The man’s screams still hadn’t stopped.
Qiao Anni stared blankly at the severed arms in her hands.
Blood vessels, muscles, even bones were clearly visible.
She let go, and the two severed arms rolled on the ground, for some reason reminding her of a gecko’s tail.
Nausea only now belatedly rose to her throat.
“Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!!!”
She fell to her knees and retched continuously, but her stomach seemed empty, and in the end, she couldn’t vomit anything.
A massive impact suddenly came from the side of her ear.
The force sent Qiao Anni flying into the wall of a shipping container.
Turning her head, she saw the leader holding a long-handled sledgehammer.
It must have been his doing.
Strangely, being hit by such a weapon, she didn’t feel intense pain.
It felt more like being punched.
She propped herself up on her elbows, trying to get back up.
Her vision was blurry—no, flickering was a more accurate description.
‘What’s wrong with me?’
Leaning against the container wall, fear and questions filled Qiao Anni’s heart.
Seeing her seemingly unresponsive, the leader raised his sledgehammer high again.
The man’s mouth opened and closed; he seemed to be shouting something, but unfortunately Qiao Anni’s head was buzzing too much to hear clearly.
The hammer came crashing down toward her head again, and she had no choice but to raise her arm to block.
clang!
The impact was much weaker than she had expected.
She had thought the hammer would crush her hand.
Qiao Anni looked at her right hand, which had taken the hammer blow, and her eyes widened.
Her right hand now looked like some kind of marvelous machine.
The skin on her palm had retracted and folded outward, replaced by pure metal, and a strange sound was coming from inside.
“C-Combat Prosthetic?”
The man’s face was full of shock, and the hammer fell from his hand.
“W-What the hell are you?”
Having no time to pay attention to the man, Qiao Anni just examined her own palm.
‘What is this? In my memory, prosthetic technology wasn’t this advanced.’
click.
She looked up and saw the man’s trembling hand, and the gun-like object in his hand.
Though it was a completely unfamiliar, strange shape, judging by its appearance and the click of a round being chambered, it was undoubtedly a pistol.
“Wait—”
Before she could even get the word of protest out, the gunfire had already sounded.
She squeezed her eyes shut in fright again, but when she didn’t feel hit, she opened them.
“Whoa.”
It was like a scene straight out of a game.
The muzzle flash and smoke, the bullets gliding through the air, the ejected casings—everything was presented before her eyes at an extremely slow speed.
It was just like Bullet Time.
No, this is Bullet Time, isn’t it?
Qiao Anni tried moving her limbs.
In this environment, her body could still move freely.
She looked toward the direction the bullets had come from.
There were three bullets incoming.
She stepped forward, carefully squeezing through the gaps between the bullets, and arrived in front of the man.
The armless man was still writhing on the ground in pain.
The other man with the syringe was nowhere to be seen—probably fled.
Qiao Anni reached for the man’s gun.
As she took it from his hand, time returned to its normal flow.
“Huh?”
The man hadn’t reacted yet; his fingers were still making the motion of pulling the trigger.
It was only when Qiao Anni aimed the gun at him that he snapped out of it.
“Aaaaah… Spare me! Spare me!”
The man kept backing away, begging for mercy.
All his earlier arrogance had vanished.
Qiao Anni hesitated, then aimed the gun at the man’s knee.
Bam! Bam!
The shots rang out.
The man let out a bloodcurdling scream, collapsed to the ground, and writhed in pain.
Qiao Anni looked at the pistol in her hand.
The feeling of firing it was incredibly strange.
It was her first time using a gun, yet her body seemed to automatically correct its posture and angle as if by muscle memory.
Click. Click.
The sound of the firing pin.
The bullet didn’t fire.
Had it gotten damp?
She tried to release the magazine.
There were still a few rounds inside.
Though it had malfunctioned, keeping it couldn’t hurt.
Thinking this, she tucked the pistol into her raincoat pocket.
Without paying much more attention to the two men struggling on the ground, Qiao Anni put her raincoat back on and walked into the rain.
The container had been at the foot of Trash Mountain, so the rest of the journey wasn’t difficult.
Soon she walked down the mountain and arrived at a chain-link fence.
There was a hole cut in the fence by something unknown—probably the work of those men.
Qiao Anni bent down and crawled through the hole.
She walked aimlessly in the darkness.
The torrential rain showed no sign of stopping.
The changes in her body and what had just happened made her mind a tangled mess.
“What’s going on?”
No matter how she thought about it, she had no clue.
Suddenly, from behind, came the sound of rain boots stepping into a puddle.
Then came rapid gunfire.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
A chill spread from her abdomen.
Qiao Anni looked down.
A liquid seemed to be flowing out from there.
‘Was I shot?’
Probably because of adrenaline, she didn’t feel much pain.
Shouts came from behind.
“Keep firing! Kill her! Avenge the boss!”
It seemed the one who got away had informed them.
‘Just my luck.’
No time to think, no time to look back.
Qiao Anni clutched her abdomen and started sprinting in the rain.
“Hah… hah…”
‘How long have I run?’
Distance and time were both blurred.
‘Must be several kilometers, right? It’s a miracle my lungs haven’t burst from sprinting so long.’
Her consciousness seemed to be fading again.
Probably from blood loss.
‘Where have I run to?’
As if an illusion, up ahead appeared what looked like a residential area, lit up by colorful lights.
The pain was becoming more apparent.
She could feel her life slipping away.
‘I need to find a hospital… or somewhere else. Anything, as long as it can save me,’ she thought.
The road narrowed.
She must have run into an alley or something.
Crash.
She knocked something over, but had no strength to look back.
The last of the oxygen seemed to be leaving her lungs.
She used the last bit of energy in her body for running.
Her body grew heavier and heavier.
Now even that last reserve of strength was gone.
With her last bit of strength, Qiao Anni leaned against the nearest door and knocked.
Without waiting for a response, Qiao Anni lost consciousness on the step.