Hope Town

Chen Changsheng woke up and found it was still early. Looking at the empty train car, he wasn't sure whether he should go back to the supermarket to buy more supplies.

Fortunately, by now he had fully merged with the Original Virus, and he could vaguely sense some of the virus's thoughts.

Clearly, the virus didn't seem hungry at all right now—it was like it had eaten its fill and fallen into a deep sleep.

But what about all those awesome abilities the Original Virus had in the game?

Why couldn't he feel any of them? He jumped hard, but unlike Alex in the game right after waking up, he couldn't clear a four- or five-meter-tall barbed-wire fence with a single light leap.

Fine. Since he had no superpowers, Chen Changsheng decided to head back to school and keep attending class. As for how to escape Hope Town, he'd have to think it over carefully.

This town only had a few hundred people, and it seemed like every move the residents made was under surveillance.

Right after the townspeople had been injected with the virus, the monitoring was probably even tighter. As a high school student, his surveillance level should be lower, giving him more opportunities.

He drove the beat-up pickup truck back home, not even bothering to change clothes, and jogged all the way to Happiness High School on the other side of town.

During the run, Chen Changsheng realized he hadn't remained completely unchanged—he had been enhanced to some degree.

He sprinted straight across the entire town without getting winded at all. In fact, the exercise made him feel even lighter.

The town's high school only had one class. A town of just four or five hundred people shouldn't logically have a high school, but since this was a military operation, here it was.

For the sake of the few residents, the military had hired teachers and built a school.

But this school lumped all the town's elementary and middle school students together, which showed the military had no long-term plans for the project. Everything was done as thoroughly as possible, yet everything felt half-hearted.

The teachers at this school usually had their own jobs too—they were the researchers at the town hospital, responsible for studying and recording the effects of the Original Virus injection on the residents.

Of course, they were just the lowest-ranking members of Black Watch. None of the characters who had appeared in the game had shown up in Chen Changsheng's memory yet—or maybe he just hadn't paid attention before.

He greeted his high school classmates and sat obediently in his seat, watching each student file into the classroom, observing quietly.

It was a strange feeling. This life wasn't originally his, and these people shouldn't have been people he knew, yet they were all clearly etched into his memory. It felt like someone had forcibly stuffed a set of memories into his head—full and vivid...

Just as Chen Changsheng was carefully matching the people in his memories to the ones in reality, a young girl with a golden ponytail and a pretty face walked into the classroom.

It was Elizabeth Green, the Matrix of the Original Virus in Prototype.

Chen Changsheng felt the virus inside him stir. It was because both of them carried large amounts of the Original Virus.

But unlike Chen Changsheng, Elizabeth didn't notice any agitation within herself. To her, it was just another ordinary day.

Sitting not far away, Chen Changsheng's eyes, which had been staring blankly due to his body's restlessness, suddenly changed.

The world in his eyes was no longer ordinary. It became a tapestry of different colors, like a thermal imager—except what Chen Changsheng saw was a viral imaging map.

Looking at each classmate, he was astonished to find other colors mixed into their red bodies. Those dark red-black hues flowed slowly through their bodies like liquid.

Before long, they had circulated through their bloodstreams and returned, and the virus seemed to have grown slightly larger.

Chen Changsheng knew the virus was growing on its own. He also examined his own body.

His insides were even more exaggerated than his classmates', packed full of red-black, even shimmering with a faint, elusive red-black glow—like he had a light show going on.

He turned his gaze to Elizabeth and found that the virus inside her was also much denser than in the other students, though still less than his own.

What set her apart was that in her abdomen, a child glowing with red light was slowly taking shape, visible to the naked eye.

Staring at this unexpected sight, the smug expression Chen Changsheng had worn after gaining his special ability froze on his face.

It seemed he had miscalculated the timing. He looked at the date on the blackboard—it was 1968.

Suddenly, Chen Changsheng deeply regretted not paying closer attention to the game's story. He only knew that in 1968, the Original Virus would break out in Hope Town, but he wasn't sure of the exact date.

The only thing he was certain of was that the sole survivor would be Elizabeth, because of her unique nature as the Matrix.

Even though Chen Changsheng felt he might also be special, he had no desire to become a research specimen!

Gone was his earlier ease and confidence. Chen Changsheng had a realistic grasp of his abilities. Not only did he lack any special powers from the newborn Original Virus, but even the game's common super-regeneration seemed severely weakened.

And even if he took a step back—say the Original Virus inside him could withstand soldiers' bullets—could it survive a nuclear blast?

If the Original Virus did survive the nuke, it probably wouldn't be Chen Changsheng himself who came out of it.

Right now, Chen Changsheng felt he desperately needed one ability: the power to absorb other people's bodies, gain their memories, and mimic their appearance.

He didn't know how Alex had awakened, but in the game, it seemed Alex was born with it. Right after escaping the research center, Alex started absorbing people to regain health and morph his form.

Logically, Chen Changsheng felt he should have this ability too. The difference was that Alex's was passive—his will had been replaced by the virus, so it came naturally.

In contrast, Chen Changsheng's was an active skill that needed to be triggered. The awkward part was that he had no idea how to activate it.

Unable to focus on studying, Chen Changsheng slipped out early and went home. Study? He was about to lose his life—why bother?

He wanted to go back and figure out how to quickly unlock the Original Virus's potential and find a clever way to escape Hope Town.

Right now, Chen Changsheng was weak, but fortunately, the Black Watch troops weren't as elite as in the game. In many ways, they weren't as tight as he had imagined.

Probably due to the era's limitations, there weren't as many high-tech gadgets as in the game. Detecting the virus still relied on reagents.

If the game's virus detectors existed now, Chen Changsheng wouldn't even bother trying to escape. He'd be caught the moment he left town and shot dead.

Chen Changsheng didn't know how to develop his abilities, but he put his imaginative mind to work and eventually came up with a few ideas.

He decided to try absorbing a small animal to see if it worked. Absorbing living things to regain health was a major trump card—if he could master it, his chances of survival would skyrocket.

In the game, Alex could absorb a full-grown adult and turn them into nutrients. Though he'd never seen Alex absorb small animals, he figured it couldn't be much different—after all, humans were animals too.

Since there were no small animals in his own home, Chen Changsheng turned his wicked hand toward the neighbor's little rabbit.

That rabbit had been caught by the neighbor in the woods near town as a gift for his daughter. Chen Changsheng, eager to explore his abilities, had no time to go looking for small animals, so the little rabbit would have to make do.

"It's you, Little White." After muttering an apology, Chen Changsheng picked up the rabbit by its ears and carried it back to his room.

The awkward part was that he had no idea how to absorb it. In the game, you just pressed the right mouse button, but clearly, reality was a bit different from the game.

He squeezed with his left hand, then his right, holding the rabbit up and examining it from every angle—but there was no sign of absorption happening.

Chen Changsheng was at a loss. How had Alex evolved all those bizarre abilities?

Was it thanks to Elizabeth's research? After all, she was The Matrix—there had to be something special about her.

But why was his own version of The Matrix so pathetic, with no abilities at all?

He regretted leaving so early. If he'd stayed at school and secretly gotten close to Elizabeth to grab some of her blood, it would definitely have worked wonders.

He tossed the rabbit aside, flopped onto his bed in frustration, and started thinking about how to escape.

The best method would be to absorb a soldier and blend into the military to flee, but he still needed a basic escape plan.

Better safe than sorry, but trying to outrun a nuclear blast radius on just two legs was really pushing it.

First, he'd buy some gasoline and find a good car. When the zombie outbreak hit, he'd make his escape in the chaos.

As for where to get the car—simple. When there's a zombie crisis, who's going to care about their own vehicle?

He'd go for a pickup truck. He knew how to drive one, was familiar with its performance, and it could handle the terrain well enough.

With that in mind, Chen Changsheng carefully recalled the households in town, trying to remember who had a suitable car.

But in his memory, only Elizabeth's house had a decent vehicle. That was a bit of a pain.

Truth be told, Chen Changsheng didn't want to get too close to Elizabeth. In the future, she'd be too easy a target.

And Elizabeth was The Matrix—what if he got absorbed by her instead? That would be the end.

But he had no other choice. To survive, he'd have to take the risk.

In his plan, he'd first find a way to get a sample of Elizabeth's blood, then somehow get her home and find the keys.

With a sigh, Chen Changsheng began to scheme. He was just an ordinary person—how could he come up with a perfect plan?

The course of the future was never shaped by one person alone. The inertia of history was immense, and even Chen Changsheng, a reincarnator, couldn't change that.

The rolling wheels of fate were closing in. Where would Chen Changsheng, still treating it all like a game, go from here?

Would he defy fate and be reborn, or be blasted into dust by the nuclear explosion?