Mysterious Numbers?

Jiang Mian looked inside. It was a temporary morgue, where the bodies of Aberrants brought in from all over the city were stored.

"Start by labeling them. Begin with Code 144051042, then keep adding to that last 42. Once you're done, I'll take you to the processing room."

Old Zhang handed her a stack of labels and pointed to the grooves in the trays beneath the remains.

His tone was flat, as if he were handling a batch of ordinary goods. He picked up a notebook and began recording something.

Jiang Mian took the labels and approached the row of bodies.

Because she was wearing a special insulated suit, she could smell only a faint trace of decay.

She had never seen any other living Aberrants, and she didn't know what the aura they leaked when using their abilities was like.

But these bodies... The moment she caught their scent, her instincts had started screaming warnings. It was just like an ordinary person smelling a corpse.

Jiang Mian's expression shifted. Her brows knitted slightly, and her lips pressed together.

Old Zhang saw her expression and assumed she was scared. But she hadn't screamed or backed away, which already put her ahead of many people.

He'd been here a long time and had seen all kinds of people.

There were burly men who threw up until they could barely stand, cowards who didn't dare even enter the room, and people who forced themselves to stay calm but were too afraid to sleep when they got home...

Compared to them, Jiang Mian had pretty decent nerves.

But...

Old Zhang's gaze lingered for a moment on Jiang Mian's profile, still touched with youthful softness.

The girl looked about the same age as his own good-for-nothing son.

She should have been in school. How had she ended up in a hellhole like this, dealing with cold corpses?

It's probably because her family is poor...

He sighed to himself.

In this world, every Base City was an isolated fortress. Only a few routes connected them, and they were all reserved for the people at the top. Resources and good jobs within the cities were scarce.

For ordinary people, most high-paying jobs came with some degree of danger. Take the cleaners outside the "Wall," for example.

Mist Creatures or Calamities would sometimes attack the city or try to sneak inside. Many were killed from a distance by the Awakened stationed beyond the Wall.

When too many bodies piled up, their auras interfered with the Awakened's senses.

Since communications and equipment such as drones failed within the Mist, someone had to leave the city to deal with them and bring back any remains that still held some value.

By comparison, temporary work in the city had the lowest barrier to entry and was easiest to find, though it paid less.

At least they were an official organization. Offering insurance to temporary workers already counted as a conscience.

"Not bad. You didn't throw up on the spot."

Old Zhang nodded, his tone gentler than it had been when they first met.

Stay here long enough, and even the living turned as cold as corpses.

Jiang Mian pulled out a label, approached a corpse, and reached down to slot it into the groove beneath the tray.

She took a look. It was a young man, and he'd died horribly. His chest had been ripped wide open, leaving nothing inside, and the edges of his skin were still charred black.

Lost control of his ability and burned himself to death...

Jiang Mian identified the cause of death at a glance.

It was one of the most common causes of death among Aberrants. If they were in a good state of mind, they could still maintain some control and slow the process of losing control.

But once their minds gave way and they let the power of Calamity run rampant, their bodies—which were still, for all intents and purposes, human—could hardly withstand it. Unless they managed to survive the Calamity Transformation.

She might have fused with two souls, which gave her a slightly greater capacity to endure than an ordinary person. Even so, after holding on for a month, she was beginning to reach her limit. She could only find a way to get her hands on a Suppressor.

Now that Jiang Mian's body had undergone a partial Calamity Transformation, her ability to endure had greatly increased. But she didn't know whether the mental erosion would keep getting worse...

She needed to prepare for that possibility.

Old Zhang came over just then. When he saw Jiang Mian staring at the empty space in the corpse's chest, he said, "Looks gruesome, doesn't it? You'll get used to it. Around here, you just have to stop thinking of them as people."

Jiang Mian lowered her head. Her thick-gloved hand felt around for a label as she asked in a somewhat "frightened"—or perhaps curious—tone, "Uncle Zhang... Do all Aberrants end up like this? Unable to control themselves, and then..."

Old Zhang glanced at her. She looked quiet and demure, but she had guts. Even after seeing all this, she still had the presence of mind to ask questions.

"More or less, I guess. I've heard they're like the mentally ill. You never know when they'll go berserk and hurt someone."

"We've got it easy here. The ones we see can't move. The Containment Bureau... They have to deal with the living ones."

The Containment Bureau was an agency dedicated to containing Aberrants. It was also responsible for transferring them to containment facilities. Unlike Security Officers, everyone they recruited was Awakened, and they needed some combat experience too.

"Then... what should you do if you run into a living one outside?"

"What else? Run! The farther away, the better!"

Old Zhang curled his lip. "If you ask me, those things shouldn't be allowed to stay in the city. They're bad luck! Who knows when they'll turn completely into the monsters out in the Mist..."

His words reflected the attitude of the vast majority of people, both ordinary citizens and the Awakened.

In the eyes of "normal people," Aberrants no longer counted as one of their own.

Besides, in a sense, they were "Awakened" too. Once they lost control, the destructive power of their abilities could easily crush Awakened of the same rank.

So naturally, people openly shunned these walking disasters.

Jiang Mian stopped asking questions and silently went on labeling the bodies.

Monsters...

That was what everyone thought of them... So as the top of the Sequence, wasn't she a monster among monsters?

Jiang Mian gave herself a bitter, self-mocking smile. She had become an Aberrant... and was destined to be alone.

Never mind. She'd focus on what was in front of her first.

She continued with her work. Once she got the chance to transfer to First District, she'd be able to get close to the remains of Calamities.

Besides those Aberrants who had died after losing control, some had clean, precise fatal wounds. They were clearly the work of the Public Security Bureau's special task force.

This place was like an exhibition hall, displaying the many fates of Aberrants: losing control, transforming, execution...

Some even had organs missing from inside their bodies. Who had taken them, and what they'd been used for, she had no way of knowing.

For Jiang Mian, an Aberrant herself, this place was downright terrifying.

As she passed a corpse, she caught sight of a mark on the inside of his forearm. It seemed to have been inscribed using an ability from the Calamity Sequence:

"w-130-b-07"

It looked like some kind of code...

Jiang Mian had just asked Old Zhang what the notebook in his hands was. He'd said it was a logbook, nothing important, but that he still had to make the entries it called for.

She glanced at it. It simply recorded the code on the label she'd put on, along with the dead person's basic information and the procedures already completed.

The man in front of her had been a hidden Aberrant when he was alive. He hadn't been discovered until he underwent a complete Calamity Transformation and went on a rampage; then the Containment Bureau had shot him dead.

So what was the significance of this string of numbers?