Chapter 128-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 128 The Company You Can't Leave (VI)
Monday morning.
The most despised time of the week for every wage slave. Zhu Ning's desk was piled high with documents.
"Toilet Paper, go liaise with these clients."
"Toilet Paper, look over this material—it'll help you."
"Toilet Paper, draft a project proposal for this."
"Toilet Paper, I'm swamped over here. Revise this plan for me, will you? I have high hopes for you—keep it up."
"No good. Redo it. Redo."
......
To every request, Zhu Ning could only smile and say okay—because she needed to become an Outstanding Employee, and that meant no pushback.
She'd be shot down again and again, nitpicked again and again. Every proposal sent back for revision.
She couldn't leave the company. Leaving only reset the loop to the same day, and she'd face the same projects and workload all over again.
Repeat, repeat, endlessly repeat. This was the Psychic Contamination.
As long as she played along with this logic, she'd become a model sheep. Maybe eventually Brightness really would give her the Outstanding Employee award.
Clack clack clack—
Zhu Ning typed absently while thinking. If this was a loop, then this was the second Monday.
While typing, she'd zone out and wonder—had she actually been in this Contamination Zone for a long time already? Had she been through countless loops without realizing it, since every day was the same and there was no way to tell?
Every concept here was blurring together.
Zhu Ning could feel herself trapped in some bizarre loop, yet she couldn't pinpoint exactly where she was.
Like that strange spiral cloud in the sky.
The dead post's author said she was stuck in the same day. Her desktop looked the same as before. Every evening after work, she encountered someone who'd jumped.
Zhu Ning was living through all of it, yet had no idea how it was happening.
Clack clack clack—
She typed away. Pure white Sheep-Heads surrounded her on all sides, but Zhu Ning didn't look out of place at all. Her rhythm was identical to everyone else's. She'd been completely assimilated by the Contamination Zone.
Nothing terrifying had appeared so far. Why? Because Zhu Ning hadn't touched the core yet?
If the Contamination Zone wasn't making a move, could Zhu Ning make hers instead?
Zhu Ning needed to wait for Monday's Performance Review Meeting.
In the meantime, bored out of her mind, she typed with her left hand while her right hand's fingernail picked at a small indentation on the desk.
There was a tiny scratch on the desktop. Some people zone out and fidget with whatever's on their desk.
The kind of trivial, childish behavior you'd normally dismiss—but when you're slacking off, anything becomes interesting.
A corner of the desk's surface coating had been picked away. Zhu Ning's fingernails were covered by the black Protective Suit gloves, but the suit's sensitive tactile system relayed the sensation.
Suddenly, Zhu Ning frowned. Something about this desk felt wrong.
Why was it soft under her fingertip?
She lifted her finger. Under the light, it was even clearer—a drop of blood sat on her fingertip, similar to what she'd found at Cardboard Box's Workstation.
Blood? Why would a Workstation have blood?
Last time, she'd found scratches under Cardboard Box's desk too. At the time she'd assumed the blood was from someone's fingernail. Now it seemed more like it had seeped out from inside the Workstation itself.
The surrounding Sheep-Heads were all typing. No one noticed anything unusual. Zhu Ning lowered her head to study the tiny hole in the desk.
The texture was extremely strange—like touching something warm and fleshy.
Zhu Ning carefully peeled back the desk's surface, as if removing an eggshell, widening the hole slightly.
About one finger-joint deep, the true color underneath was revealed. Dark red flesh.
The hole was too small to make out details. Zhu Ning pressed her face close and peered inside.
Her helmet was nearly flat against the desktop. Nobody had noticed her yet, but if Chair turned around, he'd definitely think she was insane—she was practically plastered to the desk.
The desk was a disguise. Once the disguise was stripped away, what lay beneath was revealed.
Zhu Ning activated her helmet camera. It had a macro mode. After adjusting the parameters, she peered in again.
The viewing angle caused some distortion.
At first glance, she couldn't even process what she was looking at. It took her a full three seconds. Because Ms. Zhu was a doctor, Zhu Ning had grown up sneaking peeks at her mother's medical textbooks whenever she wasn't home—close-ups of every human organ imaginable.
Even though she'd forgotten those memories, seeing it again, she could still roughly identify it.
It was a layer of flesh.
Blood vessels threaded throughout. Dark red human flesh buried beneath the Workstation's surface. Zhu Ning instantly pulled her finger back.
It hadn't been her imagination. The desk was really alive?
A question she'd never considered before: when Zhu Ning started, every desk in the office had been occupied. This was the only empty one.
So where had the previous employee who'd sat here gone? Had they successfully resigned?
And if they hadn't resigned? Where were they?
Underground, Floor B1. Opposite the cafeteria—the Cold Storage Freezer, filled with Sheep-Head corpses. What were those bodies being used as material for?
This Workstation's desk, drawers, even the keyboard—were they all made of flesh?
Zhu Ning took a deep breath. Her instinct was to cover the hole back up, as if sealing the hole meant sealing away the truth.
This was beyond her comprehension. So the chair she was sitting on—was that an employee too?
She'd been sitting on a chair made of human flesh, leaning on a desk made of human flesh, typing on a keyboard made of human flesh?
Every keystroke she pressed—was someone crying for help underneath?
Were they... still breathing?
[Sanity decreased by 1%]
Zhu Ning realized—this Contamination Zone's method was silent infiltration. She couldn't make any sudden moves. Drawing attention would invite scrutiny.
Chair sat right next to her and would immediately notice anything off.
Zhu Ning tried not to imagine she was sitting on a chair made of human flesh. She readjusted her helmet parameters.
The new helmet had upgraded audio and visual functions. She pushed the settings to near-stethoscope levels.
This time she pressed her helmet against the desktop again. The mechanical keyboards clacking all around were deafening. At first she heard nothing. She pushed the parameters to maximum.
Thump!
She heard a single thump.
Faint—even at maximum sensitivity, barely detectable. Was that... a heartbeat?
This desk was truly alive. Zhu Ning's desk was certainly not unique—besides hers, every single Workstation in this office was probably alive too.
It looked like just over a hundred Sheep-Heads typing away. But beneath the clack-clack-clack of keyboards were the heartbeats of over a hundred Workstations.
Over a hundred souls trapped here, unable to make a sound, unable to call for help. They could only watch as one person after another came to work at the company.
New employees knew nothing of what was to come. Lured in by high salaries and benefits, they typed numbly at their keyboards, keeping the office perpetually bustling.
Was this what Brightness meant when he told Zhu Ning to start typing? A new employee who stopped for even a moment might hear something strange—might start searching for the source of the anomaly.
So everyone had to keep typing at all times.
If Zhu Ning couldn't make it out of this Contamination Zone alive, her fate wouldn't just be jumping off a building—she'd be turned into a Workstation after death.
This Contamination Zone was getting more depraved by the minute.
......
The Performance Review Meeting was at 1:30 PM.
When the time came, everyone rose from their Workstations in perfect unison.
"Today marks the Mechanical Design Department's weekly Performance Review Meeting!" Brightness stood at the podium. "First, let's welcome our department's newest member. She'll bring fresh blood to our team. Welcome, Toilet Paper!"
Countless Sheep-Heads applauded in unison. But when the applause ended, no one walked up to the stage.
"Toilet Paper? Toilet Paper, come on up." Brightness frowned.
"Toilet Paper?" Brightness's voice boomed through the conference room. Other Sheep-Heads craned their necks, searching for Zhu Ning.
Zhu Ning stood up. In her black Protective Suit, she was glaringly conspicuous among the white sheep.
Zhu Ning wore a black helmet. Painted on it was a blood-red smiley face—two eyes and a casually smeared curve for a smile. Whether it was actual blood or some kind of paint was unclear. Right now, the corners of the mouth were dripping, drip-drip-drip, streaking blood downward.
After seeing the flesh inside the Workstations, Zhu Ning knew she had to get out of here. The prerequisite was becoming an Outstanding Employee.
How to become an Outstanding Employee? Zhu Ning had calculated four options.
1. Work hard, win everyone's approval, earn the supervisor's recognition, move clients with sheer effort, maintain perfect attendance, and become a model employee.
2. Use the Puppet Manipulation talent to directly control Brightness during the Monday review meeting into handing her the trophy.
3. She already knew the current Outstanding Employee was Keyboard. Steal Keyboard's alias and become Keyboard herself.
Option one—she suspected that grinding herself dry in pursuit of the award would get her contaminated. She might never earn Outstanding Employee, or by the time she did, she'd have gone insane.
Option two—she'd only get the trophy and certificate. Whether the System would count that as truly becoming an Outstanding Employee was uncertain.
Option three—similar logic. And even if she fooled the System, it wouldn't necessarily help her situation.
After all, her ultimate goal was to kill the Contamination Source, not to game the System.
So she chose option four: eliminate the competition. Leave only one person standing. She'd be the Outstanding Employee, and whoever was left would be the worst performer.
A blood-drenched smile adorned Zhu Ning's black helmet. Zhu Ning drew a gun and click—racked the slide.
She'd said it herself—her ID Badge photo looked like a criminal's.
So she'd be a criminal.
The company was an S-Level Contamination Zone. Zhu Ning was an S-Level Contaminant. Since nothing truly terrifying had appeared in this Contamination Zone yet, she'd become the most terrifying thing in it.
Every rule ever established exists for someone to come along and break it.
Zhu Ning suspected there was a hidden layer to this Contamination Zone—one you'd never find without making a move.
And the fact that Brightness could shoot Cardboard Box dead proved that firearms worked here.
Was the System's instruction to become an Outstanding Employee actually hinting that she could use violence?
The Sheep-Heads saw Zhu Ning's face and froze. Brightness was stunned too. He frowned at her: "Toilet Paper, what do you think you're doing?"
His tone was extremely stern, as if on the verge of rage.
Finally dropping the act? Zhu Ning was actually curious to see what Brightness would do.
"Sorry about this—you all drove me crazy." Zhu Ning's tone was exquisitely polite, as if she genuinely felt bad for the inconvenience.
All in all, she looked like a psychopath.
Zhu Ning tilted her head. The blood-red smiley on her helmet looked utterly terrifying. "I want to be Outstanding Employee."
BANG!
She fired a shot into the ceiling. The bullet didn't punch into any ordinary building material—it sank into flesh.
The ceiling was made of flesh too. This whole company might have been built from the blood and bone of its employees. Every rebar, every floor tile, every Workstation—all the same.
The bullet lodged deep. Blood came gushing out, as if a blood-filled showerhead had been turned on. A rain of blood instantly engulfed the entire conference room.
Author's Note
Ning-baby: I'm done pretending. Cards on the table. I'm the violent little sweetheart.
Dammit, you guys always guess what's coming!
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