Zhou Ze

Biodata

Background / History

Before transmigrating, Zhou Ze was an ordinary corporate employee accustomed to early mornings, late nights, and work calls even on days off. He once intervened when a criminal threatened a woman with a dagger, stabbing the attacker in the chest with newly purchased scissors 1 9.

He crossed into an unfamiliar young man's body and became an experimental subject at the Anomaly Containment Facility. By his first appearance, he had spent almost half a month in this world, living in a windowless room with Old Yang as his strange companion 1.

The body's official file states that its original owner killed a burglar who attempted to sexually assault his younger sister. While in custody, he signed a Special Personnel Service Agreement and became Class-D Personnel through a temporary recruitment protocol. Zhou Ze discovers that he is not the death-row inmate he had assumed himself to be, but conceals his unfamiliarity with the case to avoid exposing his transmigration 2 9. He later suspects that the body's original owner possessed unusual training and had a prior connection to Lu Fei, though neither possibility is confirmed 30.

Appearance

• Ordinary appearance: A delicate-featured young man with slightly upturned eyes and a harmless-looking face, noticeably unlike many of the other Class-D prisoners 1 2.
• Clothing: Usually wears the orange Class-D prison uniform 2.
• Abnormal facial-hair growth: Develops thick stubble during a sleep lasting no more than twenty hours. Old Yang attributes this to Alice's influence; Zhou Ze shaves it off normally 30.
• Transformed appearance: His abdomen becomes covered in screaming faces whose mouths release translucent dark-red tentacles. These envelop his body, while black liquid spills from his mouth and is absorbed by the tentacles 40.

Personality

Zhou Ze is cautious, sarcastic, and highly conscious of surveillance. He memorizes routes, withholds personal information, and plays frightened or ignorant when honesty could expose him. His outward obedience often conceals profanity-laden criticism of the Facility and its personnel 2 7 9 38.

His willingness to kill in self-defense does not mean he approves of cruelty. He explicitly distinguishes necessary killing from enjoying it, challenges the Facility's treatment of Class-D personnel, and responds sympathetically to Alice's confinement 9 16 19. Despite initially focusing on his own survival, he begins taking deliberate risks to influence Alice's understanding of the people controlling her 32.

His relationship with danger is less straightforward than his caution suggests. Combat brings unusually sharp instincts and intense adrenaline, while Old Yang repeatedly questions whether his pounding heart reflects fear or excitement. Zhou Ze later recognizes that Old Yang has consumed some of his cognition and negative emotions, helping explain how he endured confinement while still finding amusement in small things 13 46 48.

Abilities & Skills

Anomalous Luck

Zhou Ze survives experiments and encounters that kill other personnel. Old Yang describes his good fortune as something purchased through misfortune elsewhere, rather than a free benefit 5 7.

• Cost to others: Old Yang agrees with Zhou Ze's interpretation that his good luck requires someone else to suffer bad luck 7.
• Unpaid price: During the giant-snail incident, Old Yang warns that the price of Alice's gift remains unpaid and that Zhou Ze himself may become that price 40.
• Incomplete understanding: Zhou Ze eventually questions why he accepted Old Yang's explanation without examining it 38.
• Partial discovery: By the Site-17 rescue operation, the Facility has discovered only part of his anomalous ability 46.

Instinctive Combat Ability

His body executes precise movements that Zhou Ze does not remember learning. He regards these reactions as possible muscle memory inherited from its original owner 12 30.

• Instinctively dodges a shove, captures an assailant's wrist, and dislocates it in one motion 12.
• Mentally outlines a rapid rifle-disarming sequence, but refrains from acting because he senses no immediate killing intent 23.
• Uses a dagger and longsword against the demonic giant hound, exploiting a distraction to wound its foreleg 46 47.
• Reacts to Shi Yaming's ambush by placing a dagger against his neck almost simultaneously with Shi aiming a gun at him 50.
• Kane assesses his reflexes and combat awareness as comparable to those of Level 1 security personnel; this is an assessment, not a rank Zhou Ze receives 46.
• His reactions do not eliminate physical limitations: the giant hound overpowers his blocks and inflicts a serious shoulder wound 47.

Sealed Divinity and Transformation

Old Yang reports that a seal inside Zhou Ze is weakening and that he can no longer restrain the power behind it indefinitely. During the Site 108 experiment, an attack by the giant snail triggers a monstrous transformation 37 40.

• Tentacles: Bind and stab the giant snail, extending from the faces on his abdomen 40.
• Regeneration: His transformed body repeatedly heals while the snail's corrosive mucus damages his skin 41.
• Consumption: The transformed “Zhou Ze” devours the snail's flesh 41.
• Loss of control: Voices, compulsions, rage, and despair threaten to overwhelm his identity. The form is not shown as a safely controlled technique 40 43.
• Return to consciousness: Old Yang's warnings and Alice's appearance in a sea of blood urge him to resist and struggle back toward the light 43.

The reversal of time at Site 108 accompanies his recovery, but the provided account does not establish it as an ability Zhou Ze can personally command 43.

Corrosive Blood

After recovering from the Site 108 disaster, Zhou Ze discovers that his blood has corrosive properties 47.

• Uses it to blind the giant hound before killing the creature with his longsword 47.
• His blood also corrodes his clothing around the shoulder injury 47.
• He remains vulnerable to blood loss and needs Kane's instructions to control the bleeding 47.

Memory Retention, Observation, and Acting

• Amnestic survival: Retains his memories after receiving Class-A Amnestics, then pretends the previous experiment has been erased 6 7.
• Concealed knowledge: Continues remembering Wang Lei's supernatural nature despite her expectation that he should not remember the office encounter 30.
• Navigation: Memorizes escort routes and later uses a remembered route to reach an elevator during a breach 2 25.
• Improvisation: Maintains an assigned apprentice identity around Alice and adapts when she introduces information absent from his briefing 18 19 20.
• Storytelling: Uses fairy tales and heroic stories to comfort Alice and introduce distinctions between good and evil 21 31 33.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Tactical Belt — Supplied by Kane for the attempt to rescue Alice 45.
• Triangular Military Dagger — Used to wound the giant hound and attack an anomalous security guard 45 47 48.
• Longsword — A sharp, medieval-style weapon with intricate patterns on its blade, taken from Kane's collection 45.
• Blue Keycard — Specially authorized by Kane to open only SCP-239's containment chamber 45.
• Experimental headset — Carries instructions from researchers during his visits to Alice 18 32.
• Implanted nanorobots — According to Old Yang, robots in his bloodstream are synchronized with Dai Yong'an's heart and will destroy Zhou Ze if that heart stops for more than three minutes. They function as a coercive control mechanism, not equipment Zhou Ze commands 37.

Relationships

• Old Yang — Roommate, survival adviser, and mysterious protector. Guides him through lethal experiments and helps restrain the sealed power, but also admits to consuming some of his cognition and negative emotions 4 5 37 46.
• Lu Fei — Protective instructor who arranges special training and offers a possible route out of expendable Class-D service. Zhou Ze suspects a connection between Lu Fei and the body's original owner 14 16 30.
• Alice — Anomalous girl whom he visits as a supposed magic apprentice. Their shared confinement fosters genuine affection; he tells her stories, suggests keeping a diary, and later chooses to protect her 21 31 32 50.
• Dai Yong'an — Researcher directing experiments involving Alice. His coercive handling of Zhou Ze includes the suspicious “digestive tablet” and the nanorobot linkage that ties their survival together 30 33 37.
• Wang Lei — Counselor and Site director. Initially appears to be a trustworthy confidante, but her supernatural scrutiny leaves Zhou Ze wary of her and careful to conceal what he remembers 9 26 27 30.
• Shi Yaming — Security escort and former trainee of Lu Fei. Accompanies Zhou Ze during training, discusses Facility life with him, and meets him again during the Site-17 emergency 14 16 34 50.
• Liu Xin — Fellow Class-D subject who accompanies him to Site 108 and dies after pushing him out of the giant snail's attack. His final request is for Zhou Ze to tell his parents that he loves them and is sorry 37 38 40.
• Dr. Kane — Talking Golden Retriever who recruits him to rescue Alice, supplies weapons and access, and helps him survive the giant-hound encounter 45 47.
• Zhu Qian — Half-cat anomaly whom Zhou Ze enjoys petting; she responds affectionately and curls up on his lap 13 14.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Game Box and the First Breach

• Enters the E-566 Game Box experiment under rules requiring movement in red light, stillness in blue light, and avoidance of green light 2.
• Follows Old Yang's warnings to survive its green- and black-light attacks 4 5.
• Feigns unconsciousness during the ensuing containment breach. The Red Shoes approach but eventually leave him alive; combat personnel report him as the sole survivor 6.
• Receives Class-A Amnestics but wakes with his memories intact, forcing him to conceal their survival 6 7.

Training and a Possible Escape from Class-D Status

• An instinctive confrontation with yard bullies ends with the three men being shot. Lu Fei then removes Zhou Ze from the recreation area 12 13.
• Receives five days of special training in place of ordinary Class-D duties 14.
• Learns that surviving long enough to demonstrate his value could allow him to join the Facility in another capacity. Lu Fei's proposed alternative—barehanded death matches against Class-D prisoners—had been rejected 16.

Alice Experiments and Special Observation

• Visits Alice under a fabricated identity as Clive's apprentice, comforts her with a fairy tale, and promises to return 18 19 21.
• Encounters a breach involving the apparent Designation-682 and escapes the collapsing containment area 23 25.
• Seeks refuge with Wang Lei, only for her to confront his forbidden knowledge. She later offers memory erasure as an alternative to interrogation 26 28.
• Gains special-observation privileges: Level 1 staff cafeteria access and two hours of daily recreation-room access, always under security escort 30.

Influencing Alice

• Infers that Alice's thoughts and perceptions can alter reality 31.
• Expands his fictional persona into a knight and aspiring mage associated with the Night Watchmen. This is a role he invents for Alice, not a confirmed occupation 32.
• Suggests a diary and tells a dragon-slaying story with himself as its hero. Alice prays for his safety, while the chamber's Hume Index sharply rises 32 33.
• Learns that Dai Yong'an has linked their lives through nanorobots before being transferred to another experiment 37.

Site 108 and the Giant Snail

• Watches Liu Xin die after saving him from corrosive mucus 40.
• Transforms under the sealed divinity's influence, subdues the snail, and devours it while the chamber approaches collapse 40 41.
• Struggles against loss of identity in a sea of blood. Meanwhile, time reverses at Site 108, restoring the damaged area and healing those caught in the disaster 43.

Attempt to Rescue Alice

• Kane informs him that Clive intends to execute Alice amid a malfunction that has released intelligent anomalies 45.
• Fights and kills the demonic giant hound, discovering his corrosive blood in the process 47.
• Confronts an anomalous security guard whose body continues moving despite catastrophic injuries 48.
• Chooses to protect Alice rather than search the enormous facility for Clive. Upon reaching level B9, he encounters Shi Yaming and learns that security personnel have become zombie-like monsters 50.

Notable Quotes

“I may technically be an employee here, but I've never felt that I was treated as a 'person.' What difference does it make whether I'm mentally healthy?” 9

“If my life were threatened, I'd kill them without any guilt. But that doesn't mean I'd enjoy it.” 16

“Everything will get better... Alice, but before that, we still have so much to do. So much...” 33