Yan Hao felt his spine sink. In intense dizziness, he realized Sinan’s knee was pressing him against the hard cement floor, and his fingers clutching the antibodies were being pried open one by one.
“Sinan, don’t do this…” Yan Hao groaned in pain: “Sinan…”
Sinan remained deaf to his pleas, breathing ragged and bloody. Just as he was about to forcefully bend back Yan Hao’s last finger, his throat suddenly constricted.
Zhou Rong staggered up from behind, elbow tight around Sinan’s neck, using all his strength to drag him away from Yan Hao, pulling him several meters and holding him tightly in his arms.
“Look at me, Sinan, look at me,” Zhou Rong pushed him into the corner, pressing his entire body against Sinan, blocking all his escape routes with a desperate posture, forcibly turning his chin to make him look into his eyes: “I’m your Rong-ge, do you see? How could you lay hands on Rong-ge? Huh?”
Sinan’s short hair was drenched in sweat, his long black eyebrows twisted together, his face unnaturally pale. Zhou Rong trembled as he held Sinan’s head, forcing him to stay still and look into his eyes: “It’s okay, don’t cry, it’s okay… Be good, little Sinan. What if the antibodies are gone after I gave you that injection? How could I face myself?”
Sinan said word by word: “You planned this together…”
Zhou Rong said: “Yes, it was my idea, it has nothing to do with Yan Hao. Calm down and listen to me… Sinan!”
Zhou Rong pressed the struggling Sinan back down: “Listen to me! Only one in ten antibodies can survive. Are you going to gamble the hope of all humanity on this one-in-ten chance? What if you lose?!”
Sinan gradually loosened his grip on Zhou Rong’s collar, his palm soaked in the flowing black blood.
The blood was cold, but it burned his fingers with pain.
“What if… what if we win?” Zhou Rong asked, shaking: “How am I supposed to live? How can I face myself? Wouldn’t it be better if you just killed me?”
On the other side, Ning Yu strode over, kneeling down and opening his medical kit.
Sinan slumped against the wall, hands buried deep in his hair, the infected black blood smearing across his eye corners and eyebrows, wiped away forcefully by Zhou Rong.
“Please, Sinan. Listen,” Zhou Rong separated his hands, lifting his own T-shirt hem to wipe the blood from his palm, repeatedly saying hoarsely: “You have to live, I’m begging you to live. You’re still young, you’ll meet someone better than Rong-ge, someone who’ll be with you for life… Let’s be sad for a moment, then forget about it, okay? Rong-ge will always love you.”
“Always love you,” Zhou Rong murmured repeatedly, warm and wet on his hard cheeks, not knowing he could still cry.
That was actually regret.
Would Sinan forget after a while?
No.
He knew that if he hadn’t marked Sinan, if Sinan were still a free-coming and going Omega, he might be sad for a while, maybe a few months, maybe a year or two, and eventually the sadness would fade with time, like shadows dissipating in rising sunlight.
But after marking, everything changed. The psychological and physiological connection was hard to break even with death. He could die, but Sinan would walk through long, lonely years. Even if surgical intervention could erase the pheromone effects, the deeper soul mark would never disappear.
This realization terrified and filled Zhou Rong with more regret than death itself.
His heart, lungs, and liver were pierced by blades, the knife twisting in the weakest meat of his heart, turning his internal organs into a pool of bloody mud.
Sinan was innocent. He was completely lured in, naively walking into a deadly trap, offering his extremely precious love to someone who didn’t deserve it.
Zhou Rong had never felt his selfishness so clearly as in this moment. If time could flow backward, he would go back to that snowy night, grab the version of himself who was inducing Sinan’s heat, and throw him out to die in the snow.
But now, it was too late.
Zhou Rong breathed heavily, each breath raspy and hot with a bloody scent. He pressed Si Nan’s head against his chest, signaling Yan Hao to leave first.
Yan Hao’s eyes were filled with tears, staring intently at Si Nan for a moment. His gaze was incredibly bleak and desperate. Then he shifted his eyes to Zhou Rong, as if saying a final goodbye, slowly retreating towards the rooftop iron gate.
Just as he was about to reach the door, Ning Yu suddenly stood up, swaying in the wild wind and rushing towards Zhou Rong: “Wait!”
Zhou Rong was momentarily distracted, and his grip on the back of Si Nan’s neck loosened. Si Nan glanced up and saw Yan Hao about to leave, instantly bursting into a new round of struggle.
Zhou Rong immediately held him tightly, shouting at Ning Yu: “What are you doing?!”
“This!” Ning Yu knelt on one knee in front of Zhou Rong, pointing at the pale yellow glass bottle in his hand, then pointing at Si Nan. Amid the roar of the helicopter’s engine, he shouted with all his might to be heard: “Serum!”
Zhou Rong was stunned.
“I drew 800CC of blood from Si Nan. Before leaving, I only had time to separate this serum, intending to use it for an experiment on Chen Yajing. But I was taken away before I could inject it. The serum might temporarily resist the toxicity. Will you take it?”
Zhou Rong stared at the pale yellow liquid before him, suddenly remembering why Chen Yajing had come alone to the underground laboratory during the zombie siege – to experiment with the serum’s antitoxic properties at the last moment.
Just as he was about to speak, Si Nan suddenly angrily said: “No!”
“Si Nan?”
“The serum is fatal,” Si Nan rasped: “Ning Yu only tried it once. After injection, the person died within minutes…”
The glimmer of hope instantly froze, and Zhou Rong could say nothing.
Ning Yu coldly said: “Yes, or you could try that antibody that may or may not have expired. The cure rate of primary antibodies is not one-tenth, but between 1% and 3%.” He glanced at Yan Hao and asked: “Have you taken the antibody?”
Yan Hao looked lost and nodded.
Ning Yu said: “Good. You’d definitely win the lottery, kid.”
Zhou Rong didn’t know what expression to make, a twisted sense of absurdity and humor suddenly rising in his despair.
“—I haven’t asked your name yet, Brother Rong,” Si Nan said softly: “As long as I call you Brother Rong, you’ll come to save me anywhere, right?”
Zhou Rong’s consciousness was hazy, his gaze unfocused. Many memories from a deep forest night years ago overlapped with the present moment. Si Nan’s figure strangely returned to his teenage years, smiling slightly by the campfire, with a bizarre and cunning light flickering deep in his eyes.
“I haven’t asked your name yet, tell me so I can remember.”
“My surname is Zhou…”
“Rong, as in military and warfare, and you?”
Eleven years ago, sunlight filtered through the trees, casting millions of colorful halos on the grass.
Sweat streaming down, cicadas buzzing deafeningly, a young special forces soldier was tied to a tree trunk, shouting furiously, until the boy whose face was indistinct stood on tiptoe and planted a soft kiss on his chin.
“Zhong,” the boy said with a grin.
“I won’t tell my name, but if we meet again, I’ll definitely tell you.”
That face, once deeply impressive but gradually blurred by eleven years of wind and sand, finally became clear again before Zhou Rong’s eyes. The clear, beautiful pupils were like precious amber, emerging across time and space with a hint of a smile.
“Noah,” Si Nan’s thin, cold lips pressed against Zhou Rong’s fingers, speaking in a low voice: “I was once called Noah.”
“I’m not intentionally deceiving you, Zhou Rong. You were very handsome back then.”
“From that year on, I started to like you a bit.”
·
Ten minutes after the serum injection, Zhou Rong lost consciousness and fell into a deep coma.
