Chapter 67: The strobe light
Lin Qing coughed violently, the spoonful of food catching painfully in her throat as her lungs rejected the sudden intake of air. Her face flushed a deep, burning crimson, and her fingers tightened around the edge of the steel table so hard her knuckles turned white against the polished metal.
Han Zheng didn’t flinch. His expression remained remarkably patient, almost gentle, but his eyes were incredibly sharp, tracking every micro-expression, every twitch of her jaw, and every tremor of her hands like a hawk monitoring its prey.
He reached across the small dining table, sliding a clean paper napkin toward her with a slow, deliberate grace, before picking up her glass of water and handing it to her with an unbothered, steady hand.
"Careful," he murmured, his deep baritone dripping with a deliberate, casual smoothness that only heightened the immense psychological pressure vibrating in the quiet room. "Don’t choke. We have plenty of time."
Lin Qing grabbed the glass, swallowing a massive gulp of cold water to clear her airway, desperately using the physical action to buy her brain a few precious seconds of frantic damage control. Her mind raced at a million miles per hour, discarding impossible, insane truths one after another.
She couldn’t exactly tell him that she was a transmigrator. She couldn’t tell him that the original, submissive Lin Qing he had married was effectively gone, replaced by a hardened, cynical weapon, a soilder who had survived two lifetimes of slaughter.
She set the glass down with a soft, controlled click, her pulse hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She forced her facial muscles into a neutral, calm mask, leaning slightly forward. She was just about to launch into a carefully constructed, elaborate lie—something about discovering classified, underground military prepper forums months before the virus hit, and secretly training herself in the dark to protect the family—when the universe decided to grant her a miraculous, high-stakes reprieve.
Wooo. Wooo. Wooo.
The cozy, dim amber illumination of the kitchen area was instantly obliterated. A harsh, pulsing crimson light bathed the concrete walls as a silent emergency strobe light, mounted directly above the suite’s doorway, began to spin rapidly.
Simultaneously, the localized security console on the wall emitted a series of sharp, aggressive, and high-pitched electronic beeps that cut through the silence like a knife.
The domestic tension that had been building between them vanished in a fraction of a second.
The husband disappeared. In his place, the ruthless, hyper-vigilant Commander of the Vanguard squad returned. Han Zheng’s eyes snapped away from Lin Qing’s face instantly, his gaze locking onto the flashing console.
Lin Qing felt a massive, invisible wave of relief wash through her chest, her secret safe for the moment, as her own instincts instantly rebooted, replacing her personal panic with cold, calculating focus.
"Perimeter breach," Han Zheng growled, slamming his glass down and rising from the table in one smooth, explosive motion that sent his chair scraping loudly against the floor.
Lin Qing was already on her feet before he even finished the sentence. They rushed out of the small kitchen and into the main living area of the suite, where the master security monitor was flashing with real-time external data lines.
Han Zheng slapped the digital interface, pulling up the night-vision, high-resolution camera feeds overlooking the facility’s main concrete facade and the surrounding high security walls.
"Did they try to scale the perimeter?" Lin Qing asked, her eyes scanning the digital topography of the compound as she leaned over his shoulder, her breath shallow.
"No. They probably aren’t that stupid," Han Zheng muttered, his brow furrowing as he analyzed the scrolling feed.
The security walls enclosing the facility’s lands were massive, but more importantly, the high-voltage electric fences running along the top of the masonry were fully active, humming with lethal currents fed by the facility’s internal auxiliary generator.
The starving raiders couldn’t scale the walls, and they couldn’t blow through the military-grade blast doors.
"Look there," Lin Qing pointed a slender, steady finger at the upper right quadrant of the screen, which displayed the rugged, rocky terrain of the limestone hill directly above the facility’s main concrete entrance.
Through the grainy, green hue of the night-vision lens, several human figures dressed in heavy, tattered winter coats were scrambling like desperate mountain goats across the steep, jagged ridge. They were carrying heavy, bulky objects—thick, discarded rubber tarps, bundles of soaked, rotting branches, and containers of thick, chemical-heavy engine oil.
"They’re targeting the primary air intake vents," Han Zheng realized, his jaw clenching tightly as the reality of the situation hit him.
Because the facility was carved deep into the subterranean rock of the hill, its primary lung—the massive, reinforced steel air intake grates—was exposed on the concrete facade right above the main entrance clearance line to draw in fresh air.
The raiders had realized they couldn’t get in, so they had chosen to choke the facility out. They were actively throwing the thick tarps over the grates, sealing off the airflow, and lighting the oil-soaked wood on fire. Thick, toxic, black chemical smoke began to billow across the camera lens, being actively sucked down into the facility’s external filtration tubes.
Lin Qing’s eyes narrowed as she watched the frantic movements of the figures on the screen. "These aren’t random stragglers. The way they’re organizing, the tools they brought... Han Zheng, these are probably the human raiders the scientists mentioned earlier. The ones who have been hounding this facility."
Han Zheng nodded, his expression turning grim. "The scientists said the raiders had tried to breach the gates multiple times before we arrived and failed every single time. They must have seen our heavy military convoy enter the garage earlier. They probably realised we brought a massive amount of fresh supplies inside."
"Exactly," Lin Qing agreed, her voice dropping into a chillingly calm register. "They saw a massive treasure chest walk right past them and lock the door. They got impatient. Realizing their old methods of trying to force or ram the main blast doors would never work against military-grade iron, they sat out there and came up with a new, desperate way to force us to open the gates."
Han Zheng let out a dark, low chuckle, though his eyes remained entirely cold. "They think they can smoke us out like rats in a hole. They think we’ll panic when the air runs thin and come crawling out right into their crosshairs."
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
The environmental console inside their suite chimed maliciously, confirming her theory. An automated digital warning flashed across the screen in bright neon text: [PRIMARY AIR FILTRATION SYSTEM COMPROMISED. TOXIC PARTICULATES DETECTED. SWITCHING TO SECONDARY INTERNAL AIR RECIRCULATION RESIDUAL TANKS. TIMELIMIT: 45 MINUTES UNTIL CARBON DIOXIDE TOXICITY REACHES CRITICAL LEVELS.]
The raiders were executing a brutal, patient siege. They knew that if they cut off the air and pumped toxic smoke into the bunker, the people inside would have only two choices: stay inside and slowly suffocate to death in the dark, or manually override the unbreachable blast doors and march outside into a prepared, heavy ambush.
"They want to drag us out into the open on their terms," Lin Qing said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, icy register. The peace of her hot shower and the comfort of the secure suite were completely forgotten; the cold, calculating soilder was fully back online.
"They’re starving, freezing, and desperate. They’re willing to kill everyone inside this mountain just to get their hands on our cargo crates. If we sit here and do nothing, the recirculation tanks will run dry, and the scientists downstairs will probably lose their minds and try to open the doors themselves to survive."
Han Zheng didn’t hesitate for a single second. He reached across the console, his hand slamming down onto the master intercom system linked directly to the soldiers’ sleeping quarters.
"Vanguard squad, wake up, gear up, and assemble immediately," Han Zheng commanded, his authoritative baritone echoing through the speakers of the residential wing.
"This is not a drill. The rats outside have scaled the ridge and are actively trying to plug our main intake vents with chemical smoke. We have less than forty-five minutes of clean air left. We are going hot."
Without needing a single word of further instruction or coordination, Lin Qing and Han Zheng moved perfectly in sync, their bodies operating on pure, flawless combat synergy. Lin Qing turned on her heel and marched straight back into the bedroom. She left her half-eaten food behind on the table, entirely ignoring the soft comfort of her clean, oversized lounge sweatpants, and began wrapping her heavy, rigid tactical vest back over her fleece clothing.
She pulled her combat knives from her gear bag, strapping them tightly to her thighs, before loading her sidearms with rapid clicks. She grabbed her primary assault rifle, checking the chamber with a practiced, deafening clack that signaled she was ready for war.
Han Zheng stood right beside her at the edge of the bed, pulling his heavy tactical plates over his broad shoulders, his presence radiating an immense, suffocating pressure that filled the room.
As they loaded their high-capacity magazines side by side in the dim, pulsing red light of the room, the irony of the situation was almost palpable.
Just five minutes ago, Han Zheng had been intensely interrogating her, demanding to know where a simple housewife had suddenly acquired the elite, lethal capabilities of a spec-ops soldier and a medic. And now, the harsh, unforgiving reality of the apocalypse had forced them right back into their roles as unstoppable dual unit.
The heavy, unanswered question about her true identity still hung in the air like a ticking time bomb, unresolved and burning between them, but the immediate survival of their family and the security of their new fortress took absolute priority over personal mysteries.
Lin Qing snapped her rifle’s safety off, her eyes flashing with a predatory, lethal light as she looked up at Han Zheng through the crimson strobe light. The raiders outside thought they had trapped a group of helpless, soft survivors inside a hole, forcing them to suffocate. They had absolutely no idea that by targeting the vents, they had just forced a pair of apex predators to open the cage and step into the night.
"They want us to open the doors," Lin Qing whispered, a dangerous, cold smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Let’s go show them exactly what happens when we do."
Han Zheng grabbed his helmet, his eyes locking onto hers with a silent, profound understanding. "Let’s go hunt."