4 Contaminated areas
◎The last train of Line 1 disappeared◎
Area 103 Cleaning Center, Technical Support Department.
The technician was eating potato chips while the screen showed the interior of Sewer A7 in Area 103.
There had been an outbreak of aquatic pollution here, and the witcher had left an hour ago. It was just an E-level mission, and it was completed within 20 minutes after the witcher left.
Now it's the cleaners who are at work. Cleaners, to put it bluntly, are just a cleaning team. How dangerous can that be?
All technicians know that they need to be extremely focused when the demon hunters are working, and when the cleaning team is working is the best time to slack off.
The technician was eating potato chips while typing and chatting with his girlfriend with one hand, looking up at the screen from time to time.
Suddenly, he stopped eating potato chips and stared at the screen in disbelief. The pollution value on the screen suddenly increased, forming a small peak.
Is the data going crazy?
No, the data is still rising, the pollution concentration is 30%, 40%, 50%...70%!
Level D contaminated area. Six large blood-red characters appeared on the screen, flashing continuously.
D-class? Isn't it E-class?
Was this contaminated area rated incorrectly from the start? The technician threw away the potato chips and quickly tapped away at the keyboard. The calculated result was the same.
It is still a Class D pollution area.
"It's over," the technician leaped to his feet. "It's over." He quickly switched to the sewer footage. Each cleaner's helmet had a camera, allowing headquarters to monitor the situation.
The picture shook as the flashlight illuminated the depths of the sewer, revealing a fish-man contaminant, literally a contaminant.
The technician quickly contacted the cleanup team and just as they opened the public channel, they heard a bang.
Someone fired a shot.
…
Sewer A7, Area 103.
"Report, there is live contaminant, requesting release—Fuck!"
Li Nianchuan had no time to speak; it was too fast. The fishman was incredibly fast, and in the blink of an eye, he was right in front of him.
"Authorization has been granted, you are allowed to shoot!" Xu Meng's anxious voice came from the helmet.
Click, weapon authority is opened.
With a bang!
As soon as the permission was granted, Zhu Ning pulled the trigger without hesitation, leaving the bewildered Li Nianchuan stunned. The bullet ricocheted with incredible speed, striking the fishman in the face with pinpoint accuracy. The immense force of the impact caused his face to tilt backward 180 degrees.
still.
The fishman, who was running at high speed, stopped for two seconds. Zhu Ning didn't dare to relax. Is he dead?
“Hahahahahahahahahaha——” A low laugh came from the fishman.
He slowly raised his head. The center of his fish eye was pierced and his face was torn into pieces by blood.
Still alive.
Headshot but still alive, Zhu Ning immediately made a mental assessment. Unlike zombies, zombies' weak point is their heads; once shot through, they lose their ability to move.
The fact that the murloc can still move after being shot in the head is in line with the characteristics of fish to some extent.
Li Nianchuan finally reacted. He pulled out the gun from his waist. He had been a cleaner for a year and a half, and it was the first time he saw living pollutants. His heart was beating fast, and he couldn't even hold the gun properly.
Li Nianchuan also raised his gun and fired.
Bang bang bang!
Li Nianchuan attacked fiercely, his aim missing, but his suppressive firepower successfully slowed the fishman down. Zhu Ning had smashed his head, and his left leg was broken, leaving him dragging on the ground.
With such tenacious vitality, I will crawl towards them even if I have to.
"Do you know... where the last bus... number 1... is?" The fishman, with a fish head full of holes, was lying on the ground with all four limbs, crawling towards this side like Sadako.
The fish-man tilted his neck, his scales curling up, and said, "I can't catch it. Number 1... the last, last, last, last bus..."
Li Nianchuan's sanity value dropped rapidly.
Bang!
Zhu Ning fired another shot. The fishman bounced on the spot, then twitched all over, as if stuck in a frame. "Last, last, last, last bus..."
Zhu Ning asked, "Is he dead?"
Li Nianchuan was in a state of shock and said in a daze, "I don't know."
When the cleaners entered the scene, the pollutants were generally dead, and it was the first time he had seen living pollutants.
He was just taking a break from work to catch his breath. No wonder he was in a bad mood today. The more he relaxed, the more nervous he became. It turned out that there were living pollutants here.
Zhu Ning observed for a while, seeing the fish-man only twitching, and asked a key question: "How long after death does it begin to release spores?"
Li Nianchuan's mind buzzed as he finally realized, "Immediately. Spores will precipitate immediately after there are no vital signs. That means he's not dead yet!"
Li Nianchuan raised the gun he had just put down again and pointed the muzzle directly at the fishman's corpse. There was no reaction from the contaminant so far.
Not a single spore. The murloc was dead, but not completely.
Zhu Ning is a pure newcomer. Today is only her first day at work. She was happily picking cotton for half an hour when she encountered such a bad thing.
Zhu Ning wanted to be a salted fish, not to meet a real salted fish.
Zhu Ning humbly asked his senior, "What should I do in this situation?"
Li Nianchuan: "Wait for rescue."
Zhu Ning: “…”
Li Nianchuan was equally depressed. "First, the probability of our situation being like this is too low. I've been in this business for a year and a half, and I've never heard of a demon hunter sweeping the scene and still having a fish slip through their net. Second, we're not as skilled as a demon hunter, and if we act rashly, we might die early. All the rules tell us to wait here."
"Has a distress signal been sent?" Zhu Ning asked. Even while waiting for rescue, they had to let people know where they were.
Li Nianchuan: "I sent the signal when the fishman first appeared."
But he didn't respond. He thought that as a senior, he should comfort Zhu Ning. "The distress signal has been sent. We just need to wait patiently."
Li Nianchuan sighed again, "It's all my fault. If I hadn't come out to get some fresh air, I wouldn't have dragged you into this."
Zhu Ning glanced at him and said, "Don't talk nonsense."
Talking meaningless words is a waste of time.
Zhu Ning asked, "Did you notice anything wrong?"
Li Nianchuan had long discovered that Zhu Ning seemed to be more sensitive than him. She reacted to the presence of pollutants a full minute earlier than Li Nianchuan, and could be called a human radar.
Zhu Ning's words nearly pissed Li Nianchuan off, thinking there was some new contaminant. He gripped his gun tightly and asked, "What's wrong?"
Zhu Ning: "Xu Meng hasn't contacted us yet."
When the fishman first appeared, Zhu Ning only heard the captain's voice to cancel the weapon authority, and then Xu Meng's voice disappeared.
Their channel was public, and as the team leader, Xu Meng could clearly hear what was happening on Zhu Ning's side. When Zhu Ning and Li Nianchuan suspected each other of being contaminated, Xu Meng remained silent, perhaps because he was considering it, but he hadn't said anything until now.
Zhu Ning asked, "Killed?"
Li Nianchuan's face was hidden under his helmet, his face pale. "Worse."
Zhu Ning frowned.
Li Nianchuan: "This proves that the contaminated area has been expanded. We are in the core contaminated area. Outsiders cannot enter for the time being. The channel is disconnected due to mental pollution, and Xu Meng cannot contact us."
"As two noobs sweeping garbage, we don't have any equipment. The channel is disconnected, so we can't receive any information from the outside world."
Li Nianchuan spoke quickly, took a deep breath, looked at Zhu Ning and said the last words: "Zhu Ning, we are finished."
…
"Zhu Ning? Li Nianchuan? Please reply if you hear me!" Xu Meng was calling them, but there was no response.
Xu Meng was still containing the contaminant when the gunshots suddenly rang out. She thought one of them was mentally contaminated, and when Zhu Ning first drew his gun, Xu Meng didn't take it seriously.
Xu Meng still has contaminated spores that have not been contained. If the contaminated spores spread to the entire 103 districts of the city, it is estimated that the entire area will be infected.
Xu Meng knew her priorities. No matter what happened, her first priority was always to contain the contaminated spores. As she did so, she listened closely to their movements.
If this was truly a routine cleanup of a Class E contaminated area, then everything should be under her control. But things were getting increasingly chaotic over there, and a crackling sound of electricity could be heard over the channel.
At that time, Xu Meng immediately felt that something was wrong. Her intuition told her that this did not seem to be a simple E-level task.
When Li Nianchuan mentioned the presence of contaminants, she knew things were bad. Zhu Ning might be new, but Li Nianchuan was a veteran. Unfortunately, it was too late; she soon received news from the technical department.
A once-in-a-decade misfortune happened: the pollution area rating was wrong. It turned out that this place was not an E-level pollution area, but a D-level pollution area.
The D-level mission was not difficult for the witcher, but it involved two logistical people who were just cleaning up the garbage. The witcher thought he had finished his work and had left long ago.
But they don't know that if the contaminated area is likened to a devil's lair, the demon hunters are at best helping the devil clean up the garbage at the door, and the real lair is inside.
It would take at least half an hour to wait for the witcher to return. One more second in the contaminated area could easily lead to premature death, not to mention that Zhu Ning was still a newcomer.
Xu Meng tried to contact Zhu Ning and Li Nianchuan, but no matter how she asked, she received no response. She immediately guessed that the D-level contamination zone had opened, and the mental pollution had severed the communication channel.
Xu Meng lost contact with them.
…
Zhu Ning took a deep breath. How could anyone be so unlucky as her? Is this scientific?
When Fang Ying signed the contract with her, she said that generally there would be no contact with pollutants, there would be no danger, and it was a low-probability event.
During employee training, the instructional video did not teach how to kill pollutants, but only taught how to "pick cotton" because it is a low-probability event.
When Li Nianchuan gave her the gun, he said that there was generally no need to shoot because it was still a low-probability event.
Now that three low-probability events have collided with each other, Zhu Ning not only encountered living pollutants, but he didn't even know how to kill them.
She fought zombies in her previous life, why did she have to kill fish in this life?
The good news is that Zhu Ning has a gun, and a single refill of air cartridges can fire thousands of rounds, so he doesn't have to worry about running out of bullets. The bad news is that a gun can't directly kill pollutants.
Zhu Ning tried to save himself and asked, "How do we kill the pollutants?"
In the zombie world, the universal rule is to shoot someone in the head. In the wasteland world, there must also be a universal rule for killing pollutants, otherwise humans would not have been able to survive for so long.
Li Nianchuan stood there with a look of despair: "I don't know."
The fishman's corpse is still lying there, and I don't know what it will mutate into next.
Zhu Ning said to the bewildered Li Nianchuan, "Find a way."
She had no idea how to deal with the pollutants, but Li Nianchuan did. Li Nianchuan couldn't tell who was the newcomer for a moment, but Zhu Ning's aura was too strong.
Zhu Ning: "Don't you want to be a demon hunter? You must have learned it."
Li Nianchuan felt a little embarrassed for a moment. He generally didn't want to admit his past. He had once wanted to sign up to be a demon hunter, but no one wanted him, so he was reduced to sweeping garbage. How did Zhu Ning know?
Li Nianchuan's nose was bleeding, his mind still a little hazy from the constant mental pollution. He calmly pondered what he had memorized in preparation for the exam. After half a minute, Li Nianchuan said, half-heartedly, "To eliminate pollutants, we must find the source."
Zhu Ning asked, "Source of pollution?"
"Yes," Li Nianchuan said, "When a polluted area is formed, there will be a core pollution source. The pollution source is usually hidden very deep, and they will try every possible way to hide it and confuse you."
Zhu Ning: "Ghost catching game?"
"Uh..." Li Nianchuan: "You are right to understand it this way."
The fishman before him was clearly a corpse, but no spores were released, proving it wasn't the source of the contamination. Zhu Ning had to find the source to survive.
Zhu Ning asked: "How are pollutants formed?"
It would be easier to take action if we knew the cause. The fishman just now actually looked very human, and he seemed to have some kind of "grudge." Li Nianchuan was about to speak when he was interrupted by a loud noise.
Rumble——
Suddenly, there was a roar in the distance. This time the sound was so loud that Li Nianchuan could hear it without Zhu Ning reminding him.
The two headlights turned on without warning, and Zhu Ning's pupils suddenly contracted. An old subway car slowly drove out of the darkness.
This is the sewer. It is wide, but no subway car will come here.
Zhu Ning felt a gray substance floating in front of his eyes, and his vision became blurred for a moment.
She blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, she was no longer in the filthy sewer. A flickering light appeared above her head. Zhu Ning lowered her head. She was standing on a tile floor covered with a thick layer of dust.
Platform, this is the underground rail platform, the sewer is gone.
Zhu Ning assured himself that he hadn't moved at all, and the fishman's body hadn't changed. He continued to speak in a stuttering voice, "Number one one one one... line line line..."
But the environment has changed, from a sewer to an old subway station, which is the polluted area that Li Nianchuan mentioned.
The rusty, yellowed front of the train reads… Line 1? It's the last train on Line 1, and the time is displayed on the front: 23:35.
The last train the fishmen are waiting for?
boom--
The track slowly stopped in front of them, and the iron gate opened to both sides, like a silent invitation.
bite--
The moment the underground track stopped, Zhu Ning heard a crisp sound in his mind: [System prompt: You have activated the side quest. The last train of Line 1 has disappeared. The current purification progress is 10%. Please keep up the good work.]
Zhu Ning: “…”
What had she accidentally triggered?
The author has something to say:
Article 3 of the Employee Handbook: If you encounter living contaminants, please remain still and wait for rescue.
Thank you to the little angels who voted for me or provided me with nutrient solution between 2022-07-21 09:22:57 and 2022-07-22 10:24:42~
Thanks to the little angel who threw the rocket launcher: 1 popping candy;
Thank you very much for your support. I will continue to work hard!
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