06:08AM

Early morning on the third day.

Zhou Rong collapsed on the eaves, and at the moment when the eastern sky turned blue, he exhaled a breath of exhaustion.

There are only twenty-one rounds of ammunition left, four grenades, one tactical knife, one dagger, one assault rifle, and one pistol.

All the food and water were exhausted.

Although he was at the end of his life, he actually spent two long nights in the city of zombies. Even Zhou Rong felt that there was some kind of power protecting him.

But is Si Nan still alive?

Looking at the vast sea of ​​corpses, where in the cracks and corners of the city is he hiding?

Zhou Rong looked at his watch and saw that thirty-six hours had passed since Si Nan disappeared.

——Has he become disheartened, given up hope, or even...dead?

No, it won't - although there is no basis for it, Zhou Rong somehow feels that Si Nan will not be killed so easily. The most likely possibility is that he is unarmed and unable to break out, and he has gradually lost confidence in Team 118 turning back to pick him up.

, I don’t know which corner I’m hiding in, wiping my tears; or I’m packing up, preparing to forcefully set off on foot to the heliport on the outskirts of the city.

If he persisted a little longer, Zhou Rong clenched his back molars and forced himself to sit up.

If there is no result after 48 hours of searching, take a gamble and head to the airport. Depending on the actual situation, decide whether to wait and see, or drive an armored vehicle back to the city to continue the search.

"Hold on." He murmured, not knowing whether it was to himself or to Si Nan, who was smiling and waving to him in the void.

"As long as you hold on, we'll see you again."

Zhou Rong tightened the bandage on his left thigh. He was chased by the zombies and had no way to escape. He had no choice but to jump out of a tree. As a result, the wound that was stabbed by a branch and was bigger than a palm no longer bleeds. The dirty and yellow bandage

Only dark coagulated blood stains were left, which looked a bit scary at first glance, but luckily it didn't affect the movement.

Zhou Rong jumped off the roof tiles with a loudspeaker, ignored the zombies that were gathering just a few feet away, and jumped from the treetops to the street. He was about to continue shouting when his footsteps suddenly stopped.

——On the far corner of the street, there was a man with his back turned to him. He was walking into a hardware store and killed the zombies who came out of the store one by one.

The man was wearing a hoodie, and his back was extremely majestic. Zhou Rong looked at it and felt that he might be half a head taller than himself. Moreover, the man's height like Yao Ming was actually matched with muscles like Tyson's, even though he was so far away

, all give people the feeling of watching rocks and mountains moving on the flat ground.

There are still people alive?

Zhou Rong pondered for a moment and followed him silently without exposing himself.

·

"……ah……!"

Romuel turned over and pressed down on Simon: "——Jane!"

The female Alpha quickly rushed into the room, pinned down one of Simon's legs, pushed his whole body to the ground, and handcuffed his left hand to the edge of the bed. The whole series of actions was extremely skillful, as if it had been repeated many times in the past day and night.

Si Nan frowned, curled up as hard as he could, and let out a painful roar. Romuel signaled the female Apha named Jane to go out, then straddled Si Nan, suppressing all his struggles, pinched his chin and shouted: "Noah! Look!

Hold me!"

Simon turned a deaf ear.

"Noah!"

Romuel pressed his ear against his ear and kept repeating the order. The volume was so loud that it could wake even a dead person. After several minutes, Simon's inhuman hissing breathing gradually stopped, and he opened his eyes in a daze.

"Look at me!" Romuel shouted.

"..."

"What did you remember?" Romuir forced his gaze into his bloodshot eyes and asked one word at a time: "How did you get in touch with the C country's military when you were at White Eagle Base? Where is the ultimate antibody?

tell me!"

Si Nan moved his lips. But he had not taken in food or water for more than ten hours in a row. The continuous high-intensity interrogation made him extremely exhausted, and it was difficult for him to even make a sound.

Romuel made a cup of sugar water with maple sugar, came back and half-knelt beside him, and said condescendingly: "Drink."

Simon, don't look too far.

"Drink!"

No answer.

"It's the same as chocolate, right?" Romuel finally gave up trying and asked coldly.

Si Nan paid no attention and closed his eyes.

This iron-clad and silent rejection left Romuel at his wits' end. He smashed the maple syrup glass and the glass shards splashed all over the floor.

The shabby room was very quiet for a while, with the cold wind blowing through the cracks in the window. Other than that, the only sound that could be heard was Romuel's forced and angry breathing.

The suffocating stalemate lasted for several minutes.

"...Okay, I admit it." Romuel said again. Unexpectedly, he was not angry, and his ending could even be called calm and controlled. He said: "OK, I admit it, the chocolate thing is...

I did something wrong."

——In Romuel's life, there were only a handful of times when he said the words "I was wrong." Even his own father may not have heard it twice.

But Simon was unmoved.

"I shouldn't have punished you by letting you turn on the electric shock device when you were extremely weak, and using chocolate as a inducement."

"——But you know," Romuel paused, and then said coldly: "Being bitten by a zombie in a test scene will be punished. As specially trained soldiers, you and I have experienced it.

.Although it is true that the intensity of the simulation you received was greater than anyone else in the White Eagle Force, and you considered using food as a means of induction to be an insult..."

Simon had no reaction.

"Are you even listening to me?"

"..."

Romuel took a deep breath to control his emotions: "Your childish persistence is meaningless, Noah. Suppose you are starving to death and there is only a piece of chocolate in front of you. If you don't eat it, you will die.

Will you still insist on such a pale and ridiculous personality to me?"

What he didn't expect was that Si Nan actually opened his eyes, turned around, and said with a smile: "No way."

——The hoarse inflection of these three words was almost inaudible, but the slight curve of the corner of the mouth was real, and Romuel was stunned.

"I started eating chocolate a long time ago." Si Nan said, with undisguised malice in his smile:

"Someone gave it to me two days ago and I ate a big piece of it."

Romuel didn't know what to say at all and was stunned.

Si Nan sat on the ground and rested his head and neck on the edge of the bed again, as if those two words had exhausted all his strength.

There is an extremely extreme and puzzling side to Noah's true character. Romuel has always known it. If he had to compare it with normal people, he is actually very childlike in some aspects, and he is also very naive and vindictive.

kind.

He hates others and hates himself.

When he is unbearably hungry, he will have an extremely strong need for the inducer - chocolate, and is willing to accept Romuel's conditions, press the electric shock device himself, and endure the dual torture of physical pain and mental insult.

But he will also develop a stress disorder later on, and will completely refuse chocolate from then on, and will even reflexively vomit whenever he eats this kind of food.

Romuel observed that his vomiting, like some forms of anorexia, was forced on him out of self-punishment and disgust in the initial stage. But it soon evolved into a real stress response, and at one point he was even completely unable to do so.

Touch anything chocolate flavored.

——Paranoia, self-control, and being stubborn. Once you identify something, your self-awareness will be continuously strengthened, which will be deeply burned into your mind and become a part of your instinct.

This kind of personality usually doesn't change.

Romuel had no idea that his so-called younger brother would one day be able to overturn his self-awareness—if he hadn't lied.

Something moved deep inside Romuel's heart, as if he wanted to try something, but he stopped talking.

After a long while, he coughed with a complicated meaning, pulled down the zipper of his jacket, and revealed a corner of the inner scarf: "...Noah."

"Look at this, Noah." He pinched Si Nan's chin to make him look at him, but this time his hand was much softer: "Do you remember?"

It was a very ordinary dark gray cashmere scarf, with no pattern and a very thin texture. The edges had been frayed due to old relationships. In fact, it didn’t quite match Romuel’s upper-class elite temperament.

Si Nan glanced.

"The year my mother passed away, I flew from New York to Los Angeles to attend her funeral, and you were there at the time." Romuel said slowly: "After the funeral, I walked into the woods alone. It was raining, and suddenly you came over.

, gave me this scarf..."

"'Isn't it cold to stay like this?' you asked me at that time. And my response was to throw away the scarf with my hand and angrily told you to get out. You didn't say anything anymore, looked at me for a while, turned around and walked out of the woods."

Many years later, Romuel could still clearly recall all the details of that scene, including his brother's pale face wrapped in a black coat, his eyelashes that were extra moist due to the fine rain, and when he turned to leave without saying a word,

The corners of clothes rippled in the air.

The reason why I was so impressed was because it was the first time in Noah's life that he took the initiative to speak to him with such a soft attitude.

But that was also the last time, so Romuel never had the chance to verify the conjecture he repeated countless times later - if he had responded with a completely different attitude at that time, would many things have changed from now on?

"When I left Los Angeles the next day, I went back to the woods, picked up your scarf, and kept it to this day."

Romuel took off the scarf from his neck and stared into Simon's calm eyes at close range:

"I specially brought it with me before going to China this time, because I know that an unprecedented disaster has begun, and mankind is likely to become extinct from the earth. So today, when you and I meet again in the end of the world, many things have ended before they even have a chance to begin.

If something happened, is there still a chance to go back to before it happened and do it all over again?”

"——If you agree, tell me where the ultimate antibody is." Romuel whispered, his voice so soft that it was almost a whisper: "After the vaccine is developed, mankind will build the ultimate security fortress, and you and I can both be the ones to enter."

The first group of people in the safe fortress...I promise that all the painful past events will always be memories, and I will let you live a good life, a good life that you could not even imagine before."

"Really," he said solemnly, "as long as you believe me."
To be continued...