Sizhou Hotel, eighth floor.
Zhang Heng had already shed the somewhat cumbersome firefighter suit and set it aside in a corner. After dealing with the last opponent, he had followed the traces of battle left on each floor all the way here.
The bullet holes in the walls and the shattered room doors showed that a fierce battle had taken place here not long ago. But now the fighting was over, and silence had returned to the corridor.
Had anyone else been in Zhang Heng's position, their heart would likely have sunk by now. It meant that Zero had already taken out the last member of the Special Action Team and gotten his hands on the Memory Encoder first.
Yet Zero had not gone to the twelfth floor to rendezvous with No. 7 and No. 5 afterward. In other words, Zero had most likely decided to abandon his two teammates and leave the hotel at once.
Considering that Zhang Heng was already one step behind Zero, and still had to find a way through the Federal Police blockade downstairs before stopping Zero from boarding the shuttle to the fifth level of space, the difficulty of it all was enough to make anyone despair.
Yet Zhang Heng himself seemed hardly affected. His expression had barely changed, and he showed no sign of lowering his guard. If anything, he had become more cautious than ever, as though Zero were still on this floor.
Even though that seemed impossible.
But the next instant, Zhang Heng's ear twitched. Almost simultaneously, a bullet whizzed out from behind the half-closed door of the conference room.
Like a rattlesnake hidden among the rocks suddenly baring its fangs!
Yet its target seemed to have been waiting for it all along. Zhang Heng evaded a moment early, pressing himself