To this day, I hardly intend to give any explanation to the room full of newcomers at the usual morning meeting, after all, I probably won't see most of them again after the midnight test is over, but at the thought that in his work, it is only a matter of time before my life is in danger, I sigh slightly, and repeat the nonsense that I don't believe myself, as always.

But obviously, the civilians who survived yesterday have seen me with a noticeable change, with resentment, resentment, and disappointment, but also gratitude and respect, but I don't know how to face them, and I hide from people's eyes like a weasel stealing chickens.

Camille and the others had all been through brutal battles, and the horrors of the midnight test of the last two days had no particular effect on them, and perhaps from the beginning they had become accustomed to a cycle of self-blame and relief, but it did not bring any positives. For the nonce...... They also treated me with respect.

At the end of the morning meeting, on the way to the preparation room, I met Mark, who was holding a list, waving his hand to direct the newcomers in front of him, assigning them into clusters in groups, and ordering them to participate in the preparation activities of various departments according to the list. After seeing the newcomers leave, Mark took his little henchman back to the training department's preparation room.

"Mark." I stepped forward and said with a solemn look in my eyes, "Is it convenient to speak now?" ”

He froze for a second, looked around, and waved his hand to Eugenie for a first step. "Come with me, let's take a step to talk." Mark said, turning and walking out of the crowd.

Following Mark's footsteps through a shallow hallway, we came to the warehouse with a huge row of exhaust fans, which was large but unoccupied. In a corner, Mark stopped, finally turned around and opened his mouth: "I know why you're looking for me. He suddenly said to me with a serious face, "Everyone else has talked to me about it, including Gregory. ”

"So what do you think and plan to do?" Since Mark got straight to the point, I got straight to the point.

"Admittedly......," Mark was silent for a moment, and then said slowly, "I have indeed talked about this with a few comrades I trust, but I am not sure whether I want to go deep or not." ”

I sighed and said with some frustration, "I've ...... Some of them were helpless, and the deception and concealment made me feel more pain than I had ever felt before, and I couldn't meet their complaining eyes, as if I was the one who killed them. ”

"Actually, you can choose to run away." Mark suddenly raised the corners of his mouth.

"What...... What did you say? I couldn't believe my ears, and I looked slightly surprised: "I didn't think you would say that......"

"But you didn't actually do that, did you?" Mark smiled, "Stick to your principles and never give up, as I said: 'You are the most powerful warrior I have ever met.'" Mark was very sincere, and there was no deliberate intention. Maybe...... That's why the Director chose you to be the returner. He added.

"Yes...... Like, probably. I smiled bitterly, raised my head and quipped, "You guy is really getting better at talking, no wonder you are fascinated by so many people." ”

"I understand......" Mark shook his head: "Pure preaching is often so empty, sometimes it is better to make others aware of their solid steps in the past, in order to measure the scale of life more positively." ”

"Even if we have to face all this...... I said, clasping my hands, "but I really don't know how to solve the dilemma in front of me now, and I can only feel fear and despair when I think of the more difficult challenges ahead." ”

"I understand." Mark paused and began to speak: "Of all the fears of mankind to date, the deepest nightmare is the fear of our kind: our fear of betrayal, of lies, of wrongs, of perfidy, of accusations. Think about Daphna, at this moment, do those murderous monsters really scare you? Do the cruel laws in the company scare you? ”

I shook my head slightly. Admittedly, I did fear it, but it was also diluted, dissolved, and dissipated by time over countless years, and today, this former nightmare has also turned into a wisp of green smoke in my memory, and it is no longer as profound as before.

"The fear that has always been alive and well is still human. But at the same time......" Mark said, suddenly changing his words: "At the same time, when you are strongest, strong, and brave, don't you also benefit from the strength of others?" ”

It seems that this is not a bad feeling when trusted, entrusted, and affirmed in any case. Reminiscing about the past in my head, although there are unbearable pasts, but the good memories still make me can't help but raise the corners of my mouth.

"I may understand something......," I muttered, "why do those people embrace you so much." ”

"You're wrong." Mark shook his head and said, "They just stand for the truth, not me." ”

I laughed dumbly and said, "It seems that you already have the answer to my question." I put my hands in the outer pockets of my trench coat, "Tell me, what are you going to do, and I will do my best to help you." ”

"People always live for something, Devna. If you want to say it, then you must advertise it widely and in front of everyone. Mark said seriously: "We plan to start planning tomorrow, and the relevant equipment and personnel organization needs the assistance of your control department very much." I'll give you the specific detailed plan after the work is over, please. He said, patting me on the shoulder.

"Hmm." I nodded deeply and said:

"I believe in you."

With that, I turned around and left the exhaust chamber and walked briskly back to my workstation to make the final preparations for today's midnight test.

Hannah, Parker, and the other lucky ones who have survived to this day, the trust and hope that they have stubbornly held on to today in the suffocating darkness of the past, are now fading and disappearing little by little, as Mark said: "People always have to live for something." "Looking at their increasingly empty eyes and more lazy coping movements, my heart is like a knife.

I think it's time for a change.

As usual, people seem to have become accustomed to the daily midnight test, and the containment team leaned silently against the walls of their area of responsibility, lazily watching the bustling people passing by, rubbing their weapons in their hands. In some departments, the rumors of the midnight test seem to be blowing, and the civilians who learn the truth are, as unsurprisingly, as anxious as sheep in a wolf's den, and refuse to walk alone – even if it makes little practical sense.

But it was unexpected: the director was unusually cautious today, not only was the frequency of orders much slower, but the suppression of the test and escape anomalies was quite efficient and appropriate, and even asked us to give more guidance and attention to the new recruits in the training department, which made me nervous.

After dealing with the twilight test, the containment team of the whole department was ordered to squeeze into the elevator room connected by the control department and the intelligence department, although this elevator was much larger than yesterday's, but it was still a huge challenge to squeeze more than 40 people in a space of 20 square meters, but the people who were in the yin no longer had the noise of yesterday - after all, the prestige of the punishment department had long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people......

"Drop!" When the alarm of today's reverse Kabbalah level 8 meltdown suddenly sounded, the people locked in the elevator couldn't help but feel a collective gasp, but there seemed to be no strong vibration, and we were not immediately ordered to attack anything, and doubts suddenly filled this small space.

"Boom!" Suddenly, there was a sudden tremor around us, but it was not due to the violent impact or friction of the machinery, it seemed to be the explosion of an electric arc or other particles breaking through the air, but before we could make our guesses, the chilling special alarm that followed gave everyone the answer.

The blockade of the Rabbit team did not cover the elevator hall, but it was an obvious fact that the intelligence department had not penetrated. I don't understand why the Director would leave us idle and let Team Rabbit handle the midnight test, but it's still a blessing for us not to have to face the danger head-on, no matter what.

But for the civilians from the blockade zone, there was no longer any reason to be happy, and the sound of heavy fire rained down one after another, followed by countless screams - they began to "graze".

In such an environment, the containment team huddled in the elevator naturally did not show any excitement, and we were like a group of students who did not do their homework facing the teacher, holding their breath one by one, as if they had forgotten to breathe.

After a short wait, the screams from the next door gradually died down, replaced by a continuous burst of gunshots, "What the hell are these madmen doing?" Just as we were leaving our doubts, suddenly a white thing that seemed to be a magic array appeared on the wall on the right, "I! "It scares the people who are closer.

"This thing is ......" Although the newcomers showed great curiosity about this sudden appearance, the sleek old employees saw that their faces changed greatly, and they instinctively hurried to look at the exit, but regretted to find that the door had already been blocked by the supervisor, so they had to stomp their feet anxiously.

"Poof...... In the center of the white circle, a strange and strange sound suddenly came out that should not belong to this world, and then, the center of the circle collapsed into a pure black, but flowing black space like a lake, and the outside turned into a circle of white smoke flowing around it, like a nebula in the night sky.

"Get out of the way!" Mark suddenly yelled and quickly pulled the two closest employees away from the damn portal, and I and the other veteran employees immediately followed suit, grabbing the nearest stunned young people into the crowd.

In the next second, a huge white tentacle suddenly stretched out from the deep circulation in the center of the portal, and it swelled, expanded, and extended more and more, as if the poisonous gas was spreading rapidly, squeezing people's living space. "Damn it, get us out of here!!" The old employees roared heartbreakingly, angrily hammering the elevator walls.

"Ding!"

Thankfully, the Director seemed to be well aware of the extreme danger of the circle, and at the last moment, he activated the elevator and pulled an entire company of containment team back to the control department, which was probably out of the threat.

"Poof......!" The ominous voice came again, and seemed to be drawing closer and closer to us, "What...... Is this thing still catching up with us?! Someone screamed in surprise. But in the next second, a huge white mist-like tentacle that was several times larger than before suddenly pierced through the top of the elevator, as if the solid metal wall outside did not exist, and swept straight towards us!

The scene was undoubtedly hair-wrenching, and all I heard was a panicked cry: "Danger! Dangerous ......"

Instantly, my consciousness dispersed from my brain like a flock of startled birds, and it all happened so quickly that my body didn't even have time to produce any pain, and I froze in place like a puppet, unconscious.

It seemed that two seconds later, I opened my eyes again, and only vaguely noticed that there was a green mist around me, and when I became more conscious, I looked around and found that other colleagues who were standing motionless in place like sculptures were also awakened in the green fog as if they had never mastered their own bodies.

Loki, who woke up, sniffed the green mist in the air slightly, and frowned slightly, "This is the aerosol of enkephalin, it should be due to the supervisor......" As he spoke, he raised his hand and swept around the mist, and after grinding it with two fingers, Loki shrugged his shoulders and added, "But don't worry, this dose is not addictive." ”

However, this small piece of good news did not completely dispel the anxiety and doubts in people's hearts: "This ...... What's going on?! "And what's going on with that tentacle just now?" "What the hell does the director want us to do?! "The unknown deadly danger and the small space with nowhere to detour make the employees' emotions fluctuate violently again unconsciously, and fear permeates the crowd wantonly, infecting more restless souls, and constantly vicious circle.

"Quiet! Everyone is quiet! Colleagues from the Corrections and Training Department and the remaining sane elites shouted loudly, trying to maintain order and calm in the panicked crowd. Fortunately, the elevator reached the top smoothly, and there was no further danger after that; Therefore, relying on the old faces of our old-timers and the coercion of the disciplinary department, the employees reluctantly quieted down again.

But everybody knows that sooner or later, even if we can't do anything about it, it will still be cruel, and no one can do anything to influence the decisions of the supervisor - the supervisor will immediately execute the employees who lead the madness, and force others to calm down with the extreme fear of imminent death.

Naturally, this is not what we want to see, nor is it what the executives and other corporate elites would like to see, and at this moment, in such a dangerous situation, we have such a playful alignment of interests – even if it is not them who are going to die.

In the time that followed, the incessant sound of gunshots, the tearing of flesh and blood, and the indistinguishable sound of dialogue commands intermittently passed through the elevator walls to people's ears, challenging the bottom limit of human reason again and again; During this period, the elevator went up and down one after another, as if it was avoiding some threat, or as a bait to attract something; From time to time, there are more evil and indescribable absurd sounds in the ears, which seem to be the melody of death of the singing machine, the penetrating gaze of the great bird, the entanglement of Snow White's apple destroying the soul......

Finally, after a long wait, the sound of fire died down, and the elevator doors were opened, but people showed no excitement or relaxation in the face of this sudden freedom - after all, no one knew what was going on outside the door, victory? Or are they all back to the "steppe"? If they are all destroyed, what a formidable enemy will we have to face......

However, none of this is up to us, and the Director's immediate order represents the worst possible outcome: he asks us to eliminate the Violet Midnight entity that is still in the Intelligence Department.

At this moment, everyone's eyes were on Mark and them. It is true that as the returnees of the blood pupil and the old-timers who oversee the staff affairs of the department, it is naturally incumbent upon us to face unknown and dangerous tasks. "We take the lead." Mark nodded to the other returnees, and while pulling out his weapons again, the six of us came to the elevator door in threes and threes, "Punishment Department, give me the top!" Unconvinced, Lydella ordered, "Let's go too!" "This was followed by the containment teams of the Training Department and the Control Department.

The door opened, and a rather horrified, grotesque, and disgusting picture unfolded before us: there was not a single living person in the Intelligence Department—it was an indisputable fact, but we never imagined that the death would be so horrible and terrible, and among the corpses scattered in the corridor, except for the civilian who had fled in panic, had several holes in his body, and had apparently been killed by the rabbit team, the rest of the corpses were rather strange and unnatural deaths: some had stiff smirks engraved on their faces, but their heads had been struck with huge slap-width cracks in the wall to one side; Some bodies are perforated everywhere, and their bodies are turned upside down by agitation, and the sparse bones and soft flesh have made the corpses look like a paste, as if they had been swallowed whole, digested, and then spit out; Others no longer have any human appearance, their bodies have completely turned into scattered pieces of flesh and tiny bone chips, and the human body has a full four liters of blood, which has been splashed on the walls like paint, staining the corridors everywhere red. Even we can't imagine what kind of strange force could have caused them to suffer such a horrific unnatural death, and the returnees who bear the brunt of it will naturally quickly adapt to the disgusting bloody environment in front of them, but the colleagues who followed them still expressed uncontrollable surprise and horror when they saw all this, I think: they did not immediately drop their weapons and turn around and run, except that they have not yet seen the source of all this horror, which is the inexplicable psychological stability brought about by our extraordinary composure.

"The people behind followed." Mark raised his weapon as he spoke, swallowed, and stepped into the hallway with Gregory first, followed by Maxi, Ada, and me, and finally the department elite led by Loki and other colleagues left the elevator hall and entered the hellish space on earth.

"Note that the test entity may remain in the Ministry of Intelligence." Mark, who was in the front row, gestured to the rear, and everyone immediately understood, carefully lowered his steps, and did not dare to breathe, tiptoeing forward in the corridor. I checked the upper containment unit by the way, and the anomalies inside didn't seem to be unusually restless, huddled in the containment unit like cowards.

Soon we reached the end of the hallway, and beyond that was the door to the main lounge, where I made a note with Gregory, waited for the side of the door with the Justice Judge in hand, and Mark defended the front, carefully pressing the emergency open button for the door.

"Wow!" The door opened, but fortunately there was no sudden attack, and Mark and the other six slowly walked into the main lounge - it looked much more harmonious than the corridor, although there were civilian corpses on the ground, but the death was no longer as strange and miserable as Fang Cai, but the next discovery shocked everyone present: at the exit of the gate leading to another corridor, we found an unusual corpse - the remains of the rabbit team, her waist and abdomen were cut off by the emergency closed door, Except for the orange uniform on a black background, the exposed part is slightly intact, and the interior is just as miserable as the corpse in the hallway, while her helmet and head are missing, leaving only a smooth cut in the neck.

"It really doesn't seem to solve the problem...... Loki muttered, looking at the civilians scattered around the department, his expression became so solemn that Ada hurried to comfort him in a slight panic.

"Open the door, we must move on." Later, Mark said, concocting the same method again, and opened the door.

"Huh!!" In an instant, a strange gas mixed with the smell of engine oil and blood immediately rushed to the face, and all that came into view were headless corpses, and the terrifying sight immediately made the containment team in the front row who had just let go of their courage scream in shock; At the end of the corridor, a group of huge steles stood on it, the central one was so tall and wide that it almost pierced the ceiling, and the rest of the stele arrays were arranged in order of size to the sides, forming an eerie symmetry in the shape of a mountain, and in the center of the monument was a simple small altar with a small white tentacle on it, just like the one that had attacked us before; Rows of unknown runes glowing with white light were engraved on the monument, as if it were the one who drove the forbidden power to the slaughter; The corpses of the clerks were clustered around it, as if it were an epitaph written for these poor souls.

However, it seems that the sacrifice is not meaningless, and if you look closely, the stele has become potholes under the impact of countless bullets, and even obvious cracks have appeared, or half of the inscription is simply missing, which is undoubtedly rare good news, and everyone secretly breathes a sigh of relief.

"Attack!" Mark ordered, and recently Ada immediately swung Da capo to slash at the stele, but at the moment of the slash, the stele not only did not cause any damage, but the blasphemy energy was also strangely strengthened by three points, which couldn't help but immediately startle the colleagues who were about to rush up, "Stop! Mark had to be cautious about what was happening, and he made the others step back first, stretched it out with a long whip, and whipped it at the stele five meters away.

"Bang!" The silver bottle broke, the attack worked, and the stele was shattered, and Mark frowned when he saw it, and after pondering for a moment, he gave his own answer: "That thing seems to be able to absorb white damage." ”

"Everyone!" Mark then turned around and ordered: "Employees other than the white injury, join me in suppressing the test entity!" ”

As soon as the words fell, the employees immediately consciously divided into two groups, the miscellaneous injury group did their best to destroy the stone monument group, and the white injury group stood on the periphery and was responsible for guarding. Soon after, the increasingly shattered stele could no longer carry the powerful energy surging inside, and in a burst of dazzling white light, the huge energy escaped through unknown means, and the inscription no longer emitted light, and the entity was successfully suppressed.

It seemed like an easy victory, but there was no light-hearted look on the faces of the colleagues, the difficulties of reality were already so terrifying, "this time...... What if it doesn't work out next time? Similar questions linger in everyone's mind, sowing the seeds of despair.

Just when we thought the alarm was lifted and we were waiting for the Director's work order, the Director's sudden suppression order shattered our illusions in an instant, and he asked the containment team to deal with another Violet Midnight Entity, but did not send everyone there, only named six returnees, and the rest of the staff stood by standby.

Needless to say, the anomaly to deal with was not easy, and looking back at the people who didn't have to follow, I heard happy comfort, worried sighs, and even gnashing teeth of dissatisfaction. I shook my head, ready to set off with Loki and them.

The destination was the upper level of the Corrections Department, and we walked along the equipment room of the Intelligence Department, through the main lounge of the first district of the headquarters, and walked briskly towards the target corridor, along the way, in addition to the same dead silence as the Intelligence Department and the occasional trembling surviving clergy, we also found another group of stone tablets, but the color was slightly different, and the sacrifice was also a red, skinned blood claw, but its stele was broken, the runes no longer emitted light, and it seemed that it had been successfully suppressed, and the few corpses everywhere could also corroborate this.

"It seems...... Violet Midnight was a lot more difficult to handle than we thought......" Loki muttered in rare shock.

When we officially arrived at the upper floor of the Corrections Department, we were greeted by the last group of stone tablets still in action, the inscriptions emitting a cyan light, and the sacrifice was a huge eyeball with a terrifying shape; Looking around, the corpses here are still roughly shaped, but their flesh has long since dried up and withered, like a standing mummy.

Needless to say, the next task is to clean up the last stone tablet, during which a blue gaseous object often appears in the corridor, this object has a huge blue eyeball and several small and sharp teeth in the center, when it exists, a great pain will fill the whole body, as if the life force has been drained, but fortunately, this "gaze" only lasts for five to ten seconds, and with the blessing of the competent nano healing bomb and the anti-soul force field shield, we finally completed the suppression of the stone tablet in nine deaths.

At the end of the day, there are basically no more clerical jobs left in the company, and the mood of employees has reached an unprecedented low; Later in the day, Mark and Loki sent in their proposals...... Tomorrow there is a big news to prepare.