Zone 1 Outbreak

“Okay, I hope everyone had a good night's sleep” Lionheart said with a hearty laugh as the squad all gathered around the table, they all had varying expressions on their faces.

“Why do we have to wake up so early, it’s just 6 am” Bai said yawning while scratching his head.

“Yeah it’s not like we’re in a military drill camp” Hei added in agreement staring at Lionheart who smirked in response and turned to a scientist seated next to him.

“This is Dr. Ed, he’s the main scientist here so he’s just a rank below me in terms of clearance, he’s going to be taking us through the active threat we spotted last night, but first I would like to introduce you to the last member of your team, Doc if you would do me the honors” Lionheart smiled to the white coat seated beside him who grinned and nodded to him before standing up to reveal his appearance to the others who observed him curiously, he was clothed in white scientists robes, his eyeglasses glimmered with a faint hue occasionally as he grabbed his tablet from the table.

“Thank you, Mr. Lionheart, you can call me Doc, so let me introduce to you guys, the last member of your team…” Doc smiled and tapped a button on his tablet causing a part of the wall to open up revealing a shadow who walked out of the wall.

“Huh?” Henry squinted his eyes at the figure which walked into the light to reveal his full appearance.

“I introduce to you, Yoshi” Doc added just as everyone saw the figure.

“It’s a freaking robot, what is it I-Robot?” Bai said with a frown toward the figure who was revealed to be a robot who looked around curiously before inspecting its own body.

“Oh quit being a crybaby and suck it up, he's your partner whether you like it or not” Lionheart grunted at Bai who groaned.

“But it’s a freaking robot” Hai also said with displeasure, he was clearly displeased by his new teammate.

“I would please like to be referred to as him” Yoshi replied staring at Hai who chuckled.

“Oh would you look at that, the robot has pronouns, what’s he gonna say next, he wants a country full of robots” Bai mocked while high-fiving his brother who grinned at the joke.

“Come on you guys, you’re just angry 'cause Yoshi’s Japanese” Micheal smirked at the twins who glared at him.

“But wasn’t that conflict ages ago?” Henry turned to Racheal who shrugged in response.

“Okay okay that’s enough, we have more pressing matters than racial discrimination, last night you were shown the Zone 1 images and now you know the threat, Doc here will brief you on the full details” Lionheart said before sitting back down and digging into the pack of instant noodles before him.

“Is he eating instant noodles?” Bai turned to Micheal and asked with a suppressed chuckle, hearing this Micheal facepalmed and shook his head at his father’s eccentric behavior.

“Okay so these are the satellite images recorded from Zone 1, this is today’s findings” Doc explained swiping three images onto a large screen which everyone turned their attention to.

“It’s getting denser” Racheal remarked noticing that the number of red dots had increased.

“If we don’t do something, it might become a huge problem” Micheal said with a frown obviously bothered by what he saw.

“Why don’t you just drop a nuke or something?” Bai suggested with a smile.

“There might be civilians still alive in there, they might be waiting to be rescued, dropping a nuke would terminate them all, plus we don’t know what caused all this, dropping a nuke would be too risky” Micheal replied shaking his head at the suggestion.

“Just look at the red dots, do you think anyone would survive this?” Hai asked pointing at the densely packed red dots.

“Micheal’s right, we can’t risk the life of civilians plus you have an extraction mission” Lionheart finally finished his instant noodles and looked up at the screen with a serious expression.

“An extraction mission, okay let me just..I never agreed to do any suicide squad shit like this, I only came here because you told me you could get what I wanted” Bai said getting up and glancing at Lionheart who sipped his drink while also staring at Bai calmly like he didn’t care about what you wanted.

“This is about the lives of innocent scientists, don’t you care about them and their kids?” Doc asked in disbelief at Bai’s indifferent attitude toward the lives of all the scientists.

“I know this sounds dangerous and it sure is, I wouldn’t do this, that’s why I chose you guys to do it..” Lionheart who was finally done eating took in a deep breath and said to Bai who was about to reply when he continued.

“You guys are the best of the best, each having skills and abilities that are greatly treasured and rare, due to this you guys were all chosen as a team with the promise of giving each of you all what you wanted, that was the contract and since you signed the contract, you are obliged to follow in any mission that is given out to you without any form of reluctance, that was the agreement we had” Lionheart added before turning to the others who stayed silent even though they were also reluctant.

“Okay, let’s hear the full details then” Hai patted his brother’s shoulders after some time before turning to the Doc who nodded and swiped up on his tablet bringing up a new picture.

“This here is Dr. Grey, he was the lead scientist in charge of Zone 1 and the Hooke Experiment back when everything started” Doc explained pointing to the picture of a middle-aged man in lab coats surrounded by a group of other scientists.

“Oh yeah I heard about that, they were responsible for the further research into Robert Hooke’s discovery of the cell” Micheal chipped in earning a nod from the Doc.

“Yes you’re right, they researched further into the existence of the V-Cell which appeared years ago and was responsible for the sudden genetic mutations in plants, animals, and humans caused by a gene called the S-Gene, it was a group of five scientists who was put on the task of finding a solution and studying the cell and finding out how different it was from the cell discovered by Robert Hooke in 1665 and Leuwenhoek in 1675..” Doc seemingly carried away was suddenly interrupted by Bai.

“Um, I’m sorry Doc but people’s lives are at stake here so if you could please skip the biology and history class, it would be really appreciated” Bai who was already tired said to Doc who gave a light cough and then continued.

“Anyway, I was among those five scientists who were brought together, and in the end, we did find a vaccine for it and were later posted to different Zones, with Grey being pushed to Zone 1, your mission is to extract Dr. Grey and any other live and uninfected civilians with him” Doc explained, his tone turning grave.

“Looks like he’s really valuable to you guys, what’s his story?” Henry asked, his thoughts going in line with that of the others.

“As you all know, Zone 1 is the closest Zone to the wastelands where the S-Gene rages rampant, due to that, Grey was tasked with a secret mission of experimenting more on the gene, a few days before the first infection at Zone 1, we received a satellite transmission from him saying that he had finally discovered something about the V-Cell that could change the world as we know it, a few days later the first infection started and spread at a rate at which we had never met before, what we’re dealing with is something that only you guys can face, that’s why you guys were selected for this dangerous mission” Doc explained the situation, his words calling for a moment of silence for the taskforce members to absorb his words completely.

“What is the estimated chance of success?” Micheal asked curiously.

“Normally it would be around 30% but if it’s you guys then I’m guessing maybe a 50% chance of success” Doc replied truthfully.

“You do know that there is a chance that we might not get Grey out alive, he might even be dead before we get there, what do we do then?” Racheal asked.

“That’s why you also need to locate and get his research work” Doc replied with a sigh.

“I guess what’s done is done, we can’t waste time anymore, we need to start preparing to leave soon before the situation gets worse” Micheal said glancing at the faces of his teammates who also agreed since they had no choice.

“I thought it would actually take more to convince you guys but this was easier than I thought, Doc give them the plan outline with all the details” Lionheart chuckled heartily and said to Doc who shook his head and swiped up on his pad once again causing a hologram to appear on the table at which they all sat.

“To help with the infiltration is someone who knows about the place better than anyone” Doc said before then speaking into the pad, “Come in”

WHOOSH

The doors opened as a military-clothed middle-aged man with a stern face walked into the room, his hands behind his back while walking to the table where he paused and then observed the faces of the task force members with indifference.

“So these are the soldiers supposed to do this mission, they look like freaking chicks, we’re not going into a playground kids, we’re going into a real battlefield so in case you haven’t realized that you could possibly lose your lives, I suggest you buckle up” The man said sternly to the Taskforce who stared at him with a frown and then burst into laughter.

“Hahahaha, Captain Jack they may look young and inexperienced but their body count would say otherwise, please just go on with the strategy, this is Captain Jack, he’s an experienced general, he’ll be responsible for going through the strategy and other minor things” Lionheart said to the man who nodded and then turned to the taskforce and introduced the man.

“Okay Lionheart, listen up chicks, so this is the building outline of Zone 1, you guys will be dropped off here since the other areas are almost already populated with enemies, but even then we have to be careful not to get swarmed, the location is about 20 km from the main research base, which means that we have to move through the zone carefully and cautiously to the research base” Captain Jack said zooming into the streets of the zone where a holographic line led through the streets.

“So all these dots represent enemies, possibly undead right?” Racheal asked gazing at the holographic map where several dots were spread out across the whole zone.

“Yeah and the only current clear path is through here, by my calculations it would take two days to get to the center of the zone where the research base is located, that’s on the condition that nothing happens” Captain Jack replied.

“Okay, so what is the game plan? How do we get through the hordes?” Henry asked glancing at Captain Jack.

“So in a day we leave by jet, we’ll arrive there by night most probably which would be better for us since the night could mask our presence and increase our stealth, after arriving, we storm through the city taking the safe route, killing any enemy we encounter and moving quickly, by morning we should have covered half of the distance so we rest and plan for the rest of the journey based on our state and observation, in total we’ll have exactly 62 hours before whatever is spreading in the zone becomes too much for us to handle and the government has to nuke the place” Captain Jack continued which made the expressions of some people in the room change.

“You mean we have 3 days there before the whole place is nuked, what if we don’t get out in time?” Bai asked after keeping quiet for some time.

“If we don’t get out we all die” Captain Jack replied with a serious face.

“As I said before the mission is very dangerous, but the lives of people are at stake, if we can’t find out what caused the infection, we can’t let it spread any longer so 3 days is all you have” Lionheart added making the tense atmosphere disappear.

“I guess we have no choice then, so when do we leave?” Hai asked with a grin which shocked the others who didn’t understand how he could smile even under the threat that he could lose his life.

“Hahahaha, I like this one, I like your spirit, we leave tomorrow” Captain Jack replied with a laugh toward Hai who also chuckled.

“Tomorrow?” Henry asked in shock.

“Yeah today will be about training for you guys, since you just met, you need some time to get used to each other so today will be used to train your teamwork and coordination and tomorrow we leave, does anyone have questions?” Lionheart asked, his question causing several of the taskforce members to raise their hands signaling that they had a question.

“Okay seems like there are no questions, Yoshi did you get all that?” Lionheart pretended like he didn’t see the hands and got up before turning to Yoshi who nodded.

“You sure Buckethead, you didn’t seem to be paying attention right now” Bai said wanting to stir trouble.

“Oh, I sure did Shina” Yoshi replied causing the others to burst into laughter as Bai and Hai both glared at Yoshi who also gave a weird robotic chuckle.

“Hey break it up, we have a lot to do today, but first go grab your breakfast, after that we train” Captain Jack got up and said to the others, his face gaining a menacing scowl like he was planning something wicked, he then chuckled and left, leaving the others to try to imagine what he was planning.