A Story Untold in the Game
The hidden gate, which looked like a massive steel door, opened silently.
Ark 69—the place rumored to have been pushed to the brink of annihilation after an encounter with the Crawler Queen.
Just like the rumors that everyone aboard had been wiped out or killed except for one commander, the state of the Ark itself looked far from reassuring.
"This place... Even a swarm of mid-tier elite mutants could punch right through it."
Silva, the squad's sniper, murmured from behind her mask, and Helena, the leader of Cerberus Squad, nodded silently in agreement.
It seemed multiple zombie hordes had already breached the Ark's interior. Traces of battles that hadn't been cleaned up littered the walls and floors everywhere.
The defensive armaments, like those seen in Ark 74, had all been shattered and rendered useless.
"Hate to say it, but... is this Ark really gonna be okay?"
"There's a lot that needs fixing, yeah."
"That's why we brought all those materials from outside to reinforce it, right?"
Karen, was it?
Helena scratched her head at the words from the red-haired engineer-type ECHO.
No matter how she looked at it, this Ark didn't inspire much hope.
Wouldn't it be better for survival if the humans just relocated to Ark 74, where there are hundreds of them?
Only after passing through four blocks disguised as empty warehouses did they finally reach what could be called the heart of Ark 69— the command center.
"Commander, mission complete. Returning now. And these are... Cerberus Squad from Ark 74."
Arva, the leader of Arclight Squad and an original ECHO, reported to the man before her.
Seeing his face made Helena's mind race with complications.
This is bad...
The commander of Ark 69 was a shockingly young man, barely in his early to mid-twenties.
It would've been better if he was an old, apathetic human...
From her experience so far, older humans went to extreme lengths to avoid getting tangled in troublesome affairs.
They wouldn't want to deal with the accountability of meddling with outsiders from another Ark, so they'd likely just ignore and leave them be.
But a young human like this?
No telling what he was thinking.
Plus, the younger they were, the more they tended to despise ECHOs.
It stemmed from that prejudiced knowledge claiming ECHOs were why this land crawled with monsters.
I wonder how he plans to dispose of us...
In Ark 74, they called them hounds.
That was why the squad was named Cerberus Squad.
So after every battle, they always tallied ammo consumption and equipment losses first.
Treatment for wounds? Only enough to not hinder the next hunt.
That was the only care and comfort they received.
And now, even the operation to rescue human commanders had failed.
If this were Ark 74, they'd be awaiting disposal in some cold scrap room. She didn't expect things to be any different in another Ark.
I don't care if I'm scrapped. But...
She glanced back at Luna trembling behind her and Silva standing silently.
She wanted to protect those two, no matter what.
As Helena harbored such thoughts, an odd sight caught her eye.
An original ECHO clinging to the commander's side like a pet sheep.
Even if she's an original, wouldn't most humans hate having an ECHO that close?
Most human commanders saw ECHOs as convenient tools but also called them monsters and treated them as something hazardous.
She'd never seen anyone allow that much physical contact.
Even humans with strange tastes never revealed their desires toward ECHOs.
It was while Helena pondered this curiously.
"Cerberus Squad?"
The commander's voice carried a note of puzzlement.
Helena realized it was time for her to step forward.
"Yes. Cerberus Squad from Ark 74. I am the leader, Helena."
She straightened her back and faced him as proudly as possible.
She could see his gaze scan her, pass over Silva, and land on Luna, trembling at the rear.
"We encountered them in Hongwei-7. They were on a mission from Ark 74 and got pushed all the way near our Ark."
Arva soon added more details for the commander.
"A mission... What kind?"
"That is—"
After a brief hesitation, Helena slowly opened her mouth.
She figured lying about the mission here wouldn't change anything.
Besides, ECHOs from an Ark couldn't lie to humans anyway.
"It was an operation with four squads from Ark 74, alongside three commanders, to subjugate the Carapace Lord."
"...Carapace Lord?"
At her words, the brows of Ark 69's commander furrowed ever so slightly.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
[Arclight Squad's return confirmed. Also... three unidentified ECHOs approaching together.]
At Wanderer's report, I jolted off Noah's body in surprise, hastily grabbing my clothes and military outfit.
Then I headed out of the command center with Noah.
Moments later, seeing a familiar-looking ECHO squad following behind Arva, I couldn't help but blink in astonishment.
Wh-What? It's the Cerberus Squad?
Helena, a core member of the shotgun deck.
Silva, a Tier 2 sniper who shone in specific combos despite her rating.
And Luna, the support whose cute looks had drawn near-religious fandom among some players.
It was definitely the Cerberus Squad I knew.
Why are they here?
Was Cerberus Squad's activity zone near Ark 69?
I racked my brain, recalling the lore from Echoes of Humanity — ECHO.
In the game I knew, Cerberus Squad were hounds—members of the Wanderers, ECHOs without affiliation, roaming the surface.
Unlike the rogue Wanderers hostile to humans, they repaired and upgraded their gear with machine monster parts, serving as key allies to the protagonist.
They stuck with the protagonist through three whole story chapters.
And in the end, they heroically sacrificed themselves, saving the protagonist's squad, Dawn Frame, from the Crawler Queen—leaving a deep impression on players.
[Hey, rookie. Dying after coming this far would suck, right? You guys live on and see the world we couldn't.]
Their final moments sparked a flood of demands on player forums to revive the Cerberus Squad.
The devs even teased a side story on their backstory, proof of their hefty role and popularity in-game.
The problem is, that's at least thirty years from now.
Right now?
The main story protagonist wasn't even born, and Dawn Frame was nowhere near development.
"Cerberus Squad from Ark 74. I am the leader, Helena."
And the Cerberus Squad that fought so desperately against zombies in the game weren't wanderers—they claimed affiliation with Ark 74.
What? They had a home Ark? Then why did they become wanderers?
The question flashed in my mind, but I could roughly piece together the situation.
In the original story, Cerberus Squad harbored an oddly intense grudge against the Carapace Lord and Crawler Queen.
The answer was simple if I thought about it for a bit.
The Carapace Lord in Hongwei-7 had absorbed Ark 69's forces to bolster its own, then used that horde to crush Ark 74.
Or the Crawler Queen moved directly.
Losing their Ark in the process turned them into vengeance-fueled hounds. That tracked logically enough.
Except...
"It was an operation with four squads from Ark 74, alongside three commanders, to subjugate the Carapace Lord."
A familiar term slipped from Helena's lips.
"...Carapace Lord?"
Fled north, huh? So it went toward Ark 74?
No matter that it was a quasi-named tier—it took a big hit from us.
A proper Ark squad should've handled it easily, but apparently, shit hit the fan.
And Helena's follow-up report turned my guess into certainty.
Some nameless human commander's reckless push order sent the ECHO squads into a trap, leading to total annihilation. The human commanders got nabbed by zombies and turned into spawning tools for the monster.
In that mess, Cerberus Squad barely escaped the Carapace Lord's pursuit, stumbling into Hongwei-7 and running into Arva.
"...But biological spawning tools? Were there female commanders among the humans?"
"One was a female commander, but the other two were male."
"So the males died, and only the female became a tool, huh?"
"...No."
Seeing Helena's somber reply, question marks piled up in my head.
"The Carapace Lord's virus... has a special property. Men violated by it and injected with the Z Virus don't turn into zombies—they change sex instead."
"Wh-What? Some kinda TS beam?"
"Pardon?"
I waved off Helena's tilted head.
The Carapace Lord having that ability? Wild.
This wasn't even in the ECHO game lore I knew.
Anyway, piecing it all together led to one conclusion.
The Carapace Lord we'd chased off was recovering its strength somehow and building its forces.
In other words...
"...We're fucked, aren’t we?"
Our Ark was in danger.