บท 107: A City Within A City Part 2

It was evening, and Zhang Jue was walking alone through the streets of the small town of Chlamydia. From time to time, infected people suddenly appeared from the corners to attack him, but they were all killed by him with a single slash.

It was getting dark, making the already eerie atmosphere of the town even more terrifying. But Zhang Jue was still walking without any worry at all. As long as he didn't get stuck in a corner with little space, the infected were just a bunch of leeks to him, and he was neither troubled by the condition.

At this moment, Zhang Jue had arrived at the center of the C1 area. He looked around and found a place to sit down and take a sip of water. Apparently, it was a setup.

The first two expedition teams had disappeared in the C3 area, but the problematic area should be C1. Jeffrey may not be able to realize it, but with a simple analysis, Lei Shui can certainly see it at a glance. Jeffrey was acting, so he played along with him to trick Zhang Jue.

He wanted to see the town himself. But in the end, what kind of secret can make the Foundation take such a decision?

Lei Shan and Lei Shui are brothers, but they act in very different ways. Lei Shan was good at leveraging momentum, while Lei Shui was good at using his mind.

Zhang Jue smiled. Knowing that Lei Shui is a sneaky, tricky person, he would educate his brother just for Lei Shan and show him what it meant to use force to break his trick. In front of absolute strength, all schemes and tricks are a joke. The so-called game within game within a game only works for a weak person.

After a minute of tossing and slashing, Zhang Jue was a little hungry. He found a random house that was still in good shape and walked in, heading straight for the kitchen. He pressed the gas stove and found that it still worked. He smiled happily.

He opened his backpack and took out two bags of instant noodles. Yes, Zhang Jue had brought two bags of instant noodles with an old pickled vegetable flavor because the red roast beef ones were out of stock. It was a way to eat the taste of home in a foreign country.

He opened his kettle, cleaned that stove a little, then began to cook noodles and hummed an unknown song in his mouth, waiting leisurely. Those who know that he came on a dangerous mission will not know what he's doing right now and will think he was on vacation.

A few minutes later, the aroma was overwhelmed the entire kitchen. Zhang Jue took out the prepared disposable chopsticks and was about to feast on them when he heard something. It seemed to be the sound of gulping saliva. The sound was soft, but it didn't escape his ears.

The infected had long been shaken off by him, and the large house was very quiet. Hearing such a sound can be heard so suddenly was a bit scary. However, Zhang Jue did not show any fear. He didn't even know what fear was.

Zhang Jue raised his eyebrows, then walked towards the source of the sound. It was inside a huge closet. With his long sword in hand, he approached the closet slowly. When he came to this room, he had already used the Dragon Crystal to sense that there were no infected people here.

Three steps, two steps, one step.

Zhang Jue put his hand on the door of the closet and pulled it open with full force. A little girl of four or five years old, with her hands on her knees, was looking at him with big flashing eyes.

The two looked at each other for a few seconds and asked each other together, "Who are you?"

Half an hour later.

Zhang Jue's heart was pounding as he watched the little girl finish her noodles one bite at a time, but he still opened his backpack under a compassionate impulse.

"Eat slowly. I have a ham here."

The little girl couldn't use chopsticks and could only eat the noodles with a fork, but she was still fast and looked hungry enough. Zhang Jue knew that she was probably the only survivor here. The little girl finished the noodles and even drank the soup slippery clean but refused Zhang Jue's ham.

"Big brother. I'm already full from eating. You can eat this if you want."

Zhang Jue could tell that the little girl was lying and that she had refused because of the fact that she hadn't eaten yet. The little girl reminded him of Shirley. Zhang Jue smiled, peeled back the ham hock, broke half of it, and put it into her bowl. At the same time, he ate the other half.

"What's your name, little girl?" The little girl paused, still not touching the half of the ham.

"My name is Alice." She said.

"The Alice who wanders through The Wonderland?"

"What?"

"Nothing... can you tell me why you are here?"

The little girl lowered her head, "I'm waiting for Daddy to come back."

Zhang Jue asked, "Who is your father, and where did he go? Maybe I can help you find him."

The little girl looked at Zhang Jue as if she assessed whether Zhang Jue would lie to her. She was a child, after all, and had no way to tell the difference between a good and a bad person.

Looking at Zhang Jue's "harmless" gaze, Alice said, "My dad is the mayor of this town, and he said... he went to meet those 'adults' and told me to wait for him at home."

Heh! After hearing the little girl's words, Zhang Jue simply wanted to laugh out loud three times. He had actually entered the mayor's house by mistake and saved his daughter. This meant that there was a good chance that he had learned the truth of the problem.

Zhang Jue tried to calm his tone and asked, "Little sister, can you tell me what happened to this town?"

The little girl looked at her fingers, "I don't know..."

Zhang Jue followed the advice, "It's okay, Alice. Just tell me all the things you can think of."

Alice was silent for a moment, then nodded. "That day, my father said that a hole appeared in the town... some people from outside the town came to the house, and they said to my father that they were going down through the hole... then after a few days, the people in the town started to get sick, and the kindergarten class was dismissed, so I had to stay at home... Later, there were many people with guns coming, so scary... Then, one day, Dad went out and never came back..."

The little girl is still small. Speaking like this is not easy to do, but Zhang Jue still extracted from her words to fairly important information.

"Alice, are you saying that a hole was found in the town?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where that hole is?"

"Well... I don't know it myself, but it shouldn't be far from my house because dad is always standing at the window looking into the distance. I know it's the hole for sure because he's looking at it."

"Is that the window in the living room?"

"Yes."

"Okay, and you said that some people from outside the town were going down through the hole?"

"Mhmm."

"And then people just got sick one after another?"

"Yeah, what's wrong?"

"Ah... nothing." Zhang Jue cupped his chin and pondered the connection between the two events.

Originally, the problem of the people inside the town being infected with SCP-016 made him weird. Although SCP-016 was powerful, it would disintegrate in a few minutes as long as it was exposed to the air. Even if it was a mutated variant, it shouldn't last long without a host.

He couldn't figure out why anyone in this remote town would be infected, and now it seemed that the source probably lay inside that mysterious hole. Zhang Jue thought about it and asked a crucial question.

"Alice, do you remember the people who came to the house? What do they look like? Like how they looked or what they were wearing? Were there any specific detail?"

The little girl shook her head. "I only know that they were people from far away, and their accents were a little strange, just like yours. Oh, I remember." The little girl suddenly said, "On their clothes, they seem to have three letters printed on them."

"Which letters?" Zhang Jue suddenly felt a chill run down his spine as he realized that he seemed to have far underestimated the complexity of the matter.

The little girl looked up at the ceiling and tried hard to remember, "It seems to be S-C-P. Yes, that's about it. On their clothes, they all have SCP printed on them."