Contamination Prelude

Chapter 6

A light drizzle fell, everything damp. The early spring wind and rain were chilly, seeping in and sapping body heat fast.

Beneath the weed-choked unfinished building, a few people in black raincoats — or more like specialized protective suits — were busy. They wore special protective masks and gloves, loading things from the ground into coffin-like special containers.

The only one in a red raincoat stood nearby taking notes, a silver Polaris badge pinned to his chest.

If Shen Wang were here, he’d be surprised to find that this was the same young man who had escorted him back to his residence that time.

Just then, footsteps sounded from outside the alley. Someone holding an umbrella stepped into the unfinished building where weeds had overgrown even the pathways.

The note-taker looked up at the sound, and after three seconds a look of disdain crossed his face.

“Always so fussy,” he grumbled. “A place this messy and you still use an umbrella?”

The target of his grumbling was none other than Polaris’s captain, Zhou Xiangzhe.

At the moment, Zhou Xiangzhe held a black, slightly transparent umbrella, his long white hair pulled into a high ponytail. Straight black slacks, a white field suit that let him move, a killer physique and close to one-nine in height — he looked less like he was on a mission and more like he’d strolled off a fashion shoot.

The young man silently griped to himself: all that polish and still a single loser.

Zhou Xiangzhe didn’t mind the disdain, just asked evenly, “What’s the situation?”

“Exactly the same.”

“Oh, right — besides the clown’s corpse, we found the last victim on the rooftop of the unfinished building. He’s still alive, but Mental Contamination has already destroyed his mind. He can’t say anything beyond a few terrified words.”

“The Guard Unit already sent him to the Mental Contamination Center for treatment.”

The young man’s name was Ming Guang, deputy captain of Polaris, a good friend and partner of Zhou Xiangzhe. He’d come to the scene at the first moment to collect materials.

Ming Guang handed him his completed case file. “The one who killed D591 Clown and B023 Plum Rain is the same person... uh, the same contaminant.”

Zhou Xiangzhe took the file Ming Guang handed over and flipped through it.

Ming Guang’s files were always well-organized, with not just photos but all sorts of analysis reports.

“When we got back, I was surprised to hear a Grade B contaminant broke out in Central City. But knowing the death toll was under a hundred was even more unexpected. A Grade B contaminant can wipe out a whole city. That’s when I knew something was off, so I decided to check it out right away.”

Ming Guang snapped his fingers. “Definitely off.”

The Grade B Contaminant Plum Rain wasn't wiped out by the dispatch team. Polaris had left the city to eliminate Hibernation, and as luck would have it, there wasn't a single Grade A Variant in the city — just one Grade B Variant from the guard force holding down Central City. That Variant led his team in, ready to drag the contaminant down even if it cost him his life, but when they got there, all they found was the contaminant's corpse.

Like the clown, it lay motionless on the ground, its skin crumbling at the slightest touch like sun-scorched weeds. Withered thorns were embedded in the corpse, their barbs blood-red, and scattered all around were still-fresh crimson petals.

This way of dying didn’t seem like something humans could do. It was most likely killed by another high-grade contaminant.

After research, they finally identified the subject.

【A12 Blood Thorns】

“Blood Thorns, Grade A contaminant. No record of it ever entering the High Wall. Most sightings are near the edge of Contamination Zone No. 2 — likely its territory.”

“The third year after the apocalypse was the first time humans observed Blood Thorns. The recorder claimed they saw a glasshouse garden, sunlight spilling over the flowers like a layer of light. In the center of this beautiful garden stood a white-haired man, his body entwined with flowering vines, unnaturally beautiful. The recorder was enticed, only to be held back at the last moment by a companion with the talent ‘Crisis Warning’.”

“In an instant, the recorder snapped out of it. Mutants aren’t easily affected by Mental Contamination. Shaking it off, he realized there was no garden in front of him — all around were white human bones, countless flower roots piercing the skeletons. The man wasn’t wrapped in flowering vines; it was blood-red thorns.”

Later, the entire recorder team was lured into the garden — the instant they stepped inside they suffered aberration and died on the spot, turning into flower fertilizer. Only he and that crisis-warning Mutant made it out.

But... even then, they didn’t escape.

They rested in a village at the edge of the High Wall, their guard down, not realizing they were carrying seeds. The seeds sprouted inside them, fed on their blood, grew rapidly, burst out of their bodies and greedily sought new prey. In one night, the entire village was wiped out.

That’s the horror of a Grade A contaminant.

Zhou Xiangzhe summed up: “Mental Contamination lure, parasitic seeds, A-grade lethality. No clear countermeasure.”

“Very bad,” Ming Guang concluded too. “A Grade A contaminant seems to have infiltrated Central City. It’s hunting other contaminants.”

No one knows if this Grade A contaminant will attack humans after it’s done hunting contaminants. It has a record of killing humans.

Without a mutant capable of opposing it, a Grade A contaminant can kill everyone inside a High Wall.

“Issue a Grade B contamination alert,” Zhou Xiangzhe ordered. “The Guard Unit is to step up vigilance.”

“Got it,” Ming Guang nodded.

After the alert was issued, Zhou Xiangzhe glanced at the sky. It had stopped raining. He closed the black umbrella and even shook off the water, handling it with surprising care.

Ming Guang asked, curious: “Why do you always use a black umbrella when it rains? And always this slightly transparent kind.”

“A gift from a friend,” Zhou Xiangzhe said, holding the umbrella. “Back then, the orphanage only had two umbrellas for dozens of kids. I could never grab one.”

“One time he was at the hospital for treatment, it happened to rain, and a nurse gave him an umbrella. When he came back, he gave it to me.”

“After that, I was the only kid in the orphanage who had his own umbrella.”

Ming Guang hadn’t expected Zhou Xiangzhe to have such a past. His gaze toward the umbrella softened. “So this is that umbrella?”

Zhou Xiangzhe gave him an odd look. “Of course not.”

Over a dozen years, even the best umbrella would be pretty much ruined, especially one that was a flimsy little disposable thing.

And besides... he hadn’t actually managed to take that umbrella out of the orphanage. It was buried together with all the people Zhou Xiangzhe had known, in that dead, silent place.

So now, he could only buy umbrellas of the same color and style to remember it by.

---

When the alarm went off, Shen Wang was at the Anti-Contamination Center filling out his personnel file. The staffer handling his onboarding kept double-checking whether he really wanted to join the dispatch team.

Only after Shen Wang confirmed several times did the staffer breathe a sigh of relief and finalize his onboarding.

It wasn’t that the staff looked down on the dispatch team. It was that too many people who initially joined would demand to transfer to the Guard Unit either before or after their first mission, and even complained they weren’t told how dangerous it was. So now, every time someone tried to sign up, the staff had to heavily remind them.

The moment his file was entered, the alarm rang. The whole Anti-Contamination Center went dead silent for three seconds.

“An alarm?” Shen Wang looked at the flashing red light.

The staffer’s face turned grim. “A Grade B alert...?”

Shen Wang looked at him. “What does a Grade B alert mean?”

“Central City might have an extreme-danger contaminant! Possibly even Grade A!” The staffer stopped working and started frantically pulling up data. “How is that possible? Central City hasn’t had a Grade A contaminant in seven or eight years.”

Shen Wang’s eyes lit up at that.

What? A Grade A contaminant?!

He’d only been inside the High Wall a few days and already a chance to scavenge?

So he asked, “What kind of contaminant?”

“All mutants will receive the notification,” the staffer said. “Check your own terminal.”

Hearing that, Shen Wang opened the new terminal he’d been given after onboarding, and sure enough there was the just-sent message.

He clicked in with interest, and saw the name of the suspected contaminant.

【A12 Blood Thorns】

Shen Wang: ...

Oh, sorry. It was leftovers. Accidentally spilled, and now Central City thinks it’s a fresh dish.

Realizing it was a misunderstanding, Shen Wang lost interest. He went to pick up a combat suit and weapon, then prepared to leave the Anti-Contamination Center and await further orders. Of course, only Shen Wang knew this so-called Grade A contaminant was a figment; no matter how much they searched, they’d find nothing.

Thinking of that, Shen Wang found it a bit funny, so he smiled and even started humming.

Like a bratty kid who’d just pulled off a prank.

Carrying the weapon case out, just at the entrance, Zhou Xiangzhe and Ming Guang happened to be getting out of their vehicle. Their eyes met.

Shen Wang nodded at him, still smiling. His mouth was busy humming, so he didn’t even say hello. After the nod, he made to leave.

But Zhou Xiangzhe spoke. “Ten-Year Song?”

Shen Wang stopped. His eyes brightened. “What a coincidence. Captain Zhou likes music too?”

Very few people know that song now. It’s from the old era — after the apocalypse, entertainment declined, countless songs lost to history. Only someone like Shen Wang, who genuinely liked music, would go out of his way to find it.

So what, Zhou Xiangzhe was a fellow music fan?

“Not a coincidence,” Zhou Xiangzhe raised an eyebrow. “I had a friend when I was a kid. He liked to sing that song to me.”

“Then it’s even more of a coincidence,” Shen Wang grinned, especially pleased. “I sang that song to a friend when I was little too, but he didn’t seem all that into it.”

Every time, The Child — delicate as a porcelain doll — would hear a yawn, and then at some point she'd be slumped over asleep beside his bed without him even noticing.

Shen Wang absolutely would not admit it was because he kept repeating the same part over and over, for half an hour straight. Any normal person would get tired of it.

He had no idea if he was dead or alive, whether that missing survivor was him.

Zhou Xiangzhe thought for a moment, couldn’t recall ever showing disinterest, but still went ahead and spoke against his own heart.

“Just means his taste is bad.”

Ming Guang stood beside Zhou Xiangzhe, looking from one to the other.

He reaffirmed in his mind: these two definitely have some kind of connection!

He’d never seen Zhou Xiangzhe casually chat with anyone like that.

...

After Shen Wang left, Zhou Xiangzhe openly pulled up his onboarding file right in front of Ming Guang.

When he saw that Shen Wang had chosen the dispatch team, Ming Guang nodded approvingly.

“Good kid. Not short on guts. Anyone who joins the dispatch team has real potential!”

Zhou Xiangzhe didn’t pay that any mind. He was studying Shen Wang’s file in detail, especially his history.

Cured of a new-type Genetic Disease. For some reason, that line was added at the very end. It looked like he hadn’t wanted to include it originally; the paper bore clear signs of a later addition.

Rogue unregistered mutant, born in the Hantian North City Outskirts, parents died when he was in his teens. Once joined a wild adventure team but it was wiped out by a high-grade contaminant. He came to Central City seeking stability.

This file was wrong. It didn’t match Shen Wang’s experiences at all. Apart from the new-type Genetic Disease, everything was fabricated.

That was when Zhou Xiangzhe realized why ‘cured of new-type Genetic Disease’ had been added later: Shen Wang hadn’t intended to write it from the start. But back at the containment center, Zhou Xiangzhe had called out his identity, so Shen Wang suspected the containment center had found out. He had to add it to avoid being exposed.

...Shen Wang had switched identities.

“Ming Guang.” Zhou Xiangzhe was silent for a few seconds, then asked the person beside him.

“Why would someone hide their past?”

“Huh?” Ming Guang was a bit puzzled by the question.

But he didn’t brush it off. He thought about it seriously.

“Probably because it’s a past he can’t bear to look back on... right?”

Zhou Xiangzhe put the file back.

A past too painful to look back on, huh.

But either way, Zhou Xiangzhe realized that Shen Wang seemed not to want his identity discovered.

Revealing it wouldn’t make their relationship better — it might even make it terribly worse.

At that thought, Zhou Xiangzhe suddenly felt a little relieved that, due to identity issues, he hadn’t outed himself and Shen Wang’s connection right away.

“Transfer him to Polaris,” Zhou Xiangzhe said, schooling his deputy captain with zero pressure.

Ming Guang blanked. “What?”

“Just do it.” Zhou Xiangzhe turned and walked inside, with no intention of explaining.

“Zhou Xiangzhe!” Ming Guang nearly blew a fuse. “You think you can just transfer someone like that? Polaris is Central City’s strongest special operations unit. The entry requirements are insanely high! If you’re going to abuse your power, at least think about how it looks! Who are you trying to screw over here?!”

“Zhou Xiangzhe! Zhou Xiangzhe!”