Compared with Qingyi's team, who had precise intelligence and moved with precision, Nicole and Zhe were practically playing a real-life version of an escape-room game—
except this one was hell difficulty.
The two of them blundered through the maze-like factory district like headless flies and quickly stirred up a hornet's nest.
"This way!" Nicole confidently shoved open a door, completely ignoring the Staff Break Room sign on it.
The instant the door swung open, she froze in place.
Five guards who had been in the middle of a card game all looked up at once, the poker cards on the table still arranged in the perfect formation of a straight flush.
"Uh... your delivery's here?" Nicole raised both empty hands, trying to bluff her way through.
The lead guard slowly set down the ace he was holding and pointed at their full-body infiltration gear.
"These days, delivery people dress that... professionally?"
"Run!"
Zhe grabbed Nicole in one motion and, with the same movement, scooped up Eous from the floor and tucked him under his arm.
"Alert! Intruders in Sector B!"
In the next instant, red warning lights flashed through the corridor and the alarm started blaring.
The two of them took off at full speed, the thunder of pursuing footsteps surging behind them like a flood.
"Left!" Nicole shouted at a fork in the corridor.
"No, that's a dead end!"
Zhe slammed on the brakes—but his foot slipped. He went skidding like a bowling ball straight into a janitor's cart at the end of the hallway, sending mops, buckets, and dirty water clattering everywhere.
"You idiot!" Nicole cursed even as she nimbly leapt over the spreading puddle, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him back into motion. "Now we're even providing floor-cleaning service too!"
They had barely turned the next corner when three more guards charged in from ahead.
In desperation, Zhe shoved open another nearby door—
and found a dish storage room packed full of plates and cups.
"Got it!"
Nicole's eyes lit up.
She grabbed a stack of plates and started hurling them like flying discs. The crash of shattering ceramic mixed with the guards' yells in rapid succession.
"Nice one!"
Zhe had barely finished praising her when Nicole snatched up a huge soup pot and slammed it onto his head.
"Here, use this as a helmet!"
The two of them kept fleeing for their lives, with Zhe running under a clanging soup pot while Eous bounced up and down in his arms.
At one corner, they nearly ran headfirst into a full squad of armed reinforcements.
"Quick! Into the ventilation shaft!" Rin's voice finally came through from Eous's body, heavy with exasperation. "Seriously, are you two playing Temple Run in real life?"
Under Rin's remote guidance, the pair scrambled into the ventilation system.
Zhe's soup pot got wedged in the shaft entrance, and Nicole had to kick him square in the rear to get him unstuck.
"Right turn, then twenty meters straight!" Rin said while checking the surveillance map. "And be careful, there's a laboratory directly below you, and they're doing dangerous chemical experiments in there—"
She did not get to finish.
The oversized soup pot caused Zhe to crush part of the vent grating, and both of them screamed as they dropped into the lab below—
fortunately landing in a pile of cushioned mats.
Outside, the sounds of pursuit rushed past and gradually faded away.
"Just as planned!" Zhe declared smugly as he pulled the soup pot off his head—
only to find the researchers in the lab staring at the two airborne invaders in utter disbelief.
"Uh... hello. We're from Quality Inspection."
Nicole brushed off her clothes and forced herself to sound calm, then suddenly pulled out her Treasure Chest weapon.
"We're here to check the physical condition of the staff, okay?"
The device unfolded instantly, and blazing energy shells swept across the laboratory. The researchers scattered in panic.
Zhe sighed and, with the physical boost provided by the Impact Capsule, burst forward like a leopard, striking down one researcher after another with precision.
At the same time, on the other side of the factory, Qingyi heard the metallic crashes and explosions echoing in the distance and couldn't help pressing a hand to her forehead.
"It seems we aren't the only uninvited guests here tonight."
"But I have to admit," Zhu Yuan said, "they've done an excellent job drawing away most of the guards."
And just as she said, nearly the entire security force had been pulled away by Zhe and Nicole's "spectacular performance."
Taking advantage of the opening, Qingyi's team moved through the facility almost as if it were empty, and before long they located Shi Yueyu behind a concealed door.
"You are...?"
"Mr. Shi Yueyu, we're from the New Eridu Public Security Bureau."
Qingyi flashed her credentials while Zhu Yuan kept watch at the door.
"Your wife filed a report. We're here to get you out. You're safe now."
"Public Security... thank goodness!"
Shi Yueyu rose to his feet in agitation, then suddenly lowered his voice.
"But you have to be careful. They've been conducting illegal human experiments here, and they created a terrifying monster..."
Meanwhile, in the laboratory at the far end of the facility, Nicole and Zhe had already finished taking down all of the researchers.
"Messy as that was," Nicole said, looking at the aftermath with a certain satisfaction, "I guess we somehow managed to help after all?"
Zhe looked around at the wreckage and couldn't help laughing.
"At the very least, our 'quality inspection' was extremely thorough."
"My god... these records..."
Eous's camera was aimed at the lab's central computer screen, where page after page of horrifying experiment logs were displayed.
Rin's voice trembled with shock.
"They used loan sharks, scams, even outright kidnapping... to drag desperate civilians in here..." She skimmed through the records rapidly. "Look at this one—a construction worker sent here because he couldn't pay off gambling debts. And this one—an old man kidnapped because he refused to sell his ancestral home. And these... these homeless drifters..."
Line after cold line of experiment logs made it hard to breathe:
[Subject 334: Ether tolerance test. Severe rejection reaction. Processed.]
[Subject 412: Limb modification experiment. Subject lost control. Destroyed.]
[Subject 503: Neural link test. Brain death. Discarded.]
"These numbers..." Rin's voice caught. "More than two hundred people just last year alone... They treated human beings like lab mice..."
Nicole stared at the screen so hard that her fingernails dug deep into her palms.
For profit, those bastards had already sold their souls to the devil.
At that moment, a cold voice drifted down from above.
"What distinguished guests. Isn't this our family's little traitor? After running away from home all these years, have you finally decided to come back?"
Nicole's whole body stiffened.
She looked up—
and there, standing on the second-floor platform and looking down at them from above, was the head of the Melopede family.
"Don't make me laugh."
Nicole's voice cut through the laboratory like a poisoned blade of ice.
She stepped forward and met the patriarch's gaze directly, her eyes burning with fury suppressed for years.
"And you dare use the word 'family'?" she said with a laugh that was sharp with mockery. "When you used the headmistress's life to threaten me back then, did you ever treat me like family? When you turned me into a tool for a political marriage, did you ever once ask what I wanted?"
The patriarch's face darkened.
"The Melopede family gave you a second life. It turned you from a gutter orphan into a noble young lady. Is this how you repay that kindness?"
"Kindness?"
Nicole let out a laugh like she'd just heard the greatest joke in the world.
"You locked me in a gilded cage, clipped my wings, and turned me into a bargaining chip for your climb into power—and you call that kindness?"
She yanked open her collar, exposing the faint scar beneath her collarbone.
"Remember this? Back when I still hadn't mastered the etiquette you demanded, you branded me with a hot iron and left this mark on me forever. Is that your idea of a family's love?"
A flicker of emotion passed through the patriarch's eyes, but it vanished at once.
"That was necessary discipline. You were meant to become the most perfect product the Melopede family had ever made..."
"I am not your product!"
Nicole's shout rang through the laboratory.
"I am a living person! I have my own will, my own choices! And you—" She pointed straight at him. "You're nothing but a bunch of cowards hiding behind noble titles, too spineless to even face how ugly you really are!"
"Insolence!"
The patriarch finally lost patience.
"If not for this family, you'd still just be a lowly nobody from that rotten orphanage!"
"Then I'd rather be a lowly nobody for the rest of my life!"
Nicole's voice suddenly turned calm—
but the finality in it was enough to chill the blood.
"At least back then, my soul was still free."
Those words landed like a final sentence.
The entire laboratory fell into dead silence.
Even the patriarch was speechless for a moment, able only to glare at Nicole, his eyes churning with the fury of someone whose ugliest truth had just been exposed.
"Very well..."
The words came out through clenched teeth.
"If you insist on becoming an enemy of the family..."
"No."
Nicole cut him off, a liberated smile rising to her lips.
"I'm not becoming the enemy of the family."
"I'm saying goodbye to the person I used to be."
"Stubborn to the end."
The patriarch's gaze turned glacial.
"If that's how it is, then today I'll clean house myself. Release that thing!"
At his command, a twisted figure slowly emerged from the shadows deep within the laboratory.
It was a monster that still retained fragments of human shape, its limbs grotesquely mutated, both hands transformed into enormous blade-like weapons that gleamed with murderous coldness. Just looking at it was enough to make a person shudder.
"That's not one of the ordinary Ethereals you see in Hollows..."
Nicole inhaled sharply.
"That's right," the patriarch said smugly. "An accidental byproduct of our experiments. It doesn't have much in the way of reason, but its combat performance is excellent."
"You're insane. You actually dared to carry out human experimentation?!"
Nicole's voice shook with rage.
"You've trampled on the very bottom line of what it means to be human!"
"Who cares?" the patriarch sneered. "The family is fighting for survival. The lives of those lower-class people mean nothing at all."
"I used to think you people were merely lacking in humanity..."
Nicole's fists clenched tight, fire burning in her eyes.
"But now I understand."
"You're not fit to be called human at all."
"Is that your last word?" the patriarch asked with contempt, waving a hand. "Then go to hell and join the rest of those lowborn vermin."
"Kill them."
With an inhuman roar, the berserk mutant charged forward, giant blades whipping through the air.
Nicole was just about to raise her Treasure Chest to defend herself—
but Zhe moved even faster than she did.
[IMPACT!]
At some point he had already fastened the Driver into place and inserted the Impact Capsule into the belt.
Crimson energy surged around him like fresh blood, swallowing his body in a cloud of red mist as he shot forward faster than the eye could follow.
Boom—!
In only a single exchange, the berserk mutant was sent flying like a kite with its strings cut, slamming hard into the wall.
Before the stunned eyes of everyone present, the blood-red mist dispersed.
Kamen Rider ZZZ stood there in full glory.
He lifted his head, his crimson compound eyes locking onto the patriarch high above, and his icy voice echoed through the laboratory:
"The one who belongs in hell... is you."
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 175)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 119)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter79)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter125)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 60
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 73
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 55
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 66
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 64
The Way the Umamusume Look at 63
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 55
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 45
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 31
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 31
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 31
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