Chapter 114: Doing Her Thing
Seo-yeon formulated a plan on how she would approach the infected.
The moment she stepped away from the glass, she stopped looking at the zombies as monsters and started looking at them as subjects. Her eyes moved with purpose now, not fear. She was measuring distance, restraints, posture, reaction time, even the way their heads moved when they failed to break free.
"Before we cut anything open, I need baseline observation," she said. "If I dissect one too early, I lose behavior data."
Adrian stood beside her, arms crossed.
"What do you need?"
"A controlled sequence," she said. "Simple first. Sound. Light. Movement. Then I compare the response. I want to know what they prioritize and how quickly they switch focus."
Ryan glanced through the glass at the two infected below.
"Meaning you want to poke them without getting close."
"Yes," Seo-yeon said. "That’s exactly what I want."
Adrian looked to one of the personnel in the room.
"Get her what she needs."
Within minutes, the observation chamber became more active. A rolling metal cart was brought in, along with portable lights, speakers, a decibel meter, a thermal camera feed, clipboards, a pulse sensor rig for external reading through contact probes, and a remote pole system designed for safe interaction from behind the containment barrier. Two additional guards entered the lower chamber’s outer service corridor, staying behind locked secondary doors.
Seo-yeon took a clipboard and began writing.
Subject A. Male frame. Severe trauma to bilateral lower limbs. High motor aggression.
Subject B. Slightly lighter build. Similar lower limb trauma. Faster head tracking. More frequent upper body redirection.
Ryan looked over her shoulder.
"You’re naming them already?"
"I’m labeling them," she said. "If I say ’the one on the left’ for the next four hours, we waste time."
Ryan raised both hands slightly.
"Fair enough."
Seo-yeon kept writing.
"No direct chamber entry," she said. "No live personnel in the same space under any condition. Every stimulus is introduced remotely. Every result is logged."
She looked at Adrian.
"I need exact time stamps."
Adrian nodded once.
"You’ll have them."
A technician sat at the console near the glass.
"Ready for synchronized logging, ma’am."
Seo-yeon took a slow breath, then faced the containment chamber again.
"Alright," she said. "We begin with passive observation. No stimulus for two minutes."
Subject A repeatedly pulled against the right-side restraint, then suddenly snapped its head toward the ceiling before returning to the same motion. Subject B dragged its upper body in short, violent bursts, then went still for three seconds before lunging again at nothing.
Seo-yeon narrowed her eyes.
"They’re not wandering," she murmured.
Adrian looked at her.
"You said that before."
"I’m more certain now," she said. "Random movement has waste. This doesn’t."
She tapped the glass lightly with one finger, not enough for the infected to hear.
"They are searching."
Ryan frowned.
"For what?"
"I don’t know yet."
The two minutes ended.
Seo-yeon turned toward the technician.
"Stimulus One. Short burst audio. Human voice range first. Moderate volume."
The speaker in the lower chamber crackled, then played a brief spoken line from the far left corner of the room.
Both infected reacted instantly.
Their heads snapped toward the sound with such speed that Ryan’s brows lifted.
Subject B reacted first, twisting its entire upper body toward the speaker before thrashing in that direction. Subject A followed half a second later, slamming itself across the floor in repeated bursts.
Seo-yeon wrote quickly.
"Strong orientation to human vocal range. Immediate directional response. No visible hesitation. Subject B faster by approximately half a second."
She looked at the technician.
"Repeat. Same volume. Opposite side."
The second burst came from the far right.
Again, both reacted.
But this time, Subject A changed direction faster, jerking violently enough to scrape skin off one shoulder against the floor.
Ryan winced.
"It’s tearing itself apart."
"Yes," Seo-yeon said without looking away. "And it doesn’t care."
She wrote again.
Minimal self-preservation.
Target acquisition overrides structural damage response.
"Next," she said. "Use non-human audio. Mechanical tone."
A harsh electronic tone sounded from the same speaker.
The difference was immediate.
The infected still responded, but not the same way.
Subject B turned first, but slower. Subject A only redirected after two more seconds, and neither displayed the same level of violent forward drive.
Seo-yeon underlined something on her sheet.
"There," she said. "Preference."
Adrian glanced at the notes.
"Human sound draws more aggression."
"Yes," she said. "Not all sound. Specific sound."
Ryan folded his arms.
"So they’re hunting us."
Seo-yeon nodded once.
"That’s what it looks like."
She moved to the next phase.
"Light test. Sharp beam. Direct to peripheral field, not face."
The lower chamber lights dimmed. A focused flashlight beam flicked on near Subject A’s left side.
The infected jerked toward it, but the reaction was weaker than with voice. It tracked the beam, but without the same intensity. Subject B barely responded until the light crossed its direct line of sight.
"Visual stimulus matters," Seo-yeon said, "but less than sound. Or maybe less than specific sound."
She looked at the technician again.
"Now combine both. Voice and light from different directions."
The moment the voice came from the left and the light flashed from the right, both infected chose the voice.
They drove toward sound first.
Seo-yeon gave a small nod, more to herself than anyone else.
"That answers one priority question."
Adrian watched her closely.
"And?"
"They are not guided by simple motion alone," she said. "Their primary trigger appears to favor human-linked cues. Especially vocal cues."
Ryan looked back through the glass.
"Which explains why cities fell so fast."
"Yes," she said. "Crowds. Panic. Screaming. Dense sound environment. They would converge faster than containment lines could adapt."
She fell quiet for a moment.
Then she changed tactics.
"I want proximity response next. Not with a person. Use the heated dummy."
"It’ll take time," Adrian said. "We don’t have that but we can prepare. Give us an hour."
An hour later.
One of the guards wheeled in a torso-sized training dummy fitted with a heat source and blood substitute reservoir. Ryan stared at it for a second.
The dummy was placed behind a reinforced sliding slot on the lower chamber wall. It could extend into the infected area on a mechanical arm without exposing a human operator.
Seo-yeon watched the setup carefully.
"Heat on first. No sound."
The dummy extended into the room.
Subject B noticed it before Subject A.
Its head turned.
Its nostrils flared slightly.
Then it lunged.
Not at the center mass, but high—toward the upper torso and neck area.
Subject A followed a second later, also targeting high.
The force with which they hit the dummy shook the arm mechanism hard enough to rattle the metal housing.
Ryan stared.
"...They go for the kill fast."
Seo-yeon’s expression sharpened.
"No," she said. "They go for access."
She looked at him.
"Neck. Face. Upper chest. These are fast-entry points for blood exposure, airway damage, destabilization."
Ryan’s face tightened.
"That’s worse."
"Yes," she said calmly.
She had the technician retract the dummy, then extend it again with heat off and blood scent on. The result changed. The infected still reacted, but less cleanly. Then they tried heat on without scent. Stronger response than scent alone. Then voice through the dummy speaker with no heat at all.
That one changed everything.
Both infected went berserk.
They threw themselves toward it with a level of intensity even greater than before, snarling, clawing, biting at the torso and neck area. Subject A bit down so hard on the dummy’s shoulder joint that fragments of composite material chipped off.
Seo-yeon wrote continuously now.
Vocal cue remains primary.
Heat secondary.
Possible scent interest but less dominant than expected.
Attack pattern not random biting. Repeated targeting of vulnerable anatomical zones.
She set the clipboard down for a moment and just watched.
One of the infected had dislocated part of its own shoulder during the attack. The arm hung wrong. The socket looked partially torn.
"Well, you are heading something, doctor. I’m going to leave you be now and continue on your experiment. You’ll have your own dedicated team helping you. Important thing is that I need results..."
As he was speaking, one of Adrian’s men entered.
"Sir, there’s something you need to see," he said.
"What is it?"
"Sir we picked up movement when doing an aerial sweep in Metro Manila," he said. "There’s potential survivors in the area."