Chapter 490
Chapter 490
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 23
Chapter Title: Gedroits's Heir, Deul (5)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A dilemma cropped up. A massive, scorching one called "war decision rights."
And I, after a cumulative 240 years or so, had learned how to resolve it.
Ziiing—
Psssh!
"Ian! Hey, Metal Joe! Hold up a sec! Hey!"
The key was this: when a huge problem hits, don't hesitate—ask for help. Plenty of folks out there are already wrestling with the same issue even without me saying a word, and some can pull off things I can't.
Just like Hyde had.
"Let's talk it out!"
My buddy Metal Joe—Ian—was originally Ian Desmondt, went by Ashfield, and was one of the first two Swarm Alphas to found the Raptor Society.
I could swear on it: he was this era's top war commander, its greatest war criminal, and its deadliest mass murderer all in one—that hulking brute who'd just stormed out of my shelter.
Who better to consult on this than a guy juggling a life as a ruthless butcher, a family man, and now both lost? Sure, he was a weirdo, but if you thought about it, he filled the big brother role among the three of us.
So before this slippery bastard could vanish from sight, I bolted after him.
Clunk!
I didn't have to go far to spot his back.
"Hey, Ian! That Raptor thing! It's not something to decide right this second—"
"Outta my way, you fucks!"
"Ian-nim! Come on, hear us out!"
"Is Professor Park in there? Is everything on the board true?"
"I don't know! That's why you need to fuck off and stop clinging!"
"Let me join BDSM!"
"Give this letter to Professor Park!"
"Why'd the '3World Clear Commemoration Parade' get scrapped from Dome's official schedule last week?"
Wah-wah!
Waaah! Waaaah!
The concrete walls around the shelter were packed with people, each waving placards hammered from rotten planks or flags stitched from tatters.
The second Ian stepped outside, they swarmed like zombies, while he bulldozed through the human tide with his terrifying scowl and fists clenched like iron.
[This morning alone, some lunatic nailed up a "Professor Park's Birthplace" sign and bolted—what a pain in the ass!]
Oh, right—Corduro had mentioned that. The shield's barrier must've muffled the racket from outside.
My body, lunged forward to call Ian, locked up solid.
Zero-point-two seconds to yank my hand back amid the mutant-wave frenzy.
"Uh."
The guy clutching what looked like a trash lid with my face scribbled on it took half a second to clock the shelter door creaking open right behind him by sheer coincidence.
"Uh?"
"U-uh, uhhh!"
One second for the crowd behind the frozen guy to trace his stare.
.
.
.
.
Three seconds for the chaos blanketing the shelter grounds to flip into dead silence.
In those three seconds, the Professor had to grasp the gravity of his fuckup.
"P-Professor Park."
"It's the Professor!" "The Professor's shown himself to us!" "The Second Coming of Jesus!" "No, the Baby Buddha!" "Nonsense! The Prophet Muhammad's reincarnated in the flesh of the human Pa-koran-su—" "Silence!! How dare you be so rude before the Saint who's gonna lead us all to the New World—!"
Out here in the wasteland, his fame wasn't just fame. He'd forgotten that for folks whose whole lives boiled down to chow, crash, and GG, he'd snatched that away—and handed them the real-deal future called the "server room" instead.
"Professor!"
"Prophet! Speak to us, please!"
"If we find the server room, does everything get fixed?"
"I heard there's a million-person habitat up in space! Take us with you!"
"Professor!"
"Saint!"
"Professor Park!!"
Waaak! Waaaak!
They surged. Even that ironclad Metal Joe vanished under the human wave crashing toward this era's most riveting human, as the hope-starved mob greedily mobbed their "symbol of hope."
'We're fucked.'
Faced with the slow-mo stampede barreling his way, the Professor unleashed survival instincts forged across countless brushes with death.
Ziiing—clank!
'Shelter door. Double auto-seal against outside dust and filth. Just shut—locked three seconds for air scrub. Five at least till it reopens. Way too late. Defense turrets? Off-limits unless I'm mowing everyone down. Parked armed truck? Bet it's tagged already. Solo dash? Just spawns witnesses and frothing crowds per step. Need another play. A quiet exit—'
Flash!
'Got it!'
Instinct outran thought, shoving his body into motion after leaping countless death lines. His Type-3 mutant frame vaulted the shelter's concrete barrier and the pitched crowd in one bound, arrowing straight for the jeep parked out front.
The glare stinging his eyes. Peeking from the heavy-tint glass: a mirror. The steady flashes were military mirror code. And the small hand plus pink locks sending it—someone I knew for sure.
Splaash!
Thud!
"G-get in quick, hurry!"
"Thanks, Bex. And Rabbit!"
"Save the thanks till we're past those fanboys! And it's not just them—if a pic leaks of two rankers like us together, it ain't wrapping up as some tame scandal!"
Screeech—vrooom!
Bex stomped the accelerator hard from the driver's seat, and the beefy jeep peeled out of the alley fast.
"Eeeh!"
"Where you headed, Professor!"
"Saint's doing the earth-shrinking spell!"
"Muhammad!"
"Professor!"
"Profeeeessor—"
.
.
.
.
Their love-crazed howls faded into the choking dust cloud.
"S-survived...."
"Survived? This is exactly why rags-to-riches types are a nightmare! Professor Park, being 'popular' in this era ain't just being known! Shit like this happens 'cause you don't get that!"
I flopped across the back seat for a breather, only for the front passenger to rain down hell.
"Uh.... Thanks, Rabbit. Didn't see that coming."
"Damn right you're thankful. I scraped together scraps of my packed schedule for a date with Bex, and you turned the whole damn 47th District into a kicked hornet's nest all day. Professor Park, time to clock your own pull. Double after dropping a bombshell like yesterday—you gotta hole up like your life's on the line! Not just yours, either. Your contacts, kin, the works!"
"Ahem. Even so, that bad.... Coulda let 'em nab me for a day, dropped some wisdom from on high."
"As if. Lucky you crawled out when you did—if you'd ducked back inside, they'd overrun the barrier itself. Short of turreting the lot, wild-animal fences or shelter shields are worthless. Don't let the looks fool you; they're all top-shelf survivors, plenty who can throw down."
"They breach the fence? They'll lust after every trace you left. Yard signs, tools you touched, even pawprints in the dirt—they'll dig 'em up. While you're reeling, they yank turret domes, flood the circuits with shelter cam hacks, plaster the windows zombie-style, eyes bugging red to peer at what they can't even see."
"By then, I wouldn't just sit there."
"True. I'm no slouch in a brawl—maimed a bunch, dropped a few. But no bottom to it. Hell, some strapped their own blood packs to themselves, begging me to splash 'em—'Make me wear your blood!' Stabbed one right in the gut, and the fucker grinned like it was bliss. That's when it hit me: 'Ah, so this is celeb life in the wasteland. Time to ghost.' Been that way since."
"Damn."
"Plenty more standouts besides the 'blood sacks.' Like the psycho who fished my tossed canteen, cultured a meat blob from my spit cells, then showed up ranting, 'Rabbit, you don't realize it, but you've already shared everything with me.' Or the freak who whipped up mini-cams that 'stick' to residence shields, filmed my ass for fifteen days straight, dumped it on the boards."
"Uh, u-uhhh...."
Tales poured out: top-tier stalker hounds, scavenger caravans hijacked mid-haul as leverage—"Rabbit, you show solo, they walk!"—all the wild shit a wasteland celeb endures.
Oh, and Rabbit iced the blood sack and meat blob herself. Camera creep? Shipped to Dome—he's probably subhuman chow deep in some admin basement, fueling R&D.
"Etch it in: pumped-up crowds are as unhinged as pissed-off ones. You ain't solo anymore, right? Got Dana-yang~♥, Cynthia too—no more lone-wolf bullshit. Can't bunch your crew at a known solo shelter. Need to? Cop the biggest, tightest-security spot in Upper Dome like me. You're loaded."
"Uh.... Yeah."
"Cash you don't burn is just maggot bait. Pinch a whole zone from the boss outright if you have to. Safehouse dead center, guards adjacent, friend villas next—boom, outsider-proof turf. Permits drag regardless of dough, so plan ahead. 45th Dome's booming—fast approvals, cheap too. Snagged three blocks lock-stock for about 1.2 bil seals? Roughly."
"I-I'll keep it in mind...."
Now it clicked why Bex grilled me on housing the second server room dropped. House-hunting "safe nests" with a woman like this? Even server-room intel just pings as "decent pad?"
Vrooom—
Bex kept motoring steady through Rabbit's lecture, bound somewhere.
"So, where we off to?"
"A q-quiet spot."
"Quiet spot?"
"Yeah. Dome fringes are a zoo everywhere~ but stray too far, and Dome's watchdog squads latch on harder than frothing fans—'protecting' you, they claim. Bex here says it's something you're iffy spilling to the young Ajussi just yet?"
Surroundings thinning out, Rabbit's chipper chirp flipped to a low, sly murmur like a lie. I matched her gravity.
"Bex, you tapped?"
"Nope~ Guess my charms haven't bent our Bex to treason yet."
"Fair enough."
"Told you before? That stalker toy of mine—mimics residence-shield waves, latches on to spy inside. Think I'd raw-dog him to Dome? Lil' coax and he folded like wet paper."
"So. You bugged my shelter?"
"Couldn't risk it with our Dana-yang~♥ being that cute? She's claimed, trusts Bex to the hilt. But a girl's heart ain't all logic~"
....Pfft!
"Bullshit."
Eyes twinkling like a gag, voice all insinuation, gestures, sprawl—the celeb griping her fame? Poof. Reborn: sharper, sneakier, relentless.
"You scarfed the server room, huh?"
Rabbit Princess. Cheaty or not, she'd cleared the undead-swamped 2World—and legit-conquered primitive 1World sans exploits. Another finisher.
"Perfect. Been itching to hash that 'server room' out. Off Dome's grid, like you want. As GG board lord, before Dome."
Two-world conqueror laid her cards bare, dead serious.
"....No skin off my nose."
Heh!
Ian embodied war? She packed war and slaughter mileage too.
Without me? She'd have snatched what I hold now, hands down.
Vrooom—
Under the hammered-sheetmetal [BDSM Headquarters] sign looming large, the air in the rig crackled with the strain of GG's high nobility mid-spat.
"Arri— we've arr— arrived!"
For Bex? Out for a girlfriend joyride, stuck chauffeuring between them—enough to relapse his damn stutter.
****