The blue light from Arman’s power core slowly faded on the frozen floor, giving off one last bit of thinning warmth. Nathan tightly held Alice, who was still shivering and stiff. The Bio-Zero professor’s lips were turning blue, her breaths sounding incredibly fragile under the heavy, ice-crusted jacket.​"Liana, his core is going completely cold," Nathan whispered, his voice raspy as he tried to stop shaking. "Professor Alice needs a temperature stabilizer right now, or her lungs are gonna freeze over."​Liana didn't answer. Her eyes were glued to the ice crack separating them from the outside world. Out there, the silhouettes of dozens of zombies were still crowding around the snowdrift where Arman’s armor was buried. The constant sound of claws scratching against metal was pure torture, hitting Liana with a massive wave of guilt.​THUD! THUD! THUD!​A series of muffled gunshots suddenly broke through the roaring storm. It wasn't the sharp hiss of a military plasma rifle, but the hea

​"Liana’s terminal is live," Giselle whispered, her eyes reflecting the dim blue glow of the device. "She’s buying time with a dummy encryption. I can slip into her feed through a main console backdoor." ​Nathan stopped pacing, giving Giselle a serious look. "What about Professor Alice?" ​Giselle typed fast with her thumbs. "Her medical data just updated on the local net. Alice is awake. Heart rate's stable. She's ready to move, but the medical ward door is locked with a rolling code from Rania's control center." ​In the tech room three floors above them, Liana was still playing along, pretending to type furiously in front of a massive terminal screen. Vance stood right behind her, eyes narrowed, watching her every hand movement. ​BZZT. ​Suddenly, a line of code flashed in the bottom corner of Liana’s monitor, camouflaged perfectly within the running encryption algorithms of Arman’s armor. ​[G-SYS]: ALICE AWAKE. READY TO MOVE. PORTAL LOCK ON RANIA-SEC. NEED OVERRIDE. ​Liana he

​"The subject... the subject didn't fail," Alice muttered. Her voice was raspy, echoing softly through the metal pipe like a natural loudspeaker. "The North Sector... they don't want a cure. They want... total control."​"Professor, please, shut up," Nathan whispered in a panic. He crawled backward while supporting Alice’s waist, keeping the old woman from collapsing on the downward slope.​"Nathan, make her shut up!" Anna hissed from the very back of the line. Her hand was already gripping her tactical knife, ready to thrust forward if things went south. "Her voice is traveling straight down the hall. The rest of the undead down here can hear us!"​CRACK.​The sound of claws scratching the outside wall of the vent pipe made them all freeze instantly. Behind the sheet metal they were crawling on, they could hear faint, guttural groans. The zombies wandering the side tunnels of the mine were starting to pick up on the vibrations of Alice's voice.​"Don't stop, Liana! Keep moving!" Gise

The boat engine coughed twice before totally dying. A strange, heavy silence instantly rushed in, replacing the constant rumble that had been their background noise for hours. The blinding white snow was gone, replaced by a dark, moss-covered concrete canal. A thick, gray fog hung low, wrapping around a row of shops with shattered windows. ​The boat slowly drifted to a stop, bumping into a collapsed overpass pillar that lay right across the canal. ​"Out of gas," Giselle whispered, dropping the empty jerrycan onto the deck. ​Liana stood at the bow, scouting the concrete stairs leading up to the streets. "We get off here. Find some cover before this fog gets any thicker." ​Nathan moved slowly, draping Professor Alice’s arm over his shoulder. The snow was gone, but the air in this dead city felt different—damp, stuffy, and smelling of rusted iron. Alice dragged her feet as she walked, her breaths coming in short gasps behind the cloth gag Nathan had finally loosened. ​They climbed t

Dimly flickering neon lights lit up the damp underground station corridor. The smell of cheap disinfectant mixed with a sharp stench of rust that hit their noses hard. To their left and right, the station's waiting areas had been partitioned off with thick iron bars, forming a row of dead-silent quarantine cells.​Two of Harris’s men, wearing shabby plastic raincoats and thick cloth masks, immediately took Alice over from Nathan. They laid her down on a metal cot inside one of the cells. A syringe filled with a clear yellowish liquid was jammed into the professor’s arm. The effect was instant; Alice’s violently seizing body slowly started to relax, and her raspy breathing gradually became more steady.​Nathan let out a massive sigh of relief, holding onto the iron bars as he watched his research aunt. "The medicine's working. She’s calm now."​CLANG.​The sound of the cell door locking from the outside made Nathan jump. He spun around and found Harris already standing in the middle of