The two of them walked down the dark passage, occasionally feeling a cool breeze. Normally, this kind of temperature would be refreshing, but now it felt eerie. Every corner, every pillar, every shadow that couldn't be illuminated by the flashlight seemed to hide unknown monsters, ready to pounce at any moment.

"Bang bang bang... bang bang bang... pop pop..." Suddenly, there was a sound of impact from behind the ticket booth, followed by two crisp sounds. Sun Ge fired his gun, and the bullets hit the artificial marble wall and the fire door, splattering sparks.

"Sun Ge... could you not shoot behind my ear..."

Hong Tao instinctively raised his shield. In this small space with hard objects all around, it was uncomfortable and dangerous to shoot. The gunshots were louder than usual, very piercing. The danger was that the bullets could bounce off unpredictably and accidentally injure their own people.

"Sorry... sorry... I haven't touched a gun in so many years, feeling a bit nervous..." Sun Ge had been a soldier and definitely knew these taboos. But he couldn't control his body and mind being nervous at the same time. The two shots just now were not aimed at the target, but at the shadows reflected by the flashlight.

"...You should put the safety on. I think there are only zombies behind this door, no need to waste bullets on them!" Hong Tao didn't blame Sun Ge. Even if there was nothing in this dark underground space, he would still feel helpless.

After crouching down and listening carefully for a while, they couldn't hear any other sounds except for the impact from the fire door next to them. There probably wouldn't be many people on a platform working the night shift. They had just killed four, and there would probably be two or three more at most.

Opening the fire door didn't require violent force. Hong Tao found two key chains from the four zombies above. They were obviously not from home, but he tried them one by one and they worked.

But after opening the fire door, no zombies rushed out immediately. The guy in the security uniform inside didn't knock on the fire door either, but was banging on another door at the end of the corridor.

"Just one?" Before the zombie approached, Sun Ge threw a punch at it, then sighed with a sense of unfinished business.

"Bang bang bang... hey, is there anyone inside? We are humans, not monsters..."

Hong Tao didn't pay attention to the zombie. When he opened the fire door, he noticed the abnormality of this zombie. The flashlight had been aimed at the door at the end of the corridor. Now that the zombie was dead, he used the mountaineering pickaxe to knock on the door and shouted inside.

"Click clack... click clack..." No one answered, but there was a slight sound of metal collision... It was just too strange, it actually came from above!

"Back off!" Hong Tao's body reacted as if he had been electrocuted, and his body hair stood on end. At this moment, he thought of the scene in the movie Alien, where the hiding place of the monster was the ventilation duct, and it would always come out from there to attack the crew members on the spaceship, one after another!

"It... it's up there!?" Sun Ge probably hadn't seen this movie, but he understood from Hong Tao's expression and eyes. He immediately raised the fire hook in his hand and shone the flashlight at the ceiling.

"We're in big trouble... don't make a sound... slowly move towards the door... listen to my command and run together..." Hong Tao also raised his shield, stiffening his ears, and moved quietly towards the fire door. The movement was extremely smooth and also ridiculous, as if performing a very strange dance.

"Click clack... whoosh whoosh... creak creak... cough cough..." Suddenly, that sound appeared again, but this time there were many fragments, as if something had fallen into the ventilation duct and was rolling around. It stopped after a few seconds, followed by two light coughs.

"...Sun Ge, have you ever heard a zombie cough?" Hong Tao stopped his body movement, with one leg hanging in the air, but his mouth was not idle as he quietly asked Sun Ge.

"It seems not... could it be a person?" Sun Ge had been with the small team clearing the courtyard for these days, killing no fewer zombies than Hong Tao, but he had never heard a zombie cough. In fact, these monsters, who were neither human nor ghost, wouldn't make any sound, not even breathing, they were just silent.

Hong Tao also thought so, and upon careful consideration, zombies wouldn't climb over walls, so how could they crawl into the ventilation duct? Even if they happened to mutate in the ventilation duct, it had been so many days, and they couldn't be exposed to sunlight, so they should have run out of power soon. Referring to Early Summer's condition, the answer was obvious.

"...It should be here, break open the ceiling!" If it wasn't a zombie above, then it could only be a person or an animal. Hong Tao wasn't very afraid of either of these two things, so he had to open it and see what it was.

"Whoosh... whoosh..." Now the fire hook had a purpose. It was originally used to break and dismantle the interior of buildings, and breaking the ceiling was much more efficient than killing zombies.

"Cough cough... don't shoot... I'm an employee here... cough cough..."

Before long, the flashlight found a shadow in the exhaust vent. Its shape was indistinguishable, but the intermittent light coughs and faint Chinese whispers clearly indicated her identity. Yes, it was her, a woman's voice.

"Why did you run then! Didn't I call out earlier, why didn't you respond!" Hong Tao had Sun Jian set the flashlight around while he stood under the vent, holding up a shield and continuing to question. One couldn't be too careless with people, the lesson from his carelessness at the police station was deeply ingrained.

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"I...I was scared...they were always chasing me...they even killed my colleague..." A sobbing voice came from the vent.

"Are you an employee here? From the health department?" Hong Tao rolled his eyes and threw out a more professional question.

"No...I'm from the electromechanical team...I came here last Friday to repair the No.8 fan, but something happened before I got off work...I saw my colleague being bitten by someone from the health department through the window in the locker room, and then...then he turned into a monster...I don't know what to do..." The woman's voice in the vent was slightly louder, but it sounded very weak, she couldn't even finish a sentence.

"So what have you been eating and drinking all these days!" Hong Tao pieced together the woman's story, and now there was one last question to clarify.

"There are a few bags of chips and instant noodles in the locker, and some bottled water...are you sure you're not monsters?" The woman in the vent didn't quite believe Hong Tao either, she kept slowly wriggling, and had already moved a little over a meter away while talking.

"Do monsters chat with you? Stop climbing for now, if I wanted to hurt you, this thin sheet of iron wouldn't stop a bullet. Quickly find a place to look at me, if you feel safe, come down, if not, continue eating your snacks, I won't force you!"

By this time, Hong Tao was pretty sure that the person hiding in the vent was a normal human being, with no ulterior motives. His tense mood relaxed, and he was filled with joy. This trip was worth it, he had discovered a promising underground facility and even managed to save three living people!

"Come, look closely, a standard handsome Chinese man...healthy body, all limbs intact!" The woman in the vent seemed to have crawled back, Hong Tao quickly took off his helmet, used the flashlight for a light test, trying to make himself look better.

"...I'll come down from the locker room..." The effect was not bad, the woman in the vent no longer doubted Hong Tao's identity, at least she admitted he was a human, and immediately took action, crawling along the vent towards the room at the end of the corridor.

This room should be the locker room for the subway station staff, with two rows of lockers against the wall. The ceiling above the lockers was open, with a vent right there, and a chair was placed next to the lockers.

Obviously, this woman had first climbed onto the top of the locker, then opened the vent and crawled into the duct, using it as a hiding place, where she stayed for a full ten days! But that's not right, she must have come back in between, she could take all the snacks, but she couldn't take the water, she had to come back regularly.