Chapter3

As the oxygen levels in the safe house plummeted, I didn't give up. When the suffocation in my chest reached its limit, I held the semi-conscious Mia tightly, forcibly squeezing out my newly awakened superpowers. The water and darkness in the corner of the control room boiled under the pull of the "Shadow Realm," turning into a cold, black film that tightly enveloped my daughter and me.

Like two drops of black ink, we silently seeped into the upper ventilation network of the bunker through the broken gaps in the exhaust duct.

After crawling fifty yards along the pipe, the pungent smell of blood mixed with the odor of aviation kerosene filled my nostrils. I looked down through the gaps in the louvers of the loading and unloading area, where temporary searchlights illuminated the empty space as bright as day.

Elena stood in the center of the field.

On a cot in front of her lay a man in a dirty white lab coat, bound with zip ties. He was a senior federal scientist who had led the initial research on "Azure Genesis" in her previous life. Now, all ten of his fingers were broken, his nose was collapsed, and his face was covered in blood.

"I'll ask you one more time, what is the rejection rate of the extraction surgery?" Elena toyed with a scalpel in her hand, her tone as gentle as if she were discussing the dinner menu.

"You're insane... You can't strip her of her powers!" The scientist coughed up blood and screamed in despair, his voice echoing in the empty bunker. "She's only three years old! Forcibly removing that high concentration of energy will instantly burn out her brainstem!"

“That’s not something I’m considering,” Elena shrugged.

Suddenly, she stopped moving.

Without any warning, those eyes, adorned with exquisite eyeshadow, suddenly snapped open, locking onto me precisely, two stories high, completely hidden in the dark pipes. Even from ten meters away, and despite the shadowy disguise, I could still feel the chilling, sticky sensation in her gaze.

She turned towards the direction I was hiding, a cruel smile playing on her lips:

"Perfect. Since you're still holding back, go and see for yourself what your daughter is really useful."

Before she could finish speaking, I had already kicked open the blinds. Without a word, I was in mid-air, my Remington shotgun already aimed at the row of metal drums filled with spare aviation fuel at the edge of the field.

"Bang!"

Amidst the deafening gunshot, the No. 12 caliber buckshot tore through the fragile sheet metal, and the sparks instantly ignited the overflowing high-pressure fuel.

boom--!

A bright orange fireball shot up from the ground like a raging beast, the violent shockwave overturning a several-ton loading truck, and the flames instantly engulfed the spot where Elena stood. Extremely hot flames licked the ceiling, and the air distorted violently under the intense heat.

I gripped the edge of the pipe with one hand, using the recoil to swing towards the ground cover, and carefully placed Mia, whom I had been holding in my arms, behind a row of steel ammunition boxes.

“Dad…” Mia weakly tugged at my clothes.

"Stay here and close your eyes," I whispered the command, reloading the shotgun.

In the sea of fire, there were no screams, only a chilling, sticky sound, like leather tearing and blisters bursting.

A burning figure slowly crawled out of the orange-red flames. Elena's expensive trench coat and skin were already charred, but beneath that charred shell, pink new flesh was intertwining and reforming at an unprecedented speed, like countless frantically writhing fleshy snakes. That was a top-tier physical ability that only appeared in the late stages of her previous life—"super-speed regeneration".

"Hahaha... You think ordinary fire can burn me to death?" She laughed as she stood up, her charred skin peeling off like a snake shedding its skin. In less than ten seconds, a perfectly intact body, even more explosive than before, was exposed to the air again.

I raised my gun to fire, but a sudden, bone-chilling cold swept over the back of my neck.

It was Marcus. The translucent spirit had somehow circled behind me. His ethereal hands gripped my trachea tightly; the suffocation wasn't physical pressure, but a direct ripple from my soul and nerves. My vision went black instantly, and the Remington in my hand slammed heavily to the ground. The Shadow Domain began to disintegrate as my attention wandered.

“Crush his spine, Marcus.” Elena walked over with graceful steps and picked up the scalpel from the ground.

In that life-or-death struggle...

"Click".

A crisp, metallic clang, typical of gunfire, rang out in the open space.

Elena stopped in her tracks, and Marcus's spirit also paused slightly. I strained to look in the direction of the sound out of the corner of my eye.

At the edge of the bunker, three-year-old Mia had somehow stood up. Her little face was flushed, and her two small hands were straining to hold up a Glock 19 pistol that was almost as long as her forearm—the spare weapon I had left in the bunker.

The gun barrel was firmly pointed at Elena's forehead.

Tiny fingers, gripping the hard trigger that seemed so incongruous with its size.

"Don't you dare bully my dad." Mia's voice was choked with sobs, yet it conveyed a heartbreaking resolve.

"Shoot me, you little bastard," Elena sneered, her eyes full of contempt.

Bang!

The muzzle flashed from the three-year-old's hand, the recoil throwing Mia to the ground. But the 9mm copper-armored bullet, with its perfectly logical trajectory, hurtled straight towards Elena's pupils.

However, the bullet did not penetrate the skull.

Less than half an inch from Elena's face, the space rippled like water. A hand reached out out of thin air, almost transparent, its surface covered with nauseating burn scars. It caught the high-speed spinning bullet as if it were catching a flying insect.

It's that burn mutant who died in the field again!

His tattered spatial projection blocked Elena's path, then he turned his head, staring intently at me with his bloodied, eyelidless holes. The muscles in his face twitched with immense pain, and with his last ounce of strength, he hurled a sentence into my mind like a curse:

"She carries...your daughter's other half inside her..."

As soon as the words were spoken, the projection of the burned mutant finally succumbed to the backlash of some rule and, with a crisp cracking sound, turned into a sky full of fine blood mist and completely dissipated.

I suddenly broke free from Marcus, who was relaxed due to shock, and rolled to Mia's side, shielding her tightly beneath me.

Meanwhile, chilling roars and rapid footsteps echoed from the upper passage of the bunker. The muffled gunshot and the shockwave of the explosion had finally attracted the horde of zombies roaming the mountains. The metal blast door began to creak under the weight, soon to be breached by the sea of corpses.

Elena glanced at the collapsing gate, then looked deeply at Mia in my arms, and patted the ashes off her body.

“Your daughter will only live to be seven.” Her voice echoed coldly in the loading area in her last moments before the zombies swarmed in. “And I am her only cure. We will meet again soon.”

Marcus's spirit enveloped her, and the two of them transformed into a ghostly blue afterimage, disappearing into the collapsed emergency passage.

The horde of corpses poured down through the breach. I gritted my teeth, picked up Mia, and reactivated the Shadow Domain, concealing us in the deepest darkness. We retreated along the wall towards the wreckage area at the bottom of the bunker.

When we finally took refuge in a sealed old armory and locked the iron door, I leaned against the cold wall, panting heavily. Mia was curled up in my arms, sobbing softly because the recoil had injured her wrist; her pure eyes were filled with terror.

I gently stroked her hair, and my hand inadvertently touched the coin with scratches on the edge in her pocket.

The coin's metal casing had deformed due to the explosion and extremely high temperature. I took it out and gently squeezed it.

"Click".

The coin split in two evenly. Inside the hollow cavity lay a tiny chip, no bigger than a fingernail.

I was stunned. After a moment, I pulled out my tactical terminal from my backpack and inserted the chip, which shouldn't exist in the conventional sense, into the slot.

The terminal screen flickered, and then a blue holographic projection lit up in the center of the dark armory.

The light converged, outlining the face of an unfamiliar woman. She had dazzling white hair and a cold expression, though her features vaguely resembled Elena's. But her deep blue eyes were exactly the same as Mia's in my arms.

She looked at me, her eyes filled with weariness and unspeakable sorrow.

"We've finally made contact again, Dad."

My heart felt like it had been struck hard by a sledgehammer, and my breath stopped instantly.

The woman in the holographic projection didn't pause; her voice was like the wind that had traversed countless dimensions.

“I am your daughter. Listen, you must remember what I say—in three days, the military shelter will send an officer named Julian to pick you up. That’s their first trap.”

The woman took a deep breath, and the blue projection began to ripple erratically: "But before you see him, you must answer one question for me. This is the only hope to break the vicious cycle."

She looked me straight in the eye and said those words that plunged me into an ice cave:

"Would you kill me now... to save her?"

As the last word fell, a soft "pop" sounded, a wisp of smoke rose from the tactical terminal, the chip initiated the physical self-destruct program, and the holographic projection completely turned into light spots and dissipated.

The armory fell silent once more. I sat in the darkness, holding three-year-old Mia, and remained silent for a long time.