After a brief discussion with The Red Queen, the group proceeded into the utility pipes that run under The Hive since it was currently the only way out of the current predicament they faced.

Zeel had double checked and triple checked to ensure that The Red Queen provided truthful answers. Even without his nanites active, it was easy for a Homo-Superior to manipulate any AI with just their knowledge along.

Some frequency manipulation here, binary blinking there, and soon The Red Queen had infected her own system with Zeel's coding.

"How can we be sure she isn't sending us to our deaths?" Rain asked.

"Why should you care? You're already a walking corpse," Zeel replied with a hint of mocking in his voice.

He didn't particularly enjoy the company of anyone there aside from Alice, but Rain was literally dying.

"This is the utility tunnels," Kaplan said as his tablet showed him the predicted route they were required to take.

Nobody was more anxious to escape The Hive than Kaplan.

"We should hurry guys, I am getting a bad vibe from this place," Zeel said as his intuition spiked for a brief moment earlier.

Alice also felt a similar situation but had yet to identify the strange tingling of her skin.

"Heck I believe you!" Kaplan replied, "You haven't been wrong once since we landed ourselves in this mess."

"Let's go!" Zeel said looking at Alice.

Immediately, a displeased look was edged onto his face, Alice was holding Rain while walking.

Still, he couldn't exactly tell the stubborn woman that she was holding someone who was going to die regardless.

Zeel then turned his attention to Spencer, only to see him at the side holding his head.

Zeel knew he was faking it but didn't say anything since any threat to Alice gave him the perfect opportunity to get rid of Rain.

"You do know she is dead weight, right?" Zeel asked Alice, who seemed shocked by his question.

"We don't leave friends or teammates behind," Alice replied harshly.

Her favorable impression of Zeel immediately dropped after he asked the question.

"Huh? I see. Okay then," Zeel said while Rain gave him a knowing smirk as she was not unaware of what type of person he was.

After Zeel left, Rain opted to warn Alice.

"You should drop me or he'll kill us both," she said.

"Stay near me, I don't know what it is but for some reason, he needs me," Alice whispered in Rain's ear "He won't hurt you with me around,"

Soon the group encountered a horde of zombies ambushing them from all directions of escape.

*swoosh*

*swoosh*

*swoosh*

Nobody could tell exactly what happened for a moment, everyone only saw twelve zombie heads cleanly cut from their bodies.

Everyone froze at the inhuman display and stared at Zeel.

There he was, eyes flickering from side to side at such a rapid pace that everyone got dizzy from staring too long.

In a mere moment, Zeel had accounted for every single zombie in the immediate area. He concluded that he didn't have enough knives to kill them all.

"Up everyone!" Zeel said as he grabbed Alice along with Rain and threw them to the utility pipe above.

He repeated the same action with Kaplan. This left Zeel and Spencer surrounded by the entire horde.

Zeel ran towards the zombies using his length strength to jump over them to the opposite wall. Then launching himself from the wall to the utility pipes in a swift, neat motion.

From the top of the utility pipes, Zeel stared at Spencer below.

Zeel considered leaving Spencer for a brief moment before pulling him up. He doubted killing Alice's ex would make him score any points in her book.

Everyone was still a bit taken aback by Zeel's inhuman display, but Alice quickly snapped everyone out of their stupor.

"Let's go!" she yelled.

Zeel, who was coming up behind Alice, saw that she had been scratched by a nail from the earlier throw and his heart froze over for a couple of seconds.

Alice, as if feeling the emotional turmoil within Zeel, quickly turned around and put her hand on his shoulder.

Alice feared that if she didn't placate Zeel at that exact moment, everyone here would die. It was strange how she knew that, but she somehow just ... knew.

Alice could feel the dark emotions swirling inside Zeel's mind for a moment before they eased and he came out of his stupor.

"What was that?" she asked.

"Where I am from couples share psychic connections with their spouses, what you felt was just some residual connection," Zeel replied as he demonstrated he didn't want to talk about the topic much.

It also irked him that he lost control of his emotions due to Alice's injury.

Alice did not push Zeel for an answer but tripled her cautiousness toward him.

"That's not what I was asking about," Alice replied noticing the deflection.

"I know but it is the only question I am willing to answer," Zeel replied.

The group continued over the unstable utility pipes. Kaplan would have fallen into the horde below had Alice not caught him multiple times.

However, in Alice's moment of distraction, Zeel found the opportunity he required.

Zeel, with a very swift motion, jabbed Rain in the back, making her lose her grip around the pipe.

Rain slipped off the pipe into the horde below.

She was almost immediately bitten in several places but her eyes never left Zeel, as if curing him to eternal damnation with her stare.

Zeel did not care, he had seen such stares many times in the past.

Alice was about to attempt to rescue Rain but Zeel held her back. Alice lacked the strength to remove his grip.

Alice looked heartbroken and struggled fiercely to rescue Rain but Zeel didn't relent.

*Bang*

*Bang*.

Zeel had fired two shots at Rain, one in the head and one through the heart.

"It's what she would have wanted instead of being eaten," Zeel said faking the most authentic sorrowful expression he could muster.

The group followed silently with only Alice being a bit suspicious about everything that just happened.

Zeel noticed Kaplan had a scratch from a zombie on his ankle and was planning whether or not he should off Kaplan next.

Truth be told, Zeel had known the case on his back was the anti-virus all along but he planned to study its contents for later use.

It would be a waste to use such a rare formula for someone as useless as Rain and Kaplan but if he sought to impress Alice, it would be worth the waste of resources.

Since it was his first time experiencing an emotion such as love, he was unwilling to let his first experience go to waste.

Added to the fact that a semi-psychic connection had already been established with Alice, it would be stupid to receive the backlash a separation would cause.

Alice didn't know it was a two-way street, so as much as she could feel what Zeel felt in his dark moment, he could also see her falsified memories.

This confirmed Zeel's suspicion that Alice was a unique variant of the Human Race. Zeel would have considered her a clone, but there was something unique about her genetic structure.

'To think my first love would be a unique clone,' Zeel mocked.

No matter how unique Alice was.... a clone was a clone. To Homo-Superiors, clones were marvels of wonder but this universe was too primitive to impress Zeel.

'Did all the hearts of those princesses I broke accumulate to spite me?' Zeel lamented internally.