Chapter 1: Awakening

Mu Yufeng opened her eyes.

A dull ache radiated from her neck and shoulders. Before her was a heavy glass canopy. She hesitated for a moment, then reached up to push it.

It did not budge.

Memories flooded back, pulling her out of an endless slumber. She remembered now: this was her stasis pod. On a brilliant autumn afternoon bathed in golden sunlight, her attending physician had smiled as she lowered this very glass lid.

“When you wake up, a perfect new world will surely welcome you,” You Ye had said.

Three seconds after lying down, Mu Yufeng had fallen into deep cryostasis. Intricate machines had taken over her circulatory system, replacing the blood in her veins with specialized antifreeze. Then the temperature plunged, liquid nitrogen flooded the chamber, and the glass canopy before her frosted over in the blink of an eye.

Cryopreserving a living human was an unorthodox, rebellious undertaking in that era. It had been You Ye’s pet project, pushed forward through sheer force of will, though it had failed to pass the ethics board back then.

Recalling this, Mu Yufeng smiled faintly. That girl was practically practicing medicine without a license.

You Ye had actually been far more conservative than she let on. Although she was the one who proposed the stasis initiative, she had thrown a massive temper when Mu Yufeng actually agreed to let herself be frozen. That was the first time You Ye had ever lowered her head, eyes rimmed with red, admitting that she was not entirely confident in her own technology.

Yet it had not mattered. Mu Yufeng trusted her. Mu Yufeng refused to die helpless and bedridden; she would rather gamble on a future. She had already glimpsed the dawn of an unprecedented tech boom. Perhaps after a few years of waiting, her terminal illness would be as simple to cure as a common cold. Besides, You Ye was out there. She would drive her research forward at full throttle. All Mu Yufeng had to do was wait for that day. At their core, both she and You Ye were gamblers who refused to admit defeat.

The year Mu Yufeng first entered the nation’s top university, a science fiction movie had hit theaters. She and her roommate, You Ye, had skipped class to go see it. A line spoken by the protagonist had lingered with them:

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Back then, Mu Yufeng had bet You Ye that the film would go down in history. You Ye had merely looked at her, eyes crinkling with a subtle smile. “Anyone might go gentle, but never you.”

Mu Yufeng had taken that smile as mockery, stiffening her neck in stubborn defiance. “Damn right! I don’t even know how to spell ‘gentle.’ Even when I’m shoved into a coffin, I’m taking a crowbar with me for self-defense!”

Wait… a crowbar?

Mu Yufeng fumbled around inside the stasis pod. To her utter shock, her fingers brushed against an ice-cold, smooth handle. You Ye and her twisted sense of humor!

The stasis pod began to sound an alarm. The oxygen levels inside were depleting rapidly; after all, a conscious human needed to breathe. Mu Yufeng had to get out of this glass enclosure immediately, or it truly would become her coffin.

She searched every inch of the interior, but found no release latch. The pod had never been engineered with the expectation that a subject would wake up unattended.

Mu Yufeng took one last look at the exquisite stasis pod—Professor You’s proudest work, a masterpiece of modern science bordering on fine art.

Goodbye.

Crash!

A heavy strike cracked the glass. Pressing her advantage, Mu Yufeng hammered relentlessly against the fissure, finally shattering her coffin lid. Stale air rushed into her lungs, triggering a violent fit of coughing.

Pleased, Mu Yufeng patted the crowbar in her hand. Truly the Holy Sword of Physics. Nothing beats it.

She had no idea how many years had passed since she first lay down. Hopefully not too long. Hopefully her You Ye had not turned into a frail old woman who could barely walk, and still had the energy to settle scores with the lunatic who had violently smashed her life’s work.

Catching her breath, Mu Yufeng slowly sat up. She could not tell if this was still the laboratory she remembered. The room was dim, the overhead lights dead. High in the corner of the ceiling, some sort of monitor was letting out an ear-splitting buzz. Beams of pale sunlight slanted through high windows, dust motes dancing in the glare.

It looked anything but peaceful.

Mu Yufeng sat on the edge of the shattered pod, locked in a silent staring contest with the monitor. Smashing the canopy had drained every ounce of her strength. She planned to wait for medical staff to rush in, whereupon she would promptly faint to register her protest.

Yet as her breathing calmed and her heart rate leveled out, an icy chill crept down her spine.

This is wrong. A stasis pod shouldn’t be kept in a place like this.

And… why is there nobody here?

Leaning against the pod, Mu Yufeng pulled herself up. Her peripheral vision caught the crowbar resting inside, and her heart skipped a beat.

She gripped the crowbar once more.

She surveyed the room. A thick layer of dust coated the floor and workbenches. Stepping onto it in her one-piece hibernation suit produced an unsettlingly soft, velvet crunch. She walked beneath the monitor. A green pulse light flickered as the buzzer shrilled unabated. Nearly an hour had passed since she opened her eyes, yet aside from herself, the room remained entirely empty.

Who in their right mind lets an alarm shriek for an hour?

The piercing noise rattled her skull. An instinctive premonition warned her that waiting around would yield nothing. She decided to step outside and see what had happened.

It was a reckless gamble. Although the pod had executed the thawing protocol, decades or centuries of stasis had degraded her bodily functions. The violent escape had sapped her reserves, and merely walking across the room left her chest heaving.

Mu Yufeng rested one hand on the door handle, concealing the crowbar behind her back with the other. She cast a backward glance at the pod in the center of the room. Its power indicator had shifted to an alarming, pulsing crimson. Drawing a deep breath, she realized her revival was far from the idealized awakening she had envisioned.

The pod’s power reserves were about to run dry. She had likely been awakened prematurely by an emergency failsafe.

With a grim expression, Mu Yufeng yanked the door open. She recognized the lock—it was the exact model used in You Ye’s laboratory.

The good news was that she was still in the building where she had fallen asleep. The bad news was that a laboratory lock should never look so weathered. It was covered in rust.

This place has been abandoned.

Beyond the door lay a long, narrow corridor. The lighting was entirely dead. A biting chill hung in the air, her exhalations crystallizing into plumes of white vapor.

Following her memories, Mu Yufeng sought out a nearby researchers’ lounge. The moment she pushed the door inward, a cloud of dust showered over her. Squinting and coughing, she waved her arms frantically to clear the air before taking in the scene.

Desks and chairs lay overturned. Wastebaskets were kicked aside. Near the entrance lay a lab coat caked in grime and footprints. Mu Yufeng knelt to examine it, finding dark, crusted brown stains smeared across the fabric.

It looks like blood.

The thought sent a wave of cold sweat cascading down her back. She snapped her head up, scanning the wreckage.

Dead silence, save for her own ragged breathing.

Whatever happened here, people fled in panic.

She stood up. A sudden rush of postural hypotension caused her vision to black out. Swaying, she barely managed to steady herself. An ancient, primal instinct for danger flared to life within her marrow, chilling her spine. Every nerve screamed at her to run.

Yet she could not run. She had to understand what had taken place.

Gritting her teeth, Mu Yufeng ventured deeper into the room. Inside a half-broken drawer, she discovered a vintage military flashlight. These heavy, crude industrial relics had no fancy features, but they were remarkably durable. She clicked the switch, and a stubborn beam of white light sliced through the gloom.

The computer on the desk was thoroughly destroyed, its monitor punctured right through the center by something unknown. Deep, jagged gouges scored the wooden surface, leaving wood splinters clinging to her fingers when she touched them.

Mu Yufeng turned and opened an archive cabinet bolted to the wall. Even before she entered cryostasis, paper records had largely vanished from modern society. However, multi-decade initiatives still enforced strict protocols requiring multiple redundancies. Paper files might be fragile, but they did not rely on electrical power and could not be wiped or altered remotely. Crucial research always required physical copies.

Of course, whatever was left in an open lounge would not be top secret.

Leaning the crowbar against the cabinet, flashlight in one hand, she used the other to brush the dust from the papers. She picked up the topmost logbook. The date stamped across the cover nearly knocked her off her feet.

Year 2257…

More than two hundred years had passed since she closed her eyes.

Two hundred years…

Under such an unfathomable span of time, every lingering shred of hope evaporated into mist. Mu Yufeng had become an ancient relic from two centuries past. The world outside had turned upside down while she slept. She would never see her friends again. The life she had known was gone forever.

Clang!

The crowbar slipped and clattered against the floor, ringing out in the cramped lounge with a sharp echo. Her body reacted faster than her conscious mind; dropping into a crouch, she seized the metal bar again.

Her brief skim through the logbook revealed that most of the ink had faded into illegibility, the paper yellowed and brittle, threatening to shatter at the slightest pressure.

This had been a massive biotechnology research facility. Mu Yufeng knew little of the field and could not decipher the technical jargon, but thanks to years of exposure through You Ye, several keywords leaped out at her:

Virus… Mutant… Zombification…

Crouching with her back pressed against the rusted archive cabinet, Mu Yufeng heard a grating friction scrape along the hallway outside. She clicked off the flashlight, holding her breath in the pitch darkness.

Rustle, rustle, rustle—

With her eyes shut, it sounded like a colossal swarm of armored insects on the march, thousands of jointed legs clicking and scratching against the concrete floor.

The sound drew nearer. Mu Yufeng gripped the crowbar until her knuckles whitened. Opening her eyes in the dark, she stared in terror at the lounge’s wide-open doorway.

The skittering noise veered, turning into the room right next door—the room where the green-lit monitor was still screaming.

Mu Yufeng tracked the sound. The moment the last of the scratching passed into the adjacent chamber, she vaulted forward. In two strides, she crossed the threshold, slammed the heavy door shut, and engaged the manual deadbolt from the outside.

The steel-clad door provided exceptional soundproofing. The world fell blissfully silent.

Chest heaving violently, her heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird. She tasted the metallic tang of copper in the back of her throat as cold sweat drenched her back.

Judging by the experimental logs, this laboratory had suffered a catastrophic containment breach involving an unidentified pathogen—one severe enough that the researchers had labeled infected organisms with the horrific moniker “zombified.” The staff had evacuated in utter panic, leaving bloodstains in their wake.

Her throat tightened with dryness. She swallowed hard, but her esophagus felt as rough as sandpaper.

It’s dangerous here. I have to get out now.