Right on Target (TARGET)
"Ding—"
Su Heting opened his eyes to find himself sitting on a bench at a street corner.
The sky was dim, and rain poured incessantly. Few pedestrians walked the streets, all holding umbrellas—only he was left drenched. Su Heting quickly scanned his surroundings but saw no sign of the Chief.
"Ding—"
The sound came from his pants pocket.
Su Heting reached in and pulled out an old, antiquated-looking phone. He pressed the worn-out button and saw two text messages.
[Take the 9:00 PM No. 97 bus and follow a man wearing a cross-star earring.]
[Kill him where no one is watching.]
Su Heting’s fingers flew across the keypad as he typed a reply.
[In your dreams.]
[Disconnect my neural link. Now.]
A second later, the phone buzzed with a response.
[The bus arrives in 30 seconds. If you don’t kill him, you’re the one who dies. Friendly reminder—he’s a scout from the Punishment Zone, codenamed "Inspector". His job is to hunt down moles like you. One caught, one dead.]
[Kill him, and Mom will give you 200,000.]
[Pocket money.]
Su Heting’s mood soured to the extreme just as the bus pulled up and its doors slid open before him. He stared at them for two seconds before standing and boarding.
The bus was driverless, its seats sparsely occupied by four or five scattered passengers. Su Heting tossed a coin from his pocket into the fare box and walked toward the back. None of the passengers he passed wore earrings. He continued until he reached the last row, where a man sat by the window.
The dim interior lighting of the rainy night made it hard to see, but Su Heting noticed the man’s hands first.
They were pale and slender, and with nails impeccably groomed. A pitch-black pen rested between his thumb and forefinger, like a sheathed longsword placed on an altar.
Su Heting sat down, leaving three empty seats between them.
The man wore a slightly loosened tie over his shirt. A cross-star earring dangled from his right ear, with the chain clasped to his cartilage. His skin was fair, his shoulders broad and his waist narrow—he seemed absorbed in the view outside the window, as if unaware of Su Heting’s presence.
"Ding—"
The damn text was relentless.
[After sunset is slaughter hour in the Punishment Zone. You know that better than I do, right?]
No, I didn’t.
Su Heting dismissed the message and shoved his hands back into his pockets. Only his eyes were visible above the high collar of his jacket, his damp hair a messy tangle—he looked like a stray cat.
What the Chief didn’t know was that Su Heting had a secret. He’d lost parts of his memory in the Great Explosion. Everything about the Punishment Zone, the 'Black Panther' unit, and the Timed Limited Hunt—gone. But he couldn’t let the Chief catch on.
Because his body was still in the Chief’s hands.
Outside, the rain grew heavier, yet no streetlights illuminated the road.
Su Heting glanced out the window, catching glimpses of buildings flashing past. They loomed in the darkness, not a single light on.
Time seemed to have plunged into midnight and the structures’ outlines morphing into indescribable behemoths. They crouched on all sides, making the bus’s headlights feel unnaturally stark.
"Ugh—"
A passenger up front began retching violently in the aisle, carsick.
Su Heting’s cat ears twitched, picking up the sound of metal scraping against the floor amid the noise.
Hey.
A bad feeling crept over him.
Don’t throw some plot twist beyond his comprehension at him—
At that exact moment, the bus lurched violently. Su Heting braced himself but remembering that Inspector was nearby, so he suppressed the urge to leap to his feet.
But the bus had already changed lanes, its front forcibly jerked sideways and its tires screeching against the pavement as the entire vehicle tilted left. The unfortunate passenger suffering from motion sickness hadn’t even had time to straighten up before inertia flung them violently to the side, slamming them into a seat with a gut-wrenching scream.
The next second, the left-side window exploded outward, causing shards of glass spraying everywhere.
Su Heting raised an arm to shield himself, hearing the panicked screams of passengers ahead. Then, the bus lurched violently as if tossed into a washing machine, spinning wildly before crashing into a roadside phone booth.
The glass door of the phone booth shattered with a loud bang.
"...Go home..."
A hand, accompanied by an unfamiliar voice, reached in through the broken window.
"Go..."
The hand was unnaturally soft, slithering along the seats like putty, its arm stretching grotesquely long. The injured passenger’s screams turned shrill as they scrambled away, but before they could crawl even a meter, the arm wrapped tightly around them.
"Go home..."
This time, the voice was right beside him.
Su Heting whipped his head around and saw a bare-chested "woman" crouched at the window to his right. Her hair was disheveled, her face deathly pale, and her sobs eerie and muffled.
Still gripping the seatback in front of him, Su Heting remained seated, stubbornly playing the role of a bystander.
The "woman" slammed her head against the window, ignoring the passenger’s desperate struggles as she dragged them toward the exit. The passenger let out a choked cry for help, but the "woman" only smashed her head against the glass in Su Heting’s direction with increasing frenzy.
The window shattered after a few hits. Su Heting watched as her head pushed through the broken frame, lips twitching.
Ding-ding-ding—
A flurry of text messages buzzed in, but Su Heting had no time to check. The "woman" stretched her neck, her face now inches from his—he couldn’t keep pretending much longer.
What kind of mission is this?!
At the same moment, gunfire erupted beside him.
A bullet struck the "woman’s" head, but her mouth remained shut, her chest heaving with muffled pain. She thrashed wildly, smashing her head against the seatbacks as she tried to wrench herself free. To pull her head back out, several long, razor-sharp metal legs sprouted from her tangled hair, scraping against the bus’s exterior with a piercing screech.
Yet her head didn’t burst from the gunshot. Instead, a thick, viscous fluid oozed around the bullet, spitting it out from her temple onto the floor.
Su Heting’s collar yanked backward as the silent Inspector dragged him to the left. Their bodies crossed paths in that split second, and Su Heting caught a clear glimpse of the silver cross-shaped earring glinting in the dim, cramped space before Inspector launched himself like a cannonball toward the window.
The "woman" had just freed her head and was now hacking at the bus with her bladed legs.
Inspector hooked an arm around a seatback, flipping smoothly out the window. The wind whipped his hair back, revealing icy, unblinking eyes. In a flash, he drove his knee into the monster’s neck with brutal force—enough to send it crashing to the ground with a heavy thud, splattering mud everywhere.
Rain pelted Inspector’s body as he fired relentlessly at the creature, his expression unreadable. Water streamed down his face, but his gaze never wavered. The rapid gunfire echoed sharply through the night.
When the shots ceased, an eerie, unsettling terror began to spread.
"Nightwalker—" The surviving passenger's words were cut short as his expression twisted in alarm at Su Heting's direction before letting out a sharp exclamation, "Hey!"
In the blink of an eye, Su Heting jerked his head aside. A blade-like foot slashed through the window behind him, grazing his cheek as glass shards exploded in all directions.
Su Heting seized the bladed foot and yanked with all his might. The rear window shattered completely as the creature was dragged inside, slammed into the bus seats, and let out a piercing howl.
Su Heting touched the side of his neck where a glass shard had nicked him.
"You're terrifying, huh."
As his fingers brushed the wound, crimson stained his neck.
He opened his palm, revealing a bleeding gash from gripping the bladed foot, worsening his already foul mood.
Here, he could get hurt—just like in the arena, where pain sensitivity was amplified.
His heartbeat raced as a surge of adrenaline bombarded his brain, reminiscent of the moment his tail connected in the fighting pit. Blood dripped onto his hand, staining his sleeve. He clenched and unclenched his fist, caught between irritation and exhilaration.
"Hey," he wanted to say something.
But the rush drowned out his thoughts.
"Ding—"
The sudden chime of a text message cut through his rising excitement.
[Run.]
The Chief's message was succinct.
Outside, explosions erupted in unison, shattering storefront windows along the street. The shockwave flipped the bus, toppling a nearby phone booth.
Su Heting was thrown between seats, his back searing with pain.
Moments later, only the sound of rain remained in the smoky aftermath.
Brushing off glass and dust, Su Heting crawled out and leaped from the wrecked bus.
The creature's back was engulfed in flames, its hair alight.
Su Heting unzipped the jacket to see Inspector half-consumed by fire, beyond saving. The man's pen lay on the ground.
Kneeling in the rain, Su Heting's dark silhouette contrasted eerily with the burning creature beside him—a lone survivor in this dead city.
[Inspector's dead. Pay up.]
the Chief replied slowly: [Not your kill, kid. Don't linger.]
Su Heting checked the time—one hour left before logout.
For some reason, he hated the Punishment Zone.
The "Main God Alliance" filled him with an indescribable dread.
Standing in the rain, the sky pitch-black and devoid of light, he still felt as if he were under a spotlight.
[Job's done. Disconnect me.]
Blood smeared his phone as he typed, and rain blurred the screen. Wiping it only made it worse.
[One hour left. Go to this address.]
[Your home in the Punishment Zone.]
[Be there in an hour.]
The word "home" was obscured by blood. Su Heting tossed the phone into the fire: "Stop ordering me around."
The address given by the Chief was quite a distance away.
Su Heting moved through the rain with his hood up, and the tip of his tail glowing faintly like a streetlamp. But he didn’t want to expose himself in the darkness, so he ghosted across the wide, empty road like a specter. He tried to recall something from the silhouettes of the buildings, but they were too dark—like phantoms from a nightmare.
The fake home was located in some villa district. By the time Su Heting reached the gate, he was completely drenched.
He saw an elegant wooden plaque hanging on the iron fence gate, engraved with a single character: "Su."
Su Heting let out a low whistle and pushed open the gate. Passing through the small garden, he stood under the eaves and gripped the doorknob. On a whim, he chirped cheerfully, "I'm home."
Unexpectedly, the lights inside flicked on, and the door swung open from within.
Inspector, who had been confirmed dead not long ago, stood in the doorway, his broad shoulders blocking some of the light. He lifted his cold, thin eyelids and looked down at Su Heting with an imperious gaze.
"Ding—"
Though he'd already thrown away his phone, that annoying message alert tone kept ringing in his head.
Su Heting sensed lethal danger.
The excitement that had been interrupted on the bus surged instantly as alarms blaring wildly in his mind.
Inspector stared at Su Heting and spoke indifferently.
"Welcome."
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