Shi Rang looked up, locking eyes with the man.
In his shock, he froze, struggling to make out the faintly visible white fabric on the other's upper body and...
The overwhelming stench of blood that followed.
"...Is it you?" the man, who was much taller than Shi Rang, asked. "The tracker is beeping. Are you the one supposed to meet me?"
Shi Rang could not make sense of those words.
He had not heard any tracker beeping, nor had he even heard a single footstep when the figure approached.
On a night like this, any sound should have been infinitely amplified.
Having adapted to the halo of the car headlights blocked by the person, he could now see more clearly. The man before him wore a tattered white coat on his upper body, with a suitcase tucked under his arm. His backlit face was obscured in shadow, yet it gave Shi Rang an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
That metallic stench of blood grew even thicker...
Just like what he had felt when he fell into the pile of corpses in Pingyuan City, an aura thick with ominous danger froze every bone in Shi Rang's body, rendering even his fear dull and indistinct. Having experienced this before, he tried with all his might to move his body and retreat behind the gap, but his gaze was involuntarily drawn downward by something—
The figure outside the door was over two meters tall. His full appearance could not be seen from out there. Aside from the tattered coat, his lower half seemed to be draped in a wide, dark blanket, the ends of which had already slithered into the narrow gap between the two of them.
As if sensing Shi Rang's gaze, that pile of blanket reared up like a living creature, crawling onto the tip of Shi Rang's shoe...
Shi Rang leaped away from the door as if electrocuted.
Losing its support, the dark mass fell back down.
He retreated so hastily that he nearly lost his balance. His heels hit the ground heavily, and he shook his foot in lingering dread, watching with his own eyes as a few thread-like strands detached from his shoe and drifted limply to the floor.
The sudden noise tore through a certain element in the air, completely sweeping away the dead silence that represented safety in this place.
Several fingers slipped through the gap and clamped onto the edge of the door.
"Why are you leaving?"
The iron door's hinges groaned under an unbearable strain. Although the door still had not opened a single fraction, the steel plate near those fingers actually began to buckle inward.
"You promised me, as long as I brought the item..."
That face suspended high above bent down, squeezing its way in through the crack.
"I am already here. I brought the information you wanted..."
The metal door gradually deformed, showering flakes of rust from the bending stress. That dark blanket surged through the gap, spreading across the wall, while the face slowly swam into the factory building. It wore a fragile expression of near-begging, yet as it gradually sank into the shadows, it appeared all the more terrifying.
Suddenly, the figure's head jerked violently upward, letting out a bizarre, heavy gasp.
The light filtering through the gap still illuminated half of his face, where the pleading look vanished in an instant.
-----------------
Bjorn woke up.
Like surfacing from a long dream, he felt his eyes refocus, slowly regaining a clear perception of the world.
'Where is this place?'
He remembered that he was on the run, rushing to the rendezvous point. The agreed-upon location was... Had he already arrived?
Bjorn could clearly see a person not far away. The camera around the man's neck and his stiff face, which looked as though he were wearing a mask, were all taken in by his gaze.
The guy was incredibly short, actually barely reaching his waist.
He tried to speak, but a tickle deep in his throat prevented him from drawing breath. Bjorn raised the hand holding the tracker. The movement of his arm pulled up a string of exposed, blood-red meridians. Beneath a paper-thin membrane of flesh, his muscles and internal organs were entirely laid bare.
'...What is this?'
A strange image flashed in his memory.
After being hit by that temp worker, he had fallen into a semi-conscious state, collapsing face-up on the ground.
Soon after, an arm with exposed blood vessels had reached for his face, and then...
And then...
Bjorn suddenly realized that there were no light sources or windows around, yet he could clearly see every detail on the other person's body. He could even see what looked like fluctuating radiation patterns with his naked eye. This was not a visual capability any human could possess.
Using the nearby construction equipment as a reference, he realized that it was not the person in front of him who was too short; rather, his own point of view had been elevated.
Bjorn lowered his head.
He stared blankly at the thick blanket draped over his body. Thick, vein-like substances and writhing fleshy masses were crawling up his chest, covering his tattered coat and his neck. Supple nerves threaded in and out of his arm like someone stitching together a ragdoll.
Slender black lines surfaced in his field of vision, causing his sight to grow hazy and blurred. They were drilling into his eyes, interfering with his optic nerves.
It exhibited the traits of two distinct Containment Objects from Facility 031, both of which were intimately familiar to Bjorn.
It disguised itself very well, but Bjorn still saw through it.
He was the deputy director. Compared to that old man in charge, he was the one who understood the Containment Objects the best.
He recognized it. And it sensed this, too.
A blood vessel coiled around Bjorn's throat like a snake, boring into the skin under his chin.
It no longer needed Bjorn.
"It's... urgh... ahhhhh—"
At the very end of his life, Bjorn let out an incoherent, agonized wail.
Was it a cry for help? A warning? Or the inevitable terror just before death descended? No one would ever know the answer.
His final message abruptly jolted Shi Rang awake from his stupor.
This terrible journalist tore his shoes from the floor, where they felt as though they had been glued, and fled backward.
His stiff legs were as unbending as wood, but Shi Rang still managed to break into a stumbling and tottering run.
He could not clearly see the devouring taking place in the dark, but he understood that something completely defying logic was unfolding right before his eyes.
He fled into the very darkness he had tried so hard to avoid moments ago, ducking his head and sprinting madly. He ran and ran, until he violently tripped!
Shi Rang tumbled right over the backrest of that dilapidated sofa. His head smacked against the laid-out cardboard, and one of his legs landed at an awkward angle, his ankle exploding with a crisp crack.
There was no pain; the leg simply gave out. When he tried to scramble back to his feet, his outstretched right hand pressed into something soft.
The darkness concealed the pursuer's form, its pliant body almost completely silent as it slithered.
Amidst the disorienting dizziness of his fall, Shi Rang failed to realize that he had gotten turned around, now facing the very direction he had fled from.
The unknown substance instantly crawled up his palm, swallowing Shi Rang's arm in a bone-piercing chill. Ignoring his injured leg, he leaped up directly, fighting against it with all his might in the opposite direction. He tried to yank his arm back by sheer brute force, playing tug-of-war with it in the pitch black gloom.
Suddenly, that resistance vanished without a trace.
Caught off guard, Shi Rang tumbled backward. With no time to hesitate, he scrambled up and kept running. He had no direction, no plan—his only desire was to get as far away from that monstrous thing as possible.
He did not know that, without any visual references, he was running in an arc. Nor could he see that the monster had momentarily paused. Its entire body writhed as the hands, feet, and face that had once belonged to Bjorn dotted the surface of its mass. And on its chest, a brand-new bulge was forming.
Shi Rang's outstretched left hand smacked into a wall. Gritting his teeth, he groped along its surface until he surprisingly found a door that could be opened. He immediately slipped inside, pressing his back tightly against the doorframe.
Only then did he have a moment to check on his arm, which he assumed had been dislocated.
But he grasped at nothing.
Where his right arm should have been, there was absolutely nothing. A warm liquid coursed down his body, soaking his clothes.
Forcing down the scream rising in his throat, Shi Rang shakily pulled out his mobile phone and pressed the screen on. His thumb smeared two streaks of red across the LCD screen before he finally managed to drag open the flashlight icon in the corner.
He had to keep running, he had to find rescue, he had to—
The light flicked on, illuminating an abandoned boiler room.
There were no other exits here.