Chapter 24
Chapter 24
After she had chosen her identity, Song Qingxiao had entered the trial as a nurse. According to the nurse, the place was managed as a fully-closed system. The doctors and nurses would change shifts every five days. The five-day period matched the numbers counting down in her mind perfectly.
However, the trial did not prepare a place for her to go to after she got off work. In other words, it meant that the trial mission would last for five days. If she could not complete her task within those five days, she would be at the end of the road.
She took another look at the instructions in her consciousness. ‘Protect the people. Obliterate failure. Upon completion of task: 1000 credits.’
Song Qingxiao took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The numbers before her eyes had become 119: 41: 18.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
The sound of the clock ticked away. It sounded like a death sentence that hung over her head. The scene was brightly lit by the sun. The environment was calm and peaceful, but Song Qingxiao felt inexplicably uneasy.
Since she was there, she had no other choice. There was no use in panicking, so she needed to calm down and try to make sense of everything. The sooner she figured out the whole story about the trial, the sooner she could leave.
“Look here, Xiao Yu planted these plants last year. They’re growing pretty well.”
Nurse Zhang was still giving Song Qingxiao a tour of the area enthusiastically. Song Qingxiao calmed her nerves and tried to ignore the noise in her mind and the numbers before her eyes that disrupted her focus. She was worried that she would miss even a single word that Nurse Zhang spoke.
The quarantined psychiatric hospital was not very large. It could be divided into two zones. The first was a five-storied building, and the second was a leisure center. The building was split into two sections; the medical staff’s offices and dormitories were partitioned off, while the other half consisted of the patient wards and the treatment rooms.
There was no one in the leisure room downstairs. According to Nurse Zhang, there were 27 patients in the hospital, all in the same building. Despite that, Song Qingxiao felt as though her surroundings were very quiet.
Through the transparent full-length windows, she could see the tall walls around the leisure center. It nearly blocked off all of her line of sight to the outdoors, making the hospital seem like its own space.
“This place is straightforward to remember. The time here is also very regulated.”
Nurse Zhang seemed to take Doctor Liu’s words to heart and was focused on showing Song Qingxiao the ropes conscientiously. “The lights are switched on in the patient wards at six in the morning. The patients get up and wash up, brush their teeth, then we help them trim their nails and hair.”
She explained the duties of a nurse and mentioned that the daily work schedule was split into two shifts—morning and night respectively.
“The morning shift starts at 8am to 6pm in the evening. The nurses may have to work the night shift because of staff shortages and the heavy workload. Hence, it can be quite tough.”
As soon as Nurse Zhang said that, a complicated look flashed across her eyes. She looked a little guilt-ridden. Song Qingxiao did not come here to work for real. Her mission only lasted five days. If she could not complete the task within five days, she would not keep her life. With that on her mind, she did not have the headspace to worry about the job being tough.
In fact, she hoped that she would be able to master the job within the shortest time possible and figure out the details of the mission tasks.
Song Qingxiao did her best to ignore the disturbance of the ticking noise in her mind. She pursed her lips and put on a tiny smile. “It’s okay. I’m hoping that I can learn my role well and familiarize myself with the job as soon as possible. If it’s possible, put me on the next available night shift.”
Her initiative to ask for the shift impressed Nurse Zhang. In an instance, Song Qingxiao could visibly sense that Nurse Zhang was looking at her more warmly. In a mysterious, blood-thirsty space like that where she could lose her life at any time, Song Qingxiao was stunned to have met someone like Nurse Zhang, who was such a kind and gentle soul.
Nurse Zhang took her hand and broke her out of her trance, forcing her to suppress her feelings of awkwardness.
“Qingxiao, you’re the best. However, you’ve just arrived today. There’s no rush. Why don’t you join me this afternoon to familiarize yourself with the job duties? Get some good rest tonight, and we’ll talk about you doing a night shift tomorrow.”
The staff dormitories were not far from here. Two people shared a bunk bed in a room. Nurse Zhang led Song Qingxiao to collect her personal items before bringing her back to the dormitories.
The lower bunk belonged to Nurse Zhang, but since Song Qingxiao had arrived, the kind lady collected her stuff and moved it to the upper bunk without saying a word. Perhaps it was because she had been won over by Song Qingxiao earlier when she offered to take an extra shift.
Nurse Zhang considerately gave Song Qingxiao space to change. That brief moment was an opportunity for Song Qingxiao to be alone. The instructions in her consciousness had not changed. Since she had grown used to the ticking noise of the clock hands, she gradually learned to control her mind so that she could still function.
However, even though she had not figured out why the doctor was there, Song Qingxiao had a feeling that it was not a coincidence. She wondered where the people who entered the test space with her ended up since the trial had started. She wondered what roles they played.
She suppressed the thought in her mind and walked out of the room once she was done changing. Nurse Zhang waited outside. When she saw Song Qingxiao, she smiled as she handed her a lanyard.
“While you were changing, I went to grab your lanyard for you.”
As Nurse Zhang spoke, Song Qingxiao noticed the name tag on her chest. The tag had Nurse Zhang’s name on it.
‘Zhang Xiaoyu’.
The lanyard in her hand had Song Qingxiao’s name on it. Nurse Zhang explained, “You’ve just started, so we’ve not made your work pass yet. After a few days, you won’t need to wear this anymore once your work pass is made. It’ll be much more convenient then.”
Song Qingxiao nodded her head and placed the lanyard around her neck. She walked with Nurse Zhang into the patient ward area.
“The hospital originally had two grades of care units—level one and level two.”
As they walked towards the patient area, Nurse Zhang lowered her voice as though she was worried about startling something. The environment here was extremely quiet. She wore shoes with soft soles, so she made no sound when she walked, just like a ghost.
“However, we don’t have many patients in this hospital. All of their conditions are quite severe, so we no longer have any divisions.”
She could see the door leading into the patient area in the distance. A huge metal gate divided the patient area into two. There were three stages of security fences to get through. Through the slits of the security fence, the long corridor appeared deeply terrifying. It looked as though it was the throat of a huge beast that gaped wide open, preparing to swallow a person whole.
Nurse Zhang put the key into the keyhole. The door opened with a click. As she pushed the door open, an ear-piercing screech rang out. Song Qingxiao frowned in reaction.
A chilling breeze blew past. Song Qingxiao seemed to hear someone crying faintly. It was frigid and cold. She glanced at Nurse Zhang, but Nurse Zhang’s expression did not change. She did not know if Nurse Zhang had not heard it or if she had grown accustomed to it.
Goosebumps appeared on her arms. Once the third security fence was opened, Song Qingxiao seemed to have entered a new scene. Even though they were still in the same building, the medical staff’s offices and dormitories had been newly painted in a fresher white coat of paint. The glass windows let in a lot of light, and the facilities were not worn out.
The patient area was mainly painted in a light blue color. The windows were made out of a special material, and there was a corridor in the middle. The patient rooms were on one side of the corridor, while the on-duty doctor’s office and other treatment rooms were on the other side. The nurses’ station was next to the elevator in the middle. There were some windows at the end of the windows, but they had been sealed shut by metal bars. It felt as though even sunlight would not be able to stream through those bars.
Someone could be heard sobbing here. Nurse Zhang seemed to have heard it as she turned to Song Qingxiao and asked her, “Are you scared?”
Song Qingxiao shook her head. In her field of vision, she could see that the numbers counting down had become 119: 21: 36. At that moment, there was nothing else scarier than that.
She forced herself to ignore the existence of those numbers. She looked through the windows to see inside the patient rooms. The patient room to her left had two beds. There were two blank-looking patients seated on each bed. They fixed their eyes on Song Qingxiao, staring at her intently with unblinking eyes. Their movements were stiff, and their expressions were frozen.
Their faces were unfamiliar to Song Qingxiao. She returned her gaze and was about to speak when she felt someone approach her from behind. A huge force pushed against her. Someone caught the blue lanyard that she had just hung around her neck and pulled her backward with it, strangling her in an instant.
The force was so strong that her body began to move backward with it. In a moment of carelessness, Song Qingxiao’s knees buckled, and she fell to the floor with a loud crash.
However, the person who dragged her did not let go. In fact, they continued to pull her backward. In the blink of an eye, they had managed to drag her more than a meter away from Nurse Zhang.
It seemed like Song Qingxiao could not escape her fate. She somehow always ended up with her neck being strangled!
Song Qingxiao repeatedly coughed as she struggled to breathe. Somehow, she ended up with someone strangling her neck in the trial when she had also been strangled by the doctor with the mouse cord in the previous trial.
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