An Asset

Victor whirled around, eyes darting frantically across the room, but there was nothing—no one.

"Looooove…"

The voice drifted from everywhere and nowhere at once, an echo carried by ghosts of the past. It wasn’t just a whisper—it was real, tangible, like Azumi was standing right behind him, her breath warm against his ear. His heart clenched.

Then, another image flashed before his eyes.

He saw her.

Azumi stood before him, radiant in a flowing white gown, her dark hair cascading down in elegant waves. She was smiling at him—that same, breathtaking smile that had once made the world feel softer, warmer. The kind of smile that made a man believe, even in the darkest of times, that there was something worth holding onto.

Victor felt his own lips part slightly, as if to say her name, but no sound came out.

They were holding hands, their fingers interlaced, walking together down this very staircase. His body knew the sensation—the warmth of her palm, the gentle pressure of her grip—but his mind recoiled.

This never happened.

The realization slammed into him like a cold gust of wind. This wasn’t a memory. It couldn’t be. He had never walked down this staircase with Azumi. He had never seen her in a white gown, never danced with her in a grand hall. And yet, every detail felt so vivid, so painfully real, as though he had lived it a thousand times before.

Victor’s breath hitched as he looked past her, beyond the staircase.

The ruined remnants of the present dissolved into a grand, opulent past. The hall was alive with wealth and decadence. Ornate chandeliers, dripping with crystals, bathed the room in golden light. The walls, once scarred by time, were pristine, adorned with intricate gold moldings and towering marble columns.

Elegant guests in luxurious attire glided across the floor, their laughter rich and indulgent. Men in sharp-tailored suits clinked glasses of aged wine, their jeweled rings catching the candlelight. Women in lavish gowns draped in silk and velvet twirled as musicians played a waltz, their string instruments weaving a melody of high society and extravagance.

Victor’s pulse pounded.

This wasn’t just a vision. It felt real—too real.

His grip on the railing tightened, his mind racing to make sense of what was happening. Then, as if drawn by an unseen force, his eyes flicked back to Azumi.

She was still smiling at him, but there was something different now—something almost knowing in her gaze. Slowly, gracefully, she reached into the empty space before her and pulled something out of nowhere.

Victor’s breath caught.

A flower.

But not just any flower.

It was transparent, almost crystalline, as if sculpted from the purest glass. Yet, as she turned it in her delicate fingers, a soft luminescence pulsed from within. Tiny, glowing pollens drifted from its petals, shimmering like fairy dust, dissolving into the air like wisps of light.

Victor stared, captivated, his mind a storm of confusion and awe.

“What… is that?” His own voice barely sounded like his.

Azumi didn’t answer. She simply held the flower between them, her expression serene, her eyes deep with something he couldn’t quite grasp.

And then, just as suddenly as it had come, the vision shattered.

The grand ballroom faded. The warmth of Azumi’s touch vanished. The chandeliers dimmed, and the waltzing guests dissolved into dust.

Victor stumbled back, his breath ragged, the cold emptiness of reality rushing in to fill the space where the illusion had been. The staircase was once again broken, the air thick with decay.

But his heart was still hammering.

That wasn’t just a hallucination. It was something else.

Something terrifying.

Because no matter how hard he tried, he knew he had never lived that memory.

And yet… some part of him ached as if he had lost something precious... or something else.

Victor swallowed hard, tightening his grip on his shotgun. His fingers trembled slightly as he exhaled, dragging a hand down his face. He forced himself to move, descending carefully, but Amanda caught the paleness in his face the moment she looked at him.

"Victor? What's wrong?" Her voice was laced with concern as she reached out, about to press a hand to his forehead.

He instinctively stepped back. "I'm fine," he said quickly, clearing his throat in an attempt to steady himself. His vision swam for a second before sharpening again.

Amanda didn’t look convinced. Neither did Hiroshi, who stood beside her, arms crossed, watching him closely. But Victor ignored their concern and let his gaze shift to the couple Amanda had saved earlier.

They sat on the other side of the room, their wounds being tended to by the others. The man winced slightly as his arm was wrapped, while the woman whispered something reassuring to him.

"How are they?" Victor asked.

"Stable. Just minor injuries," Amanda replied, before nodding toward the boyfriend. "His name is Kento Yanai. Funny thing—he might actually be related to Code Nine."

"Azumi," Victor corrected, his jaw tightening. He hated those code names. Hated the way they stripped people of their identity, turning them into assets instead of human beings most especially Azumi.

Amanda winced. "Right. Sorry. Anyway," she went on, "he's a blue belt in Karate. Knows how to fight, but he's hesitant to use it—too much physical contact. He’s afraid of getting bitten."

She gestured to the woman beside him. "And his girlfriend, Esther Guo, is a swimmer. Not sure how useful that’ll be out here, but at least they’re both in shape."

Victor nodded, filing the information away. He'd been so focused on tracking Xianyu Zhao that he almost forgot—they were also out here to find survivors, to recruit them.

"So, neither of them are Codes, right?" Hiroshi asked.

Amanda shook her head. "Nope."

"Uhm."

Amanda and Hiroshi turned to Victor, both of them immediately on edge at his hesitation.

"Do you have any idea what this place was before the outbreak?" he asked, looking at Amanda. "I didn’t see any signs when we came in, and something about it feels... off."

Amanda furrowed her brows, glancing around as if seeing the place for the first time. “Now that you mention it… I don’t think I saw a sign either.”

She folded her arms, tapping her fingers against her bicep in thought. “It’s strange. A building this big should have something—an old banner, a rusted nameplate, something to tell us what it used to be.”

Hiroshi, who had been watching the exchange in mild confusion, tilted his head. “Why do you ask?”

Victor hesitated for a moment before exhaling, his grip tightening around his shotgun. He could still feel the ghost of Azumi’s touch, the warmth of a memory he knew wasn’t real but felt too real to ignore. His mind was screaming at him to forget it, to move on, but his gut told him otherwise.

“I just… saw something,” he admitted finally.

Amanda’s eyes sharpened. “Saw what?”

Victor shook his head, unwilling to go into detail—not yet. “It doesn’t matter right now. What matters is I could figure out what this place used to be.” His voice was steadier than he expected, but Amanda still eyed him with suspicion.

“Well, we could try and help you searching the rooms if that's so important,” she offered. “See if there are any documents left behind, anything that might tell us more.”

Victor nodded, though a heavy unease settled in his chest. He had a bad feeling—one that wasn’t going away anytime soon.

Hiroshi, oblivious to the tension hanging in the air, clapped his hands together. “Alright, so we’re playing detectives now? Sweet. I call dibs on the first cool discovery.”

Amanda rolled her eyes. “Just don’t touch anything that looks remotely suspicious.”

Victor barely heard them. His mind was still on the vision. On Azumi. On the glowing flower she had held in her hands.

Something about this place was wrong.

And he was going to find out why.

"Are you sure about this tho?" Hiroshi swallowed.

The three of them stood in tense silence before the hallway, its darkness stretching ahead like an open maw. The weak emergency lights barely did anything to push back the shadows, and a damp, musty scent hung in the air.

Victor exhaled slowly, gripping his shotgun a little tighter. “There could be infected in there.”

Amanda nodded, raising her rifle. “Yeah. And they’d be the worst kind.”

The thought was unsettling. Zombies that had adapted to the shadows—silent, waiting—only stirred when prey came too close. Victor had heard stories from their companions who had survived from being dragged into pitch-black rooms.

Even the survivors didn't know how they had actually escaped. Miracle, perhaps.

“I hate this,” Hiroshi muttered.

Amanda glanced at him. “Then stay here.”

He scoffed. “And let you two fight night-crawling zombies alone? Hell no.”

Victor took point, moving cautiously. Every step echoed too loudly against the ruined walls. The air thickened as they ventured deeper, and their own breaths became the only sounds filling the silence.

Finally, they reached the rusted door with the barely readable sign: Records.

Amanda tried the handle. “Locked.”

Victor stepped up, inspecting the door. It looked sturdy, but the rusted lock was weak. “Move back.”

A single shotgun blast shattered the lock, sending echoes ricocheting through the building. They all paused, listening.

Nothing.

No shuffling, no groaning. No sudden rush of bodies from the darkness.

Amanda let out a breath of relief. “Alright. Let’s move.”

The door creaked open, revealing a room filled with overturned filing cabinets and scattered papers. A single flickering desk lamp provided weak illumination, casting jagged shadows across the floor as though someone had recently just been there.

Hiroshi whistled lowly. “Yeah… someone definitely trashed this place and it looks extremely obvious wow!”

Amanda stepped inside first, kicking aside loose papers. She picked up a folder, flipping through it, but her expression quickly darkened. “These are blank.”

Victor frowned. “What?”

She turned the pages toward them. They were yellowed with age, but completely empty. No writing, no stamps—just faded paper.

Hiroshi rifled through a nearby drawer. “Same here. It’s like someone emptied the files and left a bunch of useless scraps.”

Victor’s stomach twisted. This wasn’t just an abandoned records room. It had been wiped clean.

He knelt by a metal cabinet that had been forced open, its contents missing. “This place wasn’t ransacked by scavengers.”

Amanda’s eyes narrowed. “It was cleared out.”

Someone—whoever had been here last—didn’t just leave in a hurry. They had erased this place. Like they wanted to make sure no one ever found out what it had been used for.

Victor’s pulse quickened.

They were walking through the remnants of something secret. Something deliberately buried.

Then, amid the mess, something caught his eye.

A single photograph.

He picked it up carefully. It was old, its edges curling, but the image was clear. A group of people stood together in what looked like a formal event. Some wore suits, others lab coats. And at the center of it all——

His breath caught in his throat.

Azumi.

She stood there in a pristine white gown, just like in his vision. But she wasn’t alone.

The man beside her—Victor recognized him.

Kento Yanai.

The same man Amanda had just saved.

Victor’s grip on the photo tightened.

“What the hell is going on?” Hiroshi gasped the moment he saw the photo.

Victor turned to Amanda. "That Kento knows something!"