Not long after Yekase and Ling Yi, bright with high spirits, cut north through the sky like twin swallows, the storm broke.

Jiang Bailu sat in a dusty storage room, dust motes drifting like ash snow. She dug through a heap of broken boxes and trash, fishing out an iron pipe, a thick coil spring, and a screwdriver.

In broad daylight, the third midway camp—and the hotel that housed the staff—were hit by a mass assault of puppets. The sun shone cold, and chaos bloomed like mold.

How could the timing be this perfect?

Right on the day after Luzhixing and Gu Xiangshi were gravely wounded.

Right when Yekase and Ling Yi took off and vanished into the blue.

Like assassins pouncing the second the guard blinked, the attack rolled out, bold as a blade.

The puppets wore the faces of staffers who’d died in that first day’s tenement incident. Confusion spiked like thorns. People died in the clamor, then rose again as fresh puppets, the tide turning and turning.

In a heartbeat, it spiraled into a biohazard, like Raccoon City waking in a bad dream.

Jiang Bailu had been at the hotel all day. Of course she became one of the hunted, chased by that foaming false life. She finally wedged a cabinet against the door and won herself a breath’s rest, a small island in a rising flood.

Thinking it through, the distress signal from the third camp came first. Which meant the culprit triggered their ability there, brewed chaos like a fever, then slipped back to the city and struck the hotel.

In the wild first minutes, Gu Xiangshi and Luzhixing stood shoulder to shoulder, old grudges shelved like dusty books. Gu raised colossal black cubes and sealed the entire third camp as if boxing a storm. Luzhixing stayed inside, alone, to wipe out the puppets one by one, a lone blade in a maelstrom.

Then Gu Xiangshi raced back and sealed the hotel too.

The terrain was more tangled than the camp. Too many people didn’t make it out. The cubes dropped, and the hotel became a trapped hive.

Jiang Bailu was one of the unlucky caught in its honeycomb.

She didn’t have the kind of strength Yekase or Ling Yi wielded, but she did have the hands and habits of the Weapon Development Department, the craft that steadies nerves like a brace of oak.

She used her pocket soldering iron to seal one end of the pipe, leaving a neat hole just shy of the screwdriver’s girth. She linked the pipe and screwdriver with the thick spring, then welded on a stubby grip. Crude, ugly, and unforgiving—she birthed a junkyard slam gun, all bite and no comfort.

Load a bullet into the pipe. Stretch the spring and let go. The screwdriver’s tail hammers the primer. Forced ignition. A dirty trick, but a trick that spits fire.

She had six bullets.

She seated one round in the “chamber,” shoved the cabinet aside, and slipped out of the storage room like a cat stealing into rain.

A few staff wandered the corridor, drifting like sleepwalkers. The moment they saw her, they bunched as if sound were gravity—zombies scenting life.

Jiang Bailu stretched the screwdriver’s handle, aimed at the nearest chest.

Bang!

The man toppled. He melted into foam and water, the carpet drinking him like thirsty moss.

“She’s got a gun!” “Run!” “Gun!”

Do they still keep a shred of who they were? Do puppets remember fear like a bruise?

On the outside, Jiang Bailu wore a buzzcut bravado, like a grunt lugging a rocket launcher into Raccoon City. Inside, the first shot slammed through her bones. Her right wrist howled under raw, un-damped recoil. It shook, a leaf in a crosswind.

She’d aimed for his chest, the biggest target. The junk gun bit low and hit his thigh. Luck held—puppets born of powers had thin skins; the difference blurred like fog.

If they’d pressed in without care for death, she wouldn’t have held. Ammo was sand in an hourglass, and her heart beat fast.

…Exhale.

Keep moving.

She needed to link up with someone who could fight. As far as she knew, the only fighter left in the hotel was Gu Xiangshi.

Jiang Bailu edged along the corridor and reached the stairwell. It was strangely quiet. The floor was wet, shining like a freshly mopped mirror.

Wet?

When a puppet died, it foamed and fell to water. Was this trail the wake of someone fighting their way upward?

…Follow it.

She’d been a researcher for two-plus years since graduation. This was her first time on a battlefield that smelled like iron and fear.

She wasn’t half as nervous as she’d imagined. Was it the junk gun weighing her hand? Or the time she’d directed the base’s defenses?

No. Neither.

Something was rising from deep inside, a courage she’d never met, like a buried ember breathing red.

“I’m… a researcher. A desk worker…”

Find Gu Xiangshi. Link up. Drag out the mastermind, the ability user hiding in this hotel like a spider under a stair.

How was that plan coming from her mouth?

Her steps didn’t stop. She followed the water’s gleam up to the top floor.

The door opened, and a staffer carrying a pine planter shuffled toward her, resin scent faint as winter. She sent him off with a clean shot, flint and flame.

Two sturdy men came next, faces painfully familiar.

She knew them. One was the driver who’d fetched them from the airport on the first day. The other was the uncle police officer who’d kept the first scene sealed, stern as a winter crow.

They were puppets now.

Bang. Bang.

They fell and blew apart into spray.

Jiang switched the gun to her left hand. Her right wrist had swelled tight, fingers unable to grip the stubby handle. Pain pulsed like a drum.

Two bullets left.

The goal was close.

She moved down the corridor. Near the rooftop, voices rose, ragged and human.

Gu Xiangshi was there.

Her coat had vanished somewhere in the fight. Her pure white suit was stained dark and pale by sweat and splash, like clouds blotched by storm. In front of her, puppets packed the space, countless as crows.

Black cubes flashed into being and vanished, each time stealing a puppet’s borrowed life. But the tide didn’t ebb. Look close—new puppets kept hatching in the crowd, as if the nest were endless.

Behind Gu, a dozen people crouched in a corner, eyes dull and bright all at once. Survivors. Beyond staffers and the racing team members, Jiang Bailu spotted that couple team.

Chen Nuo. Li Juncheng. That should be their names. The two surviving teams must have followed Gu Xiangshi back from the third camp to the hotel, riding her wake like skiffs behind a breaker.

Jiang pressed her back to the wall and shouted over the tide, “Miss Gu Xiangshi! Are these all the survivors?”

“Another living one?” Gu couldn’t spare a glance. Her voice was frayed with exhaustion, yet steely. “It’s sealed shut here. Don’t come closer! Go to the General Manager’s office at the end of the hall and find a phone. Call Eternal Green Pages!”

“Any weapons? I’m almost dry!”

“Figure it out yourself!”

Damn. She really knew how to delegate.

Two puppets turned toward Jiang’s voice. Before they lunged, Gu snapped her fingers twice. Two crisp cuts, two bodies down. But that heartbeat of distraction let a chef puppet rake a knife across her arm. Steel kissed skin. A red line opened.

“Doesn’t even sting! You think you can drag me down with this? Dream on!”

Sister, weren’t you seriously injured last night?

Jiang Bailu knew there was no choice now. It had to be her.

The Doctor and Ling Yi—they could return at any time, or never. They didn’t know what was happening in the hotel. Maybe they were shopping like the last two days, or sky-dancing above the clouds. Jiang’s phone lay in her room, dropped and forgotten. No way to call. No way to cry out.

Couldn’t anyone outside see the enormous black cube shrouding the hotel? Or… did they see it and just couldn’t get in?

Her trembling right hand clamped the screwdriver’s tail. She stepped into the hall, breath shallow and hot.

General Manager’s office. General Manager’s office…

“—Ah?!”

Her leg yanked tight. Cold fingers bit like wire.

A puppet lay prone on the floor, arms wrapped around her left leg. Before she could draw back the spring, he opened his mouth and sank his teeth into her exposed ankle.

“Aagh—!”

Pain flared white. Pain throbbed black. Pain, pain, pain.

Her junk gun spat sparks. The puppet fell to water. The pain didn’t ebb. She lifted her leg. The skin at its thinnest—torn open. Tendon and bone glinted like wet ivory.

“Ugh…”

She wanted to scream and purge the terror. Her hand slapped over her mouth, instinct hard as iron. She’d already cried out when he bit her. Another sound, and more puppets would flood in. She’d die in this narrow throat of a hall.

Her left foot numbed into a cold throb. She leaned on the wall and shambled forward, one step, then another, the world tightening like a bootlace.

Round the corner, and the General Manager’s office lay ahead. No puppets on the way. Maybe because no living scent lingered here; the tide had surged toward Gu Xiangshi’s blaze.

She peeked around the corner.

At the end of the hall stood the General Manager’s office. A man stood in front of its door.

Jeans. Hoodie. An ordinary young man, body shape average as concrete. Jiang recognized him. He was the elder of the Ghostfire Brothers.

Li Dapao.

His hand rested on the door handle. His back faced Jiang. He hadn’t noticed her.

Going in to call for help?

Jiang’s breath eased a fraction. She stepped to call out—and froze.

No.

Gu Xiangshi’s first words were “Another living one.” She was holding a dozen survivors together. She must’ve swept the hotel while Jiang hid, gathered every cry for help, and led them upward, only to be hemmed in at the rooftop like deer on a ledge.

She’d planned to clear the puppets enough to lift the cubes, then take the survivors out via the roof, wind to their backs.

But puppets kept spawning. The nest was a hole with no bottom. The stand had turned desperate.

So—why was Li Dapao here?

Was that hand on the handle meant to open the door—or to lock it tight?

Jiang snapped the junk gun up and sighted his back, breath a string.

The mastermind… was him.

He’d murdered Wang Yihan in the shadows, then used Wang’s puppet to kill Liu Shiyuan and staff. After Yekase’s push had bought them a clean night, he showed his face, exploited the rules under everyone’s noses, and killed Zheng Shu and his secretary with a smirk.

Jiang had one last bullet. Her body couldn’t carry a fight—she didn’t even know how to fight. Before he noticed her, shoot him dead.

He’d already locked the office door. He was about to turn—

Bang!!

“What—”

“Looks like we missed a stray.”

No.

At the worst possible moment.

The junk gun’s aim went crooked. The bullet bit the ceiling. Despair fell like ice water.

“Since you figured it out, I can’t let you live. Not that I planned to.” Li Dapao laughed, rich and pleased. “Mm. Gu Xiangshi should be about spent too… This is my perfect win.”

He drew a handgun from his jacket.

Not a pile of scrap. A clean, ready P250.

He stepped toward her, each footfall heavy as a drum.

Jiang Bailu couldn’t run. The bite flared, and her pace was mud. He closed the distance with ease. The hallway was long and narrow, a rifle barrel. Its darkness pointed straight at her heart.

So… is this the end? Doctor, I couldn’t wait for you to come back. I’m sorry—

Bang!!