at what was left of it and felt a cold creep up her spine — if they'd been in the room when it happened, she suspected they'd have ended up in the same state as that bed.

'Where did it go? How did it get out?' the male doctor asked.

The senior doctor rewound the footage, and it didn't take long before they saw the whole thing.

The patient was barely recognizable as human — body gone soft, viscous fluid soaking through his clothes, pupils narrowed to vertical slits. He just pressed himself against the wall, and then slowly, impossibly, pushed himself into the ventilation duct and disappeared.

The male doctor sucked in a sharp breath. 'A snake?'

'Highly Aberrated. Body elongated like that — it can squeeze into any narrow space.'

While the three of them were still tense with worry, a voice — low and slightly cool — came over the emergency broadcast.

'This is Zhou Xiangzhe. Report the escaped patient's location to me.'

Everyone in the room froze. After a long moment, the male doctor reached up and touched his ear. 'Did I just hear — Zhou Xiangzhe?'

'He's at the containment center?!'

'Nobody would fake Captain Zhou's name right now.' The senior doctor was already sharper, already moving. 'Find the patient's location. Now.'

Sun Ying quietly let out a breath behind them. The moment she heard Zhou Xiangzhe's name, the knot in her chest loosened.

She wasn't the only one.

Zhou Xiangzhe was a rare Grade S Aberrant — the head of the Anti-Pollutant Special Task Force, known to everyone, called the guardian of Central City.

As long as he was here, nothing was going to go wrong.

'Got it!' The male doctor suddenly enlarged one of the feeds. 'We have to get there — now!'

Sun Ying looked at the monitor.

On screen was someone they knew well — the man set to leave tomorrow, Mr. Shen, standing at the transparent wall of his Containment Room, head tilted back, looking up at something. The camera shifted, and through the ventilation opening in the ceiling of the containment room, an alabaster, elongated head was pushing through — human features plastered across it like a mask, like something out of a ghost story.

C052's patient.

It hadn't followed the attractants toward the center of the contamination zone at all. It had crawled through the ventilation system all the way to Shen Wang's Containment Room.

Aberrant Humans were generally not a pretty sight, but Sun Ying had never seen one this ugly.

A face more than twice the length of any normal person's, pale features crammed onto it, long and misshapen — the hideous snake-headed figure slid out of the vent. But Shen Wang didn't step back the way anyone normal would. He stood exactly where he was, watching the thing with what looked almost like curiosity.

The Aberrant Human hesitated, then opened its jaws to bare its fangs — more a defensive display than an actual attack.

Before Sun Ying could make sense of what she was seeing, the male doctor let out a sharp sound. She snapped her eyes to the monitor, and when the image registered, her own eyes went wide.

Shen Wang had the Aberrant Human by the throat.

His grip was hard — fingertips gone faintly white with the pressure — and the Aberrant Human thrashed violently, but he had it pinned against the clear wall of the Containment Room. It could barely move. The only sound it made was a low, continuous hiss.

...

Zhou Xiangzhe arrived at the location and walked in on that.

A young man with a striking face, standing before the transparent isolation wall. His expression was entirely harmless — a faint smile in those bright eyes, and the pale, slender fingers closed around the Aberrant Human's throat looked almost delicate. Put him online and he'd probably have a massive following.

But this same soft-looking, harmless person had just snapped an Aberrant Human's neck with his bare hands.

He seemed to notice someone had arrived. Shen Wang let go, and the Aberrant Human dropped to the floor with a heavy thud, its body boneless, sprawled like something that had never had a skeleton to begin with.

'Hi,' Zhou Xiangzhe heard him say.

He didn't respond. Zhou Xiangzhe looked at the readings on the wall beside the containment room.

The Contamination Level had been climbing, but it had stalled out at 63% and stopped moving.

'You're different from the other doctors,' Shen Wang tried again. 'You're not wearing a protective suit.'

Zhou Xiangzhe opened his communicator, expression flat. 'Aberrant Human is no longer showing signs of life. Logistics, come handle it.'

He said that, then turned and actually looked at Shen Wang.

The young man was smiling at him.

Like a kid who'd been bored for days and had finally stumbled onto something almost interesting.