Weapon System in Zombie Apocalypse-Chapter 179: Let’s Go For Another Run

The crystal water glass rattled against the polished wood.

It made sense now. The swarm wasn't just coincidence. It was strategy.

The beast, or whatever mind drove the infected, had played them. Divided their forces. Deliberately distracted Overwatch with a wave too large to ignore—so the worm could regenerate unchallenged beneath the rubble.

"Used the chaos as cover," Thomas muttered. "Focused on survival. On healing."

He looked back at the video.

The worm writhed slightly in the footage, its skin glistening with moisture and clotted blood. It wasn't sleeping. It wasn't resting.

It was waiting.

Phillip's voice cut through the silence. "Sir… I know we hurt it bad. Burned it down to the bone. But look at it now."

"I am," Thomas replied. "I'm looking at a corpse that's still too stupid to stay down."

Phillip raised an eyebrow.

Thomas leaned back in his chair, his expression calm—almost cold. "We killed it once, Phillip. We'll do it again. It bled. It burned. It howled when we hit it hard enough."

He stood, the towel around his shoulders dropping onto the chair. The calm from the pool, the massage, the meal—it had all evaporated. His muscles were alert now, his breathing even and sharp.

"There's no fear left in me for that thing," Thomas said. "Only calculation."

Phillip gave a nod of quiet approval. "Mission's still active to kill that thing right?"

Thomas opened the system and there the mission is still ongoing, and he confirmed it to Phillip with a nod.

"We don't stop," Thomas said. "Not until that bastard's bones are sun-bleached and shattered."

He tapped the tablet off and handed it back. "Let's go."

They moved quickly through the hotel's reinforced corridor, descending one floor via a private staircase behind the old spa wing. This level—once luxury executive suites—had been gutted and rebuilt entirely.

The Overwatch Command Center.

The heart of every operation. Every deployment. Every decision.

Steel doors opened as they approached, biometric sensors confirming Thomas's identity before unlocking with a soft hydraulic hiss.

Inside, rows of terminals lined the long room, bathed in soft blue and amber glow. Operators moved with practiced precision, some seated at ruggedized laptops, others issuing orders through headset comms. On one end, a massive video wall of mounted flat-panel televisions dominated the space, showing live Reaper drone feeds, seismic activity graphs, and bio-sensor overlays.

At the center of it all stood Marcus.

"Commander on deck," he said simply.

The room's noise dropped a level, operators straightening subtly but continuing their work.

Thomas stepped forward and looked up at the largest monitor.

The image was sickening.

There it was—the worm.

It had coiled again, tucking its tail beneath ruined concrete like a python in a nest. But its upper torso remained aboveground. The mouth—a grotesque, vertical slit of fangs and hardened mandibles—twitched every few seconds. And from those movements, Thomas could tell: it was not dormant.

"Latest feed?" he asked.

Marcus nodded. "Reaper One-One's live feed. This was taken fifteen minutes ago."

Thomas studied the monitor. The colossal worm was surrounded by smaller organisms—creatures barely the size of humans, scuttling in and out of its coiled body. Not infected in the traditional sense—more like parasites.

"What the heck is that thing?"

"It's not in our catalogue but we can assume that those things are support organisms," Marcus replied grimly. "We're calling them symbiotes for now. They don't behave like typical infected—no direct aggression, no swarming. They stay close to the worm. Almost like… caretakers."

Thomas's eyes narrowed as one of the symbiotes in the footage crawled along the worm's flank, depositing a translucent gel from its underbelly onto a section of scar tissue. The worm twitched slightly, but didn't retaliate. Instead, the muscles around the application site tightened—flexed—almost like the creature was absorbing it.

"Feeding it. Healing it. Accelerating the regeneration process," Marcus added, disgust etched across his face.

Phillip crossed his arms, wincing slightly from his sling. "So it's not just alive. It's got a damn support crew."

"Worse than that," Thomas muttered, "it's evolving."

Follow current novels on ƒreewebηoveℓ.com.

He stared hard at the screen. One of the worm's eyes—a grotesque cluster of red-veined orbs embedded in the chitin near its head—seemed to shift, locking momentarily toward the Reaper's high-altitude lens. The image blurred slightly from atmospheric distortion, but the suggestion was there.

It was aware.

"This isn't just brute force anymore," Thomas said, stepping closer to the command desk. "It's defense. Strategy. Adaptation."

The room stayed silent as the footage continued looping, showing the creature resting—but not relaxed. Its entire body was taut with barely restrained tension, like a bowstring pulled to the breaking point. Every vibration in the rubble. Every glint of reflected metal. It was responding.

It was waiting to be provoked.

"What's the call, Commander?" Marcus asked, eyes on him now. The whole room was.

Thomas didn't answer immediately. His gaze returned to the mission tab on his system screen.

He closed it.

"We are going to attack it again, only this time with more freedom," Thomas calmly said.

"That's what I like," Phillip grinned. "Will I be on the field?"

Thomas shook his head. "No, I am not going to send any men near that thing because we are going to level the entirety of Cubao with that thing in it. You will stay here, see if there will be another swarm if we start attacking that thing."

"Very well, sir."

"Now, let's finish what we started."