Red Dot Protocol: Survival of the Logistics Officer

The steam rising from the plate of Hainanese chicken rice was thick, smelling of ginger, garlic, and rendered fat. To anyone else in the Maxwell Food Centre, it was a five-dollar lunch. To Tan Wei Xian, it was a hallucination.

"Boy, you okay or not? You staring at the rice for five minutes already. If you don't want to eat, give the seat to someone else leh!"

Wei Xian flinched, his fork clattering against the plastic table. He looked up, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused. An elderly woman in a floral blouse stood over him, clutching a tray of fish soup.

"I’m… I’m okay," Wei Xian rasped. His throat felt like it had been scrubbed with sandpaper. "Sorry, Auntie. Just a bit dizzy."

"Dizzy? Your face pale like ghost, you know?" She squinted at him, sliding into the seat opposite. "You young people always skip breakfast, then go under the sun. Later faint then you know. Eat lah, don't waste the food. Very hard to queue one."

Wei Xian looked back at the chicken rice. The last thing he remembered wasn’t ginger or garlic. It was the copper tang of his own blood and the wet, slurping sound of teeth tearing into his shoulder. He instinctively reached for his left arm, expecting to find jagged bone and shredded muscle.

Instead, there was only the smooth fabric of his polyester t-shirt.

"Is today really June 15th?" Wei Xian asked, his voice trembling.

The Auntie paused, her spoon halfway to her mouth. "June 15th? Yeah, lor. Why? You got exam today ah?"

"2024?"

The woman stopped eating entirely, looking at him with genuine concern. "Boy, you sure you okay? You take drugs is it? Of course 2024. If not 1998 ah?"

"Right. 2024," Wei Xian whispered.

Suddenly, a searing white light exploded behind his retinas. He let out a strangled cry, clutching his temples as a mechanical hum vibrated through his skull. It was the neural implant—the Mark VII Combat Interface. But that was impossible. The Mark VII hadn't been prototype-tested until 2050, three years after the Fall.

[NEURAL LINK STABILIZING... RECALIBRATING TO LOCAL TIME-STREAM...]

The voice in his head wasn't human. It was a cold, synthetic resonance that made his teeth ache.

"Get out," Wei Xian groaned, stumbling to his feet. "Get out of my head!"

"Oi! Boy! Where you going?" the Auntie shouted as his chair screeched across the floor. "Your chicken rice! You never even eat one bite!"

Wei Xian didn't answer. The hawker centre was rotating. The humid air felt like wet wool in his lungs. He collided with a businessman in a crisp white shirt, sending a cup of iced kopi splashing across the man’s trousers.

"Eh, watch it, bro! You blind is it?" the man snapped, shoving Wei Xian back.

Wei Xian hit the ground hard. The concrete was hot, reality grounding him for a split second before the implant spiked again. He curled into a ball, his stomach turning.

"I’m sorry," Wei Xian choked out, before retching violently onto the pavement.

"Disgusting, man," the businessman muttered, stepping around the mess. "Drilled until like that on a Wednesday afternoon. No shame."

A younger woman in office attire stopped, hovering a few feet away. "Hey, do you need me to call an ambulance? You look really sick."

Wei Xian looked up, wiping bile from his lip. "What’s the time?"

"It’s... about 1:15 PM," she said, checking her Apple Watch. "Are you alright? You’re shaking."

"The date," Wei Xian insisted, grabbing the edge of a nearby table to haul himself up. "Tell me the exact date."

"It's June 15th, 2024," she replied slowly, as if speaking to a child. "Look, I’m calling a medic—"

"No! No medics," Wei Xian snapped, his SAF-trained voice cutting through his disorientation. "I’m fine. Just… heatstroke. I’m okay."

"You don't look okay. You just puked your guts out."

"I said I'm fine!" Wei Xian turned away, his heart hammering against his ribs.

He needed to see it. He needed a sign. He staggered toward the large wall-mounted television near the drinks stall. A group of uncles were huddled around it, nursing bottles of Tiger beer and complaining about the horse racing results.

The screen flickered, shifting from a sports highlight to a breaking news segment.

"Wait, wait, quiet down," one of the uncles said, waving his hand. "Something about the military."

Wei Xian froze. His eyes locked onto the screen.

“...in a surprise announcement today, the Ministry of Defence has appointed Major Gabriel Koh to lead the new Urban Resilience Task Force. The Major, a decorated officer from the Commandos, spoke briefly about the need for increased civil preparedness in the face of emerging global threats…”

The man on the screen was younger than Wei Xian remembered. His face wasn't yet scarred by the claw marks of a Level 3 Shambler. His uniform was pristine, his posture perfect.

"Major Koh," Wei Xian breathed.

"Wah, this guy looks fierce ah," an uncle remarked, taking a swig of beer. "Urban Resilience? What for? Singapore so safe, what they want to prepare for? Alien invasion ah?"

"Maybe for the high cost of living," another joked, laughing. "The only threat I see is the price of this beer going up again."

Wei Xian felt a chill that had nothing to do with the hawker centre's industrial fans. He knew that face. He had watched Major Gabriel Koh execute a line of infected civilians three years from now, tears streaming down the officer's face as he emptied his magazine to save the rest of the camp.

"You guys think it’s a joke?" Wei Xian asked, his voice loud enough to stop the laughter.

The uncles turned to look at him. "Hah? What you say, boy?"

"You think he’s on TV just to look good?" Wei Xian pointed at the screen, his finger trembling. "You have no idea what’s coming."

"Eh, hello, relax lah," the first uncle said, frowning. "We just talking only. Why you so serious? You his brother ah?"

"He has 720 hours," Wei Xian whispered, mostly to himself.

"What 700 hours? You talking what rubbish?"

Wei Xian didn't respond. He backed away, the sounds of the hawker centre—the clanging of woks, the chatter, the slurping of noodles—feeling like a countdown.

30 days.

In 30 days, the 'Urban Resilience Task Force' wouldn't be a news headline; it would be the only thing standing between the population and a viral strain that turned neighbors into predators.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen was cracked, but it vibrated to life. His bank balance showed $412.15.

"Four hundred dollars," he muttered, a hysterical laugh bubbling up in his chest. "I’m going to save the world with four hundred dollars and a stomach full of vomit."

He walked out of the hawker centre, the blinding Singapore sun hitting him like a physical blow. He ignored the stares of the passersby. His mind was racing, accessing files stored in the neural implant that shouldn't exist yet. Logistics. Supply chains. Safe zones.

He needed gear. He needed a bunker. He needed weapons.

But most of all, he needed money. A lot of it. And he needed it in a way that wouldn't leave a paper trail for the government to follow once the martial law protocols kicked in.

He scrolled through his contacts until he reached a name he hadn't thought about in years. A name associated with the darker corners of Geylang, far away from the polished halls of MINDEF.

Wei Xian took a deep breath, grounding himself with the old SAF discipline. Heel, toe, breathe. Heel, toe, breathe.

He hit the call button.

The phone rang three times before a gravelly voice answered.

"Who is this? How you get this number?"

"It’s Wei Xian," he said, his voice cold and devoid of the panic from moments ago.

"Wei Xian? The botak kid who used to run errands? I thought you went to sign on and become a big shot soldier."

"I need a meeting, Fatty Long. Today. Now."

There was a pause on the other end. "I’m busy, boy. Go play soldier somewhere else."

"I need ten million dollars," Wei Xian said clearly.

The silence on the other end was heavy. Then, a low, dangerous chuckle. "Ten million? You siao ah? You think I’m DBS bank? Why would I give you even ten cents?"

"Because in thirty days, money will be worth less than toilet paper," Wei Xian said, staring at a bus passing by, filled with people who had no idea they were already ghosts. "And if you give it to me now, I’ll make sure you’re the only person in Geylang who survives the first week."

"You threatening me, boy?"

"I’m offering you a life insurance policy," Wei Xian replied. "Meet me at the old warehouse on Lorong 12. If I’m not there in twenty minutes, don’t bother looking for me. But when the lights go out and the screaming starts, remember I called."

He hung up without waiting for a response.

Wei Xian looked at his hands. They were steady now. The trauma was still there, a dark weight in his gut, but it was being overridden by something stronger.

Survival.

He had 720 hours to turn a bankrupt ex-soldier into the most prepared man on the island.

"First thing's first," he whispered, looking at a nearby convenience store. "I need to buy all the canned sardines they have."

He started walking, his pace picking up. Behind him, on the hawker centre TV, Major Gabriel Koh was still speaking, a silent warning hidden behind a politician’s smile. Wei Xian didn't look back. He had a loan shark to rob and an apocalypse to outrun.