Beads of sweat run down his forehead, dampening his hair. He’s covered in dry dusty soot and his lungs are burning in pain. He chokes from the intensity and feels himself swaying in his steps. The disorientation hits him as soon as he stands back up.

The storage room is coming down in flames. He crams the inhibitors, containers of liquid-like substances, into the overly stuffed backpack and makes a run to the backmost emergency exit. It’s a blessing he’d seen the building blueprints weeks beforehand – he was planning a stealthy robbery, after all, and had naturally studied up on a place as convoluted as this. It is unfortunate, however, that blueprints can only show so much.

For instance, he wasn’t expecting a corner closet in which sprawls the corpse of a middle-aged man. One of the personnel, most likely, though it’s hard to tell from the bugs crawling all over him, tearing apart his flesh, hollowing out his organs and eating what’s left of his brain matter. Noah turns away almost immediately, his face beyond pale and sickly.

Mutated ringlets are not so lethal in terms of radioactivity, and the chances of turning into an anomaly is low. However, they’re feared for how quickly they proliferate and how diverse their palate is – while all anomalies are attracted to fresh meat and blood, these bugs eat anything. Every part of every organism is their nectar – from human waste to fish bones to spider legs. There are many insects that share such characteristics, though to encounter a swarm of this caliber is exceedingly rare.

Noah sprints to the adjacent room, hoping to pass by without alerting the pack. He has absolutely zero desire to be turned into insect feed – the thought of even touching a single bug sends shivers down his spine. He’s racing against the clock for both his life and his sanity. He reaches the back of the building with the fire rippling close behind him.

There is another thing he didn’t expect.

He sees Hannes sitting on the floor by the exit, calmly smoking a cigarette, adding more toxic fumes inside the place. His other free hand is holding a rifle, the tip of it pointed up his chin. The man looks up in surprise.

“Pretty boy, you haven’t evacuated yet… Ah, it’s good you’re still alive. Losing such a nice face would be a waste.”

“What are you doing?” he rasps out.

“It is also good that you’re here,” Hannes replies. “Will you do me a favor and shoot me?”

Noah thinks the scorching heat, coupled with the ringing in his ears, is making him hear wrong. He squints his eyes, wills away the dizziness and then he sees the state that Hannes is in – bleeding out from his nose, his mouth, all orifices on his face. His eyes are bloodshot. His hands are shaking, his helmet is discarded and the gun he holds is scraping the scruff of his beard. The safety is off and his dirt-covered fingers are quivering on the trigger.

Hannes looks afraid. His tone is awfully relaxed but there’s so much fear in his dark-brown eyes. He keeps blinking rapidly, keeps staring at the gun under him and the flickering flames in front. Noah understands his predicament when he sees a ringlet crawling out of his ear canal, pulling out with it a slimy trail of blood and bits of brain tissue.

“Come on!” the man yells, uncertain if addressing Noah or himself, considering the way his arms buck up violently, unable to shoot himself with his gun. Pus emerges from the pores on his face, oozing out green and pink. He doesn’t have much time now and he’s here to choose – be devoured, be burned, or be shot. He stutters out, “I-I am going to die… pretty boy, please…”

“It will be instant.”

Noah doesn’t comfort him, but he understands how numbing of a decision this is. A proud man like Hannes, crying his eyes out at the face of death, unable to bring himself to deliver the final blow. The soldier was always so confident in the short time they’ve been acquainted. Noah doesn’t care for him in the slightest and though a moment like this doesn’t deserve sympathy, he still feels certain complication.

Noah tells him, “Pull the trigger.”

“No, no…” Hannes laughs hysterically. He won’t do it. “I don’t want to die. I really don’t want to die.”

“Give me the gun.”

“Haha…ha…! No hesitation, just like the colonel. The both of you…”

Hannes does slide the gun over. He doesn’t have a better choice because he knows he will die – it’s a matter of how. The tears are sliding down his cheeks, an unsightly mix with the gooey larvae and more blood spewing out his mouth. The insects are already nestled inside his skin, but Hannes doesn’t scream from the pain. Noah doubts he can feel it from how hysterical he is, closing his eyes and begging for it to end quick.

“Pretty boy, do it quick while I’m still talking… Don’t let me see, I don’t want to see, haha… before I change my mind and—”

Hannes droops down the wall, his body hunched and lifeless. The shot is clean to his temple. At such a distance, there’s little chance of missing. The muzzle still emits smoke after recoil. Noah only glances for a second to confirm the abrasion on the man’s forehead – the stippling blisters, the burn scar, and the dark hole that’s already crawling with butterflies. The remains of him are gruesome.

The blood splatter dots the wall behind them and there are several bug corpses that slide down with it. Noah exhales shakily, calms his palpitating heart and prepares to leave. Before he kicks open the door, he walks up to the man’s body and yanks the dog tag off his neck. The brittle chain comes apart easily.

---

A gunshot sounds and the woman’s body falls to the ground. Her screams are cut short, but the others around her are horrified at the display. The screening had been going on for half an hour now. The pale-faced researchers are poultry waiting for their turns and the First Unit soldiers are their executioners.

It’s more a massacre than it is a screening – already, the numbers have dwindled from fifty rescued to ten still alive.

The snow is covered with blood and there is only more pouring out from the fresh corpses stacked on top. The bodies are being hauled to be incinerated in the still-blazing fire. Fourteen people stand some meters away from the gene bank, all of them somber and silent sans the soldiers in front. The First Unit is intimidating in all black, their clothes wet with snow, soot and blood.

“Show me your hands.” Yang Rong judges the next person, his eyes acute as he checks the man’s unscorched clothes and body. He’s uninjured but it doesn’t reassure the colonel who studies every bit of detail, from the man’s micro-expressions to the small shudders that rack his frame. “Pass.”

The man sags his shoulders in relief and quickly scurries to the side, joining seven of his companions who remain spiritless. All of them are lucky they were wearing lab goggles and safety equipment – a small accident and they’d end up among the forty shot and the hundreds burned inside.

“—N-No!”

The frantic scream comes from a young woman on line. She’s one of the only two who are still being screened and her results are already clear. As Yang Rong rolls up the sleeves of her lab coat, a noticeable patch of blue and green juts out near her veins. Pulpous dots move inside her skin. The ringlets are hatching inside, and she knows it too, though she’s wide-eyed in fear and shock.

“I’m not infected… I’m not infected!” She drops to her knees and wails miserably. “W-Why did this happen, t-they… They said we would be safe here! Why did this happen to us… why?”

She crawls forward to pull on his leg, but Yang Rong steps back. The woman makes a dreary sight with her long hair dragging on the filthy snow, her tears and makeup running down her face. She’s so young, in her early twenties at most and she should have a whole life ahead of her.

A part of her reminds him of Li Jiayun – it must be because of the dyed hair and colored contact lenses. Li Jiayun’s always had a liking towards cosmetics and beauty. In such an era, however, arts and crafts and all these miscellaneous diversions are worthless.

Yang Rong feels pity, not sympathy, when he sees the young woman pleading for her life.

He gives her buffer time.

“C-Colonel… you are Colonel Yang… I have heard of you. Please save me. I only want to go home…”

He answers, “I cannot do that for you.”

When she turns to scrub at her tears, he shoots her without an ounce of hesitation. The blood splatter makes it across five feet of snow, coating the shoes of the last person in line. She’s a young woman as well, dressed in that same lab coat, a pair of thin slacks and an even thinner shirt. She had cried beforehand, Yang Rong can tell from her dried-up cheeks and the puffiness under her eyes. Surprisingly, she doesn’t have any visible injuries despite being dressed so plainly. No protective equipment, no eyewear, not a pair of gloves.

“Take off your coat and roll up your sleeves,” he tells her.

She obeys easily. There really isn’t a single scratch nor burn mark on her. The other researchers had at least a twisted ankle or two and had some strands of scorched hair or a piece of charred clothing. Yang Rong nods and motions for her to go ahead.

“Excuse me…” She’s the only one to initiate a conversation with him. Her posture denotes that she’s nervous, but she continues on anyway. “I…want to ask if this is everyone who made it out?”

“It is.”

“Is there anyone else? There was—“ She looks around just to be sure, scanning through all the faces of every soldier and every evacuated person. “He had silver hair and I’m not sure, but I think his eyes were yellow and green, maybe blue—”

“Where is he?”

“You know him after all.” She sounds relieved, like she had confirmed she wasn’t hallucinating in the face of death. A moment later, her expression turns more hesitant and she says meekly, “He took me to the exit but then he turned back. I don’t know where he went. He said he was looking for something, and… Do you think…”

Yang Rong’s face remains impassive. In times like these, he usually shows the qualities of a colonel – calm and collected, cold and ruthless when necessary. He doesn’t balk at losses in the battlefield (he’d grown so accustomed, after all) and even when his men were wiped out expedition after expedition, Colonel Yang hadn’t gotten attached.

“—I would like to thank him,” the woman says though she doesn’t look hopeful. “He saved my life.”

Yang Rong thinks of a certain silver-haired rascal, that snarky young man who has placed a knife on his neck, threatened him more than once, and may be out to kill him still. He thinks of how utterly uncontrollable Noah is – he’s supposed to be a prisoner, but he certainly doesn’t act like one. His picky eating habits, for one, has been giving him headaches for the past week.

To add on, sleep-deprived Noah had taken complete advantage of him, leaning against his body so close like that, dining and dashing when done.

A complicated surge of emotions wells up inside him. Yang Rong narrows his eyes. “When I find him, I will cuff him up and demand for compensation.”

“W-What?”

He turns and walks away without responding to her. He doesn’t know why he feels so irritated right now. It doesn’t help that Hannes, a very capable sergeant, is still nowhere to be found.

“Jae, extinguish the fire and ask for forensics to identify all the victims. Li Jiayun, request for a pick-up. The remaining personnel will quarantine in the city for one week to be monitored for symptoms.”

“Yes sir,” comes Li Jiayun’s quick reply.

“Colonel Yang,” Yoo Seok walks up to him, “the infected corpses have been taken care of. It would be unwise to stay here any longer, else more anomalies will be attracted to the commotion.”

“I know.”

His handheld transceiver is going off in statics, every radioman calling for ‘Unit 1’ and ‘situation report’ and ‘Colonel Yang, do you copy?’ The inner city is in discord and news of the tragedy had already spread. The outlook is looking progressively more negative by the second – to think the esteemed Colonel Yang had made such a blunder in this operation. He can already hear all the gossip taking place. Yang Rong resists the urge to pop off the batteries, but he still doesn’t respond to summons.

“Yoo Seok,” he throws the device his direction, “hold off the peanut gallery for ten minutes. I’ll verify the number of survivors.”

The young man gives him a knowing look. Yang Rong hears the internal dialogue going off in his head – “it has been thirty minutes and there will be no other survivors inside the burning building, Colonel Yang” – but he chooses to ignore it. If asked, he’ll pass it off as being clouded by the carbon monoxide.

“Understood,” Yoo Seok says instead. “I’ll procure a vehicle for us.”