Rick watched Lin Feng's broad, sturdy back and felt an inexplicable sense of calm settle over him.

From laying out the initial plan to pushing through the operation now, this guy had always led from the front. Never shirked. Never deflected.

He was a capable leader, no. Exceptional was more like it.

A walker rounded the corner of the stairwell. Before it could manage its customary hiss, a sharp flash of steel chopped down and its skull split wide open. It dropped without another sound.

Lin Feng wrenched the fire axe free from the bone. The EXP notification ticked up by one, and he felt his appreciation for this apocalyptic tool grow another notch.

A little heavy. That was the only flaw.

Then again, Lin Feng was short on a lot of things, raw strength was not one of them.

A perfect match, honestly.

That said, he didn't let it go to his head. Wherever the three could move through fast, they moved through fast. Grinding EXP could wait. There'd be plenty of time for that later.

By the time they reached the second floor, the walkers filling the outer hallway had thickened considerably. And judging by the clothes on the bodies, none of them looked like upstanding citizens.

Gang members? Street thugs?

Had people actually been here seeking medical treatment when the apocalypse first hit?

That was a problem. Whether they had turned or not, the cleanup cost had just gone up.

Lin Feng hefted the fire axe, dropped a walker that was shambling toward him with a single swing, and said, "Stay sharp. There could still be armed gangsters in here."

Rick drew the heavy revolver, unease creeping into the words. "Lin Feng, maybe we should consider finding another location?"

Switch? Switch to what, exactly?

What did that make every walker he'd hacked through to get here?

He didn't answer. His footsteps answered for him. This illegal clinic, he was taking it.

Rick read that clearly enough and said nothing more, quietly swinging the revolver toward every shadow and corner that could hide a person.

The corridor was short. The three reached the double-layered door in no time.

Lin Feng gave it an experimental push. Nothing. He pulled. Still nothing.

He clicked his tongue. There were people inside, probably from when the world first went under. They had sealed themselves in. Maybe surgery. Maybe fear. Maybe both.

He couldn't rule out that someone had turned this place into a stronghold later on, but given how many walkers they'd cleared through to get here, that seemed unlikely.

Rick lowered his voice. "So what's the plan? Force it open?"

Lin Feng glanced at the walkers sprawled across the floor behind them. "What do you think the odds are that one of them has a key?"

"...Have you ever won the lottery?"

"Then there's no other way." Lin Feng raised the fire axe and lined up the strike.

The blade was halfway up when a mechanical sliding sound came from behind the door.

"Guys, don't do this. I know what you're after. Let's make a deal — I give you medicine, you give me a little food and water. Fair enough, right?"

Lin Feng grinned. "So you're a doctor, or...?"

"What do you think, pal?"

"No, no, no. You need to answer that honestly. It determines how much longer your life runs, buddy."

"...I'm a doctor."

"Good. I hope that's true. Now you've got two choices: open the door and let us in, or I go round up a pack of walkers and stack them against your exit. And just to be clear — you're not sitting on much food or water, are you?"

Rick stared at Lin Feng like he'd just seen a ghost, expression full of disbelief.

Seeing Lin Feng's best side plenty of times was one thing. Seeing this side, methodical, utterly without scruples, sat differently.

Silence stretched behind the door. Then, finally: "You wouldn't actually do that."

"Who knows?" Lin Feng said, completely unbothered.

Another long pause.

Then a click. A creak. The door swung open.

The three moved inside fast. Daryl stepped to one side, compound crossbow leveled dead-on at a young white doctor in casual clothes.

The doctor had both hands raised, but the eyes were steady, almost too steady, like someone who had already made peace with a situation like this. "Take whatever medical supplies you need and go."

Growl.

The stomach chose that exact moment to betray its owner. The sound was loud enough that the doctor's face flushed red immediately.

Lin Feng swallowed a laugh, reached into the pack, and pulled out two bottles of water and two bags of crackers. "Have something to eat, Doctor. That goes for the friend you've got hiding back there, too."

The doctor's pupils shrank. The instinct was to deny it, but when those eyes landed on Lin Feng's half-smile, the denial died in the throat. There was a distinct feeling that every thought was already visible.

Was this man actually a devil?

Lips pressed together, gaze dropped. "It's just me in here."

Those words hit Lin Feng somewhere raw, like a brand pressing against a nerve. The smile froze on his face. "Just you?"

The doctor caught the shift, read it as belief, and nodded quickly.

"Daryl, sweep the room. There may be a walker tied up in here that this doctor hasn't mentioned."

Daryl blinked. Then nodded, choosing to trust Lin Feng's read, and raised the crossbow again.

"No, no, no, she isn't a walker, I misspoke, please don't—"

Daryl didn't stop. Crossbow up, moving carefully deeper into the room.

In a panic, the doctor had no choice. "Cathy, can you come out on your own?"

"Dad?"

The voice was small and bright, unmistakably a little girl's. Daryl stopped and turned, disbelief written across the set of that jaw, eyes landing on the doctor's desperate, pleading look.

When Daryl turned back around, a little girl barely waist-height was standing in the doorway. Casual clothes. A ragdoll clutched to the chest. A handful of small freckles across the face.

Cathy looked up at Daryl and blinked those big eyes. Something soft and reluctant moved across that expression, but the little arms still stretched out, offering up the ragdoll.

"Do you want to play with my doll? Be careful, though. It hurts easily."

Those words went straight through Daryl like something that couldn't be blocked. A low curse came out under the breath. The crossbow came down.

Daryl tried to pull together some kind of reassuring smile. The face wasn't cooperating. It had all the warmth of a frozen wall.

Irritated, Daryl turned and marched back to Lin Feng's pack, yanked it open without ceremony, and dug out two bags of crackers suited for a kid, a can of meat, and a bottle of water.

Then trod softly back over, crouched slightly, and held it all out. "Hungry? Eat up."

Yeah. In that moment it was clear that even basic comfort wasn't exactly in the skill set.

Goddamn Merle.

Rick reached over and tugged Lin Feng's sleeve, looking at him directly. "We can't threaten a father in front of his child. That's not right. Is it, man."

Lin Feng:? So what you're telling me is, I'm the bad guy now?

➤ Next: Doctor Marcus — Everything Changes

Chapter 10 - Doctor Marcus — Everything Changes

After Cathy came out, the tense, knife-edge atmosphere in the room dissolved entirely, like sunlight breaking through storm clouds and pouring down across the earth.

Except for one axe-wielding man whose face had gone rather dark.

One blink, and he'd gone from protagonist to supporting character to outright villain. Who was he even supposed to complain to about that?

Alas. Day one of missing Merle.

"So you're saying there's a high probability this location is a gang hideout, and the firearms we need might be inside?"

The doctor took a sip of water, chewed the last of the biscuit, and slowly nodded, pointing to a crude hand-drawn map.

"Theoretically, yes. But you know how it is, it's been a long time. Who can say whether they've already cleaned the place out?"

Lin Feng nodded. If the doctor had insisted with absolute certainty that the weapons were still there, that would have been the real red flag.

"Then let's move. If it's not safe or someone beat us to it, we pull out immediately."

"Wait — you're coming back, right?"

Lin Feng looked at the doctor. "Yes. I promise. But before we do, I need you to lock this door tight. I don't want to come back to a new problem."

The doctor glanced over at Cathy, nibbling at the biscuit in tiny, careful bites. Then he looked up.

"Marcus Stewart. That's my name. Please — let me join your team."

Lin Feng gave Marcus a pat on the shoulder. "Then sit tight a little longer. We'll be back soon."

With that, the three filed out, and the door locked shut behind them.

"Dad, are we leaving?"

"Yeah, little darling. You ready?"

Cathy gave that small head a nod. "As long as Dad and Momo are here, I'm not afraid of anything."

Marcus ruffled Cathy's hair, then dug out a backpack and started packing up the clinic's medicines.

On the other side of the door, Lin Feng crouched over the walkers on the floor and began going through their bodies.

Gang members. There was no way they weren't carrying.

He pulled out four handguns, Glock family, by the look of them. He passed one to Daryl and one to Rick, then ran a quick check on each.

No jams. Smooth slide. Full magazines. Good to go.

He tucked one into his waistband, and the three of them stepped out of the stairwell.

No walkers massed outside. Lin Feng let out a quiet breath.

In a narrow alley like this, getting boxed in left exactly one option: retreat back into the building. Not ideal.

"Go, go, go. Same as always — move careful, stay sharp, keep it quick."

He took point with the fire axe and didn't look back.

His experience progress had hit 27. He wanted to push it to fifty before heading back.

Rick and Daryl stayed quiet behind him, occasionally raising gun and crossbow to sweep the shadowed corners where something, or someone, might be waiting. Lady Luck was holding for now. No massive herd, no ambush jumping out from the dark.

The group reached the location Marcus had marked before long. It looked like an auto repair warehouse.

Lin Feng's eyes sharpened. Gasoline, too?

He was already moving forward when Rick's hand caught his arm and pulled.

He turned. Rick was pointing toward a far corner, where a few walkers were shuffling aimlessly in the direction of the warehouse.

Work clothes. Auto mechanics, from the look of them. But factoring in Marcus's intel, these unlucky bastards were almost certainly the gang members left behind to hold the place.

Rick smiled. "Looks like our luck's holding pretty well."

Lin Feng gave a flat look. "No popping champagne at halftime, bro."

Rick nodded. "Fair enough."

"Daryl handles the walkers. We go in and search."

Lin Feng clapped Daryl on the shoulder. Daryl understood without a word, crossbow came up, bolt flew.

It punched straight into the walker's skull, cracked through bone, and killed the brain.

Lin Feng and Rick were already moving, circling wide and fast toward the warehouse's back door.

Lin Feng twisted the handle, pushed gently. It swung open.

He handed the axe to Rick, drew the Bowie knife from his waist, and took the lead. In a tight space like this, a short blade beat a long-handled fire axe every time.

The two moved in together. Lin Feng swept each corner, every dark gap, every place a person, or a walker, could be hiding.

The interior was crowded with car parts and scattered repair tools: wrenches, sockets, all of it. Not a neat arrangement, but not total chaos either. Nothing that looked like it had been touched recently.

Then shuffling footsteps broke the quiet from the left, uneven, stumbling, unmistakable.

Lin Feng turned sideways and fixed his eyes on the locked door.

A glance at Rick. They moved to the door together. The shuffling inside grew louder, the low guttural snarling more urgent and agitated.

A cold glint crossed Lin Feng's eyes. They couldn't wait any longer, linger too long and they'd draw more walkers, and this would get complicated fast.

He stepped forward, grabbed the handle, twisted, and shoved hard.

The door burst open. The walker stumbled back, thrown off balance.

Lin Feng closed the distance instantly, blade into the eye socket, a short twist, then out.

The walker dropped and went still.

He exhaled.

The small room was nearly pitch dark. No windows. A storage room, probably.

Lin Feng stepped in and swept the space. Something was off.

Most of it was chaotic clutter, but buried among the junk, he could make out long wooden crates.

The corner of his mouth curved up.

Jackpot.

"Rick, I think I've got something. Hold the door for me."

Rick didn't question it. "No problem. Be quick."

Lin Feng moved further in, carefully shifting the debris aside until the wooden crates were fully exposed.

He pried the lid off the first one with his knife.

Auto repair tools.

...Hm. Did he read this wrong?

He opened the next one. Then another. Each one the same, random junk, nothing remotely weapon-shaped.

He kept digging.

His hand caught on a cardboard box that felt wrong, too rigid, too solid.

Hm.

He dragged it out and opened it. Inside: a metal case.

At that point, he already knew.

Well, well. Hiding in plain sight, huh.

He pried off the lid.

Handguns, packed in a loose jumble. Glocks, Smith & Wessons, Colts. More than a dozen magazines off to the side, and several biscuit tins stuffed with ammunition.

Hah. Good thing Lin Feng's always been sharp, otherwise he really would've walked right past it.

He took a few Glocks and two of the ammo tins into his backpack, then swept the rest directly into his dimensional storage.

No heavy weapons. But small meat was still meat.

He straightened up, and stopped.

The wall behind the crates was off. Compared to everything around it, the color was noticeably lighter.

Lin Feng reached out and knocked.

Muffled. But hollow.

➤ Next: What Else Could Be Done?