“Are you sure it’s a black gorilla, Brother Rong?”
“Black gorillas have extremely high genetic similarity to humans, so maybe in virus infection…”
Zhou Rong ignored the surrounding discussions, walking toward the zombie gorilla’s sprawled front paw.
He put on full-fingered black leather gloves, tightening them, and crouched down to search through the dirty, putrid fur. Sinan walked over and squatted beside him, silently watching. Moments later, Zhou Rong finally found what he was looking for.
—On the zombie gorilla’s right front limb near the hand, a metal fine chain was caught in the fur. The chain was now very tight, deeply embedded in the blackened flesh.
Zhou Rong pinched the chain with two fingers, nodding to Sinan.
Sinan drew a military knife from his thigh, cutting the metal chain, and the bloody stainless steel tag fell with a clink.
“E Group Number 71998,” Zhou Rong read softly.
Sinan asked, “What does that mean?”
Zhou Rong clutched the tag with the steel stamp in his palm, speaking in a low voice: “Laboratory code. Someone was using black gorillas as carriers to research antiviral vaccines, but the virus mutated, and they accidentally went too far…”
He slowly stood up, looking northward.
At the highway’s end, smoke billowed, half a dead city away, was the B military area buried by ruins.
At the beginning of the disaster, the military district restarted it at the cost of countless lives and transformed it into a shelter capable of accommodating over a million people within just a few days.”
Zhou Rong opened the tablet computer, clicked to enlarge, and the screen displayed a complex floor plan.
“The shelter is excavated eleven layers deep, in a pyramid shape, divided into five areas. The eastern A area is mainly for settling disaster victims, the western B area concentrates management, communication, and energy supply, the southern C area is for troop rotation and armory, and the central D area is the underground drainage system and transportation hub.”
“The northern E area is the most important and highest classified, responsible for medical quarantine and biological virus research.”
“As the highest classified unit 118, our identity keys can access the entire A area, B area, D area, and part of C area. When summoned, we can enter E area under restricted conditions, which is the biological research institute now suspected of virus outbreak.”
