The Apocalypse Solution Provider

Chapter 23: The Company’s New Message

Su Jin grabbed his phone, gritting his teeth against a splitting headache.

He had set an alarm before crashing, but a quick glance at the screen told him he’d been out for less than two hours.

He sat on the edge of the mattress for a moment, letting the cold reality of the apocalypse fully wash over him.

Rising to his feet, he crossed the living room to the window, the faint, muffled sounds of cursing still bleeding through the floorboards.

Peering down at the courtyard, Su Jin felt his tense muscles relax a fraction.

It was exactly as he’d calculated; no one had come looking for them yet.

Sealing an entire apartment block inside their own units meant someone was bound to call for help eventually.

But the desperation level wouldn’t spike immediately, giving him a comfortable operational time window.

The building’s demographic skewed heavily toward retirees, and old people rarely ventured out into torrential storms anyway.

As for the working-class tenants, most would just call in sick, and anyone thinking about hiring a locksmith would abandon the idea the second they saw the downpour—to say nothing of calling the fire department.

His forged flyers warning about contaminated rainwater were also doing their job, even if a quick phone call to the property manager would expose the lie.

Human psychology was predictable; people would rather be safe than sorry.

It was like handing someone an anonymous note claiming you’d spat in their coffee; even if they doubted it, no sane person was taking a sip.

Combine that paranoia with the emergency broadcasts echoing across the city, and the text messages he’d sent would easily keep everyone holed up and docile.

Even if he ran the worst-case scenario and the fire department actually showed up with a battering ram… it still wasn’t a dealbreaker.

He had a gun, and he had long since made peace with violently resisting arrest. Stalling for time was child’s play.

Satisfied with his immediate perimeter, Su Jin lifted his binoculars and focused on the distant streets.

A deep frown immediately carved itself into his face.

Aside from a few abandoned cars, the street was entirely empty, save for three pedestrians.

Two wore raincoats, while the third held an umbrella… until the umbrella suddenly slipped from their grasp and clattered to the pavement.

Their gaits were unnervingly stiff, their dragging, lethargic pace completely unnatural for people caught in a downpour.

Zombification… based on their motor functions, the infection had already taken hold.

Su Jin swallowed hard and pivoted the binoculars toward the residential tower across the street.

Most of the apartments hadn’t drawn their curtains, giving him a clear view of the terrified families pacing inside.

The first two units seemed normal, but the third made his blood run cold!

In a fifth-floor living room stood a bare-chested, heavy-set man, his skin a mottled, sickly blue as he swayed stiffly by the glass, his face utterly devoid of life.

Su Jin lowered the binoculars and silently pulled his own curtains shut.

The Zombie outbreak was already active. It had taken mere hours for the pathogen to breach the human immune system.

The municipal water supply was definitely compromised.

Heart pounding, Su Jin hurried to the kitchen, cracking a separate window just enough to scoop a fresh sample of Gray Rain.

He carried it to the bathroom, where he had pre-staged a thick, reinforced wire cage divided into two distinct testing chambers.

One side was a standard holding pen, while the other was rigged with a hamster wheel.

He had built the rig specifically for this moment.

With the Zombie mutation now an active threat, understanding the pathogen’s mechanics wasn’t a luxury—it was a survival imperative.

Using a pair of heavy tongs, he dropped a white mouse into each side of the cage.

Taking a deep breath, Su Jin pulled on thick leather work gloves, drew a measure of Gray Rain into a rubber dropper, and applied an equal dose to both subjects.

While he waited for the virus to incubate, he pulled a toy 4WD car from his duffel bag and began stripping the chassis.

The parallel Earths shared a nearly identical technological timeline; despite some cosmetic differences, the toy cars were fundamentally the same.

He had obsessed over these motors as a kid, so tearing one down was muscle memory.

He ripped off the plastic shell, wired the miniature electric motor to the hamster wheel’s axle, and flipped the switch, instantly creating a motorized treadmill.

It was the perfect metric for testing a mutated subject’s physical endurance.

Thirty minutes ticked by, and both mice remained perfectly normal.

Frowning, Su Jin loaded the dropper and flooded one of the mice with a double dose of Gray Rain.

Ten minutes later, the heavily dosed subject snapped!

Its natural instinct to groom its whiskers vanished, replaced instantly by erratic, hyper-aggressive twitching.

The mouse’s physical appearance hadn’t altered, but it suddenly hurled itself at the wire mesh, desperately trying to reach the human in the room.

Thankfully, it was still just a rodent; its teeth couldn’t snap the heavy-gauge iron wire.

Watching the infected creature hurl itself against the bars in a mindless frenzy, Su Jin nervously stepped back and slowly sidestepped across the room.

Exactly as he feared… the moment he shifted, the mutated mouse tracked his movement, throwing itself at the corresponding side of the cage.

His hand rested heavily on the Silver Gun, ready to draw if the cage failed.

The mutated mouse clearly possessed an insatiable hunger for living flesh, but there was a perfectly good, uninfected mouse sitting right next to it. Why fixate on him?

An idea sparked. He pulled out his phone, set it to record, propped it against the glass enclosure, and slipped out of the bathroom.

Two minutes later, he returned and reviewed the footage.

The second Su Jin walked out of frame, the infected mouse immediately abandoned the reinforced glass and began violently attacking the mesh divider separating it from the other mouse.

Reviewing the clip, Su Jin formed a grim, working hypothesis.

The pathogen drove extreme hyper-aggression toward the living, but it operated on a threat-assessment hierarchy—it prioritized the largest available biomass.

Furthermore, the subject seemed to track its prey visually, though the data was still incomplete.

He had yet to test the effects of auditory and olfactory stimuli…

He was just reaching for his notebook to draft the next phase when his vision violently distorted!

Two massive lines of glowing text abruptly burned themselves across his retinas!

[New sample discovered. Available for extraction.]

[Upon successful extraction, the company will issue equivalent material compensation.]

Su Jin’s pupils blew wide, the crushing paranoia in his chest evaporating in an instant!

The company… the company was still online! The system was still backing him up!

The glowing text faded, returning the bathroom to its grim reality.

“Company! Extraction? How the hell do I extract it? Give me some details! I can’t read your mind! Is anyone on the line?!” Su Jin barked at the ceiling.

Dead silence.

Su Jin grabbed his hair, forcing himself to take slow, shuddering breaths.

He should have known this corporate meatgrinder wouldn’t hand-hold him through a tutorial.

But if the prompt triggered now, there had to be an immediate extraction method… they couldn’t seriously expect him to carry a biohazard around until his main quest was finished.

But how the fuck was he supposed to send it? Mail it? Use the… briefcase?!

A metaphorical lightbulb exploded in his head. Su Jin lunged out of the bathroom, practically tackling the leather briefcase on the sofa, a manic grin splitting his face.

That was it! The bag had an extradimensional inventory space. If he shoved the sample inside, the company might be able to pull it from the server! It was worth a shot!

Licking his dry lips and rubbing his hands together like a mad scientist, he feverishly dug through his tool bag.

He yanked out an extra-long, custom-sharpened flathead screwdriver and brought it down hard into the cage.

After three brutal, squelching thrusts, the mutated mouse was thoroughly skewered to death.

He didn’t waste time marveling at the thing’s unnatural durability. He just kept prodding it with the steel shaft until he was absolutely certain it was a corpse.

Using the tongs, Su Jin carefully extracted the carcass and dropped it into a heavy-duty trash bag.

After triple-bagging the hazard to ensure a hermetic seal, he shoved the Zombie rat deep into the extradimensional maw of his corporate briefcase…