Chapter 401: A Master Game Of Hide And Go Seek
Chenghai looked at me after Yuche’s voice came through the radio, but I continued down the aisle as if five trapped zombies weren’t following my movements through several concrete walls.
We passed a medicine storage room, three locked weapons rooms, and a row of cramped offices along the back of the warehouse. And somewhere below us, metal scraped across the freight yard as Yuche moved the cages.
Whenever I changed direction, the sound shifted with me. I crossed to the left side of the aisle, and the zombies struck the left walls of their steel prisons. When I turned and headed right, they followed a second later.
Even doubling back without warning didn’t confuse them.
Zhenlan stopped near the far end of the warehouse and watched me pace beneath the emergency lights. His expression tightened as another impact echoed through the building.
"They know where you are."
"No shit Sherlock," I grumbled, glaring at the man. "That’s becoming a little difficult to ignore." I took several more steps before the ache in my leg sharpened enough to stop me.
I pressed my fingers against the old bite through my pants. The pain was no longer confined to the thick scar tissue. It travelled upward along my leg in a slow, burning line that felt as though something beneath my skin was tracing the original wound from the inside.
The Devourer had bitten me before I poisoned it badly enough to force it to retreat. I’d always treated the mark as nothing more than an injury it had failed to turn into my death. Once the flesh closed and the scar stopped hurting, I’d assumed the bite no longer mattered.
Now I was beginning to wonder whether the creature had ever needed to finish eating me. Maybe getting its teeth into me had been enough to leave something behind.
Maybe it stored a few airtags in its mouth, waiting for a chance to spit it into a wound. What did I know? With my luck, that was probably the case.
Chenghai’s attention dropped to my hand. He stepped closer without touching me, but his body blocked the aisle as though he’d decided I wasn’t walking another step until he understood what was happening.
"It hurts," he pointed out, his brows furrowing in concern.
"It’s annoying," I replied, keeping my palm over the scar. I wasn’t going to admit anything, but I was also not going to be stupid enough to deny the obvious. Or at least, not this time around.
"That wasn’t a denial," he smirked at me.
"I wasn’t trying very hard."
Zhenlan joined us and looked at my face instead of the place hidden beneath my clothes. "Did the pain start before the attack?"
"Not that I can remember," I answered him with a shrug. "Then again, I didn’t really pay attention to my body when I was making sure not to die or anything."
"Did it start before the zombies turned toward you?"
I thought back to the private room. The green core had melted into my palm, unfamiliar roots had reached for its power, and gunfire had shattered my concentration before I could understand what the plants were doing.
"It started around the same time." I think... probably... maybe?
The radio on Chenghai’s belt crackled before either man could respond. Lingyun’s voice came through bright and cheerful, which meant he’d either stolen the radio from Yuche or annoyed someone until they handed it over.
"I have an idea," he announced.
"Nope," I replied immediately.
"You haven’t even heard it," Lingyun whined.
"I know you," I shot back. "I don’t even have to hear it to know that it’s a bad idea. You are just full of them."
Lingyun ignored that. "We take one zombie out of its cage and see whether it tries to eat you."
Chenghai pulled the radio from his belt. "Yeah," he grunted. "No. That’s not happening."
Zhenlan leaned toward it from my other side. "Absolutely not."
Lingyun released a wounded sigh. "No one respects science anymore."
The complaint almost made me smile, but the burning beneath my hand kept it from becoming more than a twitch at the corner of my mouth.
"Bring the cages to the loading corridor," I said.
Chenghai lowered the radio and stared at me, while Zhenlan’s attention sharpened.
"We already know they can track the direction I’m moving," I continued. "I want to find out whether they’re following the plants, the scar, or something else attached to me."
Chenghai’s jaw tightened. "How do you separate those things?"
"I move while the plants stay where they are."
Zhenlan glanced toward the roots beneath the warehouse floor. "You disconnect from everything nearby, and the cages remain beside the plants. Then we take you somewhere nothing is growing."
"There are weeds throughout the district," Chenghai pointed out.
"I know. That’s the problem."
Yuche’s voice replaced Lingyun’s over the radio. "The eastern storage building has a sealed lower level. It’s reinforced with concrete and steel, and there’s no visible plant growth inside or around it."
"Take the cages there."
He didn’t argue. Metal groaned beneath us as he redirected the five steel boxes across the freight yard.
Chenghai offered me his arm again, and this time I accepted it without comment. My ankle still hurt from walking through the market, while the bite scar pulsed hard enough to tighten the muscles from my hip to my ankle.
Zhenlan followed us, using the wind to strip away any scent or sound that might trail behind me as we crossed into the eastern storage building.
I pushed every nearby plant out of my awareness as we descended.
The roots beneath the loading bays disappeared first, followed by the weeds clinging to the outer walls and the grass beyond the fence. Their absence left an uncomfortable silence inside my senses, as though I’d closed a door and discovered someone waiting on the other side.
The lower level smelled of dust, rust, and old machinery. Concrete covered the walls and floor, while exposed steel beams crossed the ceiling. Nothing grew beneath the foundation, and no roots reached toward me through the cracks.
Yuche positioned the cages on the far side of the building, leaving three walls and a long storage corridor between us. Each zombie remained sealed inside its own steel box, unable to see me or the others.
For several seconds, the building was quiet.
Then five bodies struck metal at exactly the same time, and the impact rang through the lower level.
I walked slowly toward the left side of the room. The scraping stopped before another synchronized blow came from the opposite walls of every cage. When I crossed to the right, all five zombies turned with me again.
They couldn’t see me through the sealed boxes and concrete walls. Zhenlan had carried away my scent, I hadn’t spoken since entering the room, and I was no longer connected to the plants. There was nothing left for them to follow, yet they still knew exactly where I stood.
The old bite burned beneath my hand as I stared at the wall separating me from the dead.
The Devourer hadn’t stumbled across the black market by chance.
Apparently, we were playing a master game of hide and go seek... only no one told me that.
And before I could hide, it had already found me.