42 Chapter 42

I finally decided to go into the hallway on my right. I slowly walked in the middle of the path as I inspected the walls. There was some water dripping down the ceiling. Normally, I would never care about it, but I was very thirsty. I wanted to dampen my thirst in order to stay in control of my own body. Especially when facing 'the community', people were likely to lose control quickly. I couldn't risk them taking advantage of my bodily needs.

I stopped walking and held both of my hands under the crack on the ceiling. The water was flowing slowly, so waited for a while until I could collect some water. I had no idea where the water was coming from, but it didn't really matter in the end. I was willing to drink water from a clogged toilet at this point.

I slowly raised my hands towards my face, and smelled the water. I couldn't decide if the bad smell was caused by the water or the dirty hallway itself.

I sipped a small amount of water to test the response of my digestive system. Nothing bad had happened, so I drank all of the water in my hands. This was my only feeling of relief for a long time. I simply stood there and tried to collect more. After I drank handfuls of water, I was ready to move again.

After walking for a while, I could finally see the end of the hallway. Although I was excited for a minute, my excitement slowly turned into worry and fear. I was headed for a dead end. There was nothing at the end of the hallway, but a plain, featureless wall.

When I realised that, I immediately turned around to go back to the intersection I came from. But when I turned around, I faced another wall which was previously not there. I was trapped in the little space enclosed by the walls on all four sides. The space was not any bigger than a large closet; I could barely fit inside and turn around.

When I turned around to face the dead end again, the wall was gone. I was going to lose my mind. Since the paths were changing constantly, there was no way to navigate inside this place; I couldn't even remember where I came from!

I walked inside the newly opened hallway. After I walked for a while, I saw a steel door ahead. It was open. I calmly walked inside. The first thing that welcomed me was a dead adult body on the ground. There was no blood, and the body was probably very old. I walked past the body, looking around carefully. I might have gotten close to the so called 'quarantine'.

As I progressed, I saw a few jail doors on sides, but unfortunately, they were locked. I couldn't see anything inside. I slowly kept walking until I saw another steel door. The door was closed, and it had a large biological hazard icon painted on it. Near the door, on the wall, there was a small electronic keypad; the steel door was password protected. But, luckily for me, the door wasn't locked in the first place. I had doubts that the security system was still working anyway.

When I got past the doors, red beams of light appeared in the dark hallway. The lasers were probably a part of the security system too. I was amazed by the fact that they were still functional. Without much thought, I walked through the beams. Just then, a loud mechanical sound startled me, and I froze. There was something on the ceiling. First, I thought it was some sort of fan to regulate the air flow inside the compartments, but when I looked carefully, I was shocked. There was an automated machine gun! If that thing had worked properly, I would've been dead on the spot. It was either unloaded, or jammed. Perhaps they had unloaded it before evacuating the prison, just in case someone innocent stepped inside afterwards...

With my heart almost out of my chest, I got past the laser beams. There was a labeled map of the underground compartments in the hallway. I looked at the map for a while, but it was difficult to understand. It had lots of incomprehensible writings and numbers all around. I couldn't understand how to use the map, so I decided to explore without the help of the map.

Along the hallway, there were open doors on the left and right. I looked inside the first room on my left.

It was a rather big room with lots of surgery equipment. It reminded me of the backwards-transformed versions of the classrooms I had seen earlier; but this room was much bigger. I recklessly stepped inside, unmindful of the biological dangers of a quarantine area.

There were a lot of special equipment; hospital lightings, needles and syringes, lancets, medical scissors, pipes, old computer monitors as well as countless medicine bottles and packages scattered around on the floor.

I only noticed the dead body at the corner of the room when I was inspecting those medicines on the floor. I approached the dead body to inspect. The body was preserved relatively well, considering it had been there probably for decades... There was some greenish gel around the stomach area of the dead body. I had no idea what it could be, and I had no plans to infect myself with it, so I didn't go any further.

I left the room, got back to the hallway and looked inside the room on the right. I couldn't see much from the door, so I walked in.

The room was smaller than the previous one I just explored, but it's design was much different. Instead of being filled with random stuff, it had very little equipment. Near one of the walls, there was a metal panel with buttons and levers on it; and in the middle of the room, there was an electric chair with a man sitting on it. His body had lots of burning marks, and the smell of burnt flesh was unbearable.

But there was something wrong with the situation. This place was supposed to be evacuated decades ago. If that was true, it couldn't possibly smell like burnt flesh anymore, despite being a small, enclosed room underground. I could breathe easily, which meant that there was a good enough air circulation.

I almost had an heart attack when the man on the electric chair turned his head and talked with a broken voice.

"Save me!"