Su Jin grabbed his phone, forcing down a pounding headache.
He had set an alarm before going to sleep, but glancing at the time, less than two hours had passed.
He sat on the bed for a while to catch his breath, gradually coming to terms with reality.
Getting up, he walked over to the living room window. Muffled shouts and curses could still be heard drifting from the floors above and below.
Looking down through the window, Su Jin felt slightly relieved.
Just as he had anticipated, no one had arrived yet.
Trapping an entire stairwell of residents inside the building would inevitably drive them to seek outside help.
However, the intensity of their pleas wouldn't be very high, leaving him with an ample window of time.
A large proportion of the building's residents were elderly and mostly retired; on a rainy day like this, they wouldn't have ventured out anyway.
As for the working tenants, they would most likely decide to take the day off. Even if anyone considered calling a locksmith, the torrential rain would stifle most such thoughts, to say nothing of the fire department.
Furthermore, the forged flyers warning of severe rainwater pollution would have some effect. Although calling to verify the flyer would reveal inconsistencies, most people would rather believe it than risk their lives in an uncertain situation like this. It was like mysteriously finding a slip of paper that read, *I spat in your cup.* Any normal person would abandon the glass in sheer paranoia.
On top of that, the radio broadcasts were already circulating news of this strange deluge, so receiving emergency text messages should help people regain their composure.
Even if, in the absolute worst-case scenario, firefighters actually showed up to assist... it wouldn't pose much of an issue.
He had a gun in his possession and was fully prepared to use violent force to resist the authorities. Buying time would be no problem at all.
With no trouble inside the residential compound, Su Jin raised his binoculars and peered toward the streets in the distance.
At first glance, his brows knitted tightly together.
Aside from an occasional vehicle, only two or three pedestrians could be seen on the street.
Two wore raincoats, and one carried an umbrella... before suddenly tossing the umbrella onto the ground.
All three moved with an unnervingly sluggish gait and pace, completely unlike normal people walking in the rain.
Zombification... judging by their condition, it could already be confirmed as zombification.
Su Jin swallowed hard and shifted the binoculars toward the opposite residential block.
Most households had not drawn their curtains, allowing glimpses of people moving inside.
The first two apartments seemed normal enough, until his eyes landed on the third!
In a fifth-floor living room across the way, a bare-chested, potbellied man stood rigidly before the window, his body faintly swaying, his skin tinged a ghastly blue-green, drained of all expression and vitality.
At the sight, Su Jin lowered the binoculars and quietly drew the curtains shut.
Zombification... it had already begun. In just a matter of hours, people had succumbed to infection.
The tap water had been contaminated.
Anxiety gnawing at his gut, Su Jin turned and walked to the kitchen. At another window, he used a ladle to scoop up a small amount of the gray rainwater.
Next, he went back into the bathroom and retrieved a cage woven from thick iron wire, partitioned into two sections.
One half served as a standard cage, while the other held a hamster running wheel.
The cage had been prepared specifically for experiments.
Now that signs of zombification were emerging, it was imperative to understand this phenomenon early and make preparations ahead of time.
Using tongs, he picked up two rats and placed one in each side of the reinforced wire cage.
Taking a deep breath, Su Jin put on thick gloves, drew some of the gray water into a rubber-bulb dropper, and squeezed identical amounts onto both rats.
While waiting for any mutations to manifest, he pulled a toy mini four-wheel-drive car from his bag and set about taking it apart.
The developmental trajectories of the two worlds were largely aligned, and even their toys shared many similarities. This mini 4WD simply looked a bit different from those back on Earth.
The underlying mechanics were essentially identical.
He had loved these motorized toy cars as a boy, so he was quite familiar with them.
Stripping off the chassis shell, he jerry-rigged it to the linkage of the iron wheel. Once hooked up to power, it became an electric treadmill for rodents—ideal for testing a mutated rat's endurance.
Half an hour ticked by, yet the rats showed no reaction whatsoever.
Seeing this, Su Jin picked up the dropper and squirted another full measure of gray water over one of the rats.
Ten minutes later, the rat drenched in a double dose mutated first!
Its instinctive habit of grooming its whiskers vanished, replaced by aberrant behavior.
The mutated rat's physical appearance remained unchanged, but it displayed an overwhelming urge to attack humans.
Fortunately, it was still just a rat, and the cage was woven from wire so thick that even pliers couldn't easily snip through it.
Watching the creature repeatedly slam itself against the bars toward him, Su Jin stood up warily, took a step back, and slowly shifted to the other side.
Sure enough, as he moved, the mutated rat adjusted its direction of attack to follow.
Su Jin gripped his silver spear tightly, staying vigilant against any sudden accident.
The mutated rat was clearly fixated on living targets, but there was another rat right beside it—why did it keep staring solely at him?
With that in mind, Su Jin pulled out his phone, switched on video recording, propped it in front of the cage, and retreated into the bedroom.
Two minutes later, he returned to the living room to check the footage.
In the recording, the moment Su Jin disappeared, the mutated rat instantly changed its course and charged directly toward the rat in the running wheel.
After a quick review, Su Jin reached a tentative conclusion.
It possessed intense aggression toward living beings and prioritized larger targets.
The mutated rat seemed to rely primarily on vision to navigate, though he couldn't say for certain.
He wondered how it reacted to sound and scent...
Just as he was about to set up another test, an abrupt anomaly occurred!
Two large lines of text suddenly materialized across his field of vision!
[New sample detected. Eligible for salvage.]
[Upon salvage, the Company will provide compensation in the form of equivalent goods.]
Seeing this, Su Jin's pupils dilated, and the knot of tension in his chest eased considerably!
The Company was there... The Company was still around! It could still provide him with assistance!
The characters vanished, and everything returned to calm.
"Company!! Salvage—how do I salvage it? Could you be a little more specific?! I don't know what to do! Can someone just talk to me?!" Su Jin shouted.
He clutched his head, taking deep, steady breaths.
He should have known what this damn Company was like by now; it never offered detailed instructions.
Yet to mention salvage at a critical juncture like this meant it had to be possible right now... He couldn't be expected to wait until his overall mission was completed to hand it over, could he?
*But how the hell am I supposed to turn it in? Where do I put it... The briefcase?!*
A bell rang in Su Jin's mind. He bolted across the room in three strides and snatched the briefcase off the sofa, a fervent gleam in his eyes.
*Right! This thing contains an extradimensional space! If I put the item inside, maybe the Company can receive it. It's worth a shot!*
Licking his lips, Su Jin rubbed his hands together excitedly and rummaged through the case.
He pulled out an extra-long screwdriver with a sharpened tip and stabbed it downward into the mutated rat.
After several fierce thrusts, the mutated rat was thoroughly dead.
Having no time to marvel at the creature's formidable vitality, he poked and prodded it with the screwdriver for a while to ensure it was completely lifeless.
Su Jin carefully pried the carcass out and dropped it into a plastic bag.
After wrapping it in several more layers, he shoved the bagged rat carcass into the briefcase...
Chapter 23