The boy in the mirror had a bloodless face, blue-black eye circles were particularly obvious on his pale face, his short hair was simply groomed and there were obvious marks of freshly cut, his chapped lips were slightly reddish, and his raised cheekbones were reflected on his cheeks in the cold light. The solemn sorrowful eyebrows squeezed out a few slight marks in the eyebrows, the orange eyes like the sunset lost their former vitality, and the empty green eyes were covered with a thick haze.

This is me, Du Yuheng, a living dead caught between life and death.

I was alone in the empty floor, and the transparent chemical protective film carved out a square room for me somewhere on this floor. The two fluorescent tubes above my head are my only source of light, and UV disinfection lamps are installed on all sides; At some time each day, it lights up to disinfect the room. I hated the temperatureless fluorescent lamps and even more the purple light that seemed to carry discrimination, but I had to put up with them. Because there was only darkness outside this transparent room, the world seemed to be swallowed by a black hole, leaving me alone and this prison-like room.

In addition to a box-spring bed, there was a worn-out desk with a few magazines on top of it that I was about to turn over. Thankfully, there is also a sink with a mirror and a simple toilet. My eating and drinking were "thoughtful", and every day someone would come and bring me food, but he would only put the unpalatable food in a counter-like transition area, from which I would bring the food into the room myself.

I don't know how many days passed, but before that I was locked up in a narrower utility room, until one day the scavengers took me into the basement of this universal city. This is not their maintenance room, but the second basement level deeper below that. It seems that the underground three underground and the underground forty percent also have their functions, and they are basically places for some kind of experiment. I've been to the fourth basement level, where many mutants are being held, and they are kept in different cages depending on the level of decay. Moaning day and night, the miserable sound turned the fourth underground floor into a living hell. When I appeared, the mutants within ten meters of me all froze in place, staring at me intently. I thought they were thinking of me as one kind, but in fact it didn't seem that simple, and in their eyes, I seemed to see the awe of a more powerful kind among the beasts.

The people who studied me didn't seem to know exactly why this was happening, so they took me there every now and then, took a sample of my blood and saliva, and tested my heart and breathing. I'm more of an experimental creature to be used for research, but it's true that they don't see me as a human anymore. I've never been to the basement level, but it seems to be a place for studying infected plants, and I might be taken there for experiments one day.

The second basement floor where I usually sit is actually an area that was used to be used for excess, which means that if the experiment downstairs fails and becomes out of control, they will close the corresponding area, and this is their last line of defense. Only one entrance and exit from this level remains. There seemed to be a few unlucky ghosts stationed there on this side of the door, chatting loudly and telling boring jokes all day long; On the other side of the door was the place where I was found by Zhang Xiaoying and Xie Tao that day.

I lost contact with them after I was locked up here. Every day, I see the researchers who look at me with the eyes of the experiments, and of course Lu Huaxiong. He had a good attitude towards me, and occasionally told me about what was going on outside when I was checked-up. I heard that Huang Weizheng and the others have been trying to find a way to get me out, but until Lu Huaxiong's research progresses, Zhang Xing doesn't seem to have this plan.

"Hey, the living dead." The guard who brought me food impatiently appeared in front of the transition window where I usually put my food. He rudely threw the plate on the counter and then turned away and disappeared into the darkness.

Although I have almost lost the concept of time after this confinement, today's meal seems to have been delivered a little earlier than usual. But I can't manage so much, if I ask too much, I might not even be able to eat. This guard's attitude towards me is already good. Several of the guards' brothers died at my hands...... Perhaps it should be said that it is the mouth and the chin, but in short, because of the death of their friend, I was not less humiliated. Sneering, insulting insults or peeing in front of the diaphragm in my room...... Except that they couldn't beat me again, they didn't use any humiliating ways to humiliate me. But it didn't hurt me in the end, and I was guilty of it, so I didn't resist it.

There was no food on the dinner plate today, was this some kind of trick they came up with? Although Lu Huaxiong had Zhang strictly forbidden to do anything with what I ate, I would never doubt that they would spit in what I ate; It's obvious that my food has already been eaten, and it's good to have something to eat. But it would be too much to not even have food today. The dissatisfaction in my heart instantly made my head hot, and just when I was about to get angry, the square box on my plate caught my attention.

It was a wallet-sized black vanity case, and when I opened it, it contained flesh-colored foundation, and a small mirror on the lid reflected my gray-white dead face. After my loss of control, my body changed dramatically - my complexion changed from black and yellow to pale like a dead corpse, and there was no trace of blood in sight, which is why the scavengers called me the living dead.

Are they laughing at my skin color in this way? I looked up angrily and found a man wearing a brown stand-up collar sweatshirt standing in front of me. The thick sweatshirt didn't make him look taller, but rather a little funny, and his thin lips curled up slightly, revealing jagged teeth.

"Do you want to curse?"

As soon as Lu Huaxiong said this, my anger suddenly disappeared. I glanced down at the foundation in my hand in disgust, and then at Lu Huaxiong's strange expression, I could imagine what might happen next. "Do you want me to put on makeup because you're going to take me up?"

"Yes." Lu Huaxiong put his hands in his pockets and stepped forward, "You're ready to meet your friends." ”

"I don't want to see them......" I looked down again and saw my pathetic self in the small mirror, "You can tell them I'm dead." ”

"But you're not dead, both medically and ethically, you're still alive."

Although Lu Huaxiong seems to be a good person and has a kind attitude, this is the first time I have heard this comment from someone else in this hellish place - I am still alive......

Lu Huaxiong saw that I was willing to continue to listen to him, so he paced back and forth a few steps, like a university tutor preparing to start a lecture, and said while observing my expression: "This is definitely good news for you. First of all, I want to tell you that although you are different from normal people on the outside, in fact your internal organs and your brain are functioning normally, and to some extent, you are healthy. But the reason it's like this now is because something deeper has changed, your genes have changed. ”

I walked back and moved the stool in front of him, sat down through the diaphragm, folded my hands and blew on the hot air, hunched my back and listened attentively. Lu Huaxiong's eyes narrowed, as if he was satisfied with my reaction. "Do you know how long you've been locked up here?"

"Two months?"

"Hehe, it's not that long. You've been here for a month and five days. I let out a long sigh, feeling like he was asking me for this sarcasm. But he continued, "During this time, I analyzed your blood samples and also did genetic tests, I have to say that the city lord helped me find as much equipment as possible in this city, of course, we also carried a lot of professional equipment, so I have basically done the most comprehensive analysis and examination of your sample, and analyzed and compared it according to the data handed over to you by your special forces." Do you know what I found? ”

"Don't tell me you found a vaccine."

"Haha, no, oh no, at least not for now." Lu Huaxiong's dry humor made me a little unaccustomed, "But there was still a breakthrough, I found the original body of the virus, and it is in your body." ”

"Huh?" I raised my eyebrows, and I really thought he was teaming up with other scavengers to play tricks on me, but he looked so determined, even a little scientist-excited.

"Yes, that's what you said when I first found out." Lu Huaxiong said with a smile, "Child, the medicine you were injected by Qin Rong in Tianyang is actually the most primitive form of the HTS89 virus. I don't know what that genius did, he succeeded in rewriting the original pathogenic structure of the virus, thus eliminating its pathogenicity and terminating its mutations. ”

"Wait, how do you know about Qin Rong?" I looked at Mr. Lu with alarm, but I soon came up with an answer on my own. In the past month or so, maybe he has all the information about me, "Okay, I got it...... But I'm a liberal arts student. ”

I smiled awkwardly, and Lu Huaxiong immediately understood what I meant. "Oh sorry, it's my fault. Let's put it this way, it was Qin Rong who was the first to discover that the structure of the abnormal influenza virus that broke out around the world was inherently defective, and then he proposed to implant a special enzyme into the influenza virus, so that it would automatically disintegrate and achieve the goal of curing the flu. This method was indeed successful in curing flu patients, and you should remember that you could hear the good news of flu cure everywhere. ”

"Yes, we set off from Nanning in the first place, preparing to go to those places where the flu broke out to do condolence activities."

"Well, it seems that you children have been able to live so strongly, maybe it's not just luck." Lu Huaxiong cleared his throat and continued, "We also thought that the epidemic had been eradicated, but no one expected that the virus was not completely destroyed by the body's immune system after being decomposed, but remained in it and gradually reorganized, and then evolved into today's HTS89. At that time, we discovered the virus when we found that some patients were abnormal, but it did not cause any harm to the human body, and was even regarded by us as antibodies that appeared after the recovery of the infected person. But it later mutated, I have to say that this virus is very cunning, the incubation period is beyond our imagination, the virus after the first mutation and then mutate continuously until the eighty-ninth structural reorganization after the stability, of course, this structure is the most deadly. However, a while ago, there was another derivation of the subspecies of the virus, but fortunately it was not as terrible as the original, and the vaccine for the R virus was quickly developed by us. Oh, but you don't have an R virus in your body, so ......"

"That vaccine of yours has killed a lot of people......"

Lu Huaxiong heard the anger in my tone, he could only shake his head and said regretfully: "I know that there was a mistake in the initial R type vaccine, and Wanxiang City and Qingshan have suffered varying degrees of loss......"

"Varying degrees of loss? The people of Aoyama are almost dead, you know what! I stood up and yelled at Lu Huaxiong.

He looked at me with round eyes as if he had been hit on the head, and it was only then that I realized his innocence, and I adjusted my tone and asked him a little gently, "You don't know what's going on over there in Aoyama, do you?" ”

"The lord of the castle said that the bikers used the problematic vaccine to cause unrest in Aoyama, and Aoyama was hit hard......"

"In fact, it should be the vaccine itself that caused a disaster in Aoyama, and there was nothing about the bikers at all. At first, the people of Tsingshan believed in your vaccine and started to vaccinate it on a large scale, but God knows what the hell is wrong with your vaccine. It was your vaccine that killed almost everyone in Aoyama! "The more I spoke, the more a nameless fire burned in my body, until my righteous indignation shook the cool head of scientist Lu Huaxiong.

"But the City Lord," Lu Huaxiong's words came to an abrupt end, he took a deep breath, withdrew the surprise on his face, and calmed down again, "Okay, this is a matter between me and the City Lord. Keep listening to me...... That, what was implanted by Qin Rong in your body is the most primitive virus, that is, the HTS virus that has not mutated after the recombination of the original influenza virus, and we now call it the zero virus. As I said earlier, this Virus Zero is supposed to mutate and is an unstable body, but now it is a stable Virus Zero in your body. It is worth mentioning that although Qin Rong rewrote the zero virus so that it would not kill you, your immune system has undergone special changes under the influence of this virus, and this has changed your genetic structure, which is why your eyes will change color, as for why you can scare those zombies, my preliminary judgment is that the virus in your body itself is homologous to their HST89, and even their ancestors to some extent, so the zombies as hosts will be affected; They should smell you to become like that. ”

"Then why ...... now" I looked down at my hands, "my skin is the color of this now, and why am I ...... that day"

"It's not your fault!" Lu Huaxiong interrupted my self-blame, and stepped forward with righteous words, his face almost pressed against the diaphragm, "That day, someone shot a special medicine at you. It can heal plants infected with HTS89, but will kill zombies infected with the virus. When this drug is injected into your body, the virus zero in your body discovers its own crisis, and then immediately controls your nerve center, and at the same time has a new chemical reaction with the drug, resulting in the production of a hormone that the virus is active for self-preservation, making you manic, and no matter how mild the virus zero in your body is, it is also a type of HTS virus, so there will be similar symptoms as zombies. When the drug loses its effect, the hormones disappear and your mania disappears. But the skin color will become like this, and all I can say is that it was the drug that activated the Virus Zero, and before that they didn't react violently, and now if you look at them with a microscope, these viruses are like a plate of glass beads that have just fallen to the ground, scurrying around without a head. ”

Lo's analogy may be his dry humor, but I can't laugh at it. "Can I go back to my old self?"

"Recovery? Perhaps. But I want to remind you that you did play a crucial role in the development of a vaccine, which is likely to be developed. But this vaccine will probably kill you as well......"

"Why?" My heart hung in the air, and my trembling voice made my voice change.

"Because Virus Zero and you have fused perfectly, you are the virus, the virus is you, maybe you can control it, but if you destroy it, I don't know what will happen." Lu Huaxiong sighed helplessly, but then he smiled at me optimistically, "But I hope you don't lose faith, after all, no one has survived after being implanted with the HST virus before, and you are the first." Okay, pack up, I'm going to take you out later, see you in twenty minutes. ”

"But I don't know how to wear makeup!" I took this thing, which I thought was only used by women, and complained to Lu Huaxiong, who turned around and was about to lose sight of his figure at all.

"No matter how you transform, you are like a dead man, a living dead!" From the other side of the darkness came a hoarse voice of a scavenger taunting me.

I ignored the bastard, walked over to the sink, stared at my ugly face for a while, and finally made up my mind, washed my face carefully, and then picked up the flesh-colored foundation that looked the same skin tone as a normal person, and rubbed it lightly, and reluctantly wiped it on my face......

More than 20 minutes later, Lu Huaxiong reappeared where he had just been standing. Seeing me wearing foundation, he nodded sympathetically and motioned for the guards behind him to open the door to my "room", and a cool air came to my face, at which point I suddenly felt the urge to stay in this room, but I still persuaded myself to get out of this transparent cell.

Lu Huaxiong led me through a dark hallway, and in front of me there appeared a double door with an emergency exit sign, and next to the door there was a small room separated by partitions, which was not even as messy as the room I had lived in during this time, and there was a musty stench. There were also two middle-aged men with stubble on the bed, like drunks in the streets, who found me looking at them, and touched the broken guns in their hands extremely unfriendly, and glared at me with contempt.

In their eyes, I was an anomaly, not to mention killing their companions; So it's no wonder they're hostile.

"Your friends are coming to pick you up, you better be happy, they have a lot of trouble for you." Lu Huaxiong turned around and told me when he was about to open the double door, "Don't worry, you look pretty good." ”

Lu Huaxiong patted me on the shoulder, I think he was trying to cheer me up, but my shoulder looked a little loose when he didn't have much force. I looked up at him with anticipation, and forced myself to squeeze out a little awkward smile.

The door opened, and the gray light couldn't wait to stimulate my visual nerves, and as my eyes adjusted to the environment, I saw the world outside the dark room again. How quiet and bright it is, like a hazy and wide grassland in the rain and mist, feeling suddenly enlightened but haunted by loneliness. Outside the door stood a large number of people, mostly armed and looking at me with disgust. Zhang Xing was standing in the middle of it, his expression was very strange, not smiling, maybe mocking, I guess he was trying to make a mistake about my situation.

These people looked at me with indifferent eyes, as if they were visiting a special exhibit of wild animals in the zoo. Some bite their lower lipes and wish they could shoot me right now, others have pathetic sympathy in their eyes, and others are secretly glad that they haven't become what I am. But I felt a touch of warmth in this cold gaze, and it was from my friend.

Huang Weizheng and Chen Mo, as well as Long Hao and Liang Minxuan, stood in the crowd, it should be said that they still kept a certain distance from the crowd, it should be because other people knew their relationship with me, so they deliberately kept their distance. Instead of the excited hugs of old friends as in the movies, they just smiled at me in such a mess that only friends can show, intertwined with care, love and friendly sarcasm, just like I came out of the teacher's office to see them after making a mistake in school. Their expressions were so familiar, but they felt unacceptable to me now, because in my eyes, standing here at this time was more like attending my funeral.

"Okay!" Zhang Xing's sudden shout instantly cut off everyone's eyes, and he walked on his so-called stage again, dancing with his hands, "Today is really a good day for you, don't you say?" As he spoke, he took a step forward in my direction and carefully examined my expressionless face, "Well, I'm sure you think so in your heart." Then I will now officially allow you Du Yuheng to live here normally like other residents in Wanxiang City. His expression was almost exaggerated to the extreme, even surpassing that of a professional actor in a stage play, "but of course, there is a premise for this." You have to stay in Wanxiang City, and you have to help Dr. Lu Huaxiong and his team continue to research on vaccines, and you have to earn money on your own to ensure your livelihood. How, can you do it? ”

It's ironic that the post-apocalyptic ethical order is on the verge of depravity, while money still retains its place, which seems to be very different from the apocalyptic world that most people imagined in the past. I kept looking at this clown-like villain, and I wondered what would happen if I punched him in the mouth at this time. But I didn't. The guards behind me were getting impatient, and they kept shaking their bodies in different positions, and their equipment made irritating sounds; Everyone else in front of me was looking at me, and like some of them, I might have preferred that I refuse to be tortured and remain locked up in the basement.

"Yes." My answer was not too loud, and it didn't sound like much confidence, but it just enough for Zhang Xing to satisfy his perverted self-esteem.

"Ah, that's great. Welcome back. Zhang Xing jumped back, bowed to me, and made a welcome gesture, leading me in the direction of my friend.

Although I can hear Zhang's duplicity, I'm sure he must have his own little calculations, after all, as the ruler of Wanxiang City, he can ignore Huang Weizheng's demands and continue to imprison me to study vaccines. I didn't care about his "performance", and calmly walked towards Huang Weizheng and them, and at this time I really felt like I had walked out of prison and regained my freedom.

The meeting where I had regained my freedom ended, and the crowd began to disperse, though many of them were still staring at me. A seven or eight-year-old kid came up to me and just asked, "You're still alive, aren't you?" "He was quickly taken away by his mother, maybe his mother was already six soulless at that time, for fear that I would eat her child.

"Welcome back." I hugged my friends, and they didn't seem to care about me.

"You look good." Huang Weizheng's words of comfort made me believe that I must be terrible now, "We have prepared a party for you at home, and we want to celebrate it tonight." ”

"There's no need, it's not a good thing."

"Hey! Don't be so depressed, it's not like you at all. Chen Mo half-jokingly patted me on the back, maybe she was expecting me to fight with her like in the past, "Your makeup is really not good, I'll help you get it again later." ”

I pursed my lips in embarrassment, not knowing what to say in response. Chen Mo's words must be unintentional, but I always feel that it is harsh like a sarcasm for my ** naked. Long Hao, Liang Minxuan and Huang Weizheng all glanced at each other, they should have sensed my discomfort, and immediately laughed and needed to find a way to change the topic.

"Oh, that's right, Brother Heng! I haven't thanked you yet. Long Hao raised his left hand as he spoke, and shook the prosthetic leg in front of me that was covered by a gray metal hood; He pulled his right hand on a tab behind the hood, and only the sharp blade popped out of the side of the hood, "You saved my life!" ”

"The rescue is not very complete." This ridicule has a bit of Du Yuheng's taste in the past, everyone smiled, and more than half of it was because they were glad that the embarrassment was finally relieved.

Huang Weizheng: They chose a slightly secluded route to take me back to the so-called home. Although I believed that they must have a place to settle in Wanxiang, I didn't expect them to make this their home, and they called it so deservedly. They stopped in front of a shop lattice on the second floor, which was divided into two rooms.

Maybe this is my "home", and on the way here, I saw other rooms, some of which were separated by plastic sheets and curtains, and some of which were divided into areas of the former store, like this one. The second floor is supposed to be a residential area in Wanxiang City, and although it is not as noisy as the commercial area on the first floor, I still hear the whispers of the people who live here from time to time. And the soundproofing effect of my "home" should be pretty good, and I hope that my neighbors don't mind my presence, and of course they may have been worried about moving elsewhere for a long time.