Yuri handed the toilet bowl cleaner up to Bai Youwei, eying her with suspicion. “What do you want this for?”

“An experiment.” Bai Youwei passed it back. “For Natasha—have her squeeze a little bit down onto them. Test the effect.”

Shen Mo said nothing for a moment, then handed it to A-Da.

A-Da gripped the bottle, his feelings profoundly complicated. He silently passed it back to Natasha.

Natasha, being at the rear of the line, was also the closest to the vent they’d passed earlier.

She took the bottle of toilet bowl cleaner, uncertain what to say, pressed her lips together, and slowly retreated toward the earlier vent opening—

Through the grate, she could see the little mutants crawling around below. Their shells were nothing like the guards’—not hard at all, but soft and moist, faintly marked with blue-green spider-web patterns of delicate capillaries, slick and gelatinous, shimmering with the glossy, iridescent sheen of a slug’s body as they moved.

Natasha couldn’t help but look down at the bottle in her hand.

This thing…

If what Bai Youwei said was right—if these creatures truly breathed through their body walls—then the toilet bowl cleaner should work. But somehow she couldn’t shake a profound sense of wrongness.

Like showing up to a football match with a tennis racket. Like arriving at a swimming pool wearing a ballet costume. Deeply, fundamentally incongruous.

A cleaning product, being used like this…

“Did you try it yet?” Bai Youwei called to her from two people over.

Natasha snapped back to reality and gave a sheepish sound of acknowledgment. She opened the cap of the toilet bowl cleaner, exposing the squeeze nozzle, and aimed it at the gaps in the latticed grate—

Two little mutants were crouched directly below.

Natasha squeezed with force.

A jet of blue liquid shot out and splashed across the backs of the two mutants. They leapt into the air with violent convulsions, releasing stifled, strangled shrieks—writhing and rolling without stopping.

Natasha was frozen in place.

The toilet bowl cleaner had scorched white burn marks across their backs—as if scalding water had been flung against bare skin, raising blisters of varying sizes across the surface. Just looking at it, the pain seemed excruciating.

And that wasn’t all—a whole cluster of nearby little mutants scattered away from the affected area, as if they were intensely averse to the acrid chemical smell of the toilet bowl cleaner.

A-Da couldn’t see what was happening below, only heard the sudden commotion and noise. He called out urgently, “Well?! Does it work?!”

“……” Natasha stared fixedly at the scene below. “Well… it… works. Very well.”

Bai Youwei pressed. “Did the mutants die?”

Natasha: “They—they ran. They seem to be completely intolerant of the smell of toilet bowl cleaner…”

“We can’t let them run!” Bai Youwei said immediately. “Open the vent and get down there now!”

“D-down there?” Natasha was alarmed. “But there are hundreds of mutants down there…”

“Didn’t you just say they can’t stand the smell?” Bai Youwei said urgently. “It’ll be fine—they won’t dare get near you! —Yuri, quick, quick! Pass up about ten more bottles!”

There was no shortage of toilet bowl cleaner—one cardboard box on the shelving unit held twelve bottles, and besides that, the shelves were stacked with degreaser, bleaching powder, dish soap, disinfectant, polishing agent, and everything else imaginable.

Yuri, having pieced together what they were planning from the conversation, was already passing bottles up one by one while asking, “You’re going to use toilet bowl cleaner against the mutants? Will that really work?”

“It’ll work, it’ll work!” Bai Youwei said. “Natasha said the mutants all ran away scared. We need to move fast—if we wait for the little mutants to grow any bigger, the toilet bowl cleaner might not be nearly as effective!”

Hearing this, Natasha didn’t dare waste another second. She used her combat knife to pry the screws off the vent grate, then dropped straight down.

Thud.

Both feet plunged into the thick, sludge-like slime, sending a queasy shiver straight up her spine. It was like landing inside a pile of vomit.

The fetid stench of the hatchery was more intense here than anywhere else. Not far away, the little mutants gathered in swarms—and seeing an intruder appear among them, they immediately bared their teeth and claws and charged.

Natasha’s heart lurched. She frantically squeezed the toilet bowl cleaner in a wide circle around her.

—