Chapter 1

My name is Elias, the chief bioengineer of Eden City.

The ventilation fan in the underground lab hummed monotonously, and the air was thick with the sterile scent of disinfectant. I had been working for thirty-eight hours straight.

Holding a cup of long-cold coffee, I stood in front of the computer monitor. The progress bar crawled forward, ticking from ninety-eight percent to ninety-nine.

Inside a transparent, explosion-proof case on the desk sat a zombie blood sample collected from outside the city walls. Normally, this virus would completely destroy the human neurons in the sample within minutes, reducing the infected into a walking corpse driven solely by the instinct to feed.

I squeezed a single drop of blue liquid into it.

My research focus was a "viral vaccine." The higher-ups of Eden City had always wanted a cure—something that could grant absolute immunity or turn zombies back into humans. But that path had hit a dead end months ago.

However, I knew the reality out there. Not all the infected on the wasteland were mindless walkers. Over the past few years, our probes occasionally picked up extremely rare cases of infected individuals who actually retained a portion of their human consciousness after mutating.

But there was absolutely no pattern to it.

Out of millions of infected, maybe only one could keep their mind. No one knew why.

So, treating it as a long shot, I extracted those special samples, trying to find out how they managed to maintain their sanity amidst the virus. I never expected this fallback experiment to yield a massive breakthrough.

The progress bar hit one hundred percent. The red warning icon on the monitor vanished, replaced by a safe, glowing green.

I leaned in to check the data. The nerve cells had stopped necrotizing and, stimulated by the virus, were actually beginning to re-establish connections.

It meant the serum was a success.

While it couldn't stop the infection itself, it could preserve the infected's human sanity. The infected wouldn't turn into mindless monsters.

I picked up a test tube filled with the blue liquid from the desk, placed it inside a metal protective case no bigger than a lighter, and carefully slipped it into the inner pocket of my lab coat, right against my chest.

This was a monumental breakthrough.

I wanted to share the news with the Supreme Committee immediately. More importantly, I had to tell Serena.

Serena was one of the twelve board directors of the Supreme Committee, and she was also my girlfriend.

We met five years ago in the lower-level slums. Back then, I was just an ordinary researcher, and she was a low-level clerk. When I invented the first highly efficient water purification system, she was the one who took my patent data and negotiated with the base's higher-ups.

Thanks to that patent, we made it out of the slums together. She rose rapidly through the ranks, stepping into the very core of the city's power, while I was given this underground lab.

I took off my lab coat, threw on a regular jacket, and walked out.

I took the private metal elevator, ascending all the way up from the underground sector.

Five minutes later, the elevator stopped at the top level, known as "The Spire."

Two guards in black uniforms stood on either side of the hallway, gripping rifles loaded with live ammo. Seeing the senior engineer badge on my chest, they nodded and stepped aside.

The corridor here was lined with gray carpet and silver metal walls. It was so quiet you couldn't hear a single stray sound.

Serena was having a meeting here today.

Before she left this morning, she told me it was just a routine meeting about resource allocation for the outer mining zones. I wanted to catch her during a break and tell her about the serum firsthand.

I kept my footsteps light as I approached Meeting Room 1 at the end of the hall.

When I reached the doors, I noticed that the heavy oak double doors weren't completely shut. There was an inch-wide gap.

I was just reaching out to push it open when I heard voices coming from inside.

"Last month's extraction volume dropped by another fifteen percent." The speaker was Wilson, the Supreme Committee director in charge of city defense. His voice sounded agitated. "The number of zombies in the outer Prometheus Mining Zone is increasing. They've completely choked off the transport routes."

"Can't the Defense Force send a few armored vehicles out to clear them?" another woman's voice chimed in. It was a different director.

"No," Wilson rejected the idea flatly. "Deploying heavy machine guns and artillery will drain our ammo reserves, and it'll only draw in more zombies from further out. We can't afford to break the current balance."

Then, I heard Serena's voice.

She sounded as calm and even as always.

"There's no need to provoke a conflict, everyone. We just need to follow the agreement and deliver the quota on time. As long as the zombies outside are satisfied, they won't attack our mining convoys."

My hand froze on the door.

Agreement? Quota?

Of course I knew there were zombies outside with territorial instincts and the ability to communicate on a basic level. But Eden City's official stance had always been absolute hostility toward all infected.

When did the Supreme Committee start making secret deals with these sentient zombies behind everyone's backs? And if it was a trade, what exactly was Eden City offering?

I leaned closer to the gap and peered inside.

Seven or eight men and women in tailored suits sat around the long conference table. Serena sat off to the side, wearing a black blazer, her hair perfectly styled without a strand out of place.

An electronic spreadsheet was projected onto the wall at the front of the room.

The file was titled: This Month's Biomass Quota Roster.

I squinted to make out the contents. It wasn't a list of supplies at all. It was a list of people.

The spreadsheet was packed with hundreds of names. Next to each name was their age, physical condition, and residential district. I noticed that every single person on the list was from Eden City's lowest tier.

"The poor in the lower districts have been making a lot of noise lately," Wilson said, tapping his finger on the table as he looked at the screen. "Dozens of them rioted at the security outpost last week, claiming their families had gone missing. If you keep the handover quota at fifty people a month, it's going to be very hard for us to keep covering it up with the 'sudden fatal illness' excuse."

"Then change the excuse to 'lost contact during a supply run'," Serena replied, not even looking up from the tablet in her hands. "Eden City needs ore and fuel to keep the generators running. Without power, the heating system fails, and the whole city freezes to death. Expending a few dozen laborers a month to ensure the survival of twenty thousand law-abiding citizens is an incredibly cost-effective trade."

Standing outside the door, my breath hitched.

They were feeding live human beings to the zombies.

Every month, they picked fifty living people from the lower districts, dragged them out of the city, and handed them over to the undead to be eaten—all to buy temporary safety.

I stared dead at the spreadsheet on the wall.

Serena clicked a remote, and the screen scrolled down to display the historical handover records from the past few months.

My eyes darted across the names. They were ordinary people. Some were mechanics. Some were janitors.

Suddenly, my gaze locked onto a single line of text right in the middle of the screen.

Name: Maya.

Age: 13.

Origin: East District.

Handover Date: Three months ago.

Official Cause of Death: Novel influenza, cremated.

Maya.

The name of my own little sister.

Three months ago, I was in the middle of a closed-door trial in the underground lab. They notified me that Maya had contracted a highly contagious strain of a novel flu. By the time I rushed out of the lab, security intercepted me, telling me she had already died of organ failure. To prevent the virus from spreading through the city, they didn't even let me see her one last time before tossing her body straight into the incinerator.

Serena was with me that afternoon. She gently rubbed my back, handed me an aluminum box filled with ashes, and told me not to grieve too much—that I had to look forward.

That aluminum box was still sitting in a steel cabinet in my lab.

I glared at the handover date on the screen. It was the exact same day they told me Maya had died of the flu.

She never caught any flu.

She was used as a bargaining chip by these executives—by the girlfriend I trusted more than anyone in the world—and tossed straight into the jaws of the undead outside the walls.

Bang!

I kicked the heavy conference room doors open. The wood slammed forcefully against the wall with a deafening crash.

The people inside jolted in shock. The coffee mug in Wilson's hand dropped straight to the floor, splashing dark brown liquid all over the carpet.

Every pair of eyes in the room snapped to me.

I didn't even look at the other executives. I marched right up to the conference table, pointed at the spreadsheet on the wall, and stared at her.

"Maya," my voice was so low and ragged it sounded foreign to my own ears. "What did you do to Maya!?"

The room fell dead silent. The only sound was the faint hum of the AC vents.

Wilson snapped out of it, immediately reaching under the table and pressing the panic button for security.

Serena didn't scream, nor did she scramble to explain herself.

She looked at me with the exact same gaze she reserved for an unruly subordinate.

"Elias, you shouldn't have come up here right now," Serena said.

I looked right into her eyes. "You knew all along that Maya was sent out to feed the zombies!"

"I had just earned my seat in this room back then. I needed to prove my value and my decisiveness." Serena's voice didn't waver in the slightest. "The list is randomly generated by the system based on labor value. Maya's labor rating was too low, so she and her name was drawn. I had no reason to interfere with the system's decision."

"You fed her to the zombies!" I took a step forward.

"We secured energy for the city!" a male director interjected loudly. "You're a smart man, Elias. It's called rational cost control!"

Wilson leaned back in his chair, a sneer of utter contempt on his face. "Don't take yourself too seriously, Elias. Do you really think just because you wear that white coat and sit in some underground lab, you're one of us? Deep down, you're still just a rat from the slums. You are no different from the consumables on that list. You have no right to stand here and negotiate with us."

I ignored him, my eyes still locked on Serena.

"She was only thirteen, Serena. She used to call you her big sister."

A flicker of emotion finally crossed Serena's eyes. But it wasn't guilt. It was impatience.

"Let's not drag feelings into this, Elias," she said in a ruthlessly pragmatic tone. "Outside these walls, it is overrun with zombies. Surviving comes with a price. Maya contributed to the continued operation of this city. That is simply a fact."

She walked around the table, stopped right in front of me, and looked into my eyes.

"Forget everything you saw in this room today. Go back down and focus on your research," Serena ordered, her tone brooking no argument. "You do the science, and I am the decision-maker who ensures this city stays alive. As long as you keep developing the virus-control tech, I'll double your lab's budget next month."

I stared at the face in front of me.

I turned around and began walking stiffly toward the door. I already had the plan mapped out in my head. I was going to go back to the lab, destroy all my research logs, smash the petri dishes to pieces. And then tell everyone in the base—

"Stop him."

Wilson yelled from behind, "He saw the quota roster! If he starts blabbing out there, it'll trigger a massive riot!"

I didn't care. My hand was already on the doorknob.

Right then, I heard the faint, high-pitched crackle of electricity behind me.

A split second later, an agonizing jolt of pain exploded at the base of my neck.

A stun baton. I crashed heavily onto the carpet. In the final second before my consciousness faded into darkness, I saw a pair of black high heels step up to my face.

Serena looked down at me from above, gripping a military-grade stun baton in her hand.

"You're too emotional, Elias."

That was the last thing I heard before I blacked out.