Chapter 127
Chapter 127
“The Sky Is Broken. Take cover.”
When those words came over the radio, the Director froze for a moment.
It was Xu Wenlie’s voice, pitched extremely low and strained with absolute terror. The Director could barely remember the last time she had heard her sound like that.
The Sky Is Broken? The Director instinctively looked up at the pitch-black night sky beyond the window. There was nothing there, only endless darkness.
But she knew Xu Wenlie would never joke about something like this.
The Scarred Woman was the trump card she could always rely on. If she had said those words, then something truly horrifying must have happened.
Countless dreadful possibilities flashed through the Director’s mind.
Forget it. There was no time to think. All she knew was that they had to act immediately!
She quickly switched her radio to the public channel known to everyone in the base.
Pressing the transmit button, she said only one word:
“Assemble.”
She then left the room, crossed the corridor, and entered the first-floor lobby. More than a dozen people were still busy inside. At the sound of her footsteps, they all looked up at her.
The Director’s expression made every heart sink.
Her usually gentle face was now frighteningly grave.
“Everyone,” she said, not loudly, yet clearly enough for them all to hear. “Gather in the lobby.”
No one asked why. Those still working immediately put down whatever they were holding and converged in the center of the lobby. Footsteps rang out in a disorderly rush, but no one spoke or made any unnecessary noise.
Before long, everyone had gathered in the lobby, and the crowd began to stir uneasily.
The Director slowly swept her gaze over every face before settling on two figures who came sprinting in.
Ye Que. Wu Wujie.
The Short-haired Girl was panting hard from the run, with the Big Guy right behind her.
“Director!” Ye Que rushed up to her. “What’s going on?”
The Director offered no explanation. She simply began issuing orders.
“Ye Que, go help Gao Ling gather the patients.”
Ye Que paused for a moment, then nodded at once and ran off. Wu Wujie hesitated briefly before following her.
The Director turned to several others. “Lin Guifen, Cheng Fang… Come upstairs with me and help bring those patients down.”
The people she had named immediately stepped forward and fell in behind her. Without another word, the Director turned and headed for the stairs.
Her orders were clear, calm, and methodical.
The panicked crowd suddenly had someone to rally around and immediately began carrying out her instructions. Within moments, everyone had assembled in the lobby.
The Director led them to an inconspicuous door.
It was an iron door that looked no different from the doors to the other storage rooms along the corridor. But the Director took a key from her waist, inserted it into the lock, and turned it.
Click.
The door opened.
Beyond it was a staircase leading underground.
In the dim passage, they could barely make out the steps beneath their feet. The staircase was steep and descended so far that its end was nowhere in sight.
The Director did not hesitate. She stepped inside first, and everyone else followed in single file.
At the bottom of the stairs, the space abruptly opened up.
Only then did everyone get a clear look at what lay below.
It was vast. Absolutely enormous.
This was a massive underground space. Unlike the room-filled buildings aboveground, it contained none of those partitions and felt exceptionally empty.
Dense rows of square concrete pillars and crisscrossing steel beams supported the entire structure.
Once inside, no one was in any hurry to rest. They crowded around the Director and anxiously began asking questions.
“Director, what’s happening?”
“What happened?”
The Director kept nothing from them. She relayed Xu Wenlie’s message exactly as she had received it.
“Xu Wenlie said, ‘The Sky Is Broken,'” she told them calmly. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but if they used that code phrase, it must be something truly terrible.”
Everyone fell silent. Then murmurs broke out.
“The Sky Is Broken…” someone muttered. “Could it mean… the Madmen are using drones to search for survivors?”
They exchanged uneasy glances, but no one had an answer. Whatever they imagined, every possibility was terrifying.
The Director raised a hand, signaling for silence.
“Stay calm. We’ll hide here for now. Don’t speak, and keep quiet.”
Everyone nodded and began finding places to sit.
Just then, a shrill female voice suddenly rang out!
“Everyone is going to die! Everyone is going to die! This is God’s will!!!”
Her voice was so piercing that it made everyone’s eardrums ache.
The crowd whipped their heads around. The voice had come from a middle-aged woman in a hospital gown, huddled in a corner.
Her hair was disheveled, piled atop her head like a tangled clump of weeds. Her face was deathly pale, yet the whites of her eyes were bloodred. She looked completely deranged, flailing her arms and screaming at empty air.
“God’s will! God’s will!!!”
Several patients beside her began shouting along with her.
“Die! Die!!”
“Only those chosen by God will live! Only they will live!!!”
They laughed, shrieked, and capered wildly, utterly oblivious to the survivors frowning around them.
Their piercing cries sliced through everyone’s nerves like knives. The survivors grew increasingly agitated, while some of the quieter patients began to cry.
A young female patient curled up in a corner, clutching her head and trembling all over. Another elderly patient covered her ears and whimpered.
The Director shifted her gaze slightly and uttered a single name: “Lin Guifen.”
The middle-aged woman named Lin Guifen understood at once. With a wave of her hand, she led several people forward. They seized the deranged patients and dragged them deeper into the far corner.
The piercing screams gradually receded before finally vanishing into the darkness, but the quieter patients were still crying.
The Director was just about to go over and comfort them when someone moved ahead of her.
Wu Wujie.
The Big Guy crouched down in front of the weeping patients.
He held out a hand and waved it before their eyes, then asked gently, “Look. What’s this?”
The patients raised their heads and peered at him through tear-filled eyes.
His towering frame stood in stark contrast to the tenderness in his expression. He was like a mountain softly coaxing the tiny flowers at its foot.
With a quick flick of his hand, a doll appeared in his palm.
He broke into a grin. It was a little awkward, but the patients stopped crying.
They stared at him intently, at the doll in his hand, and at his rugged yet gentle face.
Everyone nearby watched the scene unfold.
The Director’s gaze lingered on Wu Wujie’s profile.
But beside Wu Wujie, Ye Que wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes remained fixed on the deranged patients who had been dragged away.
The Director’s expression was as calm as ever, but a trace of gloom still lingered between her brows.
Time ticked by.
Everyone gradually calmed down and found somewhere to sit in a daze. Some leaned against the walls, while others simply lay down on the floor. No one spoke. Only the hum of the generator echoed through the room.
Meng Rui sat beside a concrete pillar with her back against it, her eyes sweeping over the people around her.
Her gaze had been lingering on Wu Wujie as she considered whether she could bring the Big Guy over to her side…
Then she suddenly noticed something was missing.
She carefully looked around at the others. Where were Zhou Sufen and the people Xu Yun had locked up?
Meng Rui frowned.
Xu Yun had brought even those deranged women down here, yet she had left Zhou Sufen and the others behind?
She smiled mockingly. Had Xu Yun finally decided to stop pretending to be everyone’s savior? Was she done protecting people? Had she left them upstairs to buy the rest of them time?
Her brow soon furrowed again. No, that didn’t make sense… What if that woman told the Madmen there were still people alive in here? There was no way Xu Yun hadn’t considered that.
Could she have killed them already? Impossible. Meng Rui had kept people secretly monitoring their movements this whole time.
She could feel that something was wrong, but she couldn’t make sense of it. She wanted to ask someone, only to find everyone around her sitting in silence.
It was only then that she noticed something else.
Xu Yun was gone.
Meng Rui narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice as she asked the people beside her, “Did any of you see… where Xu Yun went?”
They shook their heads. None of them had noticed when the woman who had always been there had disappeared.
Meng Rui asked no further questions. She slowly rose to her feet and headed toward the staircase they had just come down.
The stairwell was dark.
She made her way down one step at a time. Below was another vast space, only even darker than the floor above.
She pulled a flashlight from her pocket and began searching. Before long, she came across the raving woman who had been tied up.
Several deranged patients were confined down here, bound with ropes to keep them from running around. When the woman with disheveled hair and bloodshot eyes saw someone approaching, she began shrieking again.
“Everyone will die!! Return to nothingness!! Return to nothingness!!”
Meng Rui was in no mood to deal with her. She strode over, grabbed the woman by the collar, hauled her upright, and threatened her in a low voice.
“Where’s Xu Yun? Talk!”
The woman looked at her and laughed even more gleefully.
“You’ll die too!! You’ll die too!! God’s will!! God’s will!!”
Meng Rui spat in disgust, released her grip, and tossed the woman back onto the floor. Then she turned and continued downward.
The stairs descended deeper and deeper as the light grew dimmer.
Her heart began to race. Not from fear, but from an unease she couldn’t put into words.
Then a deathly pale face suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
Meng Rui stopped dead.
It was Xu Yun.
The woman stood motionless at the foot of the stairs, watching her in silence. Nothing could be seen in the darkness behind her.
Neither of them spoke. The silence stretched on for several seconds.
Then the Director spoke, her voice calm, so utterly calm that not a hint of emotion disturbed it. “What are you doing?”
Meng Rui ignored the question and asked one of her own. “Where are Zhou Sufen and the others?”
The Director met her gaze without flinching.
“Taken care of.”
Meng Rui’s pupils contracted slightly.
Taken care of?
When? How had this woman dealt with them without making a sound?
She eyed the Director suspiciously, trying to find some crack in that tranquil expression. But there was nothing. Her face was like a pool of stagnant water, undisturbed by the slightest ripple.
Even so, something still felt wrong.
Very wrong.
Meng Rui took a deep breath and asked, “What are you doing down here, then?”
The Director’s answer remained perfectly calm. “Getting ready to shut down the generator.”
Shut down the generator?
Meng Rui glanced at the darkness behind her. The generator should indeed be in that direction.
But did it really take this long to shut down a generator? And she still hadn’t done it?
The feeling that something was wrong grew even stronger.
“Oh?” Meng Rui stepped forward, a hint of challenge in her voice. “I’m coming with you.”
The Director looked at her and, to Meng Rui’s surprise, agreed. “Sure.” She turned and headed deeper into the darkness.
Meng Rui followed at an unhurried pace.
The beam of her flashlight fell across the Director’s back, casting a long shadow over the floor. It swayed in front of Meng Rui, inexplicably making her scalp prickle.
She secretly tightened her grip on the gun in her pocket. The feel of it beneath her fingers calmed her pounding heart a little.
The Director walked to the far end of the space and pushed open a door.
The door was heavy, opening with a dull groan. Behind it was a small room housing a massive generator.
Light from the emergency lamp spilled inside, allowing Meng Rui to see the room clearly. Aside from the generator, there were two enormous vents, one for intake and one for exhaust. Both were pitch-black, their destinations impossible to discern.
Standing in the doorway, the Director looked back at her. “Coming in?”
Meng Rui stared at her. “You’re really just shutting down the generator?”
The Director looked at her, her smile still in place. “What else would I be doing?”
Meng Rui was silent for several seconds before clicking her tongue.
“Xu Yun, there is definitely something wrong with you,” she said, enunciating every word. “You’d better hope I don’t catch you.”
She had thought that following Xu Yun down here would reveal something. That she would finally get some dirt on this woman and expose her secrets.
And what had happened? She really had just come along to watch her shut down the generator. The thought made Meng Rui sick.
She rolled her eyes, turned around, and left.
The Director remained in the doorway, watching until Meng Rui’s figure vanished into the darkness. Then she let out a soft chuckle and turned toward the two enormous vents.
There was nothing but silence inside them.
Yet that silence, like the smile on her face, held an inexplicable undertone.