Chapter 677: Laboratory |
“How’s the wound?”
Caroline left a message on the wall.
“Not bad. I’m planning to grab some medicine just in case.”
Evans wasn’t sure if these information-infused drugs could fix his blood issues, but it was better to have them and not need them.
“The exit should be up ahead. Can you make it out on your own?”
Caroline’s hand holding the pen trembled slightly. She really didn’t want to stay here alone, even if he was just a D-Class personnel she’d just met.
“You want to deal with the anomaly here? Don’t be stupid. Going alone is suicide. Aren’t you part of some organization? We can escape and report what happened here to them. Let them handle the rest.”
Evans didn’t want to watch this ‘familiar face’—someone he’d survived three simulations with—throw her life away.
“Do you think whatever has been informatizing this place would let us walk out and spill its secrets?”
Even though she really didn’t want to go back, someone had to deal with the problem here.
“Still better than walking in there to die. That thing inside is way beyond us, and you don’t even have the access card for that door.”
Evans had no such noble intentions. He just wanted to get the hell out of here and figure out who he was.
“I picked up a colleague’s access card on the way out. Sorry, you go ahead.”
Caroline grabbed some medicine too, even if she might not need it.
“…There should be an armory in the research facility, right?”
Evans sighed. He didn’t want to run alone.
“There should be, but you need to leave now.”
Caroline’s hand trembled as she wrote the last part.
“Enough with the nonsense. It’s just some invisible monsters, right? As long as I get my hands on weapons, I’ll clean them out. Follow me.”
Evans grabbed his rebar and left the medical room. He still had eight chances left; worst case, he could always bail on the last one.
The two quickly found the armory, but only a handful of standard weapons remained inside. Most of the shelves had been cleared out.
Evans strapped various firearms onto himself with practiced ease, then filled a bag on the ground with spare ammunition.
“Let’s go. Stay behind me. Don’t take your pen off the wall. I want to see who dares stop me today!”
Evans gripped the rebar with one hand, leaving marks on the wall, while the other hand carried a submachine gun loaded with bullets. Even though most of his memory was gone, he sure as hell wasn’t the kind of pushover who wouldn’t fight back. If he couldn’t throw hands, what was the point of being a prisoner?
Caroline followed cautiously behind the trail with her pistol raised, afraid Evans might shoot her on a whim.
The two quickly returned to the prison cell corridor. After dodging a few crashing sounds and taking out the monsters in the cells, they approached the metal door across the way.
Caroline used the access card to open the metal door, and Evans stepped through into the maze corridor. This time, he already knew how to get through it.
Evans smashed a row of overhead lights in the corridor with his rebar, then led Caroline into the dark section.
Maybe the information-infused medicine actually worked, because this time, his right hand didn’t go haywire when they entered the darkness.
Evans pressed his right hand against the corridor wall, leaving marks as he went. Caroline followed the trail with her fingers, sticking close behind him.
They found the metal door without trouble, and Caroline opened it with the access card.
This time, Evans didn’t hesitate. He unloaded a burst from his submachine gun, shredding the decorations hanging on the walls. Only after clearing out every last ornament in the experimental center did he stop.
“Draw a map of this place and mark the brightness of each laboratory.”
Evans noticed the lab lighting was different from last time.
Maybe the time of day caused the variation.
Caroline finished the map quickly. It didn’t match the previous one either.
Evans compared the structures and brightness levels of all four maps in his head, but he couldn’t find a pattern to the differences.
After clearing the decorations, the experimental center fell eerily silent. No monsters came to attack them.
“I want to go into the laboratory. Maybe I can get some information there.”
Caroline left a message on the wall.
“Stay here. I’ll take a look first.”
Evans walked over to a dimly lit lab door, ready to gather intel inside.
The lab door wasn’t locked. Evans pushed it open and emptied a magazine straight into the room.
Bullets shredded the instruments on the workbenches, but nothing stirred inside. No strange sounds came from the corridor either.
No one came to stop Evans’ rampage.
‘Isn’t it obvious something’s seriously wrong in there?’
Evans tossed a grenade inside. It blasted apart the floor and nearby workbenches, but had no other effect.
When none of this worked, Evans reluctantly stuck his right hand into the lab. Still, the room remained perfectly quiet, like an ordinary laboratory.
Evans drew his pistol and shot out the overhead light inside the lab, but the lighting didn’t change—it stayed just as dim as before.
‘Guess I have to go in.’
Evans stepped into the laboratory, and the door automatically closed behind him. The moment it shut, he found himself no longer in the lab.
He was standing in an open field, wearing his orange prison uniform, all his weapons gone.
A humanoid figure with no skin was sprinting toward him at ten meters per second, letting out a gut-wrenching scream.
Evans felt a wave of intense fear, a terror trying to make him turn and run.
But he didn’t flee. Even though the fear clawed at his body and mind, he couldn’t understand what was so scary about this thing.
Wasn’t it just a skinless human? He’d seen worse.
Humans were tough creatures. Even skinned alive, they didn’t die quickly—but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
Evans sidestepped the creature’s charge and casually snapped its neck.
He didn’t even need to put force into it. Just an inch force was enough to use the momentum to break its neck.
The scene vanished, and Evans was back in the lab. The lights returned to normal, and Mark the D-Class personnel’s full memories flooded into his brain.
A torrent of memories poured in. At first, he feared they might mess with his head, make him forget who he was. But he quickly realized he was worrying for nothing.
Mark was an idiot who couldn’t even handle high school math. Even with amnesia, Evans wasn’t about to be influenced by those laughably illogical memories.