Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Jiang Mengchi's Distortion wasn't that bad — milder, at least, than any Distorted Human Shen Wang had seen at the Containment Center.

Black veins spread and bulged across his neck, climbing under his skin like living roots, a strand or two creeping up onto his face here and there, like a living parasite.

「It's alive. It moves around inside me a lot. After it showed up I started feeling weak and drained and out of it, and it's gotten worse over time.」 Jiang Mengchi didn't seem to care much. 「Moderate Distortion at most. It won't kill me.」

Shen Wang didn't much like minding other people's business either, so when Jiang said that, he just changed the subject.

「How big is this sealed-off area?」

Jiang Mengchi thought about it. 「The whole Qianzhen Residential Area, probably. I'm not sure, because this Space distorts now and then — I get teleported to some random spot in the compound.」

「I've even wondered — maybe one day it'll teleport me right out of here.」

「Nice thing to hope for.」 Shen Wang smiled. 「Let's go check out the rooftop, then. Stand high, see far — first let's pin down how big this place is.」

「I wouldn't recommend that.」 Jiang Mengchi shook his head. 「The rooftop's that woman's turf. Go up there and you'll run into her for sure, and the closer you get to a Pollutant, the faster you get Contaminated.」

「Then there's even less to worry about.」 Shen Wang stood up. He met Jiang Mengchi's eyes calmly. 「I'm a Class C Mutant, about to break through to Class B. And that woman's a Class D Pollutant.」

「She can't Contaminate you — and she sure can't Contaminate me.」

Jiang Mengchi stared at Shen Wang, startled, and only spoke after a long while. 「A near-Class-B Mutant? Dispatch Team member — which squad are you with?」

「Polaris.」

The instant he heard the name, Shen Wang watched a flicker of hope reignite in Jiang Mengchi's nearly dead eyes.

In Central City's eyes, Zhou Xiangzhe and his Polaris were the very word for Miracle.

At this moment, nothing was more thrilling than a Mutant saying, 'I'm Polaris.'

「Polaris — of course. I understand now.」 Jiang Mengchi got to his feet at once. 「The Pollution Control Center has a tradition of deferring to a higher-ranked Mutant under special circumstances. From now on I take your orders, and I'll give you every lead I know.」

「Until we get out of here, or clear out this Pollutant.」

Jiang Mengchi stopped pushing back on anything Shen Wang did. Leave the guard room — they left the guard room. Go up to the roof — they went up to the roof.

Climbing eighteen floors took about five minutes. Jiang Mengchi was a bit weak from the Distortion in his body and slowed them down a little, but he never once complained of being tired. He stuck close behind Shen Wang and didn't fall behind at all. Only when they reached the top did Jiang Mengchi let out a heavy breath.

Shen Wang looked at him. 「You good?」

「I'm fine.」 Jiang Mengchi sighed. 「A bit of walking's okay. Don't move enough and one day I won't be able to.」

「You sound like a retired old man.」 Shen Wang ribbed him.

The rooftop was still damp, the smell of rot everywhere, but up here there was wind, and the wind hitting his body carried a trace of life. Shen Wang took a deep breath and felt like all the dust the stairwell had poured into his lungs got blown right back out.

「So — how big's the area?」

Jiang Mengchi added, 「We got data on Qianzhen Residential Area during the mission. It's at the edge of Central City, so the compound isn't big — only three residential buildings, about a hundred households each. The 【Qianzhen Residential Area Depression-Suicide Syndrome】 is in Building 2, the middle one.」

Shen Wang pressed a hand to his forehead and gazed out. 「Doesn't look like anything special.」

「You really can't tell the difference with the naked eye, but it's like some weird circle — no matter where you go, you can't get out of it. Like the roads are completely cut off.」

「Maybe the 【Qianzhen Residential Area Depression-Suicide Syndrome】 is special — maybe she's already developed a Contaminated Talent.」

「Not possible.」 Shen Wang lowered his hand. 「A Class D Pollutant doesn't develop a Contaminated Talent — especially one that's just a brainless, fixed-pattern Pollutant. This place wasn't walled off by her.」

Jiang Mengchi looked at Shen Wang. 「Is this from your Polaris experience?」

「This is from Shen Wang's experience.」 Shen Wang smiled and flashed Jiang Mengchi a peace sign. 「Something I didn't tell you — I'm actually an outsider Mutant. Joined Polaris just today, haven't even had the chance to run a single mission yet.」

「So Polaris experience doesn't apply to me.」

Jiang Mengchi: ……?

He looked at Shen Wang with an indescribable expression, as if sunk into the deepest confusion.

Confused why someone like Shen Wang would join Polaris, confused why Polaris would take in someone like this.

「Fine.」 In the end Jiang Mengchi just gave up. 「Your rank's higher than mine. You call the shots.」

「Aw, just a joke.」 Shen Wang propped one hand on his hip, a smile in his black eyes. He lowered his voice — once again the trustworthy, promising young man.

「Want to hear the judgment of Shen Wang, fresh recruit to Polaris?」

「Go on.」

Jiang Mengchi thought Shen Wang was a bit of a loose cannon, but after all he was a Polaris member — even if he'd never run a mission with them. He trusted Polaris's eye, and he trusted that anyone Polaris chose had to have something special about him.

So he trusted Shen Wang.

「Pollutants have an expansionist nature. Even the most ordinary Pollutant couldn't trap an entire Space and then, three months later, use a Mutant's cry for help to lure in prey.」

Jiang Mengchi blinked. 「You're saying it's not Contamination that makes the compound impossible to leave?」

「I told you, she's just a Class D Pollutant.」 Shen Wang stepped forward, planting one foot on the edge of the roof. The wind lifted his coat, making him look utterly free and easy. 「So there's one possibility, and only one — this is a quarantine deliberately set up by the Pollution Control Center.」

「But the Pollution Control Center has no reason to quarantine an ordinary compound. Like you said, she's only a Class D Pollutant. A quarantine takes time and effort — killing her would be far simpler. That's exactly why the Pollution Control Center sent us to clear the Contamination.」

Shen Wang looked at him. 「Right — there's no need to quarantine a Pollutant. So what does get quarantined?」

Jiang Mengchi froze. He was silent for a few seconds.

「A Pollution Source.」

He looked out toward the distance beyond the rooftop, understanding finally settling into his eyes.

「Because this isn't a simple Pollutant — it's an uncontrollable Pollution Source. So the Pollution Control Center quarantined and locked it down in an emergency……」

「Which is why we can't find a way out. We're trapped in here to die.」

/

If the quarantine came from outside, then even if they killed the 【Qianzhen Residential Area Depression-Suicide Syndrome】 they still couldn't leave — the quarantine wouldn't lift until the Pollution Source was gone, unless they had some special means to deal with the Pollution Source and get word to the people outside.

The odds of that were vanishingly small.

「You still want to deal with the 【Qianzhen Residential Area Depression-Suicide Syndrome】 now?」 Shen Wang asked, standing beside Jiang Mengchi.

Jiang Mengchi wasn't crushed by the news, though. After thinking it over for a while, he still nodded.

「I do.」

「Even if this is a Pollution Source, and killing her doesn't mean we get to leave — but given that new people keep wandering in from time to time, once she's dealt with those newcomers won't be Contaminated so easily, and their survival rate will go up. So it's still very much worth doing.」

A note of admiration entered Shen Wang's eyes. 「You take things in stride.」

「If I didn't, I'd have died in here ages ago.」 Jiang Mengchi said, 「Mental stability is the greatest wealth of this era. Lucky me — I've got it.」

Since the decision was made, they headed down from the rooftop. This time the destination was the suicide woman's home, unit 501 — where, in her depression, she'd jumped to her death.

The stairwell was thick with dust, a footprint left with every step, looking long abandoned. But the dust wasn't undisturbed — chaotic strings of footsteps ran across it, line after line, yet only going up, never coming down. As if no one who went up ever came back.

Shen Wang and Jiang Mengchi left the only descending footprints, finally stopping at the fifth-floor stairwell.

The door to 501 wasn't shut. From the stairwell you could see the room inside was an utter mess, furniture toppled every which way. With the doors and windows left open, there was even more dust than in the stairwell — like a yellow-brown blanket had been draped over everything.

No sign of the Pollutant.

They walked inside. The air carried the earthy reek of dust, the floor trampled into a single smear of tracks. The walls were riddled with bullet holes, as if someone had stood here venting, firing round after round at the wall.

「Your doing?」 Shen Wang looked over the wreckage covering the walls.

「No…… I'm not sure either.」 Jiang Mengchi frowned. 「In my memory I never came here. But maybe my teammates did. Still, if there'd been gunfire, there's no way I wouldn't have heard it.」

「Oh.」 Shen Wang made a meaningful sound. 「Hey, what's that over there?」

Jiang Mengchi turned to look where Shen Wang was pointing, and only then noticed a scrap of cloth hanging off the tilted corner of a table in the corner of the room.

Almost before he'd registered it, he was already rushing into the room and picking the scrap up.

Pollution Control Center uniforms were all custom-made — special fabric, both insulating and protective. The moment it was in his hand, Jiang Mengchi could tell it was a Security Force uniform. The black scrap of fabric carried a fishy smell, and rubbing it carefully you could see dried red-black matter — blood, no matter how you looked at it.

Under the scrap of fabric was a mission report, stained red with blood and covered in dust.

【Mission Personnel: Security Force 13th Street Patrol, Squad 337, full complement.】

【Mission Objective: Eliminate the Pollutant 【Qianzhen Residential Area Depression-Suicide Syndrome】, at any cost.】

【Mission Date: Apocalypse Calendar Year 27, August 21.】

Shen Wang came over and pulled the page from his hand. He studied it for a moment before speaking. 「That date's off, isn't it?」

Jiang Mengchi slowly raised his head and looked at Shen Wang.

「Apocalypse Calendar Year 27, August 21 — that's over two years ago. But you said your squad had only been in here a bit over six months.」

「But in my memory it really is just a bit over six months.」 Jiang Mengchi stood up, clutching the scrap of cloth. 「Maybe there's no sense of time in here and I lost track of how much had passed. Or maybe there's something wrong with my memory.」

「Still……」

Jiang Mengchi stared at that scrap of cloth, a trace of confusion welling up in his eyes.

「I don't know why, but I keep feeling my teammates are fine. They can't have died.」

「Looking at all this, anyone normal would instinctively figure something's wrong, right?」

「So why do I believe in them so firmly?」