Red Dot Protocol: Survival of the Logistics Officer

Chapter 5: Logistics of the Damned

The red light on the monitor pulsed like a dying heart. Wei Xian grabbed the guard, Ah Beng—who had finally managed to stammer his name—and shoved him toward the narrow, slime-slicked drainage pipe.

"Move! Don't look back, just crawl!" Wei Xian shouted, the hiss of the gas becoming a literal death rattle in the confined space.

"Bro, is that—is that smoke? Why is it pink?" Ah Beng coughed, his voice cracking.

"It’s not smoke, it’s a death sentence. Keep your shirt over your nose and keep moving!" Wei Xian jammed the antiviral crate into the crawlspace and kicked the man’s heels. "If you stop, you become a permanent resident of this vault."

They tumbled out into the humid undergrowth of the nature reserve ten minutes later, gasping for air. Wei Xian didn't stop to admire the moonlight. He hauled the crates to a hidden cache beneath a tarp, his hands moving with the efficiency of a man who had spent three years preparing for this exact moment.

"You’re insane," Ah Beng wheezed, wiping mud from his face. "Who are you, man? A spy?"

"I’m a guy who wants to see next month," Wei Xian replied, checking his phone. He started typing furiously. "You still want that paycheck, or are you ready to help me move ten tons of rice?"

"Ten tons? You trying to feed the whole of Singapore?"

"Just the parts that matter. Pick up your phone. We’re going to be the biggest 'humanitarian' donors the city has ever seen."

Three days later, the back of a rented lorry groaned under the weight of three hundred bags of premium Thai jasmine rice. Wei Xian leaned against the side of the truck, watching a confused Shopee driver squint at the GPS coordinates of a desolate, overgrown trail near the old Jurong railway line.

"Eh, boss? You sure this is the address?" the driver asked, scratching his head. "I look at the map, it says 'Forest'. You sure you didn't key in the wrong thing? My boss gonna kill me if I get lost in the jungle."

Wei Xian stepped forward, flashing a fake NGO pass he’d printed using the last of his 'security' access codes. "It’s a remote aid depot, Uncle. High-security, low-profile. The big organizations prefer these locations to avoid the, ah, political complications."

"NGO? You look a bit young to be running an NGO, leh," the driver muttered, eyeing the crates of solar panels stacked in the back. "Very expensive stuff, these. You sure nobody gonna steal?"

"That’s why I tipped you an extra hundred, right?" Wei Xian tapped his watch. "Just drop them by the marker. No need to unload, we have a forklift crew coming from the back."

The driver’s eyes lit up. "One hundred? Wah, steady lah. Okay, okay, I dump it exactly where you want. But if my lorry get stuck in the mud, you help me push ah?"

"Deal," Wei Xian said, checking his HUD.

Logistics Status: 42% complete. Estimated caloric intake for 50 people for six months secured.

"Uncle, tell me," Wei Xian said, leaning in, his voice dropping to a conversational tone. "You heard anything weird on the news today? People coughing, maybe? Weird flu?"

The driver paused, his grin fading. "Actually... my wife say her colleague just got sent home from Changi Airport. Something about some weird fever, like dengue but not dengue. Why you ask?"

Wei Xian felt the air in his lungs turn to ice. "Just curious. You know, news travels fast."

"Ya lor. Everything also so strange lately. You think got another lockdown ah?"

"I think you should go home, hug your family, and buy a bag of rice for your house," Wei Xian said, his voice flat. "Don't ask questions. Just drive."

The driver looked at him, confused, then shrugged. "You a strange guy, boss. But hey, money is money. I go first, ah!"

As the lorry rumbled away, Wei Xian let out a long, shuddering breath. He pulled his phone out. A notification flickered on the screen: CHANGI AIRPORT TERMINAL 3 - MEDICAL ISOLATION PROTOCOL INITIATED.

"It’s not supposed to be here yet," Wei Xian whispered to the empty forest. "It was supposed to stay in the lab for another week."

He felt a sudden, sharp jolt in his chest—not a pain, but a synchronization. His neural implant hummed with a terrifying frequency.

[WARNING: BIOLOGICAL THREAT DETECTED IN PROXIMITY. NEURAL LINK SYNCING WITH PATHOGEN FREQUENCY. HEART RATE: 110 BPM. STABILIZATION REQUIRED.]

"What?" Wei Xian clutched his chest, stumbling back against the truck. "I'm not even in the red zone! How is it syncing?"

"Wei Xian?" Ah Beng walked up, carrying a stack of medical supplies. "Everything okay? You look like you just saw a ghost."

Wei Xian couldn't answer. The humming in his head was getting louder, vibrating his very teeth. It was a rhythmic, dissonant sound—the exact sound of the virus's replication cycle.

"Ah Beng," Wei Xian gasped, grabbing the man's jacket. "Tell me you don't feel that. The sound. The vibration."

Ah Beng looked at him, terrified. "What sound? Wei Xian, you’re scaring me. You’re bleeding from your nose, man!"

Wei Xian reached up and felt the warm, sticky liquid trickling down his lip. He looked at his fingers, coated in dark red.

"It's not an infection," he rasped, his eyes widening as the HUD began to display a scrolling list of genetic sequences he had no business reading. "It's a resonance."

"What does that mean?" Ah Beng backed away. "You're starting to talk like a textbook again!"

"It means..." Wei Xian stared at the horizon, where the distant lights of the airport flickered. "It means the virus doesn't just want to kill us. It’s looking for a host to interface with."

A siren wailed in the distance—long, low, and unmistakable. It wasn't an ambulance. It was a tactical alarm.

"That's the military," Wei Xian whispered, his heart hammering in perfect time with the synthetic pulse in his brain. "Gabriel is coming."

Suddenly, his phone buzzed. It was a direct line—a secure military channel.

“Tan Wei Xian. We know about the rice. We know about the medical supplies. We know about the bunker. Stop what you’re doing, or we will open fire on your position. This is your final warning.”*

Wei Xian looked at the phone, then at the dark, looming forest. He laughed, a jagged, broken sound. "You're too late, Major. We’re already inside."

The ground beneath them shook. A muffled explosion rippled through the city.

"Wei Xian!" Ah Beng yelled over the rising wind. "Look at the sky!"

Above the city, the clouds were turning a sickly, bruised purple. The virus wasn't just spreading; it was terraforming.

Wei Xian gripped his side, his vision flickering between reality and a stream of incoming data. "It’s not just a flu, Beng. It’s an upgrade."

He didn't wait for the military's response. He pulled a detonator from his pocket.

"Start the truck!" Wei Xian roared. "We're going to the center of the storm!"