2026-08-21 20:43:10The 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!"
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 124: The Ledger’s Next Page
The morning sun cut sharp, golden lines across the mahogany desk, turning the dust motes dancing in the air into suspended embers. Mdm. Lim sat motionless, her posture as rigid as the structure supporting them. She dipped her brush into the fresh charcoal ink, the smell of it—earthy, biting, and permanent—filling the cramped office. With a steady hand, she wrote the date at the top margin of the ledger. The ink soaked into the recycled paper, a black stroke marking the beginning of a cycle, a promise of order in a world that favored chaos.Scratch. Scratch. Thump.Gabriel stepped into the doorway, his silhouette blocking the glare from the veranda. He held a grease-stained tally sheet in his hand, his knuckles white from the strain of gripping it."The weights are in," Gabriel said, his voice raspy from the salt air. "The mackerel crates from Vance’s latest run were consistent. Fifty-two ki
Chapter 123: The Horizon Check II
"The silence is the most dangerous part of the dry season," Mdm. Lim murmured, her gaze fixed on the darkening stretch of the Jurong channel. She didn't wait for a response, her fingers tracing the worn wood of the railing, testing the grain for signs of rot—a lifelong habit of a woman who measured the world in structural integrity.Gabriel looked at her, noting the way the fading light deepened the lines around her eyes. She looked tired, not just from the day's labor, but from the cumulative weight of keeping this fragile cluster of stilts above the rising, hungry tide. "It’s not just the silence, Mdm. Lim. It’s what’s hiding in it.""Exactly," she replied, a sharp edge to her voice. "We’ve had the northerners, we’ve had the gear failure, and we’ve had the cistern crisis. We’re overdue for something truly catastrophic. The sea rarely lets us enjoy a week of smooth winch operatio
Chapter 122: The Evening Heat
The sun dipped below the flat horizon, painting the oily surface of the Jurong channel in dull shades of copper and violet. The heat, which had been a hammer blow against the back of the neck for the better part of fourteen hours, began to lose its sharp, predatory edge, settling into a thick, humid stillness. It was the hour of the cooling breeze, though "cool" was a relative term in the stilt-settlement; it merely meant the air was no longer actively blistering the skin.Gabriel leaned against the cedar railing—the one Wei Xian had reinforced with cross-bracing and salvaged drift-bolts just three days ago. He felt it hold steady under his weight, a solid, unyielding contrast to the constant, shifting instability of the life they led. Below him, the tide was licking at the barnacle-crusted piles, the sound rhythmic and hypnotic."You’re thinking too loud, Gabriel," a voice drifted from the shadows of the walkway.
Chapter 121: The Repair of the Crane
The iron-on-iron shriek that had haunted the Jurong dockside for three weeks finally died, replaced by a low, rhythmic hum. Kai gripped the hand-winch, feeling the cold, smooth tension of the gear train as it transferred his physical effort into the heavy lift. The improvement was intoxicating. Where once the crane had stuttered and groaned, threatening to fracture its own mounting bolts, it now swung with a precision that bordered on grace."Ease it," Wei Xian called out from the veranda, his voice cutting through the humid air. He was hunched over a steaming mug of tea, his eyes narrowed as he assessed the movement of the loading arm. "If you snap that cable, you’re the one who has to splice it in the salt-spray. Keep the torque steady."Kai didn’t look back. He leaned into the winch, his biceps burning as he guided the heavy, salt-encrusted crate of dried mackerel upward. It hung for a moment, suspended over the
Chapter 120: The Ledger of Grace
The scratch of Mdm. Lim’s charcoal brush against the rough, recycled paper was the only sound in the office. It was a rhythmic, scratching pulse, like the steady beat of a heart, punctuating the stillness of the afternoon. Outside the thin, salt-worn walls of the command hut, the stilt-settlement hummed with the mundane, desperate industry of survival. The wind had begun to howl, a dry, abrasive gust that rattled the loose corrugated tin sheets overhead, carrying the scent of parched earth and distant, decaying mangroves.Mdm. Lim did not look up when the door creaked open. She didn't need to. The pattern of the footsteps—heavy, deliberate, yet hesitant—told her exactly who it was."The cistern is finished," Gabriel said, his voice gravelly from a day of breathing in the damp, claustrophobic air of the underground tank. He leaned against the doorframe, his clothes stiff with dried mud and the white, chalky residue of hy
Chapter 119: The Deep Cistern Repair
Gabriel leaned his weight against the iron-shod handle of the sounding line, watching the grease-marked cord slip slowly down into the dark throat of the primary concrete cistern. The damp air rising from the subterranean chamber smelled of wet limestone, stagnant runoff, and the faint, mineral bitterness of ancient dregs. Beside him, Kai wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of a soot-dusted forearm, his eyes fixed on the descending cord."How deep is the drop this week, Gabriel?" Kai asked, his voice echoing slightly against the low, curved concrete ceiling of the access hatch. "Is the silt line climbing faster than Mdm. Lim calculated in the evening audit?""Two inches lower than Tuesday," Gabriel replied, his tone flat as he pinched the wet cord between his calloused fingers to mark the exact water level. "If we don't clear the intake pipe before the wind shifts fully to the south, the whole distribution manifold is g
You may also like
Lord Of The Ultra Billionaire System
Author_Danny27.0K viewsThe Tycoon Game System
Dee Hwang 24.0K viewsFrom A Useless Cripple To An Almighty Boss
Sweet savage41.8K viewsMy Rich Squandering System
NOVEMBRE24.3K viewsThe Monster Tamer Who Hates Monsters
velqiane39 viewsBelittle Me Now And Cry Later
DiamondWrite 415 viewsAscend or Vanish
Aria Winters47 viewsTHE SYSTEM'S LAST DEBTOR
Murni Senja54 views