”You came back.” Carl whispered as Jean walked to her. “Why? You have already got out.” He looked to make sure there wasn’t anyone else coming. “Where is everyone else?”

Jean shrugged. “They left. As for me...do you believe me if I say I came here to save everyone here?” She joked.

Carl smiled. It had been a while since he did that. “Yes.” He looked into Jean’s eyes. “You’re a good person, Jean. You just try to look mean, but deep down...” He trailed off.

Jean grinned. Her previous actions have paid off. Whether it was by explaining what was happening to Carl, by giving him an explosive to save the mercenaries, or by returning here when she had already got away, Jean perfectly portrayed a voyager that was trying to be cold hearted to survive but couldn’t truly manage it. This allowed her to have some freedom but still be forgiven and trusted.

While they were talking, the rest of the team went through how they would be buried alive in The Hive if they couldn’t escape in time. Alice came up with the idea of restarting the Red Queen and get information from her about what truly happened down here. Carl and Jean went with the flow.

Her life under duress, the Red Queen told the team everything. What the T-virus did. How to kill the undead. And...

“...One scratch from the creature is sufficient to infect a person…”

Carl touched his lips. If one scratch could infect a person, what could a drop of blood do? The other mercenaries looked at each other as well. One of them, JD, was bitten in the arm. Another mercenary, Warner, was scratched on the neck. It took all the friendship and trust between the mercenaries to keep them from abandoning each other, especially since they didn’t know there was a way to withstand the infection.

“How do we get out?” Jean finally stepped up and asked the most important question.

The Red Queen looked at her. “All the entrances are under siege, but the sewers are clear.”

The team looked at each other. They didn’t trust the Red Queen, but they didn’t have a choice. Between staying here to die and taking their chances by trusting the Red Queen, the team knew what to choose.

“Don’t lie to me.” Jean warned before opening a patch that led to the sewers. She frowned at the stink, but she jumped down nonetheless. The ten others followed. In the face of death by chewing, the stinking sewage was not that bad.

They barely reached ten steps when twenty zombies floded the route.

“That bitch.” Carl cursed, knowing that the Red Queen betrayed them and gave them false information. He raised his rifle desperately. The other members of the team did a similar thing, but they knew their chances were low. The narrow hallway made it difficult for them to concentrate fire on the zombies, and trading with an army of the dead was never a good idea. But before any of them could fire, Jean walked before them and stopped them.

“Don’t waste your ammo. I’ll clear a path,” She pulled out a syringe, turned to Carl, and smiled. “Just don’t leave me behind after that.” The other members looked at her in confusion. Jean answered the doubt with her action as she stabbed the syringe into her arm and pushed the liquid into her bloodstream. “Adrenalin.” She explained and dropped the syringe, replacing it with two pistols.

Before anyone could raise a question, Jean moved forward.

And for the next ten seconds the whole team stared in awe as Jean fought.

Moving forward, Jean dropped four zombies with four quick shots to the head. Both the zombies and Jean were moving, but that didn’t stop the girl from landing the shots in where she wanted them. The next second she charged into the zombie horde, positioning her pistols and firing at a rate and direction just enough to stop the zombies from reaching her. The deadly zombies seemed so slow when facing Jean’s slant figure. The girl moved around like a bird in a forest, easily dodging the corroding limbs of the dead. None of the limbs could reach her form.

A zombie grabbed onto Jean’s arm, and the next second its head was literally smashed into its body. Jean turned around and jammed her pistol into the open mouth of another zombie and fired. The bullet entered the zombie’s mouth, went through the neck, came out the other side, and hit a second zombie in the skull.

Two clips were gone almost instantly, but there were still eight zombies left. Rotating her pistols, she grabbed onto the gun barrels and aimed the handle part at the zombies. She clicked a button, and two silver blades popped out of the handles.

Four stabs to the brain in two seconds sent the four zombies onto the ground.

“Wow.” Carl’s jaws dropped. One girl and twenty zombies. Who would win? But before he could say anything, Jean collapsed to the ground, shaking in pain.

“Something this effective has its price.” Shade was the first to recover. His assumption was logical. Jean just took some drug and killed twenty zombies in ten seconds. For ten whole seconds Jean was literally nonhuman. If that could really go without any consequences, then Umbrella wouldn’t be researching t-virus. They would be developing adrenalin. He even suspected whether or not Jean could recover at all, but that was not a question for now. “Bring her. We need to go now!” They weren’t going to waste the chance Jean bought with potentially her life be wasted because they were amazed.

Rain wanted to carry Jean, but Carl beat her to that. As difficult as it was due to Jean’s weight, he held her up carefully. Looking at her pained expression, he understood what Jean meant by him needing power to protect those that he cared about.

In Carl’s arms, Jean was satisfied by how this turned out. The adrenalin was not exactly a lie. It was a stim pack from the Starcraft universe. Of course, the consequence was a lie. She could literally take a mountain of stim pack for fun and still be fine.

The result was satisfying. She “risked her own life” to save the rest, and thus established a close relationship with Carl. As long as she played it carefully, this could make Carl trust her until the very end. Likewise, with this as support, Carl’s desire for strength would multiply. Jean simply laid down in Carl’s arms with her eyes closed and scanned the surrounding.

The team moved on. Most of the zombies already in the sewers were slaughtered, and the few zombies attracted by the smell of the living were picked off as soon as they appeared. They could never get into a number large enough to threaten the team that was much larger than it was in the original history.

The situation was fine until the team reached a pipe. It was hanging above several dozen zombies. The hands of the dead reached out, desperately wanting human flesh.

Everyone eyed the fragile pipe. No one knew when it would fall apart, and the later the person crosses the more likely he/she wouldn’t make it. They all turned to Shade for guidance.

“Move over one by one.” Shade knew in this situation chaos could only mean more danger. The mercenaries went by first. Addison and Spence followed. At last, only Jean, Carl, and Shade were still left on the wrong side.

“Go.” Shade pointed his rifle at the zombies below. “I’ll cover you.”

Carl nodded in gratitude. He knew the captain was taking quite the chances by wanting him to go first. Jean was knocked out, and judging from her constant shaking of pain she wouldn’t be in a walking state soon, which meant he needed to carry her over. The weight of two was more than that of one. Holding to Jean tightly, he navigated across the pipe.

The first step brought a series of cracking sound through the air. Carl froze, feeling the sweat on his back.

The man licked his lips. It was dry.

Jean twisted her body.

Carl’s eyes laid on Jean. He wouldn’t let the girl get hurt. She had risked her life protecting them, and now he would risk his life protecting her. He made another step.

The cracking increased, but the pipe simply refused to fall. In the end, Carl and Jean reached the other side intact. Whether it was due to luck or some other force was a great question.

Now only Shade was on the dangerous side. The pipe was much weaker, but it was still intact. The mercenary captain was no ordinary man. Remaining calm and watching his steps, he slowly moved across. The dozens of arms reaching out to him didn’t raise a ripple in his mind.

That was when a piece of brick broke off from the ceiling above and smashed Shade in the head.

The rest of the team had no chance to respond as the man collapsed off the pipe and into a pool of zombies. Unfortunately, Shade was neither a xel’naga nor someone who a xel’naga needed, so he was immediately attacked. The team acted as soon as they could. Rain unloaded an entire clip into the horde, but bullets couldn’t stop the undead’s infinite desire for human flesh. A few zombies who have lost an arm or a leg were still biting.

Shade barely even screamed. The brick had already knocked him out or even killed him. He was defenseless as his body was reduced to small bits and pieces of flesh and bone.

“No!” Carl screamed. He had known the captain for just a few hours, but the man had already earned his respect. This was a rather painful loss. He emptied a clip of bullets into the horde and killed four zombies, but that hardly changed anything.

Alice signed and grabbed onto Carl’s arm. “We need to move.” She didn’t have the attachment to Shade that the mercenaries and Carl had.

Carl nodded sadly and lead the way.

In his arms, Jean slightly groaned. Shade’s presence offered more harm than good to Carl’s growth. Jean wanted to be a leader, and Shade’s role was overlapping with that. As long as Shade was alive, Carl would always be a follower and not a leader.

So Jean changed that.