Dimensional Store: Welcome to the Apocalypse Apartment - chapter 96

Qian Duoduo was Professor Feng’s honored guest. The security guards didn’t dare act rashly.

“Drop all your guns.” Gu Huaiwei dragged Qian Duoduo along, eyes sweeping warily over the raised muzzles as she backed toward the door.

“You heard her! Hurry up and toss your guns!” Qian Duoduo barked at the guards to stand down, then shamelessly played the scared kid, switching to pleading words. “Miss, miss, keep the muzzle a little farther from me. We can talk this out. Whatever you want, I can get it for you.”

Qian Duoduo didn’t want to die. She’d come to the Black Spiral Research Institute for money-for a foothold in the Upper District. She wasn’t about to throw her life away for nothing.

The guards hesitated.

Qian Duoduo’s tone turned sharp. “Put the guns down, now! I’m the professor’s honored guest. If anything happens to me, you’ll all pay for it!”

Just then, Professor Feng strolled in from outside, wearing a white lab coat. At his side was a female secretary in office attire.

Professor Feng wore gold-rimmed glasses and a silver-white watch on his wrist. His features were neat, carrying a scholarly air. He wiped his watch face, his voice utterly flat. “No one is to lower their guns.”

The secretary held a blue folder against her chest, her gaze cool and indifferent as she looked over everyone present.

The guards who had started to waver immediately raised their weapons again at Professor Feng’s words.

Gu Huaiwei felt Qian Duoduo’s body jolt in her grip. Qian Duoduo’s lips trembled as she looked at the man in the lab coat. “Professor Feng… why are you here? I told you I’d handle everything…”

“Have you handled it?” Professor Feng’s voice didn’t change; he simply asked.

“There was just… an accident halfway through.”

“I don’t like accidents.”

Qian Duoduo’s expression turned even worse.

Gu Huaiwei pressed the muzzle closer to Qian Duoduo’s temple and murmured into her ear, “Prove to them you’re still worth keeping alive. Otherwise, if I can’t get out, I’m taking you down with me.”

Qian Duoduo tried hard to angle her head away from the gun.

“Stop craning your neck,” Gu Huaiwei said. “Twist all you want-I can still hit you.”

Her tone had a hint of playful bite, like a cat baring its claws, but she wasn’t joking with Qian Duoduo.

Qian Duoduo stared at Professor Feng with desperate hope, praying he would save her.

“Professor, don’t forget-this woman’s intel was given to you by me first.”

Her pupils quivered. She didn’t dare blink, terrified of missing even the tiniest flicker of expression on Professor Feng’s face.

“I gave you her photo. I gave you her hair. I even helped you come up with the plan-using Xiao Youqi’s name to lure her here.

You have to save me! I’m still useful to you!”

Her voice climbed higher and higher, and at the same time, her confidence hollowed out.

Professor Feng’s silence-and the secretary’s indifferent face-forced Qian Duoduo to confront the truth.

They were planning to kill her once she’d outlived her usefulness.

Professor Feng didn’t spare Qian Duoduo a single extra glance. Cold light flashed across his gold-rimmed lenses as he looked at Gu Huaiwei, as casually as if discussing what to eat for dinner.

“If you think she’s too noisy, you can kill her.”

Gu Huaiwei’s long, pale fingers rested on the trigger. “She followed you, at least once. Saying that-aren’t you afraid you’ll chill your own people’s hearts?”

Professor Feng’s voice held not a shred of warmth. “Someone who betrays others will eventually be betrayed.”

At those words, Qian Duoduo’s facial muscles twitched. Her breathing sped up; her fingertips trembled. On the verge of collapse, she lowered her head, and the words burst out like rapid-fire.

“What do you people living in the Upper District even know?

Have you ever really seen what life in the Lower District is like? Do you have any idea how much we have to fight just to stay alive?”
Wanderers are only ever loyal to themselves. That’s how I am, and Xiao Youqi is the same. That’s our friendship-how we get along!

“I only went to take the benefits I wanted, only so I could live better. What did I do wrong? And who the hell are you people? You don’t have any right to punish me!”

“Not punishment,” Gu Huaiwei said softly. “Just paying you back for trying to hurt me.”

She chuckled, her gentle tone in no way stopping her from firing twice.

Two gunshots rang out. Qian Duoduo’s kneecaps shattered instantly. Her legs buckled and she dropped to her knees with a scream that turned the air raw.

“Ah! Fuck your whole family! My knees! Aaaah!” She collapsed into a pool of blood, clutching the mangled wounds, her throat filling with broken sobs and unwilling curses.

Gu Huaiwei crouched down, turning her back to Professor Feng and the others. She bent close and pressed the gun to Qian Duoduo’s temple, lowering her voice. “Afraid to die? Which is worse-death, or pain?”

“Live… I want to live…” Even in agony, Qian Duoduo scrabbled across the floor, desperate to crawl away from the muzzle.

She didn’t want to die.

No matter how unbearable the pain was, she didn’t want to die.

Gu Huaiwei clamped a hand down on her shoulder, pinning her in place.

“You don’t want to die, so I’ll let you live. While you’re hurting, think it through-who’s the one who put you in this state? You should know this: I didn’t want to kill you. It’s the person you were counting on who didn’t give you even the slightest chance.”

Tears spilled from Qian Duoduo’s eyes, the kind that came from pure physiology, forced out by pain.

“Save your hatred for someone worth hating,” Gu Huaiwei said, deliberately guiding her toward Professor Feng.

Even if it was only the tiniest sliver of strength she could exploit, Gu Huaiwei had to plant the seed.

Qian Duoduo stared at her. In her eyes were fear, hatred-and, faintly, a desperate hope that she might survive.

Her lips parted, but all that escaped was a ragged moan.

She probably wanted to say something to Gu Huaiwei, but this clearly wasn’t the time.

After saying her piece, Gu Huaiwei stood. She tossed the gun to the floor, then kicked it to the wall. Smiling, she raised both hands. “I surrender.”

Professor Feng offered no reaction to Gu Huaiwei’s choice not to kill Qian Duoduo.

He lifted his chin slightly and signaled the security guards beside him. “Take her.”

The guards rushed in, cuffed Gu Huaiwei’s hands behind her back, pulled a black hood over her eyes, and shoved her forward.

Gu Huaiwei didn’t resist.

As she was marched along, she replayed Professor Feng’s face and that of the female secretary, matching them to the man and woman who had stood beside her sister on that cassette tape.

On the tape, they’d had more collagen in their faces.

Now they looked a little old.

Underground Level Seven of the Black Spiral Research Institute.

Gu Huaiwei could tell it was Level Seven thanks to Bai Niao-his meticulous map had marked the landmarks on every floor.

The handcuffs and blindfold had been removed.

Gu Huaiwei was locked inside a transparent laboratory.

The temperature ran low, and the air reeked of disinfectant.

The lighting was bright enough that she could see, with brutal clarity, the things in the room next door-things she didn’t want to see at all.

Next door was an interrogation room.

Thick iron chains hung from the walls, along with serrated iron rings and sharp hooks.

On the table lay an array of blades, neatly lined up from small to large, along with assorted bottles and jars filled with grotesquely colored liquids.

Of the larger implements, Gu Huaiwei could only recognize an electric chair. As for the rest-just their shapes were enough to conjure bad possibilities.

And in this glass-walled lab, Gu Huaiwei wasn’t alone.

She had a roommate just as miserable as she was-Xiao Youqi.