The man tried to take a step forward, holding up a shaking hand. "Please. I just need..."
"He's attacking!" another voice shrieked.
The Hero didn't wait.
He brought the lead pipe down hard on the man's shoulder.
The man grunted, dropping to his knees, clutching the ground as he struggled to breathe.
"Wait..." the man rasped, looking up through dazed eyes. "I'm... I'm human..."
"Shut up!" the Hero shouted, raising the pipe again. "We're doing this for everyone! You're a risk to the collective!"
The crowd didn't try to stop it.
They recoiled, mindless terror turning into a mob as they scrambled away from the sheer brutality, some cheering as the pipe connected again.
The man stopped moving, his body folding into the dirt.
"He's dead," a bystander murmured, looking at the Hero with a mix of fear and admiration. "He had to do it. It was the right thing."
Lin Yue watched from the shadows, a slow, dark smile spreading across her face.
"What a mess," she murmured, watching the
"Heroes" pat each other on the back for murder. "The righteous are always the most efficient killers."
She didn't move to help. Instead, she adjusted her heavy rucksack and turned toward the back alley that led to her apartment complex.
The feature film was about to start, and she wanted to be in her "budget" apartment when the credits rolled.
Lin Yue's apartment was silent, save for the hum of the emergency lights and her own ragged breathing.
She methodically pulled the heavy cans of beef stew and the water jugs from her tactical rucksack, lining them up on the kitchen counter with trembling hands.
As she reached for the last pack of batteries, the fluorescent light caught a flash of silver.
She froze.
Her hand hovered over the counter before she slowly brought it to her face. The ring was still there, the one thing Han Feng had bought with his own money.
At that time, she was overjoyed at the promise of a future together.
She stroked the band gently, the metal cold against her skin. .
Every touch felt like a physical replay of the last five years. "I love you more than anyone, Yue'er," he had said. "Without you, I'm nothing."
She had believed him.
She had turned her back on her parents' warnings and ignored her friends' side-eyes, all to be the foundation he stood on. She had bankrolled his life, his MBA, even his designer clothes, only to watch him recite the exact same script to a woman who looked like a porcelain doll.
A lump formed in her throat, thick and suffocating.
She bit her lip until she tasted copper, forcing the tears back into her eyes. She refused to give him a single drop of her grief in this new, hellish world.
"How could you give my happy ever after to another woman?" she whispered into the empty kitchen. The silence of the apartment was the only answer. "How could you use the same words? The same ring?"
Her fingers tightened around the silver band until it dug into her flesh.
"Ha... Han Feng." Her laugh was jagged, a sound of pure, concentrated bitterness. "I hope you suffer. I hope you remain lonely for the rest of your wretched life. We both should be miserable. We both should never look for happiness again."
She stared at the ring.
Logically, she should have pulled it off and thrown it into the garbage disposal or used it to trade for a box of ammo. It was a symbol of her stupidity, a mark of her "Low-IQ" past.
But she didn't remove it.
The apartment felt cavernous and cold.
Despite the food and the gun tucked into her waistband, she felt a hollow ache in her chest that no amount of hoarding could fill.
The ring was a weight, but it was the only thing connecting her to the woman she used to be—the one who was capable of feeling something other than spite.
Lin Yue wasn't ready to let go of the past yet.
She wasn't ready to be truly alone, even if "together" had been a lie.
Wail!
Wail!
Wail!
The final siren cut through her thoughts. It was the two-hour mark.
She turned away from the counter and walked to the window, guess it was finally time to watch what happened to those who broke the rules.
The sight from the window was like a scene from a horror film.
Those things were not slow; they were jumping into apartments and shattering glass with a terrifying force that shouldn't belong to the dead.
Lin Yue drew back from the glass, her face pale. She immediately knew she had to black out the windows.
Light was a death sentence, and the scent of a living human was probably even worse.
"I need to throw off my scent and block every entrance," she thought, her eyes scanning the room with a cold, mechanical precision.
But she was lacking resources.
There was no tape to seal the cracks, and no black plastic to cover the glass. She looked at the gaps in the window frame and made a mental note.
"I'll get tape during the next food window. I have to."
She grabbed the heavy curtains and pulled them shut, plunging the apartment into a suffocating gloom.
Then she started pushing the furniture toward the door.
She gripped the heavy wardrobe, her muscles straining as she shoved it.
The screech of the wood against the floor was loud, a sound that seemed to echo too far in the silence.
She pushed the heaviest pieces closest to the door, stacking them until the entrance was a wall of dead weight.
Once the door was secured, she brought out the gun.
The cold metal felt heavy and familiar in her hand. She knew how to use it. She remembered how Han Feng had come back from that corporate retreat, his face flushed with embarrassment because he didn't know how to use a gun well.
She had gone to a shooting range and spent hours practicing, all just to learn the skill so she could impress him and protect his fragile ego.
"Stupid." she thought, looking at the gun. "All that to impress a man who didn't even know my favorite color." a short, jagged laugh escaping her throat.
It was a sound devoid of any warmth.
The love was gone, but the skill was useful now.
She checked the magazine and chambered a round with a crisp, metallic click.
"I have no friends or family here." she whispered to the dark room, her eyes fixed on the barricaded door. "I'll kill anyone who tries to break into this house."
Outside, a heavy thud hit the exterior wall, followed by the sound of something sharp dragging against the bricks.