Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 206: Think

Chapter 206: Think

"Cuddles?" crooned Si Dong as he approached me. Cheng Bo Jing was standing in front of me, still frozen from when I had suddenly rejected him, and Rip was holding me from behind. I was surrounded, not able to move an inch.

I should be freaking out with so many people around, but I was just so happy that the majority of them weren’t dead.

"Yeah?" I replied, turning my head to look at him.

"Who is Zhong Yong Zheng?" he asked, looking down at me concerned.

"I don’t know," I shrugged. "That was what Bai Long Qiang had called him."

Everyone’s head spun around to where the man was standing in front of the couch. His eyes widened, and he started shaking his head.

"Kitten, I don’t know anyone by that name," he said, holding up his hands.

"If I may," interrupted Chang Guo Zi as he looked at me. "Zhong Yong Zheng is the leader of Betrayed Intent, one of the other teams that had been assigned to this mission."

"Wait... assigned? Who assigned us? I thought it was a mission that you just happened to come across," snapped Bai Long Qiang as he turned to look at the man.

"Nope, I would never have volunteered us for something like this. Our four teams, Phoenix, Betrayed, Oath, and Vengeance, were assigned this mission by the creator," informed Chang Guo Zi as he looked around the room.

"Wu Bai Hee," growled Bin An Sha. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel the murderous rage pouring off of him right now. "I should have killed her when I had the chance."

"No," I disagreed, trying to remember what I had seen. "There were at least a hundred of you guys... that’s roughly around ten teams, right? Plus, someone mentioned that the Princess teams were going house to house."

"Just because we are assigned the mission doesn’t mean that we are the only ones that can participate. However, we would be the only ones who would face the consequences of failing the mission," sighed Duan Zhao Hui from where he stood beside Chang Guo Zi.

The living room seemed to shrink with everyone in it, but I didn’t care right now. There had to be a way to stop this before it happened.

"Who is the one to determine the rewards and punishments for a mission? Maybe we can talk to them?" I asked hopefully, turning my full attention to one of the only ones in this room to know the answer.

"That won’t help," he grunted with a shake of his head. "It was Wu Bai Hee that came up with the new system we are using. Zhou Jun Jie has washed his hands of it all."

"So we’re fucked," grunted Duan Zhao Hui. Well, at least that comment about being fucked up the ass with no lube now makes sense.

"Maybe if we avoided the area from your dream?" suggested Fan Teng Fei, looking at me.

I shook my head. "I have no idea where it is. All I know was that you were out for three days before it happened. I couldn’t tell you if it took the whole time to get there or if you were there for a while."

"Can you think of anything that might be able to help?" asked Duan Zhao Hui, raising his hands in defense as I spun around and growled at him.

"Oh, why didn’t I think about that? You know... I wasn’t doing anything in my dream besides screaming at everyone who couldn’t hear me. You were on a highway with graffitied green signs that I have no idea what they were saying. There were trees around on either side, and the cars had been pushed to both sides of the road."

"That’s the highway to City B," murmured Duan Zhao Hui. "What color was the paint?"

I blinked rapidly... "Black?" I said, raising my voice like it was a question and not a statement.

"Black Mountain territory," grunted Chang Guo Zi with a nod of his head. They shared a look before turning their attention back to me. "What was the city like where we were?"

It was like they were speaking an entirely different language... one that was close enough to English that I could kind of understand it but not enough to make sense of what they were saying.

"I don’t know... it looked like any main street," I said slowly, not knowing what they were looking for.

"Think," encouraged Duan Zhao Hui.

"Oh, go fuck yourself," I growled. It wasn’t like he was saying it to be a dick, and part of me knew that, but if he really didn’t think that I wasn’t raking my brain for any small detail, the dude was delusional.

Wait... if touching Cheng Bo Jing had me flashing back to his death... "Fan Teng Fei? Can I borrow you for a second?" I asked as I slipped out of Rip’s arms and moved toward the other man.

"Of course, what do you need?" he asked, coming to a stop in front of me.

"Just don’t move."

I reached forward and laid my palm against Fan Teng Fei’s cheek and closed my eyes. My mind immediately went to the last time I had seen him, completely surrounded by more and more zombies as he tried to burn them to death using nothing more than a lighter and gas in a bottle gourd.

He disappeared from sight under a wave of the creatures.

No. Couldn’t fixate on that. I had to go earlier than that. When he entered the grocery store...

Like his mind was a movie reel, I watched the pictures play in reverse until we got to the moment I was looking for.

"Hyper-mart," I said, my voice coming from far away. "A two story hyper-mart in the middle of main street. A bedding place on one side and a real estate office on the other side."

"Can you see the name of any streets?"

The voice came to me like someone was calling for me down a long hallway.

"No," I murmured with a shake of my head. "Sorry."