Chương 201: The Abyss Whispers, "You Look at Me, but You Think of Him"

"... But my soul is still here..." As long as her soul remained, there was a chance.

"If one day... I can wrest back control of this body..." A sudden thought flared in her mind.

"I will definitely... definitely become stronger than that annoying guy!" The moment this thought surfaced, her mind instinctively conjured the image of his back.

"No... by the time I can do that... he'll probably be even stronger." She murmured unconsciously, struggling bitterly against her fate. The moment she struggled, the chaotic, berserk physical sensations violently ceased. Carried by the immense inertia of her "body," she pitched forward violently. Her head—the only part she could vaguely control—slammed hard against something that was neither entirely soft nor completely hard. A searing, burning pain flared across half her face.

This long-lost, vivid, undeniably human sensation of pain acted like a thunderbolt, violently yanking her soul back to reality...

"Oh, you're awake..." Stimulated by the pain, she suddenly felt herself re-enter her body. But before she could even register the relief, a familiar male voice rang out right in front of her. A sudden jolt followed, and she felt the source of the voice move slightly further away as it continued:"Man, the quality of this gas mask is terrible. Look how skewed it got..." Then, the suffocating sack bounding her soul began to slowly loosen...... While sprinting, Vince only occasionally glanced at Raven's Health Bar.

Seeing it stabilize into a solid yellow and begin slowly ticking upward, he relaxed and focused entirely on running. It wasn't until he heard faint, muffled muttering near his ear that he found a spot sheltered from the rain to stop and check on her. Upon checking, he realized that the gas mask he had strapped onto her to prevent her from biting... ahem, to protect her from the wind... had been jostled completely sideways.

The thick rubber edge was pressing aggressively against her nose, her mouth, and one of her eyes... Her good eye. Vince hurriedly reached up and unbuckled the mask's straps. Good thing he noticed it in time; another few minutes and she might have actually suffocated. The moment the mask came off, the cold, damp air rushed into Raven's nasal cavity, triggering a violent coughing fit. As she coughed, she frantically scanned her surroundings with her dimly glowing, dark blue eye.

The entire left side of her vision was gone, and she couldn't channel any energy into it. She was likely blinded in that eye. She aggressively twisted her head to the left, only to come face-to-face with a strange yet deeply familiar visage... It was that annoy... it was Vince. And currently, he was staring back at her with a bizarre expression, their faces inches apart. She looked down. This was his shoulder. Which meant she was... strapped to his back?

Then, all those violent vibrations, the sudden accelerations, and the bone-crushing decelerations from earlier... that meant...?! Her coughing ceased abruptly, violently choked back down her throat. Raven suddenly felt her blood boiling. Her entire body went completely stiff. Staring at the face inches from hers, her mind went completely blank, totally crashing...

Meanwhile, seeing her wake up only to stare at him with an inexplicable, dumbfounded expression, Vince couldn't help but recall the melodramatic tropes from soap operas... This girl... she didn't get struck stupid by the lightning and lose her memory, did she? Well, what do I do now? If I take her back and she doesn't recognize her sister, and insists on treating me as her only family, what am I supposed to do? Worst case scenario, I'll just dump her on Zoe. Give Zoe a little sister to play with...

"Uh... do you remember your name?" Having mentally sorted out her living arrangements, Vince waved a hand in front of her face and asked tentatively. Hearing this line, which sounded like it was ripped straight out of a cheap drama, Raven suddenly wished she really had lost her memory. Or better yet, just slipped back into a coma.

"I... just let me have a moment of silence..." Raven blinked, sighed deeply, and buried her head into the crook of Vince's neck, refusing to say another word. Unfortunately for Vince, he lacked night vision and couldn't see that her face was currently blushing so fiercely it looked ready to catch fire. Did she really lose her memory? Vince couldn't help but wonder. When Marcus realized I saved him, his reaction definitely wasn't 'let me have a moment of silence.' Shouldn't she be thanking me right now...?

"So... do you know who I am?" Vince tapped her buried head lightly, probing silently.

"You..." A muffled, frustrated groan came from below.

"You're... Vince. Aaaargh!" Raven violently jerked her head up, opened her mouth, and bit down hard on the side of Vince's neck!

"Mmph no mnre qmations!! I dudn't luooe may mmory!!!" [-1]!

"Ow, ow, ow, ow! Let go, let go! What is wrong with you?!" He got bitten on the hand earlier, so he strapped a gas mask to her face for the entire run to prevent this exact scenario. He never expected to get bitten again the moment she woke up. So unfair!

"Biting the hand that feeds you!" Vince finally got his revenge for earlier, yelling right into her ear.

"That's twice you've bitten me!"

"Wmn dd I btte yoo twshhe?!" Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"You bit my hand when I was pulling you out of that crack!" Hearing Vince say that, the fiery, unbearable shame burning in Raven's chest slowly subsided. Her little internal theater of horrors was forced back down into the depths of her memory.

"You..." Deep down, Raven knew Vince had saved her, so she hadn't actually bitten him with any real force. Hearing that she had already bitten him while he was extracting her from the rubble filled her with a pang of guilt. She slowly released her bite, asking in confusion,"How did you know I was down there...?" She wanted to raise her hand to wipe the saliva off his neck, but found that she couldn't move her limbs at all. There was only a paralyzing, pins-and-needles numbness.

Left with no other option, she leaned her head in and rubbed the side of her face against his neck to wipe it off. Vince felt incredibly ticklish as her frizzy hair rubbed against his skin. He reached up and ruffled her head. He had no idea what her bizarre chain of reactions was about, but trying to guess the inner workings of a teenage girl's mind was a fool's errand. Either way, his diagnosis was correct. Wasn't this basically just amnesia? But he didn't answer her question.

Instead, he said, "Let's save the questions for later. We need to keep moving."

"Okay..."

"Do you have night vision?" Noticing the faint glow in her eyes and the way she had looked at him, Vince connected the dots and suddenly asked.

"I can see a bit, but I'm blind in one eye, so my field of view is limited..."

"That's enough. We're about to pass the peak density of the horde. Once we're past them, we'll have time..." His reliable [Stealth Potion] was still on cooldown. He had stumbled blindly through the last stretch, causing three or four structurally compromised buildings to collapse under his feet, and nearly tripped over concrete bollards several times. Having Raven act as a navigator would make things vastly easier.

"Do you still want to wear the mask?" he asked, holding up the gas mask he had just taken off.

"I'll pass..." Raven politely declined the mask that had nearly suffocated her into hallucinations. She looked around, realizing they were standing on the roof of a collapsed building. Half a room remained mostly intact, barely shielding them from the rain. It wasn't until Vince stepped toward the edge of the roof that she saw the dense, writhing mass of zombies.

Packed shoulder-to-shoulder, they were surging down the main road, forming a thick tide of rotting flesh that stretched for hundreds, maybe thousands of meters...

"Hold on tight..."

"Uh, I can't hold on... I don't have any feeling in my body..." Knowing she was securely tied to him, she still felt the need to explain. She didn't want him to assume she could support her own weight and end up dropping her. Even though a minute ago she had been mortified enough to wish she had just turned into a zombie, seeing the endless sea of monsters below made her realize that being human was definitely better...

"Right. Don't worry about it..." Vince muttered. He reached back, hoisting her thighs up slightly. He lowered his center of gravity, coiling his muscles for an explosive launch. He was going to push through in one breath! Raven suddenly felt that terrifying, overly familiar G-force crush her again. Her internal theater threatened to resurface, but she violently shoved it back down. She hurriedly buried her head against Vince's shoulder.

Her single remaining eye glowed with a faint, dark blue light as she continuously called out warnings about obstacles and collapsing buildings...... Two assault vehicles were parked in the open lot in front of the gas station. Both engines were idling. They faced north, their drivers sitting tensely behind the wheel, constantly checking their rearview mirrors. A light drizzle fell from the sky. Over a dozen heavily armed men wearing rain ponchos stood under the harsh glare of the gas station's canopy lights.

"Captain Ben's side is fully prepped and ready to move out at any time!" Evelyn stood amidst the men as Clint's voice crackled through the walkie-talkie in her hand. Clint had already taken all the remaining personnel and integrated them into the survivor convoy. The only people remaining here were Evelyn, Wyatt, Captain Travis, and ten of his men. Because Vince wasn't around, Evelyn wasn't comfortable leaving Travis over there, so she had forcibly kept him here with her.

"Evelyn! Marcus is back!" Holden's excited voice blared from the radio. Hearing this, Evelyn looked up toward the gas station entrance. Earlier, the squad setting up the barricade had discovered a narrow alleyway—barely wide enough for a car—on the east side of the collapsed building's ruins, diagonally behind the gas station. Taking this path south meant they wouldn't have to risk cutting through the eastern residential complex.

Unable to sit still after finishing the barricade, Holden and Cole had volunteered to take a civilian car and drive south to intercept the returning scouts. They hadn't been gone long before they found Marcus. Moments later, an assault vehicle rolled into the gas station. The two men in the front seats were Holden and Marcus. The car braked hard, and the doors flew open. A blood-soaked Marcus stumbled out of the passenger seat. Holden quickly jumped out to support him.

"Jesus, Marcus, how did you get so mangled?!" Captain Travis was the first to rush over, supporting Marcus and asking with deep concern. Evelyn walked over soon after. When her eyes fell upon Marcus's severed right arm, her pupils contracted sharply.

"... Marcus, what happened?" Even Evelyn was visibly shaken by the severity of Marcus's injuries. Despite the presence of outsiders, she completely forgot to use his rank.

"Colonel... Colonel Lin saved me..." Marcus gasped for breath, nodding weakly at Travis before continuing.

"He went ahead to find Raven. Did Cole... did he make it back?" Marcus hesitated, but eventually asked the question, even though he already knew the likely answer. Vince hadn't mentioned him, and Marcus had forgotten to ask at the time. But seeing the scattered zombies and ruined buildings along the road on his drive back, he understood that Cole's chances were grim. Marcus himself was an Awakened and had barely survived. No matter how strong Cole was, he was still just an ordinary man...

"Holden, Wyatt, take Marcus to the convoy. Find a doctor and get him patched up..." Evelyn didn't answer his question. Instead, she turned to Holden.

"It's good that you made it back alive. Go..."

"Cole is still waiting further up..." Hearing Evelyn's words and thinking of Cole, Holden's expression darkened. But this squad had already lost half its members along the journey. At least one of them making it back was a blessing. He and Wyatt helped Marcus into the back of their car, and Holden climbed into the driver's seat.

"I'll be right back after I drop him off!" With that, he floored the gas pedal, heading north along the road. The dust kicked up by the collapsed building was slowly washing away in the rain, vaguely revealing the jagged, skeletal ruins and twisted rebar. The dark crevices and hollows formed by the interlocking concrete slabs seemed to devour the ambient light, like lurking monsters waiting to swallow anyone who drew near. Parked tightly in front of the ruins were two rows of various vehicles.

The interiors were crammed with fabric and spare tires, and countless plastic water bottles filled with an unknown liquid were shoved into the gaps... Evelyn stared at the crude yet deadly defensive line, then checked her watch. Cold rainwater dripped from the brim of her cap onto the walkie-talkie in her hand, but she paid it no mind. Her gaze remained fixed solemnly to the south....

"Watch out!" Raven, strapped to Vince's back, suddenly shouted a warning, but Vince had already noticed it. He couldn't see bricks in the dark, but not a single zombie hiding in the shadows could escape his Dharma Eyes. The moment he landed, Vince spotted a Health Bar lingering over the exit of a ventilation shaft directly in front of him... [987/987]"Get the fuck out of my way!" Equipping the [Sharpness Crystal], he channeled the energy into his foot.

He delivered a vicious kick to the middle of the ventilation shaft, shearing the metal duct—and the mutated zombie hiding inside it—clean in half! [-672]! It wasn't dead, but he didn't have time to finish it off. As long as it couldn't stop them from running, that was enough. The further forward they pushed, the more mutated zombies there were—flushed out of their nests by the noise and vibrations. The structural damage to the buildings was also far more severe.

Some of the buildings that hadn't completely collapsed when Vince first passed through had since been brought down by the rampaging mutants. Fortunately, despite a few close calls, they managed to push past the densest peak of the horde, entering the final stretch where the zombies were sparse. Vince was the one who had the close calls; Raven had been perfectly safe strapped to his back.

"So that lightning strike wasn't you seeing my fire and intentionally sending a signal?" Listening to Raven recount her experience, Vince turned his head and gave her a bewildered look. The grotesque burn scar was on her left cheek, and her left eye was the one that was blinded. Because of this, Raven hadn't seen Vince's expression. She only answered based on what he had just told her.

"The roof ahead is collapsed, stay near the edge... No, I didn't see any fire..." she murmured, lost in her own memories. She only recalled that later on, she couldn't see or hear anything. Every ounce of her strength was dedicated to fighting the corruption trying to drag her down into the abyss.

"I did draw the lightning, but I've done it before. Last time I was inside the APC, so I didn't hurt myself..." Raven recalled the lightning strike Vince mentioned and explained.

"It was right before we got here. That strike completely drained my energy..."

"Inside the APC... So that's how the autocannon on the roof got wrecked?" Hearing her explanation, Vince finally understood how the massive gun on the vehicle had been destroyed.

"Yeah... A mutated zombie jumped onto the roof. It was about to tear the turret apart..."