The store was so quiet that only the rain could be heard.
Qin Zheng stood beneath the light, and for the first time, a crack opened in the hard, controlled calm that usually sat across his face.
Not panic.
Something else.
Lin Wu's third question—why was your first concern who touched the case?—had struck exactly where it needed to.
Lin Wu didn't rush him.
She simply left the ledger open on the counter, pen laid across the page, like an unusually patient shop owner waiting for a customer to decide whether he really wanted to pay.
Three seconds.
Five.
At last, Qin Zheng spoke.
"Because if the box is lost, it can still be recovered."
Then he lifted his eyes to her.
"But if someone touched it and is still alive…"
"that's worth more."
At the shelves, Su Yu instinctively tightened her grip on Sui Sui.
Inside the rest pod, Xie Lin's fingers curled tighter and tighter until his knuckles went pale.
Lin Wu's expression didn't move. She only asked, evenly,
"How much more?"
Qin Zheng went silent for a moment, as if weighing exactly how far this answer could be sold.
Then he said it.
"That wasn't an ordinary sample."
"It leaves a mark."
"Not everyone who touches it reacts the same way. Some people burn with fever, lose their minds, mutate, and die quickly. Some show no response at all."
He paused.
"And a very small number…"
"The sample remembers them."
When that sentence landed, the gray mist over the Special Goods Cabinet shifted ever so slightly.
Lin Wu's eyes lifted a fraction.
She caught the key point at once.
"Remembers them how?"
Qin Zheng's voice dropped lower.
"It means later tracking, analysis, stabilization—even unlocking higher permissions—those people may function as living keys."
"The box is a dead object. A person is a variable."
"If a dead object is lost, you can take it back."
"If a variable ends up in someone else's hands…"
He let the rest sit there.
No need to finish it.
This time even Qi Ye straightened slightly.
He didn't know the technical language. Didn't need to.
He understood the important part:
Anyone who had touched that box tonight could go from being a bystander to being a resource.
And in the apocalypse, the moment someone started treating you as a resource—
that was when you were in the most danger.
Lin Wu lowered her eyes and wrote two words into the ledger:
Living Key
Then she drew a quiet circle around them.
Only then did she look back up.
"So the second team didn't come just for the box."
"You came for people too."
Qin Zheng didn't deny it.
"Yes."
"Anyone who touched it, got close to it, or remained near it before and after instability began is to be taken for assessment."
Su Yu's face changed immediately.
She hadn't touched the box.
But if the scene got sealed, who knew whether they'd decide it was better to drag in ten innocent people than miss one valuable one?
He Qing had gone tight too.
At the counter, Pei Wan finally spoke, her tone edged with ice.
"So when you came in and asked who touched it, you weren't managing risk."
"You were marking targets."
Qin Zheng turned to look at her. His voice remained even.
"The Containment Team was never assigned the same role as your recovery unit."
"One team retrieves what was lost."
"The other ensures it can't be lost again."
He paused.
"Including people."
The cold in Pei Wan's eyes deepened, but she said nothing more.
Because she knew he was telling the truth.
It was just the kind of truth no one liked hearing.
Behind the counter, Lin Wu tapped the ledger once.
"Fine."
"That answer is worth half a life."
Qin Zheng looked at her.
"And the other half?"
"The other half…" Lin Wu raised her eyes. "I want to know what happens after the sample 'remembers' someone."
"Do they die?"
"Or do you drag them away and turn them into lab material?"
That question was sharper than the last one.
This one didn't probe around the edges.
It tore the cover straight off.
Several members of the second team outside visibly tensed.
Qin Zheng went quiet again, longer this time.
The overhead light cut down one side of his face, making the line of his nose look even straighter while a faint shadow pressed beneath his eyes.
After a few seconds, he finally spoke, voice lower than before.
"In theory: observation, isolation, evaluation."
"Reality…"
He stopped.
Lin Wu didn't say a word. She waited.
Qin Zheng looked at her, then finally gave the part that was actually worth money.
"If the response is stable, they're classified as high-priority assets."
"If the response destabilizes, they're cleared on-site."
"If the response is… unusual…"
He paused.
"They go deeper."
"Where?" Lin Wu asked.
His eyes cooled.
"That's the next transaction."
Good.
That answer actually improved Lin Wu's mood.
She liked customers who knew where the line was—
but still had no choice except to keep talking.
"Fair." She nodded. "Then I'll log this round as received."
The moment she said it, the system lit silently.
[High-value information transaction completed.][Store Reputation +3][Notice: Risk status for certain customers has been updated.]
Risk status updated.
Lin Wu's eyes shifted.
She opened the in-store customer list with a casual motion.
The next second, new pale labels appeared beside several names:
Su Yu — [Ordinary Survivor]He Qing — [Ordinary Survivor]Qi Ye — [Off-World Customer]Pei Wan — [High-Authority Real-World Customer]Xie Lin — [Sample Contact Subject]Lin Wu — [???]
Lin Wu's gaze paused for the briefest moment on the question marks behind her own name.
Then, without changing expression, she closed the panel.
This wasn't the time to examine herself.
But she had seen it.
And she would remember it.
She had touched the box.
And then she had fed that box into the store core.
If Xie Lin was labeled Sample Contact Subject—
then whatever sat behind her own name probably was not some harmless participation ribbon.
Qin Zheng noticed that tiny pause in her gaze. His eyes darkened.
"You touched it too."
Not a question.
A conclusion.
The store went quiet all over again.
Inside the rest pod, Xie Lin looked up sharply.
Pei Wan's gaze also snapped toward Lin Wu.
Even Qi Ye turned his head to look at her.
Lin Wu, however, didn't let even her breathing change.
She simply turned to a fresh page in the ledger and wrote two new words:
Additional Charge
Then she lifted her eyes to Qin Zheng.
"Mr. Qin."
"The thing you just asked?"
"That's a new question."
Qin Zheng stared at her.
"What do you want?"
"Simple." Lin Wu's voice was clean and precise. "The Second Team's on-site containment threshold chart."
"I want the short verbal version. What gets sealed. What gets detained. What can be cleared immediately."
That landed hard.
Even the second team members outside visibly changed expression.
Because this wasn't ordinary intelligence.
This was the ruler they measured the world with.
Qin Zheng's eyes went cold.
"You ask for a lot."
"Thank you," Lin Wu replied smoothly. "I always do."
At the counter's edge, the mist behind the Special Goods Cabinet drifted lightly again.
As though the expensive item inside was also waiting to see whether the deal would go through.
Rain thickened outside. Far down the street came the occasional low howl of infected that had lost their target, distant and hollow.
Inside the convenience store, the lights remained steady, as if none of the violence beyond its walls had permission to touch it.
Qin Zheng looked at Lin Wu and finally understood what made her frightening.
It wasn't that she wasn't afraid.
It was that every time everyone else thought this was the moment business could no longer be discussed—
she found the one layer that was worth the most.
After several seconds, he spoke.
"I'll give you the short version. Three rules."
"First: if someone is a confirmed sealed-item contact subject, control is the priority. Immediate execution is not."
"Second: if they show obvious destabilization signs—high fever, bleeding, sharply increased aggression, abnormal pupil dilation—on-site clearance is authorized."
"Third—"
He looked directly at Lin Wu.
"If the target displays abnormal stability, they are to be reported upward immediately and may not be handled without authorization."
For the first time, Lin Wu's eyes really moved.
Abnormal stability.
That sounded extremely valuable.
"Definition?" she pressed.
This time Qin Zheng didn't answer.
"That lies beyond the third rule."
Lin Wu looked at him for two seconds.
Then she smiled.
"Fine."
"I'll put the rest on account."
She lowered her head and wrote the three rules down with efficient strokes.
When she reached the third line, her pen paused for an instant.
Abnormal stability. Report upward immediately.
What did that mean?
It meant that if someone tonight had touched the sample, had not gone mad, had not died, and remained stable—
then to the second team, that person was no longer just a risk.
They were a target.
Possibly even a result.
When she finished writing, she tapped the ledger three times, as usual.
Tok.Tok.Tok.
Then she looked up, her tone settling back into that maddening calm that made people want to grit their teeth and keep paying anyway.
"Good."
"Now I'll sell you the answer."
Qin Zheng watched her without blinking.
Lin Wu leaned forward slightly, her voice low, every word precise.
"The person who touched the case is indeed still in my store."
She paused.
"And—"
A faint curve touched her mouth.
"Currently in excellent mental condition. No madness. No attacks. No fever. No bleeding."
Qin Zheng's gaze darkened in an instant.
And in that same instant, Pei Wan fully understood what Lin Wu was doing.
She wasn't selling a person.
She was selling a judgment result.
She had sliced off the most valuable part and sold it to Qin Zheng:
The person is here.The person is stable.The person is not currently destabilizing.
But no name.
No location.
No access.
That was harsher than handing someone over.
Because now he knew the target was right in front of him—
and would have to keep paying anyway.
Sure enough, Qin Zheng spoke the next second.
"I want to see him."
"Of course," Lin Wu replied immediately. "That's the next transaction."
Qin Zheng: "…"
This time Pei Wan really couldn't hold it in. She turned her head, and one shoulder shifted slightly.
She was laughing.
Very faintly.
But she was.
Because she had suddenly realized the most miserable people in the store tonight were no longer her own team.
It was the second team.
They had arrived with authority, orders, and the power to dispose of things.
And the moment they stepped through the door, every one of those things had been sliced into neat little units that could be sold.
Standing under the lights, Qin Zheng looked genuinely unpleasant for the first time.
But he didn't explode.
Because he knew perfectly well—
the stability assessment Lin Wu had just sold him was already important enough.
Important enough that no matter how much it irritated him, he still had to keep buying.
After several seconds, he said slowly,
"Name the price."
At once, a glint lit in Lin Wu's eyes.
There it was.
The real deal.
The big one.
She was just about to speak—
when a soft click came from the direction of the rest pod.
Very light.
Like someone inside had accidentally brushed against one of the restraints.
Every head turned at once.
The air tightened instantly.
Behind the narrow opening of the pod door, one side of Xie Lin's face appeared beneath the pale blue light.
He clearly knew he'd been exposed.
But he didn't hide.
Instead, he slowly lifted his eyes and looked at Qin Zheng.
There was no panic in that look.
Only a hard, cold clarity that came from being cornered so completely there was nothing left to soften.
Qin Zheng's gaze locked onto his face.
And for the first time, he no longer looked like a customer buying answers.
He looked like a hunting dog that had finally seen its target.
The store grew so quiet that breathing itself sounded loud.
Lin Wu slowly straightened, one hand pressing down on the ledger, and her eyes turned cold.
Because she knew—
the next transaction
was not going to come cheap.