Doomsday Wonderland

Lin Sanjiu spun around urgently, her eyes sweeping through the dim, shadowy passage: the staggered rows of bunk beds along the walls, the heavy black outlines of cabinets, an arm hanging out of a partition where someone lay sleeping, the jumble of pots and pans in an open-air kitchen... Everything looked exactly as it had when they arrived.

It was a trap—they had deliberately distracted her attention—

As the thought hit her, she activated her Defense Forcefield and tensed her muscles for combat. But when she turned back to Eight-Heads De and the woman by the window, she hesitated.

Neither of them had moved to attack. Instead, they remained focused on whatever was behind her. The tension in their posture had clearly eased, as if they had just experienced a false alarm. Eight-Heads De exhaled a faint breath.

"What did you see?" Zhong Qing's reaction mirrored Lin Sanjiu's almost exactly. He turned back to glance behind them several times, his thin lips pressed tight with confusion. "Or did you think you saw something?"

"I must've been seeing things," Eight-Heads De said as if to reassure himself, scratching his chin. "I thought someone was sneaking up on us. It's fine, let's keep going."

That explanation didn't add up. One person seeing things was reasonable. But two people seeing the same thing?

They must have seen something in the passageway, something that appeared dangerous, that shouldn't exist. Something that made them react with immediate caution.

If it had been a duoluozhong, Lin Sanjiu couldn't figure out what in the passage could have looked like one.

Her combat prowess and perception far surpassed Eight-Heads De. If there had been any strange sounds, she would have detected them. By now, she had grown familiar with the sounds and atmosphere of Chimeric City, especially at night. Anything out of place would have stood out.

"You explain to them; I'm staying out of this." The woman by the window turned to leave. As she passed Zhong Qing, she smiled. "Come find me next time, kid. I'll take you to Chimeric City's bars."

Zhong Qing's face remained stony, and he said nothing.

Eight-Heads De coughed awkwardly. "Look, I know this area is far from the outer edge where duoluozhong could come in. But four people disappeared quietly near here. I'm hoping we can figure out why during these patrols. Chimeric City is full of rumors, but you can't believe everything you hear. Most are just baseless nonsense. I keep telling people not to spread these stories, but it doesn't help. I don't know who keeps believing and spreading them."

His frustration was palpable.

The explanation made sense. Zhong Qing frowned thoughtfully and asked, "Then what did you think you saw just now? Both of you were on guard for a moment."

"Honestly, I don't know." Eight-Heads De sighed. "If I knew exactly what I was looking out for, maybe I wouldn't be so jumpy."

"But you must have some idea—"

"I don't like to speculate without proof," Eight-Heads De interjected. "In my line of work, if you don't stick to principles, the consequences can be huge."

"Let's keep moving," Lin Sanjiu said, deciding to smooth things over. Unlike Zhong Qing, who could afford to refuse payment, Eight-Heads De was her best hope of finding the grand prize and Yu Yuan. "Whatever is causing these disappearances, I can handle it."

Zhong Qing reluctantly nodded, and the three of them continued their patrol. The next few hours passed as uneventfully as before. As the night wore on, even the late-night businesses closed up, their shutters pulled down.

The passageway led them onward, winding deeper into the hushed, shadowy depths of Chimeric City. Only when Lin Sanjiu looked up through gaps in the ceiling, catching glimpses of the night sky, did she remember they were high on a mountain.

On either side of the path, makeshift rooms, tents, bunks, and blankets held sleeping residents. Posthumans were used to the patrols, and ordinary people rarely sensed their presence, so few stirred as they passed.

By the time they patrolled the Fifth District for the fifth time, even Lin Sanjiu had begun to recognize the routes: where a luxurious little room stood out among the shacks, where the less-than-clean public toilet was, where the dormitory of a makeshift school lay—a row of children sleeping on bunk beds behind a curtain. So when Eight-Heads De suddenly stopped walking, she took a look around and understood.

A hammock that had previously been occupied was now empty. The cloth, relieved of a body's weight, had shriveled into a narrow strip, still swaying slightly from the ceiling.

"The last time we passed here," Eight-Heads De snapped the hammock as if a person might drop out from its folds, his voice barely restrained, "he was sleeping right here, wasn't he? Where is he now? Search, quickly!"

The hammock was surrounded by a few crates, cabinets, and chairs. On the wall beside it was a small window formed by removing several bricks. Moonlight streamed through, illuminating the empty bed and the dusty floor. ᚱã₦ốＢÊŞ

Refusing to believe it, Lin Sanjiu even pried open the cabinet doors, but there was no sign of the man. She remembered that the person who had been here was a non-evolved man. Even in sleep, he was almost laughable: dressed in a floral shirt, lounging in his hammock, with a map of the ocean tacked to the wall, he had transformed a slum corner into his own version of Hawaii.

Now, he had vanished from his self-made Hawaii.

"Maybe he crawled into someone else's tent?" Zhong Qing glanced around, his tension rising. "We've checked so many times and found nothing..."

Their voices were getting louder, disturbing people nearby. Shuffling and murmurs began as people woke up. Someone unzipped a tent, another person shouted a muffled "Who's there?" through a wall. Eight-Heads De grabbed a man who had just poked his head out of a tent and pointed to the hammock, demanding, "Where did that guy go? Did you hear anything?"

The man, freshly woken from sleep and now surrounded by three hunched-over posthumans, was startled. "I-I was sleeping, how would I know? Maybe he went to the bathroom?"

The bathroom—Lin Sanjiu straightened up at the suggestion, glancing back down the path. She had passed a public toilet earlier; maybe there was still time...

But she didn't move.

Eight-Heads De and Zhong Qing also seemed frozen, as if someone had pressed a pause button.

For several seconds, no one moved or spoke. It appeared that everyone had seen it. Perhaps just out of the corner of their eyes.

The man in the tent, bewildered by the sudden stillness of the three posthumans, frowned. "What's..."

He didn't finish his sentence. His gaze was drawn away by something else. Squinting into the night, he exhaled in relief and pointed to the small window by the hammock. "There he is, standing right there."

Lin Sanjiu tensed and slowly turned her head toward the window.

The man in the tent continued to ramble. "You scared me. I thought someone had disappeared again. But he's just outside the wall. All right, if there's nothing wrong, I'm going back to sleep..."

The man in the floral shirt was indeed standing outside the wall—or, more accurately, a man's face was now hovering in the window. Only his face was visible; everything below his chin was obscured. Lin Sanjiu couldn't see if he was still wearing the floral shirt.

"How did he..." Zhong Qing said softly.

Lin Sanjiu understood what he meant. The ceiling above this stretch of the path had no openings, and the only way out was through a window no bigger than a human head. To get outside, the man in the floral shirt would have to walk dozens of meters forward or backward, jump to the nearest ceiling opening, and then climb along the wall to the outside.

But none of the posthumans had heard any footsteps echoing in the passage.

That face blocked the moonlight coming through the small window, casting a dark silhouette inside. Only the top of his head and cheekbones were illuminated. His eyes, however, were clearly visible in the dimness: they caught a faint light and moved left and right, tracking their gaze.

"Hey." Eight-Heads De stepped forward first, stopping a few paces from the window. His usually smooth broadcaster's voice quivered. "You're the one who was just sleeping in this hammock, right? What are you doing out there?"

Zhong Qing took two steps back.

The face in the window remained silent.

"Answer me," Eight-Heads De said, raising his voice, "Don't you recognize me?"

The force in his voice shattered Chimeric City's fragile, dreaming slumber, causing several people to sit up in their beds. Some posthumans, who seemed to have already been awake, also stirred.

"What's going on?" someone muttered. "Isn't that Ah Pu? What's he doing?"

A female posthuman stepped closer, about to speak to the man called Ah Pu. But when she opened her mouth, she only drew in a sharp breath.

"What is it?" Eight-Heads De immediately turned to her.

"Something's wrong," the female posthuman said, staring at the face in the window. "There's another passage outside the wall, separated from this hammock by another household. I've seen it before. If he's standing outside, then where exactly is he standing? On someone's mattress?"

If he was standing on a mattress, then what about the person on the mattress? Lin Sanjiu hadn't completed this thought when the man's face turned left and right a few times, then cautiously tried to push into the window. One ear scraped against the frame, emerging into the air inside, while his chin jammed tightly against the window ledge, leaving no room for his neck.

"He's trying to come in?" another posthuman said. "He's trying to come in, isn't he? Don't let him in! Stop him!"

Even though Ah Pu was just an ordinary human, fear twisted their voices, inexplicably. Besides, how could someone squeeze through a window only the size of a human head?

"Something's wrong with him," the female posthuman cried in a low, terrified voice. "I know what's happening now..."

"What is it?" Zhong Qing asked immediately.

At that moment, Lin Sanjiu suddenly realized what Eight-Heads De had been wary of before. She also understood why she hadn't noticed anything unusual. What Eight-Heads De feared was likely the most ordinary, most commonplace thing in Chimeric City. How could she have detected something wrong with that?

"The ordinary people here are mutating!"

As the female posthuman said this, Ah Pu's head was still jammed in the window. But then a slick, nauseating sound, like something slithering out of flesh, came from outside. Every posthuman felt it.

Now, it seemed only a head remained stuck in the window.

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