Mad Dogs
Tu Ran forced herself to stay calm and reached out to take the thumbnail-sized mini camera. She plugged it into the side of her communicator, and the screen showed the video loading. The progress bar hit eleven percent, twelve, thirteen...
Tu Ran looked at Tubin. "If you don't mind, Mr. Tubin, could you take our people to collect the faces of everyone who died last night? I need to compare them with what's in the video."
"Alright." Tubin's gaze withdrew from the communicator on Tu Ran's wrist.
"Li Wu, Liang Feng, you two go with Mr. Tubin," Tu Ran said, looking at the two men. "Be careful—the aberrants might still be lurking around there. Don't let anyone get close, and don't trust anyone." She gave each of them a firm pat on the shoulder.
"Understood." Liang Feng and Li Wu nodded.
"Go on."
Once the three had left, the progress bar on Tu Ran's wrist already showed seventy-eight percent. She turned her attention to the two pioneers Xie Xu had assigned her. Both wore expressionless faces, eyelids half-lowered as if they couldn't be bothered with anyone. They carried an assortment of heavy weaponry, wore full professional combat gear, and were tall with broad shoulders—the exposed halves of their faces beneath their helmets radiated a fierce keep-your-distance aura. She had no real impression of these people, only catching a quick glance at their names before giving orders.
"You two have the most experience, so you'll search the farm for suspicious traces and find any humans that might be possessed by aberrants. The remaining guards will assist you."
The two raised no objections, merely nodded. Each took four guards and headed off in opposite directions.
Only Tu Ran and Ding Naiqing remained where they stood.
Progress: one hundred percent. Zero's mechanical voice rang out. "Video extraction complete. Fourteen human faces have been identified."
Zero enlarged the faces one by one. More or less, Tu Ran found them somewhat familiar. She had passed all of them yesterday, even personally questioned a few, yet she hadn't noticed anything unusual about them.
Zero singled out the footage captured after the surveillance was damaged, and Tu Ran hit play. The image was dark, but the scene was barely discernible. Seven or eight figures emerged from the shadows. Their eyes glowed green, bright as ghost fire in the night. They dropped to their knees one after another, clawing at the mastiff's massive half-devoured carcass—biting, tearing, fighting over it. They were like a pack of ravenous mad dogs, even coming to blows over a single rib. The scene descended into utter chaos.
Among them, Tu Ran noticed Karen Cinth. Because she tried to claim the mastiff's head for herself, one of its kin—a patterned snake as thick as a barrel—coiled around her body. The patterned snake constricted tighter and tighter. Blood began streaming from Karen's seven orifices. Then, her head was squeezed clean off. It tumbled to the ground, her eyes staring straight at the camera. But the aberrant possessing Karen's body was unharmed—it simply had to crawl out of the mutilated shell and find another human host.
Soon, the mastiff's corpse was devoured down to the bone. The aberrant-possessed humans rubbed their round bellies and scattered in every direction. The scene fell silent again. A half hour passed. A foot in high heels appeared at the camera's location.