Chapter 495
Chapter 495
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 23
Chapter Title: Gedroits's Heir, Deul (10)
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Bang!
The crack of gunfire was a sound anyone living in the wasteland had no choice but to get used to. Surviving this long meant you'd faced down countless gun barrels pointed your way—and thrown just as many lead slugs right back at them.
That's why seasoned wasteland survivors didn't panic or descend into chaos at the sound of shots. They reacted instantly.
Bang!
Before the echo of the first shot had even faded, they all flattened themselves behind the nearest solid cover.
Bang!
By the time the second shot rang out, they'd already sized up the direction and location of the firefight and decided to bolt in the opposite direction.
Crash!
As the crumpled Ticcat slammed into the corner of the room, they'd crammed whatever weapons were within reach into their back pockets, bracing for any fights they might get dragged into during their escape.
The problem was that the gunfire came from Ian reflexively blasting away at a drone that had suddenly armed itself. And this was Woojin Gramps's underground black market, where the stalls were littered with deadly weapons or the mutant byproducts used to make them.
As a result, there was no typical crowd panic from stumbling into a shootout.
Creak, click!
Sneaking along—
Gulp!
Instead, hundreds of people—primed to shoot any unknown assailant that popped out from a corner—moved tactically toward the narrow black market exits in a state of extreme tension. That was the spectacle unfolding.
Of course, the danger level was hundreds of times higher than regular chaos. In a situation where no one knew who fired the shots, wastelanders would put a hole in any random armed stranger's head to eliminate potential threats—every single one of them.
The moment one overly tense person squeezed off a single shot, the black market would turn into a killing field where everyone mowed down anyone in sight.
Cough, cough—
Clink!
"We meet again often. Professor, and Desmond."
"S-Sorry...."
"Eat shit."
That was why Ian and I had been summoned to Commander Young's office.
"Right in a population-dense urban area. In a dark indoor space with half-blocked sightlines, where more than half the merchandise is ready-to-use murder tools, you start a firefight. Not to nag, but seriously—were you acting on Raptor orders? To sow chaos inside the Dome?"
"Ahem. Well, we stopped it, didn't we? Your gramps's black market was crawling with those pricks."
"I have no idea what you're talking about. The black market's an open space everyone knows about, isn't it? Our agents were just shopping personally."
"Oh yeah? As expected of the famed Audit Division elites! Shopping in squads, no less! The second shit hit the fan, you flashed your Audit badges to control the civilians, while half bolted straight—'precisely'—to Professor's room, prioritizing VIP safety and escorting him to Admin. Real impressive, huh?"
"Thanks for the praise. Would've been nicer in front of my agents. Praise from 'that' Ian Desmond would do wonders for morale."
Grind!
It crossed my mind just then—Ian was always grinding his teeth like that; pretty soon he'd need to replace his uppers with metal ones.
My relationship with the Commander wasn't bad, but Ian and the Commander's was downright hostile. Ever since realizing the Commander had withheld intel and sent us into the 38 District mess, Ian had taken a real dislike to him.
I didn't know what went down in real life during those months I spent playing 3world as a data soul, but when I checked in, the Commander called Ian "Desmond" instead of "Metaljaw," and Ian called the Commander "hey," "you," "whatsit," and the like.
When I asked, he said, "For two military outfits sharing a tent and rations, this counts as friendly." Looked like they'd met up separately at some point.
"....Enough chit-chat. First off, we've got the expert analysis on the recovered drone."
Shifting gears, the Commander swept back his fallen hair and read from a report he'd gotten by grinding poor Admin scientists into dust in ten minutes flat.
"No hacking traces. Armament activation looks like an emergency protocol from the computation circuits shutting down to defend against a hack attempt. Internal circuits all fried—core functions unrecoverable. Anomalous."
Thud—
"Anomalous, huh. If you have any special info on this report, I'd appreciate sharing. Say, it's an old-era high-end drone several generations ahead of anything the Dome could cobble together now. Or more specifically, a long-range comms device in the drone that's impossible to trace to a receiver, no matter how hard you try."
"....Alexander Young. Your tone's pretty shitty. What, think we're Raptor puppets?"
"I'm talking about the machine's possibilities, not defection risks. Couldn't a high-performance device from outside—like what just happened—cause trouble without Professor or BDSM's involvement? Can we be sure it never slipped control before? How long have you had it? Why only Professor can access its internal data? What's in there that even all the Dome's top techs can barely infer functional changes from, let alone scratch the program firewall? Desmond, as someone responsible for every soul in the Dome, I have to consider every scenario, personal feelings aside. Figured you'd get that, having been a leader once."
Scraaape—ptui.
"That's called 'trust'—extending a hand without covering every base, you half-assed leader fuck."
As the Commander raised his glass, Ian responded by hawking a thick loogie into his own.
"Yawwn. If you've got more, I'll catch a nap and come back. No need for a referee, right?"
Clink. Chink.
I wedged myself between their sharp exchange by clinking my glass against Ian's loogie-filled one and the Commander's ice-filled one.
"Let's see. First, drone T.C.A.T-3000 showed up on its own not long after I split from you yesterday. Specs aside, it's classified as a GG transport drone."
Raptor. Server room. My access. War. World Tree's sister.
From the chaotic black market to Admin HQ, my head was full of that shit.
'Someone definitely tried to send a message through the drone.'
Noise made it hard to make out, but it dropped some key keywords.
[Answer/for you—Prime-Completer Professor encounters.]
[Answer/Doomsday Device/Collector/delivered to.]
Limited sentences I could parse for sure right now.
'Prime/Completer Professor. Said [for you], so it's singling me out—the guy who got server room access.'
[Answer]. [Doomsday Device]. No clue on those ominous-sounding words, but I got the last one.
'Collector. Heard that name before. Definitely from that 3rd-form variant who called himself W during the 38 District incident....'
Fuck. If Hyde were here, he'd pull up exactly when and where and what was said in a flash. As is, all I had was a vague memory of hearing it somewhere in 38 District. One sure thing: it came from the Artist Alliance mouths, the ones they called 'Suitables' among themselves.
There—a sloppy but solid connection: 『3rd-form variants—Artist Alliance—Collector』.
'And then, [Collector. Delivered] with that screen showing a girl looking exactly like the World Tree.'
'She was definitely looking at me through Ticcat's feed. Circumstantially, that entity mimicking the World Tree's form is likely the Collector.'
That chains it to 『3rd-form variants—Artist Alliance—Collector—World Tree's sister』. As her sister, obviously tied to the World Tree, who as GG's core admin AI—
Leads to an endless mind map: 『3rd-form variants—Artist Alliance—Collector—World Tree's sister—World Tree (GG admin)—Gedroits's Game—Andrey Gedroits.....』
My head was exploding with this by the time Ian and I reached the Commander's office. While they bonded with fireworks, I finally sorted my thoughts.
Alexander Young.
How much to reveal to the Dome leader who'd staked everything on restoring past glory,
Who'd broken moral taboos like Old Pictures and Under Dome for it, even betraying allies like in 38 District for the Dome....
"Looked too spec'd out for a mere transport drone."
"Precisely, it's like a comms module 'that side' slapped on me when I inherited most of Gedroits's legacy and access. Naturally not this era's tech. Gedroits himself prepped it for his damned Completer Project."
"Comms module, huh. A remote to freely use the Gedroits Company access you inherited."
The Commander nodded like it made sense. So he knew about Gedroits's Completer Project. 47 District Dome had backed Rabbit long ago, so he'd heard some of GG's secrets from her. Simple psych trap: gauge his trust in me by what he spills or hides. Less interrogation, more ingrained habit from his life.
That's why I couldn't spill everything to him.
I like him plenty, and as an ally he's rock-solid.
But he's ally-only; the Commander follows the grand cause of 'restoring old-era glory,' not me.
"Right. Like I said before, lets me use swarms of transport drones as hands, feet, eyes. Thanks to it, I snagged a few scenes you'd find real 'impressive,' Commander."
"....Small, but clear tank tracks. Showing me this means.... you've got more traces than just these, right?"
"Tough right now, but data'll pinpoint locations soon enough."
"Sad times. Our Admin pals burned the midnight oil crafting five-year city dev plans, refugee intake, Dome nationalization—all kindling now."
The instant he saw Raptor traces, his mind leaped to tracking Raptor Society, then war. No hesitation or conflict like me—not a speck. Guy who'd preserved this much civilization in this fallen world had discarded countless souls to do it. Different from me, for sure.
"Well.... You get the gist now, right? Metaljaw, you too? Why the drone detected a hack, flipped out solo, and died in my hands."
"Raptor caught on to the tracking. One of the widespread transport drones got nabbed?"
"Tch. Raptors have this paranoid culture even among internal warlords. Swarm Alpha runs his 'Noise Pack' SIGINT and EW unit on 24/7 alert. They'd crack basic drone commands easy. Once they see it's 'scouting wasteland tank tracks,' they'll lose their shit like they chugged hot sauce."
"Plus, regular transport drone lenses couldn't spot those tracks through the goddamn sandstorm, so I had to order low-altitude flight on a GG drone. In a way, getting tailed by Raptor was inevitable."
Reveal what to reveal, hide what to hide.
Sure. Even if Raptor Society's Noise Pack are 3rd World War-honed EW pros, can they match tech generations ahead from Gedroits? If they could, they'd have reverse-traced drone signals to the server room coords, hacked it, done it all.
Hacking Ticcat—straight-lined to GG server room—is near-impossible without Gedroits himself.
'And 3rd-form variants pull off shit impossible by normal science.'
3rd-forms transcend science I grasp. Better to think of it as magic or mystery. Judging them with my puny knowledge boxes them wrong.
Suitable W teleports like a 3world archmage couldn't. Whether teleport or something else, he does impossible shit like breathing.
Noho Buru, the humanoid variant who wanted death by a human he liked, carried a rotting tiger inside his skin. Way off biological rules.
'So if the girl the World Tree's AI called [sister outside]—hooked to massive machines and screens with wires in her back—can [manipulate any machine at will], it ain't that unbelievable.'
Probably the truth behind the black market room fiasco. Collector—3rd-form from Artist Alliance, World Tree's sister—hacked Ticcat with some ability, left me a message. Timed for when I was in that room.
Woojin Gramps and Ian? Can't be Dome collaborators, no question. Each runs private militias inside Dome. And as we saw, not on great terms.
In a jammed space, messaging me with two absolute non-Dome guys present? No coincidence—stake my heart on it.
Artist Alliance's message: 'Come to the coords of that last structure signal Dome doesn't know about.'
Intent probably:
[An....swer....]
[Youuuu—up therrrre—]
Collector's answer to my war-with-Raptor-or-wait dilemma.
The answer's up there.
'Beep—beep—'
Dying drone left a distress signal and coords like a final gasp.
No Hyde, but my memory ain't so shot I'd forget a few digits.
"Up. Up there...."
"Hm? What? Something up top?"
"Nah, just mumbling."
(8744. 09. 248)
Collector's coords to me. Crunch the numbers—coincidentally near 25 District outskirts, Raptor's heading.
(8744. 317. 42)
And this? Coords only I know.
'Next Space. Gedroits's unmanned spaceport base coords.'
Unmanned means fully automated from prep to launch—no crew needed. Function: launch crewed ships to orbital habitat 'Next Space,' sustaining ~40 people in space for centuries.
Collector's coords and Gedroits's spaceport? Just 2.5km apart.
[Youuuu—up therrrre—]
"....Space."
War or wait.
Artist Alliance's answer to that: head to space.
Beyond that thick sandstorm, to the stars. To the server room—ark of knowledge, cradle of hope.
Now that I knew they weren't mere mutant freaks but something tied to Gedroits, I couldn't just ignore it.
Least meet 'em. If I want my greed-filled future—not Alexander Young's plain one—I'll push risky paths a bit.
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