XG 68 - Is this a secret code or something?

Chen Yibo immediately dashed into the room a second after Kang Xunsu. The flashlight moved around the room like a disco ball from Chen Yibo’s movement, so she could only count on her ears to hear to figure out what was going on in the room. As soon as the guys entered the room, the three crayon-ish figures immediately went back into the room, likely to protect their owner.

Wong Xue Guo’s night vision was not that good, so she exempted herself from joining the fray in the darkroom.

Suddenly, the room seemed to be brighter and it was not from the flashlight. It was Chen Yibo that ripped off the curtain, along with the thick layer of newspapers sticking onto the window, borrowing light from the sun.

With the help of the sunlight, she could see Kang Xunsu had successfully restrained the thin figure with both of her hands twisted behind her back and her face was mercilessly pressed onto the dirty floor. The thin woman was screaming and saying something Wong Xue Guo could not understand, but what she could understand was her screaming will bring more danger to them.

“Shut up!” Kang Xunsu pressed his gun onto the screaming woman’s head, but she still continued screaming.

Chen Yibo quickly spoke to the woman in Korean, and it worked to reduce the volume of her screaming. After a moment of conversing with the woman, he suddenly changed his tone, coaxing the woman as one does to a child until she finally stopped screaming.

When the woman stopped resisting Kang Xunsu’s grip, the crayon-ish figures also stopped moving. Their stillness was the same as robots that were no longer receiving any instruction from their owner.

“What is it?” Kang Xunsu asked Chen Yibo, his gun still pressing onto the woman’s head.

“She does not seem mentally sound. I had to speak to her as if she was a child to finally get her to open up to me. She had been calling the dark figures as her parents, telling us not to hurt them.”

“Brother Xunsu, look at her arm,” Wong Xue Guo said with a tone of urgency.

Kang Xunsu looked down and saw a bite mark on the woman’s arm, but it looked days old. “So… she survived?”

“These figures are her ability,” Chen Yibo confirmed.

“Will she attack us if I release her?” Kang Xunsu asked.

“I will try to talk her out of it.”

The walkie-talkie resting in Kang Xunsu’s military vest pocket buzzed and L.L’s voice echoed in the room. “Need help?”

“No,” Kang Xunsu answered. “Keep an eye on zombies that get attracted by the screaming.”

Now that the room was lit up with natural light, Wong Xue Guo took in the damp room with a smelly odor. She could even smell urine from the air which could not be blocked with her mask. This small room looked to be the young girl’s bedroom, with empty packets of food and drink littered on the floor.

There was a picture from the table stand consisting of a family of three and a brown dog. She vaguely matched the smiling daughter in the picture as the deranged girl, and the mother, if she had not guessed wrong, was the zombie tied up on the chair behind the cashier.

So far, Wong Xue Guo only knew two ability users, which were Nurul Hanani and Vihaan. Her mother had mentioned that they could somehow influence what ability they will get during the awakening process by their strong desire. In the other future, Suzie Yap and Charles Wong had already awakened their genes long before knowing that theory, so they could not test it on themselves.

If she used that reasoning to judge the girl’s ability, could her ability manifest as such because she wanted her family to be with her? The crayon was the tool she had used to draw, judging from the scattered drawings pasted on the wall. Was her ability to bring art to life with the drawing?

Or were these three ‘entities’ the only drawing she could ‘resurrect’ and reuse?

Unfortunately, Chen Yibo was sure she was not mentally well and could not work together with them to experiment with her ability.

Chen Yibo has finally assured the woman they will not hurt her ‘family’ and Kang Xunsu could finally let her go to leave the room, unable to stand the smell. The woman sat on the floor, staring at Chen Yibo with her large eyes that looked as if they would fall from her sockets due to her extreme weight loss.

“What should we do with her?” Wong Xue Guo asked after she finished her short tour around the room.

This young girl, estimated to be younger than Wong Xue Guo by a year or two, was the first survivor they encountered, and even a successfully awakened person. She had the ability but was also useless in helping them. It could only depend on how bad her mental state was.

“No idea.” Kang Xunsu itched to light a cigarette. “It’s likely that her father locked her inside with food for her survival. Her father might be dead.”

He had seen from a glance that there was no more food and water in the room, with only empty wrappers littering all over the floor. They also do not want to sit around and wait if the father would return.

Kang Xunsu sighed. “I will go talk with L.L. Why don’t you try asking your mother’s opinion?”

Wong Xue Guo’s eyes lit up. That works too. But what she did not know was her question would create a small argument for her parents.

Once again, Suzie Yap and Charles Wong were in a disagreement because of their slightly different parenting methods.

“She should learn not to rescue everyone she meets,” Charles Wong said coldly.

“I know that!” Suzie Yap snapped. “But don’t you understand I don’t want her to be completely heartless?”

“You want her to save the correct people.”

“Yes! She would have allies to help her if there’s danger.”

“Then just tell her to list out the benefits of saving that person, and whether it will cover the downside of doing so.”

Suzie Yap lost her anger and stopped cutting the man tied to the chair with a surgical knife. “Funny, that’s what I told her to do when we rescued Vihaan and Sung-Ho. She did well in listing the benefits and the downside.”

“... But you are not happy.”

“Oh, I don’t know!” Suzie Yap mourned and covered her face with her hand that was not holding onto the knife. There was no indication that she minded the gloves she was wearing were stained with blood. “I’m happy that she would think that way to prevent others from using her as a stepping stone, but I’m also sad that she… she has grown up.”

Charles Wong gripped his wife’s wrist, pulling her hands away from her face. “Darling-”

“I really hated myself,” Suzie Yap admitted with a deep sigh. “You have no idea how many times I had to fight against myself not to throw the sword I had given her and lock her in a room to keep her safe?”

“You did the right thing. She had to be strong by herself.”

“We won’t be able to be with her always,” Suzie Yap struggled to reason with herself.

“We will help her whenever we can, and whenever she needs us.”

Suzie Yap stared at her husband, who she had first met during the beautiful winter. At the age of sixteen, he was a totally different person than he was now. He changed himself to be the type she liked and his hard work was rewarded with her heart. She was happy that she married her ‘dream man’ and he does not seem to mind he had molded himself to her satisfaction.

BUt DiD ShE Do tHe RIghT THiNG?

Shaking those messy thoughts away, she asked, “So, what do you think I should answer? To save or not to save?”

“A mentally ill person will have great unpredictability in their actions. It is already hard to get a sane person to listen to orders, so what do we expect from a mentally ill person? It’s best not to bring that person along,” Charles Wong said.

“Right.”

Tossing the bloody knife onto the metal tray and removing her blood-stained gloves, she left the interrogation room with a dark face. “You will handle the rest.”

Brother Lam, who was also in the interrogation room, eyed his Boss, who then told him, “Make sure he’s not dead.”

Brother Lam sighed after his Boss left the room, leaving him and a scared assistant behind to deal with the rest. He examined the bloody chest of the little spy hiding among the researchers that they caught. The spy had already gone unconscious long before Suzie Yap finally stopped her slicing.

“Madam Boss had made a great mess... What an untimely message.” Brother Lam sighed as he scrutinized the spy’s deadly pale face.

Suzie Yap had ignored the objective of the interrogation after receiving a message from someone and overdid the torture. It was likely to be a message from the young miss.

“We don’t have enough medicine to heal him…” The assistant spoke out timidly, still lingering over the fear of what he had seen.

“Just make sure he’s still breathing.”

When Wong Xue Guo finally receives a reply from her mother, she quickly reads it, only to feel her mind hit a wall.

Suzie Yap: You can do whatever makes you happy.

Is she being tested? Is this a secret code or something?