Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

As the Admiral bumped the glass—which I assumed was military-grade reinforced glass—with the bottom of his closed fist, it just made a dull sound before the “ex-wife” inside rose up unnaturally by flinging its whole discolored body to the sound it heard.

Additionally, it also barely made any sound when it collided on the spot the Admiral bumped but it did leave nasty mark of its bodily fluids which slowly got washed down by the steam coming from the inside.

‘What the fuck…’

From a quick glance, it was just a simple-looking aquarium with nothing on the inside to sustain a human being.

All it had was a light source, the mist spray, and some random ass bullshit to monitor everything that was happening inside.

But yeah, the figure inside couldn’t even be called “human” anymore because it looked like what would happen if you crumpled a piece of paper and tried to straighten it back out.

Sure, it did have some external identifiers like its face had a showdown with Mike Tyson or its limbs that looked like it was more than double-jointed due to its injuries, but in all honesty, it looked like a person tried to volunteer as a crash test dummy and somehow survived.

Despite all that, I was more confused as to how it could move unnaturally—or even move at all—because this “senator” needed more than a wheelchair or a shoulder to lean on.

I was just staring at it the whole time like everyone else who saw this scene for the first time, but the Admiral was looking straight at me.

“Take a closer look. My ex-wife’s one of one if any of that matters…”

“Does your daughter know?” I asked as I moved a few steps forward.

“No.”

Oscar chimed in, “Can I also tap the glass?”

“Sure.”

And as Oscar did, instead of a “ragdoll” flinging itself to any known sound source, we all just heard a dull click after we saw it motion to throw something. S~eaʀᴄh the ηovёlFire .net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“The hell?”

“What’re those—”

“That’s also her. Part of her, at least.”

“…”

“…”

To our surprise, the senator was making use of its bones as throwables because we saw pieces of its skeletal system on the flooring, but that just made us even more confused. Our bones should be the structure that keeps our bodies upright but even with the unnatural movement, it shouldn’t be able to fling itself, throw an item, or much less, move.

But yeah, we saw it “search” its right arm for more “artillery” though we discovered that it was a Southpaw from that action.

It seemed like its right arm was just a very long appendage but its whole muscle configuration was jumbled all over. I was pretty sure it had five bicep heads and three long heads for its forearms—aside from its fingers just being nubs—and it made me think of one of our own.

‘Maybe?’

I would’ve thought that this was a doing of a stitcher/slurper but I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any mention of a special like that from overseas. Even so, what if it was just a matter of time until each continent or country have the same type of shit—but it seemed like my prediction was a little off.

The Admiral pressed some sort of button to conceal his “ex-wife” by turning off the lights from the inside. But before the lights completely dimmed down, we saw the spray coming out of the small nozzles give out a lot more but the color of it was still the same.

I wasn’t sure if it was some way to make it “sleep” but we still have a lot more questions than answers—which I’m gonna assume he doesn’t have the right answer for it either.

“I’m sorry, gents, she has to ‘recollect’ herself after that. We can’t just stress her body out even more—because we can’t just feed her outsider meat…”

Oscar cut in before I managed to, “Holdup— That’s a lot more questions than answers. We gotta need more context than that!”

The Admiral let out another long sigh, “Let’s talk upstairs, I just wanted you all to see that before I surrender her. I know she’s not my wife anymore and she really doesn’t look like her anymore but—”

I just had to do it, “Admiral. I don’t know if this would work with you or if this is appropriate but does this aquarium have a catching tray of sorts where we could get a sample of her blood or any of her bodily fluids? Maybe even a bone or two? We don’t need a lot but we do have Japanese scientists in a different island group and they would greatly appreciate the help.”

“…”

“Admiral?”

As I asked him that question, the Admiral just looked straight at me for what felt like a whole minute before he let out another sigh and looked down. After what seemed to be another minute, he looked back at me and nodded a few times before he answered:

“We already have some samples to pass on. It is kind of diluted with the mist and all but you just gotta collect a lot of it, you know? Don’t worry though, this is just the alcohol talking, I already made up my mind about this.”

“T-Thank you, Admiral— no, Mr. Burke. For the record… I won’t charge you interest with the alcohol—”

“HAH! Is that so?”

“Mine’s not watered down—”

He suddenly jabbed my gut before he kind of stared me down as he lightly shook his head, “Asshole. Easy on the jokes, alright?”

“Right… Apologies.”

But yeah, I took one last look at the aquarium before we followed the Admiral up the staircase but it was very obvious that the weight on his shoulders was as heavy as the steps he was taking.

It didn’t take long before we reached their “war room” of sorts but the first thing I noticed was the similarity of the markings of their world map with Major Harper’s except for a few select ones.