A profound and unsettling silence had settled over the cavernous warehouse, broken only by the faint, tinny echo of a digital payment confirmation. It was a sound that had become hauntingly familiar to Michael over the past few hours, a chime that signified not acquisition, but a kind of hemorrhage. He sat slumped on an upturned crate by the vast rolling door, the cold of the concrete seeping through his trousers. The glow from his smartphone screen illuminated his face, pale and drawn, etching deep shadows under his eyes. Each successful transaction was a tiny, financial crucio curse, a jolt of agonizing loss that made his fingers twitch.
The business with the young widow, Ah Juan, dispatching that peculiar parcel of scented hosiery to her list of eccentric clientele, had been a mere prelude. A sideshow. A few hundred yuan scraped back into his coffers. Every little helps, he'd thought with a grimace, the old saying tasting like ash in his mouth. It was the philosophy of a man desperately trying to plug a leaking dam with chewing gum. The fortune in pristine, 'original flavour' US dollars he'd liberated from Base 0005 felt less like a treasure and more like a ticking clock. Half of it, over three million converted, was already vanishing into the ether with a speed that was frankly terrifying.
His thumb, moving with a will of its own, navigated the garish, chaotic interface of 'PinDuoDuo', a digital marketplace that felt both infinitely vast and suffocatingly cheap. The requirement was simple, monstrously so: nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) protection suits. The Detroit ruins were not merely a graveyard of steel and stone; they were a cauldron of latent death, a place where the very air could sear the lungs and rot the flesh. To enter unprepared was suicide.
The search results unfurled like a bizarre and terrifying tapestry. At one end, offerings so flimsy they resembled children's fancy dress—a gaudy, sequined 'belly-dancer's veil' of a suit for the price of a cheap lunch. The image of hulking brutes like Zak attempting to contort themselves into such a thing, ready to battle horrors, was so ludicrous it bordered on the hysterical. At the other end were the real deals: fully-sealed ensembles of heavy-duty polymer, with thick glass faceplates and elephant-trunk-like respirator filters. They promised absolute isolation, a personal capsule against a poisoned world, proof against radiation, acidic mists, and even the ghostly kiss of mustard gas. The price per unit was a gut punch. Over two thousand yuan. He needed three hundred, at a minimum. The calculator app delivered the verdict with cold, digital finality: over seven hundred thousand yuan. Gone. Just like that.
The phone in his hand vibrated, an incoming call from an unknown number. The seller, no doubt. The voice on the other end was unctuously cheerful, dripping with a sycophantic glee that made Michael's skin crawl. The man had clearly just landed a whale, a customer so profligate he was worthy of a celebratory feast. Michael ended the call abruptly, the man's ingratiating tone lingering like a bad smell.
But the suits were only the first layer of this financial abyss. There would be casualties. The suits weren't infallible. And then there were the people from Base 0005, now huddled in his settlement. He saw them in his mind's eye, shrouded in hoods and cloaks, hiding their minor but shameful mutations. Li Hao and the other youths were adapting, but the elders… they moved like ghosts, ashamed of their own flesh, unable to integrate. They needed medicine. Something to counteract the slow, insidious damage.
His mind, scrambling for a lifeline, snagged on the memory of the pharmaceutical salesman, Zhang Ming. A 'pen-pusher', a failure by his own estimation, but a man with access to the arcane world of modern remedies. The phone call that followed was a masterpiece of hollow promotion. Zhang's voice took on the cadence of a television huckster, pitching 'Anduolin Capsules'—a 'state-classified formula' that promised to tonify the blood, detoxify the system, and, most miraculously, repair cellular damage from radioactive exposure. "A truly remarkable therapeutic and prophylactic effect," Zhang chirped. "The results speak for themselves!"
"Where does one acquire these marvels? And at what cost?" Michael asked, playing his part in the farce.
The transition to hard numbers sent Zhang into a paroxysm of excitement. "A fortunate coincidence! Our company produces them! Originally 109 yuan per box, but with our 'Dragon Boat Festival' promotion—not 998, not 888—just 98!"
You absolute wanker,Michael thought, the vulgarity a quiet anchor in the storm of his spending. A 'Dragon Boat Festival' promotion. In September.The math was despairingly simple. Twenty-four capsules per box, a two-day supply at normal dosage. For the afflicted in the wasteland, the dosage would be higher, the treatment longer. The cost would be astronomical. Yet, not buying them was unthinkable. He placed an order for a thousand boxes, along with other miscellaneous pharmaceuticals, adding another two hundred thousand yuan to the day's butcher's bill. This was merely a trial. If it worked, it would become a permanent, gaping mouth to feed.
And so it continued. For hours, he was a statue of fiscal despair, perched on his crate, the cold seeping into his bones as the digital yuan flowed from his accounts like lifeblood from a fatal wound. The cheerful 'ding' of each successful payment was a fresh wave of nausea. The thought whispered to him, seductive and cruel: he could stop. He could take the remaining money, buy a flat, a car, and live a simple, comfortable life. Leave the fools of Base 0005 to their fate.
But he couldn't. It was an impossibility, as fundamental as gravity. The affliction of caring, it seemed, was as contagious as any virus.
A single, small mercy presented itself as evening drew in. A call from the sales director of the clothing factory. The previous 'live-streaming' shipment of goods had been a sensational success. Not only was the final payment being transferred, but the director, her voice brimming with a new, sycophantic respect, was proposing a new collaboration, this time with a fee increased by fifty thousand yuan. The news was a flicker of light in the profound darkness. It propelled him to a nearby food stall, where, with the savage appetite of a man clinging to sanity, he devoured three plates of fried noodles and ten chicken wings, then ordered three portions of egg-fried rice to go. The proprietress watched his gastronomic marathon with wide, fearful eyes, her hands trembling as she scooped the rice—less a cook and more a witness to a man attempting to eat his own anxiety, terrified he might expire on the spot and bring calamity upon her small establishment.
By nine o'clock, the final, grubby transaction was complete. Twenty barrels of dubious-quality diesel, purchased under the cover of darkness from a private fuel merchant, were offloaded into a corner of the warehouse. He knew the stuff was filthy, that it would clog injectors and foul engines with alarming speed. But purchasing such volume from a legitimate station was impossible; the 'agricultural machinery' excuse would only stretch so far. The solution was as inelegant as the problem: stock up on fuel filters and water separators, and resign himself to replacing them every ten days in the wasteland.
Alone at last, he made a final circuit of the warehouse's deserted corner. The silence was absolute. Heaving the great door shut, he climbed into the cab of the massive excavator. The engine coughed to life, a deep-throated diesel roar that echoed in the enclosed space. Then, with a concentration that made his temples throb, he focused. The air in front of the machine's bucket began to shimmer, to tear. A portal, humming with latent energy, swirled into existence. With a deep breath, he drove the excavator forward, through the tear in reality, and out into the perpetual twilight of the wasteland.
The guards' faces were priceless monuments of shock as the multi-ton machine rumbled out of the storage hovel. He didn't pause. He killed the engine, leapt from the cab, and sprinted back through the still-flickering portal into the warehouse. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird in a cage of bone. He scrambled onto the waiting loader, its bucket already piled high with supplies. Again, he drove through the gateway. Back and forth he went, a man possessed, a spectral ferryman moving his obscene cargo between worlds. The final journey was made in the cab of a heavy transport truck.
When it was done, the portal winked out of existence with a soft sigh. Michael stood on the cracked earth of the wasteland, surrounded by his monstrous purchases. The physical and metaphysical toll of the rapid-fire transits hit him like a physical blow. He staggered, his stomach convulsing. He had grown accustomed to the journey, but this… this was different. It was like being spun through a cosmic dryer. He doubled over, and with a great, wrenching heave, he vomited onto the dusty ground, the remains of his triumphant dinner a bitter testament to the cost of survival.