Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A patient escaping the Pollutant Containment Center wasn't exactly a rare incident.

But the escaped Distorted Human getting taken out by an isolated survivor in a cell not far away — now that was a strange one. A real Distortion, killed bare-handed.

Either way, after this incident, just about every doctor at the Containment Center figured Shen Wang was a Mutant. Only a Mutant could deal with a heavily distorted Distorted Human that easily.

'So what Talent did he Awaken?' Zhou Xiangzhe asked.

A white-haired old man was at Zhou Xiangzhe's side. Hearing the question, he pulled up a piece of surveillance footage for him.

'We went over the footage from when it happened, frame by frame. Slowed down, you can see the Distorted Human clearly hesitate when it's facing Shen Wang. And here.'

The old man pointed at the Distorted Human on screen. 'This looks less like an attack and more like it's bracing itself. Going off that, we figure Shen Wang Awakened Talent B-031 [Fear Intimidation].'

'It's an interesting ability. After Awakening, anyone with hostile intent toward him mistakes him for the thing they fear most.'

'An enemy under its effect has a fifty percent chance to hesitate, thirty percent to flee, and twenty percent to strike back.'

'That Distorted Human clearly landed in the hesitate category.'

Zhou Xiangzhe raised an eyebrow slightly. 'So you're saying the Talent he Awakened had nothing to do with him strangling the Distorted Human?'

'That's right.' The old man nodded, dead serious. 'All it tells us is the guy's got nerve and a strong grip. The second the Distorted Human hesitated, he grabbed the snake by its weak point and choked the life out of it. A normal person wouldn't have the guts.'

They walked to the isolation point, where a woman in a blue protective suit was recording data.

'Sun Ying,' the old man called out.

'Teacher!' Sun Ying answered at once.

The old man nodded. 'How's it looking?'

'Mr. Shen's Contamination Level is back to fifty-one percent, and it's still trending down,' Sun Ying said, eyes on the readings. 'We generally think his high Contamination Level is because of his Talent. Using it spikes his Contamination Level for a short time, and once he stops, it slowly returns to normal.'

'Looks like the reason he survived is that he kept using his ability in a high-Contamination area, so the Pollutants didn't dare come near. That's also why his Contamination Level hit eighty-eight percent when he was detained — and once he was isolated and didn't need the ability anymore, it dropped right back down.' The old man summed it up.

Which was a good thing.

Because Mutants who could actually fight Pollutants were so, so few.

Thinking that, the old man let out a quiet sigh in his heart.

Thirty years ago, a blood-red fog had swallowed the whole world. It lasted three days and three nights, and when it cleared, the world was a different place.

Pollution Sources no one could explain, Pollutants born after a Pollution Source tainted something, humans killed off by those Pollutants — you could say seventy percent of humanity died right at the start of the end of the world.

Mutants, also called Talented ones, were people who'd been contaminated too but hadn't distorted into Pollutants. Instead they Awakened special abilities — vanishingly rare, and standing on the front line against the Pollutants.

But Mutants weren't all-powerful. Their Contamination Level ran higher than a normal human's, and using a Talent ability pushed it up. The moment it broke a hundred percent, a Mutant turned into a Pollutant on the spot — almost no exceptions.

It was basically the magical girl and Dark Witch dynamic from Madoka Magica, except in this era they had no choice but to fight for it.

Because if they didn't, the rest of humanity would just die faster.

'So what are you planning to do with him?' Zhou Xiangzhe asked.

'Now that we've confirmed there's no problem, we let him leave the Containment Center per regulations, of course.'

The old man answered with a smile crinkling his eyes. 'Since he's a Mutant, the Pollution Control Center will arrange housing for him. Per Central City regulations, every Mutant living in Central City has to join the Pollution Control Center. After a three-day adjustment period, he'll report there.'

'Captain Zhou, you've got your eye on him?'

Zhou Xiangzhe was quiet a moment, neither denying nor confirming.

He thought back to Shen Wang's smile and said, in a faintly odd tone, 'I just don't think he's the easygoing type.'

'That's normal enough.' The old man wasn't bothered. 'There aren't many normal people among the Mutants either. More than half of them are off in the head — the Psychological Counseling Room's packed with Mutants.'

Zhou Xiangzhe thought: this is different, though.

Those Mutants with screws loose had Contamination Levels high enough to mess with their minds, so they couldn't help going mad, couldn't help going to the Psychological Counseling Room to ease the Mental Aberration.

But Shen Wang was different. He didn't seem like someone whose head had gone wrong from a high Contamination Level, like he'd just casually strangle a Distorted Human. He seemed like someone who'd never been easygoing to begin with — choking a Distorted Human the way a kid crushes an ant.

His goal wasn't venting any feeling at all.

/

A while later, Shen Wang — the one judged to have a personality problem — was finally let out of his cramped detainment room, seven days on.

The Pollution Control Center handed him a key, told him it was the housing assigned to him, and then hurried off. Word was the Special Operations Team had come back from a mission and brought in a load of survivors and Distorted Humans who still had self-awareness, which had turned their already-busy workload into a flat-out frenzy.

Shen Wang wasn't one to ask a lot of questions. He took the key and left the Containment Center.

Life in the detainment room had been mind-numbing. Everywhere you looked were ugly Distorted Humans — some still had human minds, some had fully degenerated. Shen Wang's luck was rotten: not a single person with a normal mind anywhere around him.

Lucky for him, he used to be a patient. He'd long since gotten used to the boredom of hospital wards, so he toughed out the seven days.

Stepping out the Containment Center's front gate, Shen Wang felt the wind on him, sharp and cold. It was spring now — the temperature still on the low side — but plants were slowly pushing up through the soil, a touch of tender green. Shen Wang stretched lazily and tried to flag down a cab.

Of course he couldn't get one. This was the Containment Center — what cab would ever dare come out here?

Was he supposed to hoof it to somewhere he could actually catch a ride?

Just as Shen Wang was checking the map to figure out how long the walk would take, a voice sounded by his ear.

'Where are you headed?'

Shen Wang turned his head and met the eyes of someone who'd just walked out of the Containment Center.

A man in a pitch-black combat uniform, hard-featured, a not-yet-settled killing edge hanging about him. He looked cool and remote. But the most arresting thing wasn't the aura around him — it was his appearance. He had long silver hair, just loose over his shoulders like that, and eyes a gold that didn't look human.

A normal person wouldn't have such a strange look. It was more like a Pollutant's.

Which was exactly why Shen Wang had been happy to chat at Zhou Xiangzhe back in the cell.

Human, but not human in the face — and not the kind of freak with some deformed growth, either. White hair, gold eyes, exquisite as a sprite. Freakish in a thoroughly likable direction.

People always cut a beautiful person a little extra slack, and Shen Wang was no different.

So Shen Wang held up the key and gave it a little jingle. 'I'm going to the housing they assigned me.'

Unlike in the cell, he seemed loose and at ease now. The deliberate harmlessness and the eerie feel it had bred were both gone, leaving him crisp and clean — a sharp contrast to the man who'd choked a Distorted Human to death.

Even Zhou Xiangzhe gave him a couple of surprised glances.

They held eye contact for two seconds before Zhou Xiangzhe was the first to look away. He said, 'Get in. I'll take you.'

Shen Wang raised an eyebrow, a little surprised.

The Special Operations Team had come back today and dropped a batch of survivors at the Containment Center. From his clothes and his attitude toward the place, it wasn't hard to guess he was one of them — quite possibly the captain himself, Zhou Xiangzhe.

The rare Class S Mutant. The Guardian of Central City. The uncrowned king who'd killed a Class S Pollutant.

And he was going to drive a nobody like himself to his housing?

That bored, huh?

'Captain Zhou, wouldn't this waste your time?' Shen Wang didn't refuse, but he didn't agree either — he just asked back.

'Since you know it'd waste my time, don't drag it out with me. You won't get a cab here, and walking to where you can would take you three hours, minimum.'

Zhou Xiangzhe's voice ran cold; even ordinary speech carried a sharp chill, as if he genuinely begrudged every wasted minute and a half.

Half an hour in a car beat three hours on foot, obviously. Shen Wang stopped hesitating and got in after Zhou Xiangzhe.

It was a thoroughly ordinary-looking car, black all over, the kind that vanished into traffic.

Once inside, Shen Wang noticed there was another person in the driver's seat. Like Zhou Xiangzhe, he wore a combat uniform, with a silver badge over his chest bearing the Special Operations Team's emblem — Polar Star. The moment he saw it, Shen Wang knew exactly who they were.

'Who's this?' The man eyed Shen Wang with curiosity. 'New recruit you're bringing in?'

'No.' Zhou Xiangzhe shut it down. 'Jiujiang Community, D Street, South City.'

The man raised an eyebrow, puzzled, but in the end said nothing, just started the car cleanly and drove off toward the address Zhou Xiangzhe had given.

Shen Wang, though, looked over at Zhou Xiangzhe. 'How do you know that address, Captain Zhou?'

'Your attending doctor gave it to me,' Zhou Xiangzhe answered. 'He seemed to think I'd recruit you, so he handed over the address to make you easy to find.'

Shen Wang: ?

What kind of ethics-free doctor doesn't give a damn about patient privacy.

'You have a Genetic Disease?' Zhou Xiangzhe asked suddenly.

Shen Wang gave him a slightly odd look, then asked back, 'The Detainment Facility can even dig up that?'

When the end of the world came, it didn't just cut the world's population by seventy percent — it brought a strange Novel Genetic Disease along with it. Unlike contamination sickness, this Novel Genetic Disease only showed up in children born in the apocalypse era. Even if the parents were normal, there was a chance they'd have a child with the Novel Genetic Disease.

Shen Wang was one of those children, born with a rare Genetic Disease. The place he'd known best his whole life was a hospital ward.

'I'm just a former Genetic Disease patient. I'm better now.'

Zhou Xiangzhe nodded. 'Congratulations.'

That single word, in his cold tone, came out unexpectedly sincere.

Shen Wang nodded, a little weirded out. 'Thanks.'

The young guy driving had his ears perked up on the sly, steering with one part of his brain and trying to catch some gossip with the other.

Zhou Xiangzhe was a man with a heavy safety streak, and privately a touch of a clean freak. He'd never once seen him bring a stranger into this car. These two had to have something going on, right?

Too bad — right up until the car reached the spot and Shen Wang got out, Zhou Xiangzhe never said another word to him.

Watching Shen Wang's retreating back, the young guy spoke up, curious. 'Hey, so who is he?'

'Nobody.' Zhou Xiangzhe watched Shen Wang walk in through the community gate, and only pulled his gaze back once the figure was completely out of sight. 'Starting today you're on leave for a week. Don't forget to pick up your bonus.'

The young guy clicked his tongue.

What's wrong with a little gossip? How'd he just change the subject like that?

……

By night, the Pollution Control Center was still ablaze with light. This was the department that fought Pollutants, so someone was on duty twenty-four hours a day.

Zhou Xiangzhe had a week of leave too, but as the Guardian of Central City, having leave didn't mean he actually got to rest — there were too many problems only he could handle.

His dorm was excessively clean, not a single eyesore of clutter anywhere you looked — a cold, frosty kind of tidy.

Zhou Xiangzhe sat in a chair, silent for a while, then pulled open the left-hand drawer and drew out two newspapers.

The papers had yellowed, the edges a little torn — the marks of years carved right into the pages, a stark contrast to the spotless room.

Zhou Xiangzhe carefully laid his hand on the blurry photo at the center of the first paper. It was a group shot — a few adults and dozens of children lined up, all of them, kids and grown-ups alike, smiling. The kind of picture that warmed you up inside.

But unlike the warmth of the picture, the headline was more horrifying than you'd imagine.

'Class S Contamination Source Erupts at Star River Orphanage — All Staff and Students Trapped and Missing, Survivor Count: 2!'

After the apocalypse hit, the number of orphans and how they'd survive became a real problem, so orphanages were built across the regions. Star River Orphanage was one of them.

But Star River Orphanage was an unlucky one, because it had the bad fortune to be built atop a Class S Contamination Source that had never been discovered. The Pollution Source's sudden eruption turned the whole Orphanage into a true forbidden zone, and there were only two survivors of that disaster.

The first was a boy the Orphanage's Principal had thrown out a window. He now went by: Zhou Xiangzhe.

The other was a child with a congenital Genetic Disease, who happened to be at the hospital undergoing treatment when it erupted. After being adopted, his name was changed to: Shen Wang.

After finishing that paper, Zhou Xiangzhe looked at the other one. That one covered a different disaster — and unlike the distant Orphanage incident, this one had happened three years ago.

The photo with it showed ruins still burning.

'Yidu Central Hospital Struck by High-Level Pollutant Attack!'

This was the hospital Zhou Xiangzhe later found out Shen Wang had been treated at all along. Too bad that by the time he found it, the place had already been destroyed in a high-level Pollutant attack, patients and medical staff dead and wounded beyond count. Shen Wang had gone missing in that incident too, and all Zhou Xiangzhe could do was treat him as dead.

He never imagined he'd run into him here…

The first moment he laid eyes on Shen Wang, Zhou Xiangzhe had recognized him.

'He didn't recognize me.' Zhou Xiangzhe murmured under his breath, gazing at the group photo on the paper, a trace of regret in his gold eyes.

'But that figures.' Zhou Xiangzhe lowered his lashes. 'I look so different now I barely even look human.'

'…No wonder he couldn't tell.'