The ultraviolet lamps in the medical tent were crackling, and when Mou Xuan stepped over the broken glass on the ground, the vaccine gel stuck to the soles of his boots made an unsettling sticky sound.
Doctor Gu was using hemostatic forceps to pick up the diseased wheat seeds from between the fingernails of seed collector Fan, and his reading glasses were covered with a layer of sweat.
"All the penicillin in the No. 3 cold storage has frozen." Material manager Zhou slapped the inventory list on the operating table. The edges of the paper were still stained with frost from the freezer. "Those bastards in the East District stole our transport truck last night. Now they have to allocate sutures by the centimeter."
Mou Xuan's knuckles made regular crisp sounds on the medical steel cabinet, and the sound made Nurse Qian, who was huddled in the corner, shiver.
The thirty rabies vaccines in the refrigerator were emitting a strange blue-green color. Chen Yao silently transferred the spoiled vaccines into a lead box. The ice crystals on the cuffs of her combat uniform were gleaming in the low temperature.
"Depart before dawn." Mou Xuan tore off the city's medical map from the wall and circled the cancer hospital in the northern suburbs that was devoured by vines with a red pen. "Chen Yao will lead the first team to clean up the periphery, and medical student Sun will be responsible for identifying the drugs."
As the armored vehicle rolled over the frozen moat, the searchlight on its roof startled flocks of mutant crows.
Chen Yao's sniper rifle poked out half an inch from the car window. Three hunched figures flashed through the night vision goggles. Before those refugees with looters' emblems could raise their homemade Molotov cocktails, the bullets had already blown off their kneecaps.
"Abandoned sentry box at twelve o'clock!" Medical student Sun suddenly screamed. Three infected people wrapped in bandages were crawling out of the ventilation duct.
The watch on Mou Xuan's left hand turned three squares counterclockwise. The double image caused by the flow of time allowed him to predict the trajectory of the opponent's bite in advance, and the bayonet accurately severed the infected person's carotid artery.
When the gas mask broke open the rusted door of the hospital's emergency department, the radioactive dust floating in the flashlight beam looked like some kind of deadly firefly.
Chen Yao kicked away the automatic registration machine that was blocking her way and suddenly grabbed Mou Xuan's wrist.
The scorching heat from her palms came through her tactical gloves, and there was a piece of withered wheat husk between her fingers.
"Underground." She spoke hoarsely and knocked the marble floor with the butt of the gun. The dull echo was mixed with metallic vibrations.
Mou Xuan's pupils shrank into dangerous vertical lines, and his time ability made the scene in front of him rapidly rewind - he saw a group of people in white coats pushing a cart full of cardboard boxes disappear at the end of the fire escape half a year ago.
When the secret door of the pharmacy warehouse was torn open by hydraulic pliers, twenty unopened boxes of antibiotics appeared in the dust.
Medical student Sun rushed towards the well-preserved blood analyzer with an action more enthusiastic than seeing his first love.
But Mou Xuan's attention was all on the row of silver refrigerators in the corner. The special refrigerators for organ transplantation arranged inside the glass doors were making steady operating sounds.
"Wait!" Doctor Gu suddenly stopped the team member who was about to carry the plasma, "These drug numbers are wrong, look at the radiation warning label at the end of the production batch--"
A sharp metal scraping sound came from deep in the ventilation duct, and Chen Yao's sniper rifle was loaded instantly.
The wheat-awn-like bulge on her collarbone was faintly visible under the tactical vest, and Mou Xuan had already pulled out the saber covered with pyrite powder.
As a cart loaded with medical supplies rolled over broken glass on the ground, the electronic lock of a refrigerator suddenly issued an error beep.
Pharmacist Zhao suddenly picked up a box of ceftriaxone sodium with tweezers, and his voice was muffled behind the gas mask: "This batch of antibiotics will expire next Wednesday." He kicked away the blood-stained metal box at his feet, revealing rows of precision surgical instruments underneath, "The image converters of the laparoscope are all models from five years ago--" The trembling of his fingers as he ran over the part number changed the tone of the last word.
The gears of Mou Xuan's watch made a slight friction sound, and his ability to go back in time allowed him to see the gradually blurry expiration date code on the potion bottle.
The incandescent light tubes in the cold storage projected crisscrossing time scales in his pupils, and the red marks representing the expiration dates of the drugs were approaching at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"Radiation shortens the half-life of the drug by 80%." Doctor Gu tore off the ice-stained protective suit, revealing the yellowed bandages underneath. "Now even saline solution has become a strategic material." The old doctor suddenly coughed violently, and the blood foam that leaked from between his fingers instantly condensed into ice crystals in the air at minus fifteen degrees Celsius.
Chen Yao silently took off the satellite phone from her tactical belt. The metal shell still had scratches from the mutant crow.
As she turned around, the wheat ear embroidery on the inside of the collar of her combat uniform brushed against the back of Mou Xuan's hand - it was the amulet she had embroidered with blood-stained thread after they fought for three days and nights in the granary last month.
"There is a medical equipment dealer in the south city shelter." Chen Yao turned the satellite phone's encrypted channel knob to 7.6MHz, "The transport team that saved him last month." As she spoke, the wheat-awn-like bulge on her collarbone rose and fell slightly under her tactical vest, like some kind of life form about to break out of the ground.
Mou Xuan's military boots crushed the ice on the ground, and his time ability allowed him to rehearse seventeen material distribution plans within 0.3 seconds.
When the second mutant crow crashed into the armored vehicle's bulletproof glass, he tore off the medical map and drew a blood-red cross at the location of the cancer hospital: "Meet at Outpost No. 2 in two hours."
The returning armored vehicles made a teeth-grinding squeaking sound as they rolled over the icy road.
Medical student Sun huddled in a corner holding the broken blood analyzer. The missing sensor interfaces looked like an open black mouth.
Nurse Qian suddenly jumped up with a scream—the expired painkillers in her backpack were oozing a strange fluorescent liquid.
As the base's searchlights pierced through the snow, supplies manager Zhou was stepping on boxes of glucose infusion bags to count the spoils.
He deliberately hid the intact ECG monitor in the deepest part of the warehouse, but he didn't realize that the cold light reflected by Mou Xuan's watch had already recorded the storage coordinates of each part.
Chen Yao pressed the call button next to the remaining radiator of the armored vehicle, and a familiar rustling sound suddenly came from the static noise of the satellite phone.
It was the same peculiar frequency interference they had heard in the radio silence zone last month, when an entire reconnaissance team had been skinned and turned into dried battle flags.
"This is Nightingale." As she spoke in code into the microphone, her fingers unconsciously stroked the wheat ears embroidery on her collar.
The sudden burst of electricity from the communicator filled the entire car with the smell of burnt rubber, and five hundred meters away on the snowy field, a signal jammer disguised as an ice spike continued to flash red.
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