A/N: As 'Love Me Again' had ended at my Patreon page, the schedule will be filled up by 'Shadow In Your Mind'! So 'Shadow In Your Mind' will now be 3x per week!

XG 94 - Aren't you moved?

Lucky for the exhausted group, the sub-team was alright. The sub-team was also relieved when they arrived, with no one missing. After all, that big guy was too tough to handle.

Kenny's wound was bandaged and the bullet was taken out by Jackson to his best ability. The pale-faced Choi Yerim was the one that stitched it with forced steady hands as her boyfriend does not know how to stitch anything.

There were some chairs inside the hidden lab and they all took one each, not showing any reluctance to rest at all. Their tiredness had them willingly leave their safety to be guarded by the locked door.

With her bag on her lap, Wong Xue Guo rummaged her backpack for her water bottle and had to spend a few seconds letting her shaking fingers slowly curl around the bottle before securely lifting it out.

Before she could twist open the bottle cap, Chen Yibo had taken it, twisted the cap, and passed it back to her. He must have noticed her shaking hands.

Her hands were no longer the smooth lady-like hands but of a fighter. Seeing her hands, she ached for her previous smooth soft hands but was also proud to achieve such hands that could protect herself and hopefully will be able to prevent her parent's death in the future.

Moving her gaze from her hands, she thanked him and drank thirstily, moisturizing her mouth and throat that relished from the chilling water.

"We found a generator!" Hyunjin happily shared the news with his captain.

Beom Seok was happy with the news, but a little saddened that their enthusiasm was similar to when they found a gold bar. Their level of satisfaction after the apocalypse had dropped way too much.

"There's no electricity, so I can't retrieve any files from the computer. We should carry them back," Jackson reported. From the physical documents, he had succeeded in breaking apart the code used to hide the gene experiment and get a lot of results. But he was unsure if they had printed out everything.

There was more risk in using incomplete data that would lead to a dangerous conclusion.

"We will decide that later," Kang Xunsu said. It was not confirmed whether they had completed their mission yet and were too early to decide anything permanent. Their vehicle has enough space, but it would also be a great hassle and dangerous to carry both the computers and medicines at the same time.

After a short rest, Chen Yibo helped Jackson to rummage through the entire lab for any more related content they were searching for. With Chen Yibo helping, Choi Yerim took a short break and was obviously favouring her right leg.

"What happened to your leg?" Wong Xue Guo asked after Choi Yerim took a seat beside her.

"I accidentally sprained my ankle when running without looking. It's not that serious."

But to Wong Xue Guo, hurting their leg was serious, especially when they might definitely need to run again later. "Try to massage lightly and don't walk if needed."

"Thank you." She eyed the bottle cradling in Wong Xue Guo's arms that were still slightly shaking from exhaustion. "You and Chen Yibo have a sweet relationship."

"Huh?" Wong Xue Guo turned to look at Choi Yerim strangely.

Choi Yerim knew that the two young adults were not in a relationship, and that puzzled her. "You and he are still not together yet? He took such good care of you, aren't you moved?"

"Excuse me, but what are you saying?"

Choi Yerim smiled. "He treated you just like a boyfriend does. He likes you, right?"

Does he like her? Wong Xue Guo's mind buzzed. She indeed noticed he treated her well, but that does not mean he would be romantically interested in her. She was sure of it since he was a nice person that likes to help people.

But what if....?

Wong Xue Guo laughed. "If he does, why don't I know it? Don't think too much about it. We are just good friends."

The conversation ended that way when the others started to speak up.

"Does any of the files contain information about that big guy?" Changbin asked curiously.

"Yeah, that big guy might be an experiment! His healing rate is insane!" Lee Son Dong's eyes brightened.

Kenny shot them a look of disgust. "Why would you want to know more about that thing..."

Jackson smiled. "This floor is really the main base of the experiment. That Frankenstein imitation is indeed one of the experiments. Judging from their reports... it's hard to decide if their goal is achieved or not. To sum it up, that 'Frankenstein' is a dead body with other organs implanted in him that were not his to replace the missing ones. He was injected with the gene and it was successfully activated-"

"They found a way?" Vihaan asked in surprise.

"It's a terrible and rather inhuman method. I don't think our researchers would agree with it," Jackson said dryly and quickly added, "Not that I would agree with it either. We will use it as a reference and nothing else."

"So, what's the big guy's ability?" Wong Xue Guo asked.

"There is no 'ability' specifically mentioned in the report. He's a corpse with no mind of his own and basically always put into 'sleep' to keep him contained as he continues being experimented on. But that Frankenstein has a very mild self-healing rate, a little faster than an average human, so that could be counted as an ability?"

"How mild is the healing rate?" Chen Yibo asked with a poor expression.

"For example, he could easily heal a paper cut quickly."

"But he could now heal a gunshot wound quickly!" Lee Son Dong pointed out in disbelief.

Jackson rubbed his chin. "My guess is he needs to keep on eating to get stronger. I've checked, those bodies with their heads stuck inside the walls were all zombies with their hearts missing. They were mostly eaten by Frankenstein and he got stronger that way."

"So that's why this place has so few zombies," Beom Seok mumbled with a frown. While it was good that the big guy helped them clean up the zombies, it was bad that the big guy would get stronger in return. It was good they managed to kill him before he grew way too strong for them to kill.

"Did they make more of that big guy?" Hong Yan asked a very important question.

"Fortunately, no."

Everyone collectively sighed from Jackson's confirmation.

"They were able to go this far in their experiment, unlike our researchers that had spent more than ten years with no big discovery," Kenny commented airily.

Jackson gave him a dead-eyed look. "That's because we are principled people. If we throw away our morality, of course, we can get more results."

Not to mention, the government was keeping a tight leash on them, so they could not even use human experiments even if there were volunteers.

Kang Xunsu laughed. "Then you will be hunted down by the government if you do."

Jackson sighed loudly. "We are doing our best without violating any ethical code, but we are not being appreciated at all!"

Kenny scratched his head with his good hand and sheepishly said, "Sorry. I'm talking about things I don't know about."

Jackson was slightly taken aback and a bit pacified, saying it was nothing to be apologized about. But he looked happy to receive an apology.

Chen Yibo found the file about the big guy and flipped through it. "The big guy is actually a death sentence prisoner from the United States. He was shipped here with authorized consent... could this hospital work together with the US?"

"And there might be something similar to the big guy in the US too if they shared the experiment result. They should have experimented on many death sentence prisoners and only this Frankenstein succeeded," Jackson guessed and then rummaged for a file. "I think the hospital had also experimented on some patients from ICU secretly."

"What shitty doctors," Kang Xunsu gave his own opinion.

Jackson hesitated before adding, "The ICU patients ward is just a floor above us."

"Hah? You want to check it out?" Hyunjin asked in shock. He had assumed they had gotten their objective and will be leaving soon.

"If the doctors had experimented on the ICU patients, we could bring one back to check what they had done to them. There are no records of what they had done to the ICU patients. I think they are saved on the computer database."

Kang Xunsu stood up. "To prevent anything dangerous to the remaining mankind, we need to check. If there's any dead body, stab their heart."

Just after he said that he sat back down. "After we have enough rest."

Beom Seok gave him a thumbs up and Vihaan ate another energy bar.

A/N: I nearly forgot to develop the romance between two leads. Gotten too focused on developing the gene, poorly executed action scenes, and family bonding.

P.S. I'm not targeting the U.S. or Korea! It just so happen that they are famous countries to me, so I kinda use them >.<