As they pulled apart, Rong Shi lightly nipped Song Yu’s sensual lips.

“A cat this reckless—only I’d dare take him in.”

Song Yu chuckled, listening to the faint footsteps outside, and raised his gun toward the door. “If anything, it’s a bunny this fierce—only I’d dare want him, right?”

The instant the door swung open, a highly compressed air round punched through the intruder’s wrist; the gun clattered to the floor.

A few minutes later, they’d finished this wave. Song Yu crouched, checking a killer’s collar and palm. “These calluses are much thicker than the last two days’.”

Rong Shi: “Veterans.”

This batch’s combat quality was clearly higher than the previous two.

The noise here would draw more over. With no time to linger, they headed down the emergency stairwell to the first floor.

The moment they stepped out of the stairwell, Song Yu yanked back—bullets hammered the metal door with a crackling rattle.

“Lucky we haven’t run into rats.” He leaned to the wall, smiling with smugness. “Killing people is so much nicer than killing rats.”

Rong Shi: “…”

Only you could call killing people “nicer.”

Unfortunately, speak of the devil…

Before his smile could fade, a rat the size of a kangaroo bounded out of the building opposite, big wet eyes staring at him through the doorframe.

Song Yu: “…Damn.”

Mutant Rat: “?”

He barely lifted his hand before the rat’s head snapped back and it dropped—someone else was faster.

Holstering his weapon, Rong Shi drawled, “Afraid of rats? Where’s your feline pride?”

Seeing the mutant’s tail, Song Yu’s face soured even more. “I’m a pet cat. I don’t eat rats—I only eat rabbit.”

Rong Shi: “…”

Catching something out of the corner of his eye, Song Yu frowned. “Didn’t we tell them to go on ahead?”

Rong Shi followed his line of sight.

Through the ground-floor windows opposite, Old Lin and A8’s men were being chased by mutant rats.

Judging from where they were running, Rong Shi glanced upward—right toward the corridor that had just collapsed. “They probably came to save us.”

“Completely unnecessary,” Song Yu muttered, though he didn’t sound truly annoyed.

In the building opposite, Old Lin and the team laid down cover while three went to dig through the collapse.

“Even if you find ‘em, they’ll be pancakes!” the teammate next to Old Lin griped, firing at the rats.

Old Lin barked back, “Then we bring the pancakes back!”

“Captain, more rats by the second!”

“This is never-ending! The blasts must’ve drawn them out—what now?!”

“Skin’s thick as hell!”

“Move it!”

Gunfire everywhere—they had enemies and rats, attacked from both sides.

Temper flaring, Old Lin slammed his comm. “Rescue, rescue! L100, Security Bureau!”

“Request submitted to rescue. Personnel are being dispatched. Please prioritize your own—”

“Prioritize your ass!” Old Lin emptied a few rounds into a charging rat. “You’ll be the death of us!”

They were holding near the central corridor of the ring-shaped building; from the other three corridors, rats were pouring out.

The three charged with finding “pancakes” steeled themselves and dug into the rubble.

A sudden squeal behind them shot every hair on end.

One beta grabbed for his gun and spun—right into a magnified rat’s head. Two razor foreclaws were half a meter from his chest.

“Shit!” Panic sent him stumbling back into the rubble. His shots landed in harmless places.

The claws were almost on him. He scrabbled backward, despair flooding in waves.

Whip—

A faint hiss through the air; the rat’s head jerked to the side. The next moment, its body was booted several meters away.

Blinking, the beta focused—wasn’t this tall, long-legged, cold-faced youth the “pancake” he was supposed to find?!

Rong Shi held out a hand. “You okay?”

The beta clasped it and got up—belatedly processing. “You two are okay?!”

Song Yu leaned to the wall, tracking the snipers’ positions. “If your legs work, move.”

Down the corridor, Old Lin and the others were flagging under the rats’ pressure.

The structure was too decrepit; anything with real punch might bring the place down. And too much noise would draw more rats.

But quietly plinking away was a slog.

Old Lin kept firing, shouting over his shoulder, “Found them yet?!”

“Found them.”

Rong Shi’s voice, right at his ear—Old Lin nearly jumped out of his skin. “Holy—!”

He whirled. Two tall, long-legged, devastatingly handsome men stood behind him.

“All that worry for nothing!”

Another rocket struck above, blowing the wall apart. Rong Shi clapped his shoulder. “Let’s move.”

Old Lin waved the brothers in. A cluster of them rushed toward the ring’s center.

But the deeper they went, the more rats there were.

Old Lin got even more irritable. “What, did we poke a rat nest?”

Rong Shi and Song Yu kept a bead on the killers’ movements.

“Still increasing,” Song Yu said, face cold, voice low.

All told, they were up over a hundred now.

“There they are!”

Someone in the team yelled.

Rong Shi glanced over.

The A3 squad, which had gone ahead, was bottled up by a black mass of rats outside the unit; they couldn’t get a single step closer.

“Captain, we should retreat!”

“No—call rescue!”

“Weizi’s head’s cut!”

“Captain, decide!”

A3 already had one man down in a pool of blood; the rest were all injured to some degree.

Yang Peng clenched his jaw, chest tight with anger.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to retreat—he couldn’t. Not anymore.

There were too many rats; every route was plugged.

Gunshots cracked. The two rats closest to the wounded had their brains burst.

The beta propping Weizi stared.

A beat later—two more rats dropped.

He looked around and spotted them under the left corridor: two interns with guns up.

“Damn…”

Only after they fired several more times did the beta find his voice. Shot after shot—headshots.

A mutant rat’s hide was tough. If a small round didn’t hit a vital, it was like a tickle.

They moved quick. Getting a kill in three rounds was already elite.

With this many rats, hitting one wasn’t special—but one shot, one kill? Only a top dog.

The beta was dazed.

If he hadn’t seen it himself, he’d never have believed two first-years could shoot like this.

“Rescue, rescue’s here!” Joy broke from his chest. He yelled to Yang Peng, “Captain, A8’s here!”

Hearing it, Yang Peng looked over. When he saw Rong Shi and Song Yu, his expression turned… complicated.

They weren’t dead?

The swing of emotion was so obvious that Rong Shi gave him a second look—then moved on as if nothing had happened.

Under the corridor, Song Yu refused to take a single step closer, watching the writhing swarms—his shooting grew even colder and more ruthless.

While covering, Rong Shi watched his angles.

Several rounds skimmed past teammates’ skulls.

“You do know this isn’t Star War, right?” Rong Shi said mildly.

“I do.” Song Yu’s face stayed frosty, voice loose. “Or I’d have toggled map hacks already.”

Rong Shi: “…”

While they laid down fire, Old Lin and A8 also mounted the machine guns and mowed rats.

As the numbers thinned, they moved toward A3.

At the rear, Song Yu dropped his gun to reload.

In the brief lull, Rong Shi ruffled his hair and murmured, “I’ll make you cookies later—you can add the sugar.”

The temper vanished in a heartbeat. Song Yu’s eyes lit—and he forced a scowl. “You coaxing a kid?”

Rong Shi: “So you know?”

Song Yu: “…Damn.”

“I want roast rabbit.”

Rong Shi: “…”

Another blast rolled in behind them. Rong Shi shielded his head and hauled him into cover.

[01: Master, mutant readings spiking!]

[00: Master, three killer teams inbound—opposite building’s 2nd and 4th floors and this building’s 3rd. Caution advised.]

Barely two seconds after 01’s warning, cries rose ahead.

“Again! More of them!”

Just when it looked like the rats were nearly done, they gushed from every side—so many it was impossible to count.

Dozens of killers with heavy weapons, plus hundreds of mutant rats—no one could say how this melee would end.

Song Yu’s eyes narrowed. “What do you say—feel like going big?”

Rong Shi’s wrist turned. At an angle no one could see, 01 shot from his decorative clasp.

It zipped outside, skimmed past a scrapped armored vehicle.

[Scan complete. Grandpa-Car mode engaged.]

A heartbeat later, tucked under a tangle of roots, an identical armored vehicle appeared—half-new, half-old, its paint flaking.

The second they cleared the corridor, A8 and A3 were forced back.

Between bursts, the swearing kept up—

“What dogshit luck these two days?!”

“Find a safer spot—wait for rescue.”

“With this many rats, hide where?!”

“Over here.”

Rong Shi’s voice came from the rear.

Old Lin tugged Yang Peng over at a run.

Seeing his reluctance, Old Lin said acidly, “Don’t try any crap this time. Those two brats saved your sorry hide.”

Pointed at and cursed, Yang Peng’s face went red. “Don’t you pin that on me! When did I ever pull a dirty trick?”

Old Lin: “Says the guy who—”

“All right,” Rong Shi cut in. “Whatever personal beef, deal with it in private.”

Listening to 01’s feed on the killers, he spoke fast: “Xiao Yu and I will draw the killers and most of the rats. You handle the rest yourselves—check the unit, then hold for rescue.”

Yang Peng and the others blinked.

They’d thought he’d have something else to say. He was… issuing orders to them?

Yang Peng’s face cooled. “On what authority do you order me?”

Rong Shi tilted his head. “I’m informing you. You’re free to refuse.”

“You’re an intern,” Yang Peng snapped, irritated by the aloofness. “You don’t—”

“Okay.” Yang Peng’s rebuke died half-spoken as Old Lin answered without hesitation.

“But how do you draw them?” Old Lin asked.

Rats were pouring out of every corner—the front wave was already in the corridor.

Time was short; to the rank and file, the interns’ plan sounded unreliable.

“This many rats—you think you can ‘draw them’? Don’t talk big,” someone barked, firing as he complained. “If it was that easy, they’d be long gone. Focus on holding till rescue.”

“That section’s buckling! Fall back!”

“Use the launchers and run lines! Buy time!”

“Shit, watch the vines!”

Keeping an eye on the lines, Rong Shi said evenly, “There’s an armored car here. I’ll drive the opposite direction from you. But don’t delay—no one knows how many more rats are underfoot.”

At the words “armored car,” a few finally noticed the not-quite-a-scrap vehicle in the junk heap.

These had been top of the line when the Bureau was built—now antiques, barely worth anything.

Old Lin gaped, blank. “Kid—you can drive an armored car?”

Doubt rippled.

“I heard this model needs a license scan to start—Class A!”

“Damn—Class A can pilot small warships. Why does a clunker need that?!”

“There aren’t even fifty thousand Class A licensees in the whole Empire—Lieutenant Qing in our legion didn’t pass.”

“Legend says hell difficulty—pass rate capped—high scores don’t help.”

Between firing and reloading, they chatted in bursts.

Even Old Lin didn’t believe Rong Shi could drive one—and certainly not that he had a Class A.

The killers kept hosing them. If vines hadn’t armored the outer walls, the building would have fallen already.

Rong Shi didn’t have time to explain. He slipped through the fire, reached the driver’s door, and popped it.

“They said it needs a license—are you not listening?”

“Boss, get back! A rocket’s gonna land!”

“No license, no start—”

They all tried to talk him down, but he wasn’t listening.

His hand swept the sensor. The console lit.

[License scan passed. Initializing armored vehicle systems—]

Everyone: “???”

License scan… passed?

He was eighteen. How the hell did he earn a Class A?

With control granted, Rong Shi spun the wheel, swung the nose around, gunned it into a crisp U-turn, and stopped at the corridor’s edge. The passenger door popped open.

Loose hand on the wheel, he tipped his head to Song Yu. “Get in. I’ll take you for a spin.”

Catching, from the corner of his eye, their stunned faces, Song Yu’s mood soared.

His rabbit—of course he could do anything.

All incoming fire pinged off the armored hull.

[01: Aaaaa—my back hurts, my butt hurts, everywhere hurts—]

Rong Shi: “Your sugar daddy can’t hear you.”

[…]

As soon as Song Yu was in, Rong Shi locked the doors and engaged defense. He drove into the rat tide.

Song Yu called out 00, slipped it through the roof seam, and turned it into a wavelength emitter.

[00: Activate?]

Song Yu: “Activate.”

[00: Activated.]

The instant they neared, the rats leapt.

When the emitter pulsed, they went mad—hurling themselves at the car.

[01: Aaaaaaa—don’t come any closer! Brother, I’ll never be clean again, Q_Q]

Rong Shi: “…”

“Knew it,” Song Yu said, smiling softly.

The M80 sensor had given him the idea.

If a specific wavelength could enrage mutants, he could use that.

The armored car weaved S-curves through the swarm. When he was done “playing,” Rong Shi spun and drove outward.

“You can… drive like that?!”

“That’s insane!”

“Holy—every rat’s chasing the car!”

With the rats peeling off en masse, the teams felt oddly… lonely.

They watched the car lead the horde away, exchanging looks.

Even the way the big guy drove was cocky. Awesome.

Rong Shi didn’t go far—he circled the outer ring.

The killers’ target was them, and soon enough, they flushed out.

“Still over a hundred.” Song Yu watched heads pop up, voice icy.

Rong Shi scanned the area, explaining. “Places like that are good for stashes. Their vehicles are probably parked there.”

He drove and gave Song Yu a few pointers.

Behind them, a black wave of rats chased as they looped.

Whoever organized this had a clear goal—make sure they couldn’t escape.

The killers would stop at nothing to see them dead.

If they came out—the killers would follow.

Once every killer had exposed themselves, just before they reached their vehicles, Rong Shi abruptly spun and charged back—straight through the killers’ line.

The killers met the fury of the mutant horde head-on. The battle turned savage.

Rong Shi kept the wheel steady, looping the battlefield while they tore into each other.

Elbow propped on the window, Song Yu watched the carnage with a bright smile. “Tsk, tsk—try being human for once.”

Rong Shi drove with unhurried grace, occasionally pitching a shell into a knot of bodies. “To be worthy of you—I can only stop being human.”

Song Yu: “…”

__

Author’s Note:
Bunny Rong: How many spoonfuls of sugar in the cookies?
Cat Song (paw up): Five—tablespoons. [joyous spin]
Bunny Rong: …