Third Chapter: Escape

"Bang!"

The dull thud sounded like two bags of cement being dropped from the third floor.

Darnell's charge was powerful. He slammed the leaping monster four or five meters away, then crashed hard onto the open ground in front of Lin An.

Both man and monster had hit the ground hard, but the moment they landed, they rolled over and sprang back up, regaining their feet.

The monster had been under Lin An's fire for a long time. One leg was broken, and one shoulder was shattered. Those injuries slowed it as it got up, allowing Darnell to rise faster.

"I'm the best Ni Ge in New York, I'm Mama's best son, I'm..."

Darnell vented his fear with meaningless shouts and charged again, grappling with the monster in a wild, disorganized brawl.

Lin An could tell Darnell was giving it everything he had. He clearly had no combat training; he was fighting the monster like he would in a street brawl, shouting incoherently and swinging wild haymakers at its wolf head.

Lin An reloaded the short-barreled assault rifle in his hands, but he had no clear shot. All he could do was watch the man and monster trade punches and swipes.

In an exchange between fists and claws, the fists were undeniably at a disadvantage. Fortunately, Lin An had already crippled the monster. Darnell could hit it five or six times before it managed to swipe back once.

[Smack its jaw! Hit the jaw!]

[Kick it in the crotch!]

[Ow, I can feel that just watching]

After watching for a while, Lin An understood what was going on and immediately shouted.

"Pin it down! Stop hitting it, pin it down! Don't let it move!"

Darnell's first reaction to the shout wasn't to obey, but to complain.

"Pin it down? Bro, are you kidding me?"

The monster's claws swept in from the left, cutting him off mid-sentence. He instinctively leaned back, and the tips of its claws passed in front of his chin, stirring up a gust of air that made every hair on his face stand on end.

"This thing has claws, and my whole body hurts. After this fight, I'm gonna need rabies shots..."

"The cops are coming!"

"You should've said so sooner!!!"

That worked. The instant Lin An said it, Darnell threw himself at the monster without hesitation.

At that moment, it was as if the monster wasn't a furry, foul-smelling beast, but a naked blonde bombshell with curves in all the right places.

Even a disabled monster had no answer for a strongman like Darnell. In a flash, the one-meter-eighty-five, muscular "black beast" had tackled it to the ground.

The two black beasts rolled around on the ground. Lin An seized the opportunity and hurried over with his rifle. When Darnell rolled on top and clamped both hands around the monster's neck, Lin An pointed the muzzle at its wolf head and flicked his thumb to burst-fire mode.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The monster's head burst like a watermelon.

Darnell was still choking it at the time. Black liquid and chunks of flesh sprayed all over his face, but he remained motionless, still holding the same position.

"It's dead."

Lin An said it, but Darnell didn't move.

"Darnell, it's dead."

Only then did Darnell topple backward, though his hands were still clamped tightly around the headless monster's neck.

"Bro, help me out. My hands—my hands are really cramping up. I'm not kidding. My fingers are like..."

Lin An had a general idea of this Ni Ge's personality by now: he was a chatterbox and a coward. Tackling the werewolf to help him had probably taken every last bit of his courage, and now it had run out.

Also, when Lin An glanced at Darnell's shoulder and saw the black flesh beneath his torn clothes writhing, he knew something was off about him.

Maybe he was human, but there was probably something else mixed into his blood.

[Are his hands really cramping? Should we help him?]

[Help with what? Look after yourself first. The streamer looks awful.]

[Is it low blood sugar? His face is as white as paper.]

"Bro, anyone got glucose? Toss me a bottle."

Lin An said.

"I don't think I'm doing too well."

[Hang on, I'll go downstairs and buy some right now.]

[Have a little bread first to settle your stomach.]

[Big Belly tipped five French bread rolls.]

Darnell was struggling to pull his hands off the monster's neck. When he heard Lin An, he turned his head and saw a plastic bag and a glass bottle appear out of thin air in Lin An's hands.

Darnell's mouth fell open.

"Oh my God, my eyes are cramping too... No, are you a magician or a wizard?!"

Watching Lin An wolf down the bread rolls and drink from the glass bottle, Darnell felt a little hungry himself.

"Bro, give me one. I'm hungry too."

Lin An ignored Ni Ge. Someone who was really exhausted and starving wouldn't keep talking like this guy.

After wolfing down the bread rolls and a bottle of glucose in no time, Lin An finally recovered a little. Some color returned to his pale face.

He was just about to put the trash into the System Store for storage when a prompt appeared.

[Rewarded items cannot be sold]

Huh!?

That was a thing?

Lin An looked at what he was holding. Should he just leave it here?

No, he couldn't. The trash contained Lin An's biological information. Judging by those armed men and monsters, whoever was behind this could extract biological information from garbage. And once they had his information, Lin An had no idea what they might do with it.

Whatever it was, it definitely wouldn't be good.

With that thought, Lin An stuffed the trash inside his clothes, intending to take it with him.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait!"

Darnell circled Lin An like a gorilla begging for a banana.

"You just... ate bread, and now... you... you can't leave! Hey, are you listening to me?"

Lin An had things to do and ignored the anxious monkey.

He scoured the ground, collecting as many of the discarded weapons as he could: the AR-15 and pistol Darnell had dropped, along with the magazine Lin An had thrown away.

He left the shell casings. He'd fired too many shots; finding them all would be too much trouble.

As Darnell watched Lin An work, he slowly realized he wasn't going to get a response. He stopped and went off to check himself over.

After gathering everything, Lin An followed the Bullet Screen's directions and set off. Darnell, walking beside him, quickly caught up.

[Go left, go left. Don't take that corridor; someone's hiding there.]

[There's a corner ahead. Turn there.]

[Stop.]

Lin An stopped. Darnell nearly walked into his back.

"You..."

"Shh."

Darnell shut his mouth. At the same time, his body sank a little, knees bent and shoulders drawn in. He seemed to shrink from one meter eighty-five to around one meter seventy.

His natural Black instinct for danger told him something was wrong.

Lin An glanced sideways at the corridor entrance on his left.

A flashlight beam swept across it, tracing a wavering circle of light on the wall before disappearing. Then several footsteps came from the same direction.

[They're cops. Judging by their uniforms, they're New York police.]

[Now we know where the streamer is.]

[Go, quick! Right. There's a room ahead.]

Lin An slipped out of the shadows along the wall like a fish swimming out of a crack in the rocks.

He bent over and took long strides, but each step landed lightly: first his toes, then the ball of his foot, then his heel... a stealth technique he'd written about countless times in novels but had never actually tried.

Darnell followed behind.

His movements surprised Lin An too. The Black man in his thirties moved through the darkness with a strange fluidity.

His strides were longer than Lin An's, but no louder. He turned his shoulders sideways in the narrow corridor, almost brushing the wall as he went. His whole body looked like an elongated shadow, gliding silently along the wall.

It seemed that before Lin An woke up, this Black man had been using the same technique to evade the armed men inside the abandoned factory.

They crossed a corridor, passed a pile of scrap, and went through a room with its door removed.

They repeated this process more than a dozen times. Then Darnell was surprised to find himself and the bro whose name he still didn't know standing beneath the abandoned factory's perimeter wall, right beside a gap they could slip through.

Lin An froze in front of the opening for a few seconds.

[It's safe. Nothing suspicious.]

[Wait, there's a vehicle parked over by the road.]

[A refrigerated semi-trailer. The engine's running, and the headlights are on.]

[Don't go that way. Go around it.]

Lin An frowned.

"There's a vehicle outside. A refrigerated semi, and it's still running."

Darnell's expression changed.

"Middle of the night, outside an abandoned factory, and there's a refrigerated truck left running."

He counted it off on his fingers, keeping his voice low.

"That's not right. That's really not right, you know what I mean?"

"Go around it."

"How?"

Lin An checked the Bullet Screen.

[Go right. Follow the railroad tracks, cut through the weeds, and circle around behind the factory.]

[There's a small road leading to a residential neighborhood.]

Once he had the route, Lin An slipped through the gap, quick as a cat emerging from a hole.

His sneaker crunched on the gravel beside the railroad tracks. He immediately stopped, blending into the shadows beyond the moonlight.

Darnell came out after him, moving even faster than Lin An. He slid out like a snake shedding its skin, far too smoothly for someone who was one meter eighty-five and weighed two hundred pounds.

He stopped beside Lin An. The two of them pressed their backs against the factory's outer wall, facing the railroad tracks.

The refrigerated semi-trailer was parked on the road about a hundred meters away.

Lin An could make out its shape... The white trailer gleamed coldly in the moonlight, and the cab's headlights were on.

The trailer doors were closed, and there was nothing unusual about it from the outside. It looked like an ordinary refrigerated semi-trailer parked by the roadside.

But something was clearly wrong.

[Stop staring and move!]

[There's something inside the truck.]

Lin An tugged Darnell along, and Darnell followed him to the right along the factory wall. They moved stealthily, staying in the shadows as much as possible.

They walked for about five minutes.

The refrigerated truck's lights grew farther and farther away, finally disappearing behind the corner of the factory.

The Bullet Screen began to quiet down. The messages changed from "Run!" to "It's safe now," and from "Be careful" to "There's a fork up ahead."

Darnell stopped beside a dead tree.

"Are we... safe?"

"For now."

Darnell turned to look at Lin An. His face was covered in sweat. Even with the blood hiding some of it, Darnell could tell Lin An wasn't doing well.

"Bro."

He hesitated.

"Can we take a break?"

"No. Keep moving."

Lin An looked around.

Behind the dead tree was an asphalt road, lined on both sides with rows of townhouses. Lights were on in some of the houses, meaning their owners were still awake... They needed to be careful.

A dog barked in the distance. A car drove past an intersection far away, its headlights sweeping in an arc across a building before disappearing.

This was a residential neighborhood.

An ordinary residential neighborhood, but Lin An had no idea where it was.

He turned and faced Darnell.

"Where are we?"

He asked.

Darnell was taken aback.

"Brooklyn District?"

"New York?"

"Yeah."

He straightened up, put his hands on his hips, and lifted his chin, once again adopting the air of "the coolest young man in New York."

"Brooklyn, New York, the United States of America, Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way..."

"Enough. Where do you live?"

Darnell paused. He hesitated, studied Lin An's face for a moment, then decided to trust him.

"Queens. My home's in Queens."

He glanced at Lin An, then at the row of lit-up houses in the distance, and finally down at his own tattered clothes, stained with blood and monster fluid.

"It'll probably take..."

He thought it over.

"Two or three hours to walk? If we took the subway... the subway's probably stopped by now. We should get a cab... but I don't have any money on me."

He looked at Lin An.

"I have money, but we can't take a cab. The driver would sell us out."

"Then what do we do, walk back?"

The two of them looked at each other in the moonlight for about three seconds. Then Darnell turned around and started walking down the asphalt road, deliberately slowing his pace.

"Come on."

He said it without looking back.

"We'll talk once we get to my place. And that... that thing you do, when you make food next time, make some for me too. I want to eat some."

"There isn't any more."

"Really? What about the bread?"

"I ate it."

"You..."

Darnell glanced back at him, his expression somewhere between hurt and angry.

"You ate all five loaves by yourself? You didn't leave me even one?"

"The loaves were small, and you weren't hungry."

"How was I not hungry!? I just fought a monster. I had my hands around its throat, its blood sprayed all over my face, my fingers cramped up, and I..."

"You talk too much. You're not hungry."

Darnell shut his mouth, turned back around, and kept walking.

After about twenty steps, he spoke again.

"Bro."

"Yeah."

"Next time, if there is a next time, could you save me a loaf?"

"Depends."

"Depends on what?"

"On whether you're really hungry."

"I just..."

"You were screaming."

"I wasn't screaming. That was... that was a battle cry. Have you seen Braveheart? Wallace shouted when he charged..."

"He shouted, 'Freedom.'"

"I was shouting 'Freedom' too!"

"You shouted, 'I'm the best Ni Ge in New York.'"

"...That's a kind of freedom too."

Lin An smiled.

The two of them walked along the asphalt road for about ten minutes. There was no one around. New York wasn't safe late at night, and even if there had been anyone about, they would have hidden at the sight of a tall Black man walking down the road.

The others were the same. They knew better than Ni Ge just how dangerous a tall, muscular Ni Ge could be... especially when he was wearing tattered clothes. That made it even worse.

Several dust-covered cars were parked along the curb. Their tires were flat, or missing altogether.

Darnell slowed his pace again. He wasn't just looking out for Lin An's stamina; he'd also noticed something.

The shutter of a convenience store on the corner was halfway down. Someone had sprayed an X on it, and red paint was still running down the surface like a dried streak of blood.

[Whoa, they've got looting here too]

[Streamer, streamer, stop for a second and look at the newspaper on the ground]

Lin An stopped and picked up the crumpled newspaper, following the Bullet Screen's instructions.

[Holy shit, Obama just took office. Your timeline is March 2009]

[Ping Sheng Bu Yin Jiu tipped a Phoenix Brand bicycle]

[Streamer, let Ni Ge give you a ride. Keep walking and I'm afraid you'll die on the road. You look way too pale]

[Exactly, hurry up and let Aodebiao ride the bike]