Chapter 4-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World

Chapter 4 Contamination Zone

District 103 Sanitation Center, Technical Support Department.

A technician was eating potato chips, the screen in front of him displaying the interior of sewer A7 in District 103.

A water-based Contaminant outbreak had once occurred here. A Demon Hunter had already gone in an hour ago. For a mere E-Level Mission, the Demon Hunter had it sorted out within twenty minutes.

Now, it was the Cleaners' turn to work. To put it bluntly, Cleaners were just trash sweepers. What danger could there be?

All the technicians knew that when the Demon Hunters were working, they had to be on high alert, watch out for unknown dangers, and be ready to provide support at any moment. But when the Clean Squad was working, it was the perfect time to slack off.

The technician munched on his chips, typing a message to his girlfriend with one hand, glancing up at the screen from time to time.

Suddenly, his chip-eating motion froze. He stared at the screen in disbelief. The contamination reading on the screen had spiked, forming a small peak.

Was the data glitching?

No, the numbers were still climbing. Contamination concentration: 30%, 40%, 50%... 70%!

D-LEVEL CONTAMINATION ZONE. Six blood-red words appeared on the screen, flashing relentlessly.

D-level? Wasn't it E-level?

Had this zone been misclassified from the very beginning? The technician threw the chips aside, his fingers flying across the keyboard. The result was the same after two calculations.

Still a D-level Contamination Zone.

It’s over. The technician shot up from his chair. This time, it was really over. He quickly switched to the sewer feed. Each Cleaner's helmet was equipped with a camera, allowing headquarters to monitor the situation.

The monitor showed a shaky first-person view. A flashlight beam cut through the depths of the sewer, revealing a Fishman Contaminant. A real, live Contaminant.

The technician quickly contacted the Cleaner team. The moment he opened the public channel, he heard a bang.

Someone had fired a shot.

…

Sewer A7, District 103.

"Report, we have a live Contaminant! Requesting authorization to—" Li Nianchuan didn't even have time to finish his sentence. The Fishman's running speed was astonishing; it was upon them in the blink of an eye.

"Authorization granted! You are clear to engage!" Xu Meng's anxious voice crackled through the helmet's comms.

Click. The weapon lock disengaged.

BANG!

The instant the authorization came through, Zhu Ning pulled the trigger without hesitation. Li Nianchuan was stunned for a moment. The bullet shot out, precisely hitting the Fishman in the face. The massive impact snapped its head back a full one hundred and eighty degrees.

It stopped.

The rapidly charging Fishman froze in place. Zhu Ning's finger was still on the trigger, not daring to relax. Was it dead?

"Hahahahahahaha—" A low chuckle came from the Fishman.

It slowly raised its head. Its fish-eye was pierced through the center, scales blasted open, its face a mangled ruin of blood and flesh.

Still alive.

A headshot, but it's still alive. Zhu Ning made an instant judgment. Contaminants were different from zombies. A zombie's weak point was its head; once pierced, it would lose all motor function.

The Fishman could still move after a headshot. In a way, this was very characteristic of a fish.

Li Nianchuan finally snapped out of it. He drew the gun from his hip. In his year and a half as a Cleaner, this was the first time he had seen a live Contaminant. His heart hammered against his ribs, his hands clumsy as he gripped the weapon.

Li Nianchuan raised his gun and fired as well.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Li Nianchuan unleashed a volley. Compared to Zhu Ning, his aim was practically nonexistent, but the suppressive fire successfully slowed the Fishman down. Its head was already mangled by Zhu Ning, and one of its legs had been shot out, forcing it to drag itself across the ground.

Its vitality was terrifyingly tenacious. It was crawling towards them.

"Do... you... know... where... the last... number... one... train... is?" The Fishman, with its ravaged head, crawled on all fours like Sadako from The Ring.

The Fishman tilted its neck, the scales on its face curling at the edges. A spray of scales scattered across the floor. "I'm going to miss it... the last... la-la-la-last train..."

Li Nianchuan felt his sanity slipping away.

BANG!

Zhu Ning fired another shot. The Fishman's body jolted, then it began to twitch violently, its movements like a lagging video. "La-la-la-la-last train..."

"Is it dead?" Zhu Ning asked.

Li Nianchuan was still in a state of shock, mumbling dazedly, "I don't know."

Usually, by the time Cleaners entered the site, the Contaminants were thoroughly dead. This was his first time seeing a live one.

He had just stepped out for a breather during a lull in his work. No wonder he felt on edge today; the more he tried to relax, the more tense he became. It turned out there was a live Contaminant here.

Zhu Ning observed it for a moment. The Fishman was only convulsing. She asked a critical question: "How long after death before it starts releasing Contamination Spores?"

Li Nianchuan's mind buzzed, finally catching on. "Immediately. The spores are released as soon as there are no vital signs. That means it's not dead yet!"

Li Nianchuan raised the gun he had just lowered, aiming the muzzle at the Fishman's body. There was still no reaction from the Contaminant.

Not a single spore was in the air. The Fishman was dead, but not completely.

Zhu Ning was a complete rookie. Today was her first day on the job. Half an hour of happy "cotton picking" and she runs into this mess.

Zhu Ning wanted to lie around like a dead fish, not fight an actual one.

Zhu Ning humbly consulted her senior. "What do we usually do in a situation like this?"

Li Nianchuan: "Wait for rescue."

Zhu Ning: "..."

Li Nianchuan was just as frustrated. "First, the odds of this happening are incredibly low. I've been on the job for a year and a half and I've never even heard of a Demon Hunter leaving a straggler behind. Second, we're not as skilled as Demon Hunters. Acting rashly could get us killed faster. All the protocols tell us to stay put and wait."

"Did you send a distress signal?" Zhu Ning asked. Waiting for rescue was fine, but someone had to know where they were.

Li Nianchuan: "I sent one the moment the Fishman appeared."

But there had been no response. He thought that as the senior, he should try to calm Zhu Ning down. "The distress signal is out. We just need to be patient."

Li Nianchuan sighed again. "This is all my fault. If I hadn't wanted to come out for some air, I wouldn't have dragged you into this."

Zhu Ning glanced at him. "Cut the crap."

Wasting time on pointless words was meaningless.

Zhu Ning asked, "Have you noticed anything else that's wrong?"

Li Nianchuan had long since discovered that Zhu Ning seemed to be more perceptive than him. She had reacted to the Contaminant a full minute before he did, like a human radar.

Hearing her say this, Li Nianchuan's hair nearly stood on end, thinking there was another Contaminant. He tightened his grip on his gun and asked, "What's wrong?"

Zhu Ning: "Xu Meng hasn't contacted us at all."

When the Fishman first appeared, Zhu Ning had only heard the captain's single order to unlock their weapons. Then, Xu Meng's voice vanished.

Their channel was public. As the team captain, Xu Meng should have been able to hear everything happening on their end. When Zhu Ning and Li Nianchuan were suspecting each other of being contaminated, Xu Meng's silence might have been her assessing the situation. But to have heard nothing at all by now...

"Was she killed?" Zhu Ning asked.

Li Nianchuan's face was hidden behind his helmet, but his complexion was deathly pale. "Worse."

Zhu Ning frowned.

Li Nianchuan: "This means the Contamination Zone has fully manifested. We're in the core area. Outsiders can't get in easily. The Psychic Contamination has severed our comms channel. Xu Meng can't reach us."

"And the two of us, a couple of rookie trash sweepers, are stuck here with no special gear, our comms are down, and we can't receive any information from the outside."

Li Nianchuan spoke rapidly, taking a deep breath before looking at Zhu Ning and delivering the final sentence: "Zhu Ning, we're done for."

…

"Zhu Ning? Li Nianchuan? Respond if you can hear me!" Xu Meng was calling them, but there was no reply.

When the gunshot suddenly rang out, Xu Meng was still securing the Contaminants. At the time, she thought one of them had been affected by Psychic Contamination. When Zhu Ning drew her gun the first time, Xu Meng hadn't thought much of it.

Xu Meng had unsecured Contamination Spores on her side. If those spores spread to the city, the entire District 103 would likely become contaminated.

Xu Meng knew how to prioritize. No matter what happened, the first priority was always to secure the Contamination Spores. She continued her work while keeping an ear on the commotion from their side.

If this were just a normal E-Level Mission cleanup, everything should have been under her control. But things on their end were getting more chaotic, and static crackled through the channel.

Xu Meng immediately felt that something was wrong. Her intuition told her this wasn't a simple E-Level Mission.

When Li Nianchuan reported a live Contaminant, she knew it was bad. Zhu Ning might be a rookie, but Li Nianchuan was an experienced employee. Xu Meng had considered providing support, but before she could act, she received a message from the tech department.

A once-in-a-decade stroke of bad luck had occurred. The Contamination Zone had been misclassified. This wasn't E-level at all, but a D-level Contamination Zone.

A D-level mission wasn't too difficult for a Demon Hunter, but the only people inside were three support staff who swept trash. The Demon Hunter thought the job was done and had left long ago.

But they didn't know. If you compared a Contamination Zone to a demon's lair, the Demon Hunter had, at best, cleaned up the garbage at the entrance. The real nest was deep inside.

It would take at least half an hour for the Demon Hunter to return. Every extra second spent in a Contamination Zone increased the risk of an early death, and Zhu Ning was a rookie, no less.

Xu Meng tried to contact Zhu Ning and Li Nianchuan, but no matter how many times she called, she heard no response. She immediately guessed that the D-level Contamination Zone had manifested, and the Psychic Contamination had severed their communication link.

She had lost contact with them.

…

Zhu Ning took a deep breath. Could a person really be this unlucky? Was this even scientific?

When Fang Ying had her sign the contract, she said they would generally not encounter live Contaminants, that it was a low-probability event.

During employee training, the instructional videos didn't teach them how to kill Contaminants, only how to do "cotton picking," because it was a low-probability event.

When Li Nianchuan gave her the gun, he said she generally wouldn't need to fire it, because it was still a low-probability event.

Now, three low-probability events had collided. Zhu Ning had not only encountered a live Contaminant, but she didn't even know how to kill it.

In her past life, she fought zombies. Why was she reduced to killing fish in this one?

The good news was, Zhu Ning had a gun. The air-powered rounds could be fired a thousand times on a single fuel cell, so she didn't have to worry about running out of ammo. The bad news was, the gun couldn't kill the Contaminant outright.

Zhu Ning tried to save herself. "How do you kill a Contaminant?"

In a zombie world, the universal rule was a shot to the head. In this Wasteland, there must be a universal rule for killing Contaminants too; otherwise, humanity couldn't have survived this long.

Li Nianchuan stood there, a picture of despair. "I don't know!"

The Fishman's corpse was still lying there, and there was no telling what it might mutate into next.

Zhu Ning said to the dazed Li Nianchuan, "Figure it out."

She had no idea how to deal with Contaminants, but Li Nianchuan must.

For a moment, Li Nianchuan couldn't even tell who the rookie was. Zhu Ning's presence was too powerful, like a captain giving orders.

Zhu Ning: "Don't you want to be a Demon Hunter? You must have studied for it."

Li Nianchuan felt a flash of embarrassment. He normally didn't like to admit this part of his past. He had once tried to sign up to be a Demon Hunter, but after all his efforts, they rejected him. He could only resign himself to sweeping trash. How did Zhu Ning know?

Li Nianchuan's nose was bleeding from the continuous Psychic Contamination, and his mind was a bit fuzzy. He tried to think calmly, to remember what he had crammed for the exam. After half a minute, the half-baked Li Nianchuan said, "To eliminate a Contaminant, you have to find the Source of Contamination."

"Source of Contamination?" Zhu Ning asked.

"Right," Li Nianchuan said. "When a Contamination Zone is formed, there's a core Source of Contamination. The Source is usually hidden deep and will try every trick to conceal itself, to confuse you."

Zhu Ning: "A ghost-hunting game?"

"Uh..." Li Nianchuan: "That's not a wrong way to put it."

The Fishman before them was clearly a corpse, yet no spores were being released. This proved it wasn't the Source of Contamination. To survive, Zhu Ning had to find the Source.

Zhu Ning asked, "How are Contaminants formed?"

Knowing the cause would make it easier to act. The Fishman just now actually resembled a human. It seemed to have some kind of "grudge." Li Nianchuan was about to speak when a loud noise interrupted him.

RUMBLE—

A deafening roar suddenly echoed from the distance. This time, the sound was so loud that Li Nianchuan heard it without needing a reminder from Zhu Ning.

Two large headlights switched on without warning. Zhu Ning's pupils contracted sharply as an old-fashioned Sub-rail vehicle slowly emerged from the darkness.

This was a sewer. It was wide, but not wide enough for a Sub-rail. She immediately remembered Li Nianchuan saying this place used to be a Sub-rail station.

Zhu Ning felt gray matter floating before her eyes. For a moment, her vision blurred, and black lines began to precipitate.

She blinked. When she opened her eyes again, she was no longer in a filthy sewer. A flickering incandescent light hung above her. Zhu Ning looked down. She was standing on yellow tiled flooring, covered in a thick layer of dust.

A platform. This was a Sub-rail platform. The sewer was gone.

Zhu Ning was sure she hadn't moved an inch. The Fishman's body hadn't changed either, still stuttering, "Nu-nu-nu-number... one... li-li-line..."

But the environment had changed, from a sewer to an old, dilapidated Sub-rail station. The deep, dark tunnel looked as if it could swallow her whole. Was this what Li Nianchuan called a Contamination Zone?

The rusted, yellowed front of the train read... Line 1? The last train on Line 1. The time displayed on the front of the train was 23:35.

The last train the Fishman was waiting for?

RUMBLE—

The Sub-rail slowly came to a stop in front of them. The rusty metal doors slid open to either side, a silent invitation.

Ding—

The moment the Sub-rail stopped, a crisp sound rang in Zhu Ning's mind:

[System Notification: You have activated the side quest, "The Vanished Last Train of Line 1." Current purification progress: 10%. Please keep up the good work.]

Zhu Ning: "..."

What the hell had she just triggered?

Author's Note:

Cleaner Handbook, Rule #3: If you encounter a live Contaminant, remain still and await rescue.

← Previous Chapter Next Chapter →