Chapter 92: Settling Accounts

When Ling Zhe heard that familiar voice, tears immediately began streaming down his face.

A moment later, Ling Lan reached out through the small window in the door, and the siblings clasped hands tightly.

“You’ve got blood on your hand?” Ling Lan said, startled by the slick, sticky dampness in her brother’s palm.

“Just a small injury. Nothing serious. Everyone’s here now, and we’ll get you out right away!” Ling Zhe said.

The door to the isolation room was steel. Bai Ge pressed an ear to the keyhole and studied it for a while before saying, “This lock is complicated. Let me see if I can open it... though the chances of success are probably slim.”

She straightened up, took out her wallet, and drew a magnetic card from inside.

Back in police academy, she had learned a little about the methods burglars used to break into homes. Some people could open a door with nothing more than a bit of wire or a plastic card; the tools were simple, but the technique was brilliant.

She had never tried it herself, but now she had to give it a shot.

Bai Ge was still thinking about how to swipe the card when Yi Chen suddenly said, “No need to go through all that trouble.”

He spread his fingers open. His nails lengthened several times over, and heat seemed to rise from his hand.

“You...” Bai Ge had barely gotten the word out before Yi Chen jabbed hard at the door panel and tore with force. With a shriek, a huge gash was ripped open in the steel!

The most direct and violent method.

Damn. That was insane.

Zhu Youzheng, standing beside Yi Chen, had the clearest view of all.

He suddenly remembered that a little over a month ago, when he had just met Yi Chen, the two of them had hidden in a bank vault while the crawlers outside slammed into the door with thunderous force. Back then, Yi Chen had been about that impressive. And now he had become so much stronger.

After the opening had been widened, it was enough for one person to pass through. Ling Lan carefully climbed out.

“Sis, are you all right?” Ling Zhe asked anxiously.

“I’m fine. I just haven’t been able to get out these past few days, and I was getting suffocated, wasting my life away in here. I never thought you’d come so quickly. I figured I’d have to wait three to five days,” Ling Lan said with feeling.

Her face looked a little haggard, but her spirits were still good. Without her glasses, she seemed a little less intellectual and a little more easygoing.

“Who locked you in here?” Yi Chen asked.

As she tended to her brother’s gunshot wound, Ling Lan replied, “Ouyang Hong. I was following him and uncovered Future Group’s secret, which is why they locked me up here.”

“I knew it was him,” Yi Chen said darkly.

“He dared to do this to my sister? If I catch that bastard, I’ll smash his head in!” Ling Zhe gritted his teeth and etched the name Ouyang Hong into memory.

Ling Lan shot him a glare. “It’s enough if you can guarantee you don’t come out of this missing a limb. Stop talking nonsense. If anyone’s going to deal with him, your sister can do it herself.”

Everyone had assumed Ling Lan was merely telling her brother not to keep chasing the matter, but it turned out she intended to settle the score herself.

While the siblings were talking, Bai Ge noticed that the pattern on Yi Chen’s arm had already faded, though there were still flecks of blood on his nails, probably from tearing the door open just now.

“Your hand... does it hurt?” Bai Ge asked.

“Not really.” Yi Chen’s reply was not a show of bravado, but the truth.

For him, blood under a fingernail was so minor it scarcely counted as an injury. He suspected no one else would ever know what it felt like to have their heart pierced or their skull shattered.

Bai Ge nodded and suggested they leave as soon as possible. The alarm had gone off, and security reinforcements would likely be arriving soon. Ling Lan would explain the specifics of her days trapped here while they walked.

Yi Chen and Liang Bing took the emergency passage, while Bai Ge brought the others in the elevator. Before long, everyone met downstairs.

Bai Ge had already considered the team size after adding Ling Lan and Yi Chen, so she had driven over in a business van this time. Everyone took a seat one by one, and it was not cramped.

Once everything was ready, Bai Ge saw that the main entrance of Future Medical was slowly closing.

Trying to stop us?

Bai Ge calmly pressed the accelerator. The van had plenty of power and charged straight toward the gate.

“We’re going to hit it!” Zhu Youzheng screamed.

Everyone could clearly feel the vehicle skim past the edge of the gate, producing a harsh, grating screech. If they had been able to see the scene outside, they would likely have been stunned by the brilliant shower of sparks that flew off the scrape.

“That was close...”

Everyone wore the look of people who had just narrowly escaped disaster, even Ling Zhe, who normally drove like a man possessed. He had always played the role of the one behind the wheel, in control of everything, and had never experienced such a thrill from the observer’s side.

“Where are we going now?” Bai Ge asked.

“To find Ouyang Hong. I know where he lives,” Ling Lan said, looking as though she intended to settle accounts with him properly.

“Fine. There are a lot of things I want to ask him as well,” Yi Chen said.

Bai Ge had just merged onto the main road when she caught sight of several black sedans gradually approaching in the rearview mirror, moving fast and seeming to be headed for them.

“Are we being followed?” Yi Chen noticed it too.

“This is annoying.” Bai Ge clicked her tongue and jerked the wheel, turning into a side street.

Everyone felt as though the van might take flight. In a panic, they grabbed their seatbelts and fastened them.

Yi Chen swallowed his motion-sickness medicine and still found time to tease Ling Zhe. “Looks like you’ve met your match, huh?”

“Match? This is definitely a teacher! The way she just drifted this car a moment ago—her skills are no joke...” Ling Zhe lavished praise on Bai Ge’s driving.

Whether they could shake the cars behind them depended entirely on Bai Ge; the rest of them were no help at all.

Fortunately, Ling Zhe had once driven every day as though his life depended on it, so everyone adapted to the pace quickly and even had time to chat.

“Yi Chen, earlier at that Future Medical building, there was another isolation area upstairs. The people kept there were all infected subjects and samples of the undead,” Ling Lan said.

“There are other infected people?” Bai Ge had never heard of this before and was a little shocked. The moment she was distracted, the van bounced even more violently.

“Focus on your driving,” Yi Chen said helplessly.

He wasn’t worried about a crash causing him harm, but the others’ bodies would not be able to take it.

Bai Ge had no choice but to suppress her curiosity and stop asking questions.

“So the secret of Future Group you uncovered was this, then?” Yi Chen asked. He had recuperated in that building twice and had stayed there for several days each time, yet somehow never sensed anything unusual.

Perhaps Dr. Ouyang had done something to mask it, and on top of that, his own condition had been poor, so he never noticed the problem.

“Yes. There were probably five or six controlled infected subjects. I’m not very clear on their abilities. Their records are all in Ouyang Hong’s hands,” Ling Lan continued.

The infected were neither undead nor ordinary humans. They were individuals living on the edge. Yi Chen had a rough idea of what kind of man Ouyang Hong was, and anyone in his hands was unlikely to be treated well.

For a fleeting moment, he had the impulse to turn back and rescue those infected people, but he quickly calmed himself.

In the end, they had nothing to do with him; that impulse was only a sense of shared misery.

Today, he had broken into the inner city and helped everyone rescue the trapped Ling Lan. That alone was enough to draw Future Group’s attention. Even so, these were still actions taken against a single person.

If he went further, challenged their bottom line and their secrets, and freed the other infected people, that would amount to an open declaration of war. The consequences would be impossible to imagine.

If he were alone, then right or wrong, he could do whatever he pleased.

But now, he had so many friends around him, and his family was still in the inner city. He could not drag them all into the flames because of his own choices.