A/N: I already give you the first chapter, since it is finished. In the coming days, it will continue.

The young police officer Wang Yibo, groaning in pain, regained consciousness after being knocked down by a heavy object in the evidence room when the earth suddenly began to shake during a power outage.

Wang Yibo could barely remember what had happened. He only knew that his duty had just started and that he wanted to get a piece of evidence to be examined in more detail and to get it out of the evidence room.

He also remembered that he spoke briefly with the older police officer, Tan, who was down here making sure that nothing got into or out of the evidence room without permission.

He entered the evidence room, it went dark around him and instead of the generators kicking in after 30 seconds at the latest, the earth shook. And from then on, Yibo knows nothing.

Carefully, he pushed everything that fell on his body during the quake off of him and straightened up, only to immediately fall to his knees again when he suddenly felt dizzy and sick. And Wang Yibo doesn't have to be a doctor to know that he probably has a concussion.

Gently, he touched the aching wound on the back of his head. He could feel dried blood on it and wondered how long he had been unconscious?

When he finally pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, he was horrified to discover that he had been unconscious for about 18 hours. He tried to call for help, but he had no service.

Using the flashlight function, he looked around the basement. It was a mess. The evidence that had been collected was jumbled all over the place. The shelves were partly overturned and in front of the room, it didn't look any better.

He pushed and shoved everything in his way and made his way out of the evidence room. He was relieved that the old locking system had not yet been replaced and the barred door was open.

When he finally managed to get out of the evidence room, which seemed to take him hours, he was horrified to see the dead Tan sitting at his desk. One of the file cabinets behind him had fallen on him and hit his head. Yibo didn't even want to look closer because the mass running down his body was enough for him.

Wang Yibo kept calling out to his colleagues and for help, since his head hurt so much that he could hardly move. But there was nothing. Nothing but silence.

Carefully Yibo continued to make his way to the basement stairs, he called out into the stairwell, but again, nothing but silence.

He had no choice but to walk very slowly, step by step up the 30 steps to the basement door. When he finally got there, he leaned against the wall next to it for a moment, holding his aching head and trying to get rid of the dizziness and nausea. More than once he thought he was going to pass out again, but then managed to stay conscious and keep going.

Yibo opened the basement door and the smell of smoke and burnt came to him. Slowly he entered the entrance hall, he shone his cell phone around him and was horrified. There had been a fire here and apparently the fire had started so quickly that his two colleagues at the reception desk, had not even managed to escape. Their burned corpses were still sitting there waiting for visitors.

At the sight of those two corpses, Yibo threw up. The smell of their burnt flesh rose to his nose and he vomited one more time. Shortly after, he called for help again, but there was just nothing. Only this silence.

After a break of half an hour, Yibo went further into his department. There, except for that huge hole in the wall of the building, it looked the same as in the entrance hall. He went to his desk, took out his flashlight and service weapon from the drawer, and then very slowly searched for survivors in the building. But except for him, there was no one who had made it.

At one of the many windows, Yibo finally stopped and looked out. At first he could see nothing but darkness. But then he saw burning buildings here and there. But no people on the street.

Yibo decided to do what probably everyone does. To go to the hospital. There one would be able to help him and there he would find perhaps still other survivors. And maybe someone would finally be there to tell him what was happening.

He also thought about his parents and wondered if they were okay? They live a little outside the city and maybe whatever it was had only hit the interior of the city. But he didn't have time to worry about them now. He had to have his head wound treated and urgently needed painkillers.

So he slowly made his way out of the police station and to the hospital, which is fortunately only three blocks away. He holstered his gun, got some new batteries for his flashlight, and drank almost half a liter of water from the water bottle he always kept in his desk, all at once, packed the bottle with the rest of the water into a bag he carried around his back, and headed out.

His aching head, the dizziness, the nausea and now also the intoxication and the ashes on the road, made it difficult for him to breathe and move on. Normally he would not even need 10 minutes for this distance, now he was already half an hour on the road and the hospital was still not to be seen.

He passed all the buildings and stores, where yesterday still had been worked and customers went in and out. This street was always full of people. But now he was here all alone. Here and there lay corpses, which he did not even want to look closer, the smell of their lifeless bodies, was already bad enough.

Again and again Yibo had to stop, coughed hard and had to drink something. His water bottle was almost empty when he finally saw the hospital after 40 minutes. But unlike what he expected, he didn't see anyone there either. Weren't the survivors supposed to go there? Shouldn't they already be standing outside, desperately calling for help for their loved ones?

Why was there no one there either?

*~*~*

In the morgue of the coroner's office, the young doctor Xiao Zhan kicked the door. These close automatically when there is an emergency. For hours now, Xiao Zhan had been trying to get this door open, but had little success. Without power, there was nothing he could do against the emergency locks other than somehow try to get this damn door open some other way.

He was angry because he had again let his chief doctor keep him from finally getting off work. His shift ended over an hour ago when his chief doctor came to him and told him to get a report from the medical examiner.

But instead of telling his supervisor, "No, I'm off duty, please send someone else." he had just nodded and immediately went downstairs to the coroner's office. Yet he hated it down here. Not only that it was the basement, but also that it was always cold there, and often he had to give the coroner a hand because he lacked the necessary personnel.

When he arrived downstairs at the forensic department, he went to the medical examiner's office, knocked on his door and waited. But instead of an answer to his knock, the power suddenly went out and he stood there in the dark.

On his fingers, he counted off until the generators would kick in. Usually it took no more than 10-30 seconds, but this time they started nothing. Instead, the earth beneath him suddenly shook and he heard a series of what sounded like explosions. Screams could be heard coming from the hallway behind the security door. He knocked on it, shouted, but no one answered him.

Feeling his way along the wall in the dark, he searched for the office door and pushed it open. Then he took out his cell phone and shone a light into the office; no one was there.

There was no one in the morgue either, except for the two dead bodies lying there, laid out and waiting for their autopsies. "Soon you will start to decompose. Better I take you to the cold room." Murmured Zhan.

He slid the two bodies one by one into the cold room and made a note of it on the clipboard beside them. Then he went back to the coroner's office and waited. At some point, someone had to come down here to check, didn't they?

After several hours of waiting, Zhan finally fell asleep at his desk. He had been up for more than 42 hours and could barely keep awake before that.

And when he finally woke up, after more than 7 hours, he was horrified to find that there was still no electricity, the security door was still locked, and no one down here was checking either.

Xiao Zhan searched for a key, which, as he himself knew, would have gotten him nowhere, since the security doors are automatic and there is no lock. But somehow that was inside him, an automatic impulse.

After a few minutes he returned to the door, knocked on it, but heard nothing. Nothing could be heard from the other side. And not once in the past half hour had he heard an announcement from a hospital nurse. And usually they came all the time.

Desperate to get out of there, Zhan tried forcefully, kicking the door again and again. Of course, he was unsuccessful. He also hit the door with a crowbar he found in the office. But again nothing but the echoes of his own caused noise.

And then, after being locked down here for almost 20 hours, he found a magnetic strip. He stuck it on a piece of paper, went to the security door, slowly slid the magnetic strip through from top to bottom, and got a small miracle, because the door unlocked. He didn't know how he had done it, and it was only a desperate attempt, but it worked.

But he was not prepared for the sight behind the door. Several bodies, visitors, patients, nurses and even two doctors were lying there. Zhan looked at them all, but there was nothing more he could do for them.

Since the battery of Zhan's cell phone was already low and he only had 9% left, he didn't want to waste any more time in the dark and with the dead. He ran down the hall to the stairwell, ran upstairs and stopped in horror on the first floor. Dead bodies, dead bodies everywhere. And some looked horribly disfigured. "What the hell happened here?" He asked louder than he had planned.

He ran all around the hospital looking for survivors, but all the people he met were dead. And at one of the windows on the top floor he finally stopped and looked out. Darkness, fire and smoke everywhere he looked. A cold shiver ran down his spine.

Zhan had to think of his family, were they still alive? Did his parents make it out of the city in time before it escalated here? And what caused it? Were they attacked? If so, by whom and why?

Then, as Zhan looked down to the street, he saw a man in uniform standing there, suddenly collapsed.

Zhan ran downstairs as fast as he could and to the young police officer. He hoisted him onto a hospital bed and took him inside to the hospital. "Damn, your wound is really big. I'm going to have to stitch it up. Mhhh, why am I even telling you this? You can't hear me anyway." He muttered and prepared everything.

Stitch by stitch he sutured the wound and injected the young officer Wang, as his name tag said, with an antibiotic and additionally, out of pure caution, with a shot against tetanus. Then he waited for the officer to wake up.

To pass the time until then, Zhan gathered all the important medicines, durable food and snacks from the vending machines, water bottles and that amount of bandages. He packed everything into a paramedic's emergency kit and wondered if he could get to his car in the parking garage.

Because Zhan was clear, the way things are here in the city, he can't stay here. He needs to get out of town and find a place where there are other survivors and answers. And if the young officer wants to, he will take him as well, it is better to survive together than alone.

As Officer Wang slowly regained consciousness, he startled, "Take it easy Officer Wang. You are in the hospital. I am Doctor Xiao Zhan and I found you unconscious on the street. I brought you in here and stitched your wound." Explained Zhan.

"I am Wang Yibo and thank you. Can you maybe tell me what happened here?"

"Unfortunately no, officer, I was locked in the basement until earlier."

"Mhhh, so was I. Are there any other survivors?"

Zhan shook his head and replied, "No, I didn't find a single one. I don't think we'll find anyone else here either. Unless the person was locked in a basement like us."

The two young men looked around them, wondering what the chances were that others had made it just like they had?