Chapter 6
Thirty minutes of stealthily avoiding active infected while taking out the dormant ones. Every now and then, one of those early birds would wake up. Like this bastard charging at me right now.
“Kraaaah—!”
The infected's lower jaw flew off with one axe swing, leaving it only able to let out a pathetic wheeze. It had been sprawled out in the middle of the connecting bridge between factories like some Don Quixote, then stood up and lunged when I got close. Since this was a sensor-dead zone, there was no way to detect it other than spotting it lying there. Or maybe it wasn't fully dormant.
No entities approaching nearby. Focus solely on the enemy before you.
I dodged its wild swings in midair, kept a safe distance, then darted in at the opening. I slammed its torso against the bridge railing with a body check, gripped the axe head and handle, and crushed its throat with the shaft. Gack, gurk. With its back and waist pinned to the railing and neck bent back at a 90-degree angle under the axe shaft, it thrashed its head like mad. Filthy drool splattered my face in the process, but the helmet visor blocked it.
“Bye now.”
Once most of its upper body was dangling over, I grabbed its pants and hurled it off the side. It plummeted headfirst, hit with a dull thud, and went silent. Just the occasional twitch after that.
As I crossed the connecting bridge and neared the central control room, the severely wrecked interior came into view.
“You seeing this? It's totally smashed to hell.”
I stood before a massive hole in the wall. Artemis was sharing my view through the shoulder cam on my riot suppression suit.
Debris cross-section analysis indicates gas bombs were used. Impressive power for hastily made improvised explosives. Fine craftsmanship.
Rebar concrete and wiring bundles that had filled the hole in the wall spilled out into the passage. The exhaust duct above had been torn apart and collapsed on top.
“Looks like they were being chased.”
Scanning.
Light beamed from the shoulder cam. It swept over dried blood and footprints on the floor, and storage cabinets that looked like they'd been toppled haphazardly to buy time while fleeing. Then a hologram projected onto the corridor: a blurry human figure scrambling away in panic. Its flailing arms knocked over objects, blocking the path. Something immediately barreled through afterward, shoving the debris aside and leaving scrape marks on the floor. The fleeing figure tumbled at the corridor's end, and the footage ended. All that remained there were bone fragments still clad in clothes and shoes. Not a scrap of flesh left.
Early in the infection spread, survivors in the central sector likely fled into the buildings rather than the open exterior.
“Some probably bolted for the upper sector entrance, but that would've been locked down.”
The Shelter OS had registered the riot and auto-triggered emergency lockdown protocols. All three sectors isolated. Back then, with Artemis not fully activated yet, I couldn't intervene.
“Must've been hell at the sealed main doors of each sector.”
The upper sector main door surveillance cam footage was pure pandemonium. People screaming to be let in right up to the end. Even as infected breath closed in on their necks, they never looked back—just pounded on the door and begged the security camera overhead. It was a herding hunt by the infected.
“Or maybe a hunt driven by false hope.”
The moment those long, sharp teeth and claws tore into their throats and backs, their eyes on camera were a mix of resignation, despair, and regret. Could the gaze of a priest realizing their lifelong faith was a lie even compare?
In extreme situations, what decides life or death is judgment. Don't let human sentiment cloud yours.
“I might look like a fool compared to you, but I'm not dumb enough to commit suicide out of panic. I'm a pro at survival too.”
Hey, I'm a vet with multiple combat notches on my belt. Never once let fear make me choose wrong. Back in my first real firefight, a bullet grazed my nose bridge and blood poured down, but my hands didn't shake as I cut and spliced the frontline to drop that bridge.
I'm not just talking fear. Lust, pity, anger, affection—plenty of things muddy human judgment.
“Aren't those called emotions? Not materials?”
Honestly, living with her—who executes everything perfectly—can feel burdensome at times. That's why I treasure that human 'sentiment' all the more. It sets me apart from her, gives me the strength to stand equal.
It's all just electrical signals and chemical reactions anyway. Mere deliveries to the receptors. By my standards, human emotions are materials.
A bit irritating, but I rarely argue back with her. Debating logic with her is like fighting the Soviets—knock down one unit, and twice as many reserves swarm in. Beat those, and five or ten times more reinforcements wait. That's arguing logic with her.
Instead of this chatter, shouldn't you start looking for a bathroom soon?
“Took care of that before heading out. Basic of basics.”
Your urine levels are at 15%. You've got five hours before critical. But what I'm referring to is the 225 grams of organic sludge bubbling in your small intestine. Remember how I repeatedly advised cutting back on fried foods? You ignored it and shoveled them in anyway. Now your digestive system has surrendered to the massive grease load. Soon, your entire gut will declare free passage. It'll lose form, thicken up, race through your large intestine, and finally erupt from your anus like a spray. Forty minutes left. Ah, what an imperfect, pathetic existence.
She's monitoring my hormone shifts in real-time, so the diagnosis is spot-on. Hell, prepping me for a shit emergency is top-tier support, right? But praising her would just piss her off, so I kept quiet.
“This is where they made their final stand.”
Twenty meters from the control room, the wreckage was the most gruesome I'd seen yet. Clear traces of what maximum resistance looked like from unarmed civilian engineers.
Holing up inside the control room would have eventually resulted in the bulkheads being breached and them being massacred anyway. It seems they opted to build massive barricades in the outer corridor and resist using heavy machinery instead. It was their best choice, but the situation was just too dire.
A barricade made of stacked equipment was set up in four layers, and its scale was on the level of a small fortress.
They had reinforced the durability by welding the connecting parts, and carved out small spaces in a few spots to install something akin to machine-gun emplacements.
What rested there were improvised flamethrowers. They were made by connecting blowtorches and industrial compressed air sprayers, then attaching car fuel tanks.
"None of them have any fuel left. They fought desperately."
I picked up a flamethrower rolling on the ground; its fuel tank was completely empty and the nozzle was melted off. It was the same for the rest of them.
The personnel without flamethrowers must have fought as spearmen.
"I didn't see a single one in the workshop; they must have brought them all here."
Thermal lances. Industrial cutting tools we call oxygen lances in Korea. The intense 4,000-degree heat at the tip can slice through chunks of iron and concrete alike.
Placing excavators behind the barricade was also a good choice. They could attack from both the front and above without their lines of movement overlapping, and it's a great countermeasure against large infected.
The final bastion was two small excavators placed in the back.
The flamethrowers would prevent approach, and any bastard that broke through would get skewered by the thermal lances. After that, the strategy was to crush them from above with the excavator's bucket or push them away.
I found myself respecting the engineers who made their last stand here.
Even if they ultimately lost and met their deaths, they mobilized the knowledge and skills they had honed their entire lives, fighting their absolute hardest even in a hopeless situation.
The remnants here, engraved with their fighting spirit and courage, were better described as magnificent rather than gruesome.
I carefully made my way past, making sure not to step on the hard hats and blood-soaked work clothes scattered everywhere, and arrived at the control room door.
There are no biosignals inside the control room. Open it.
At her words, I pulled out my hacking tool. It was time to show them who the master of this place was.