Chapter 42: 3.1

Again, she woke in a completely white room. But this time she was standing completely awake, dizzy with the flashing of fluorescent lights hanging above her.

Someone was sprawled on the white pristine tiles in front of her, seemingly unconscious. The middle-aged man laying on the floor wore a white lab coat and there was a noticeable red bruise on his bald forehead, but he seemed to still be breathing. Faintly.

Her head rang, disoriented, and she clutched her temples to steady herself.

There was a flock of people in lab coats entering Feng Mian's sealed room from a white door which she wouldn't know was a door at all if not for it being etched open by the people outside. She couldn't tell if this was a laboratory or a hospital of some sort.

Feng Mian: "555?"

There was no response. An empty feeling emerged in her subconsciousness which she hadn't felt ever since 555 latched on to her.

A brunette woman leading the group of uniformly dressed people with similar lab coats faced her as she spoke, not to her, but to the team behind her. Somebody even took notes.

"119 behavioural conduct is as violent as usual. She doesn't respond well to testing and conclusive data is turbulent with many unpredictable variables."

Feng Mian felt as if she was being appraised like a red panda in a zoo. Judging by how they were keeping their distance and how they were avoiding eye contact with her, there was also a possibility that she was a dangerous individual.

At this time, the unconscious body was already carried outside by guards in black vests as if it was a mundane daily ritual they've practised over and over.

The brunette stepped closer to her and stopped when they were an arm's length apart. "How are you today 119?"

Feng Mian looked around her. 'Was she 119?'

There was no one else there, so it must be referring to her. "I'm okay," Feng Mian said hesitantly.

"This is the fifth one this month, clearly there's something you're not happy with. Do you have anything to share?" Her tone sounded so flat and dull, it was as if she's reading from a script.

Feng Mian has yet to inherit the original's memory, but judging from the blue hospital gown she was wearing, she must have been a patient. 'Was she in a hospital? Was this her doctor?'

"Is the bald guy alright?" Feng Mian deflected.

There was a two-second pause from the lady, and her eyes looked at her more inquisitively with a hint of surprise reflected in them.

"He'll be fine," she said. She started to turn the pages of the notepad in her hands, flipping it over with her thumb.

"We'll assign you to a new caretaker by the end of this week. Please be kind to this one. Or at least don't throw him to the wall like the previous one."

'So it was her that threw him? Good hell, in the last world she was the wrong gender, what kind of monster was she in this life?'

One guy, which Feng Mian assumed was the lady's assistant, came up to them. He tiptoed slowly, pausing when he saw that Feng Mian had noticed him closing in. He sidestepped to get out of her peripheral's vision while slouching down to shrink his presence and took the trouble to go around her to whisper in the lady doctor's ear.

She didn't know what he said to the lady, but the lady quirked her eyebrows as she glanced back at Feng Mian in interest.

"He volunteered?" Feng Mian heard the lady utter under her breath. She nodded to gesture to the assistant that she understood, and the assistant wasted no time to speed-walk back to his herd of doctors.

The lady's notepad was shut and she prepared to leave, but not before reminding her. "Remember to eat your meals. Someone of importance will be coming to see you soon. If you don't want to be put down, I suggest you be on your best behaviour."

'Be put down? As in eliminated? Killed? Butchered?' Feng Mian gulped. This wasn't a normal hospital. Doctors don't threaten to kill you for not playing nice.

Feng Mian: "555! Wei! Come out for this grandma! Where on earth did you put me?!"

The brunette lady had already walked out the door, with the doctors trailing behind her swiftly. Some of the daredevils had even looked back quickly to give her a final look before hurrying on.

System 555 was finally back online.

System 555: "Sorry ah Xiao Mian, something happened at the headquarters and this daddy was held back. You're okay right?"

Feng Mian shook her head. "You scared me there for a while when you didn't respond. This world is weird. Where am I?"

System 555: "Oh, right. Hold on for a second, I'm transferring the original host's memory to you."

A wave of nausea hit her and images of flashbacks swirled in her head like montages, much like how it did in the previous world. She could keenly see, hear, and smell what the original host had as if the senses were her own.

The original host was not a human - not entirely anyway. 119 was born in this very research lab, and here she had also met her demise.

This was a post-apocalyptic world in which a raging war between zombies and humans began. It has been three years since the first zombie outbreak happened, and initially, humans' and zombies' mortality rate were at par with each other as the two sides fought. The zombies, however, had the ability to evolve and got stronger and stronger with the passing of time, leaving humans at a huge disadvantage. That was when a team of highly intellectual researchers banned together to create a new specimen of superhumans; the first generation ability users.

119 was the first successful ability user created in the world who had the capability to learn and most importantly; fully sane. She was constructed from the best human genes, combined together and altered to create a forced evolution that pushed the human body to its peak potential. The name 119 was given to her jokingly at first by one of the researchers but it stuck and the researchers thought it fitting enough. She was, after all, mankind's best hope for survival.

Although she physically has the body of a seventeen-year-old girl, her mind was like a newborn baby - naive and immature. And with dangerous abilities she has yet learned to fully hone, a little temper tantrum could result in colossal destruction. With her underdeveloped brain, 119 soon found it onerous to stay inside her lab cell all day, alone and without company. Blood samples were taken on a daily basis as she was strapped onto her bed, and multitudes of experiments were imposed on her to test the limits of her superhuman abilities.

The caretakers assigned to her spoke to her no more than necessary, treating her as an experimental subject that could present certain outcomes. Whenever they came to see her, it was always the same routines, the same questions, with their nose perpetually stuck to their notes. Once in a while, when they find that she had said something interesting, they would jot it down on their little notepads.

Even she who's barely human could feel the wall they've put up; as if they are wary of her very existence. Her moods got worse and even she couldn't understand why; she just wanted them and their irritating little notepads out of her sights. One by one, her caretakers had fallen to her moody rampages and her notorious reputation as a hard-to-work with experiment was spread to all the researchers. An experiment that evokes fear. They dread that once a caretaker needs to be replaced, they would be OK thw next one assigned to the monster.

Unable to cope with the loneliness and experiments much longer, 119 eventually took her own life by destroying the roof of her cell and dying under the avalanche of bricks.

Feng Mian nearly shed a tear after she processed the original host's memories.

Feng Mian: "Baobei ah, this 119's backstory is so poor. Given life only to be secluded and ousted from human's warmth."

The system prompt came out.

[SYSTEM PROMPT: Target location: City Z…. Downloading soul server…. Original host's wish:

1. Get out of the experiment facility.

2. Make humans reach evolution. ]

There were two wishes she had to fulfil this time. Feng Mian could understand why 119 would want the first one, but why did she wish for the evolution of humans?

System 555: "The mission objectives this time is a bit harder host. Since your last world was an easy one, please be prepared mentally from now on. It's going to get harder from here."

Feng Mian wanted to gag a little. When they say zombies, did they mean the rip you apart, eat your brains kind of zombies? She felt that she couldn't prepare mentally for this even if she was given fifty more years. She had only seen zombies in movies ba.

'Mommyyyyyyy~… take me home…'