Black-footed cat

Everything went smoothly after that. Luo Ruzhuo finished her training and, with an ID card in hand, arrived at her dormitory.

"Beep. Honored Guide, welcome home."

She swiped her ID card, and the door slid silently open. Warm yellow light spilled out like water, and as Luo Ruzhuo moved through the room, the temperature automatically adjusted to the range most comfortable for her.

A robot approached, its display showing the expression ᡴ⁽˶ᵔᴗᵔ˶⁾ꪫ. A warm, damp towel, snacks, and tea were ready on its mechanical arms to help the room's owner recover from the fatigue of being out. "Hello, Master! I'll be your personal butler from now on~ Please give me a name!"

Luo Ruzhuo stared at the snack for a while, forced herself to look away, and said casually, "Let's call you Big Yellow."

Big Yellow was a stray dog she had fed before the apocalypse. After it began, Luo Ruzhuo never saw him again.

People couldn't even survive the apocalypse, let alone a dog.

The thought flashed through Luo Ruzhuo's mind. "Big Yellow" was delighted with his name and came over to spin circles around her.

"Master's hunger level detected approaching the critical point." Big Yellow beeped again. "Please select a dining option, Master."

Luo Ruzhuo looked down and saw two options on the screen: dine-in and delivery. She selected delivery, and an array of food pictures appeared on the screen: meat golden and crispy, vegetables crisp and fresh green-all of it looked tempting. Beef stew with potatoes, braised chicken with chestnuts, red-braised pork, stir-fried cabbage... Luo Ruzhuo ordered several of her favorites from before the apocalypse.

While waiting for her meal, Luo Ruzhuo looked around the dormitory.

It was a single-floor apartment of roughly two hundred square meters, with a walk-in closet, a washroom, a bedroom, a sitting room... The layout made sense, and the decor was warm and natural. Even before the apocalypse, it would have been considered high-end. She recalled the slightly apologetic words Weina had spoken when handing her the ID card at the training center: "The dormitory is basic, so I'm sorry you'll have to stay here for now. The war zone isn't as comfortable as the central district. Please bear with us."

Remembering the years she had spent struggling through the apocalypse, then looking at her surroundings, Luo Ruzhuo was suddenly so happy she felt like crying.

On her first official day of work, a white guide uniform arrived along with three doses of mental power growth potion. Weina had taken Luo Ruzhuo to choose it in person on the last day of training.

When Weina had taken Luo Ruzhuo to choose a uniform, she saw her select the pants version without looking at anything else and tactfully reminded her that the guide uniform also came in a matching white skirt version—the choice of most female guides.

Luo Ruzhuo hadn't expected gender stereotypes to persist even in interstellar society.

The Black Tower required guides to dress neatly and appropriately, and the uniform followed that principle. It was pure white throughout, made of a special fabric that regulated body temperature and kept out wind and water. Its stand collar was crisp, and two rows of metal buttons ran down the front from the collar to the waist. The waist tapered slightly, and the pants were tailored to just the right length, outlining her figure like a drawn saber.

The girl in the mirror looked eighty percent like Luo Ruzhuo. Her waist-length hair had been cut to her shoulders the day before, giving her a cleaner, sharper appearance.

Her polished leather shoes made little sound against the floor as Weina led Luo Ruzhuo to her treatment room. She looked around without showing any reaction.

There was a desk, an optical computer, and an office chair, with a pure white three-seat sofa beside them and a few green plants in the corner. Luo Ruzhuo looked closely and realized the plants were virtual images cast by a projector.

Weina led her to the chair and handed her another ID card. Before Luo Ruzhuo could ask, Weina casually swiped it over a drawer beneath the desk and pulled it open with a swish. It was full of iron implements.

Luo Ruzhuo didn't recognize them, so Weina took them out and explained each one.

The more Luo Ruzhuo heard, the stranger her expression became.

"This is a bite guard, and these are the gear collar and foot restraints. Ah, this is a clicker, and there's also..." Looking at the needlelike injector at the very bottom, Weina smiled with her eyes curved and grumbled in dissatisfaction, "This is an automatic tranquilizer dart launcher. There's a fixed quota every month, and once it's used up, there won't be any more. Miss Luo, you must be careful to save them!"

Luo Ruzhuo said, "Are these things used often?"

Weina nodded. "Of course! Sentinels with high contamination levels can be very destructive." At that, her smile faded and her tone grew much more serious. "Miss Luo, no matter who you were before, now that you've become a guide, please remember this: guides are an extremely, extremely precious resource to the Federation."

This was practically a consensus among the people of the Federation: sentinels were a resource that could be used repeatedly, while guides were the vital source that made their repeated use possible.

Weina said, "We must protect ourselves!"

Luo Ruzhuo nodded thoughtfully.

Not long afterward, she put those things to use.

About fifteen minutes after Weina left, the door was pushed silently open, and a tall, straight figure came into view.

The visitor's information popped up on the optical computer at just the right moment:

Name: Heisha Draven

Spiritual form: Black-footed cat

Sex: Male sentinel

Rank: B

Contamination level: 86%

Team: First District · Desert Team

The young man's figure was upright beneath his black uniform, his muscles developed just right. His eyes were dark and round, his features rather deep-set, and his lips pressed together slightly. Overall, he had a rather cool, stern air.

"Hello, Miss Guide." His voice was rather low as well.

Luo Ruzhuo nodded and gestured for him to sit on the sofa. "Heisha Draven. Hello, please sit down."

Once Heisha Draven was seated, he studied the guide before him without showing it.

Her black hair fell straight to her shoulders. Her forehead was smooth, her brows and eyes delicately proportioned, her lips pale, and her pupils a very deep black. The gaze she turned on him was calm and undisturbed, like a deep mountain pool.

There was little new at the front besides fighting contamination. A new guide had arrived, and between everyone's bits and pieces, they had assembled the black-haired girl's entire background. In a word, she was a lucky ordinary person who had awakened as a guide after successfully taking revenge.

Class divisions in the Federation were entrenched, and ordinary people struggled to live in the cracks between sentinels, guides, and the Federation's powerful elite. On top of that, both her parents were dead, and she lived under someone else's roof. When they spoke of how she had lain low for two years before finally killing Phil Rice, everyone felt some admiration.

Admiration aside, most sentinels still didn't want a murderer guide to purify them—it clashed too badly with their image of guides as gentle, pure, and kind!

But there were far too few guides at the Black Tower on the front. Compared with a guide's dark past, their own immediate safety was naturally more important—or so Heisha Draven believed.

So the moment he learned a new guide had arrived at the Black Tower, he booked a purification.

Only when he actually met this highly controversial guide did he realize his original view seemed somewhat prejudiced.

Heisha Draven was staring at her, lost in thought, when he saw the girl stand up. Her voice, cool and clear as a spring, sounded beside his ear. "Please don't resist. I need to take a few precautions."

With a click, a pair of slender but distinctly jointed hands moved behind his ears for a moment, and an icy steel mask was fitted over the young man's face. Then his wrists felt cold as his hands were cuffed separately to the post behind the sofa. Because of Weina's warning, Luo Ruzhuo didn't use the limited supply of anesthetic.

Once she had done all that, Heisha heard her let out a breath. "All right, you can release your spiritual form now."

Luo Ruzhuo thought she had been cautious enough. Although the young man named Heisha was unexpectedly docile, she had still prepared to attack with her mental ability, just in case.

Then a kitten only a little bigger than a palm appeared before the sufficiently cautious Luo Ruzhuo.

It was tawny overall, with black spots and stripes all over its fur. Its four legs looked as though they had been dipped in ink, and its large, round eyes were bright, with black, circular pupils. It crouched on the sofa like a plush toy, flicked its tail slightly, raised its little head, and gave a soft "meow." Its voice was exceptionally soft and cute.

Luo Ruzhuo's heart stirred. After she moved closer, before she could do anything, the kitten, whose appearance was cute enough, held its tail high, the tip trembling slightly. It rubbed its forehead against her white guide uniform while a purr rumbled from its throat, loud and booming like thunder.

Luo Ruzhuo had never kept a small animal before the apocalypse; she had only fed the stray Big Yellow a few times. After the apocalypse, she had treated mutated animals the same way she treated zombies.

She had never encountered anything like this. Instinctively, she felt it didn't seem hostile, but she didn't know what was wrong with it, either.

So Luo Ruzhuo looked at Heisha, whose face had instantly turned bright red, and asked, "Why does it keep making that noise? Is its contamination very severe?"