"I'm sorry… it's all because of me…"
The jeep rumbled slowly through the ruins. The girl sat with her head bowed, hands clenched in her lap, her voice nearly drowned by the engine.
Guilt filled the cabin.
Since leaving the survivor base, it had shadowed her every moment.
Just earlier, they'd suffered their first attack. If not for the weapons gifted by that lady—if not for Kohta's skill with a gun—they might've already been… She didn't dare finish the thought.
How long had it been since leaving the base? It wasn't even dark yet.
The difficulty of surviving the apocalypse was clear.
She bit her lip, bitterness welling, guilt crashing like waves.
It was her fault Kohta had been expelled. And when facing raiders, all she had done was cower behind him, trembling, useless.
"Ah… n-no, that's not it…"
Kohta squirmed at the wheel, cheeks flushed red with panic. He had pulled the trigger without hesitation against bandits. But now, before the tears of the girl he loved, the boy new to romance fumbled like a child holding a pen for the first time.
'Teacher! This problem is too hard!'
He opened his mouth, but no words came. Before the world fell, he had never thought about how to comfort a weeping girl. Now, trying to speak gentle words of solace felt harder than gunning down foes.
"R-right! I—I actually wanted to leave the base anyway. Because I thought… I thought…"
He had found a reason—but stumbled halfway. He had no real reason to want to leave.
Then, suddenly, he saw a figure.
"Th-that's—!"
Sweat beaded on his palms, gripping the wheel. Through the windshield, he saw that familiar golden silhouette beneath a fallen billboard.
The jeep slowed to a halt. Kohta scrambled out, nearly stumbling in haste. The girl followed, wiping hastily at her tears.
"Lady Zeroy, you… why are you here?"
Kohta rushed up, voice trembling.
Zeroy glanced past him at the girl, noting her swollen eyes and reddened nose, but said nothing.
She unclipped four crystal-clear vials from her belt and handed them to Kohta.
"Virus serum. Once injected, you get full immunity. Two each—for you and her."
She always carried some serums as a precaution, and now, on her way out, she had spotted their jeep.
"Eh…?"
Kohta froze, staring blankly at the vials in his hands.
"I'm going."
As swiftly as she arrived, she turned to leave.
"W-wait—"
The wind swallowed his words. Zeroy had already leapt, bounding across rooftops until she vanished.
"Thank you, Lady Zeroy!"
Kohta snapped back, shouting with all his strength at her fading figure. His voice echoed across the ruins, long after she was gone.
…
The mission was more than half complete: the serum found, the virus sample secured.
Now, only two things remained—killing and finding a safe refuge for the group.
An uninhabited island was one option. But better still were the company's secret bases.
The one she had just cleansed proved this catastrophe was no accident. The company had planned it, preparing underground shelters for its staff—with power, supplies, long-term sustainability, and extreme defenses to repel most threats.
Perfect fortresses for the girls to occupy.
And the executives surely had even more luxurious havens. Conditions there would surpass ordinary bases.
Though still under company control. Once she left, if the girls hid there, they'd eventually be discovered, prey for slaughter.
But not unsolvable—so long as she kept killing.
She couldn't wipe out every member in days; even so, she could strike down leaders. Enough targeted beheadings, and the company's machinery would collapse. Too consumed with chaos to care about details.
Then—let the killing begin.
Zeroy hacked their systems again, searching for the addresses of key figures. Once located, she would descend, and another base would drown in blood.
None were innocent.
The innocent were already dead.
This company had outer and inner staff. The outer were ordinary workers—denied shelter entry, left outside to die. They were the innocents.
And they were gone.
At the branch she had found earlier, the open offices above ground were overrun—corpses and zombies everywhere.
But the hidden underground section had been untouched, serene. Those inside—the inner staff—were accomplices, complicit in the apocalypse.
That's why she killed them all. If even one had been innocent, she would not have.
At first, she had doubted. A few deranged executives wanting to end the world made sense. Still, all the staff? An entire global workforce, united in madness?
Impossible.
Her investigation revealed the truth.
These inner staff were "manufactured". Clones—replicas of real humans, with copied genes, memories, and skills, conditioned from the start to serve the company and embrace its creed.
So she could kill them all, certain none were wrongly slain.
Absurd, yes. Such technology hardly belonged to this world. Though perhaps it was Main God's doing, or some shift in this world itself.
And if the company was Umbrella in another guise, then perhaps clone tech wasn't so far-fetched after all.
...
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