Three Minutes

The standard ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I used for taking someone on as a teammate in EFD was brutally simple. It came down to a single question: when things went south, could I trust them with my back?

Whether a teammate was skilled or not, knowledgeable or not, good in a crisis or not — none of that mattered much. I could cover for that kind of thing myself. All I needed was someone I could, by my own measure, actually trust.

Of course, you could ask what "trust" even meant in a prison crawling with convicts. I didn't genuinely believe in them, either. But if I couldn't trust anything else, I could trust a prisoner's will to survive. Their hunger to live, to claw their way out of this hell, wouldn't lose to a terminal cancer patient staring down a death sentence.

Lucy should be able to mop up that rabble and climb up after me just fine.

I still knew next to nothing about the prisoner named Lucy beyond the fact that she was Russian-born, but I had clocked her unusual stamina and outstanding athleticism relative to that slight frame a long time ago. Especially back at the Apartment Complex, when she'd flung a throwing dagger and snuffed an enemy in a single motion — that was the moment I thought, yeah, a prisoner's still a prisoner. Which meant Lucy was someone I could leave my back to while I went up the lighthouse first.

The problem isn't Lucy. It's this.

I took a slow turn around the lighthouse control room, where the traces of someone who had once lived here were still plainly visible. Old-fashioned lighthouses had the hassle of needing a person to adjust every setting by hand, but by the modern era most of them had settled into automated systems. This place, though, went well beyond simply managing a lighthouse. A complicated apparatus existed here for managing and controlling something else entirely. It felt less like a lighthouse office and more like a look at a small secret base — banks of gauges, PCs, even an independent internal power plant designed to hold out if the external supply was cut. On top of that, the generator was a hybrid model combining a compact hydroelectric unit installed beneath the lighthouse with solar panels. Far too sophisticated and high-end to install in a lighthouse that was "just" a lighthouse.

If it's got an independent power supply, the internal electricity should still be running fine. And yet there's no sign anyone's so much as touched the interior.

I was curious what had become of the people who'd been here, but I had no way of finding out. Instead, I carefully switched on the PC. If I couldn't figure it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠out myself, I could always ask someone else to do it for me.

"Perfect. I'll hook you up to the PC. If there's any information left on it, pull it out."

The same way it had once read an entire USB drive in a single pass, I pressed Crazy Clock against the PC tower. It fired off another laser and remotely jacked into the connection port. While it combed through the data on the hard disk and the machine's usage history, I kept farming. Not because I still had space left in my pack — I needed to find something in this room that was absolutely required if I wanted to use the lighthouse's hidden escape route.

Here we go.

I found what I was looking for in one of the cabinets lined up along the wall. The heliport escape wasn't something just anyone could use by showing up. If it were, it wouldn't be a hidden escape — it'd be a regular one. Which meant the item you absolutely had to farm was a dedicated signal flare. In zones where you couldn't extract under your own power — the heliport escape, the X-ZONE escape, the Biohazard Quarantine Zone escape, and so on — a dedicated prep item for that exit always dropped, no exceptions.

"What's on it?"

"Play them."

Every prisoner was barred from reading text inside a Dark Zone thanks to the goggles on the special gas masks, but audio came through just fine. Having to bypass the information censors one workaround at a time was a pain, but I figured that was just another way of enjoying EFD. For all I knew, it might even lead me to an ending I'd never managed to see.

I listened slowly to the voices Crazy Clock poured straight into my skull via bone conduction, and started climbing toward the top of the lighthouse.

The media file cut off there. That must have been Track 1. Without so much as a pause to breathe, it rolled straight into Track 2.

Track 2 was buried under heavy static, mixed with a strange noise that made it hard to follow. But in that second track I caught a familiar sound I hadn't been able to pick out of the first.

The clear, bright crash of waves.

Everything had gone under.

"No wonder. For all that enormous apartment complex, there wasn't a single playground or kindergarten in sight."

The reason those towers had been packed in so densely it was hard to breathe was that, from the very beginning, there had never been any need to build playgrounds or handsome walking paths. The reason Lucy and I hadn't found a single cozy family photo or scrap of children's things when we tore through those apartments — the reason the rooms showed no sign of having ever been lived in messily, the reason we hadn't even spotted so much as a tricycle or a kick scooter — was the same.

Because the most important thing of all, the children — the future — had never been there.

"Yeah. This whole fake harbor and the entire apartment complex were one giant breeding pen. A place for holding a ritual."

The reason classified documents had been sitting in a convenience store safe for no apparent reason? The person running that store had only been using the fake identity of a shopkeeper. They'd been an agency operative. The reason Guard Dogs had been prowling an empty apartment complex? Their original job, from before any of this happened, had been to make sure the 'Hope' locked up in those ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠towers couldn't run. Their original purpose was long over, but the Dark Zone had turned them into Native Species, and they'd been wandering ever since.

I felt my chest kick a little, realizing I'd stumbled onto one of the secrets tangled through this world. I was an EFD player starving for new content and lore payoffs, after all. That much I couldn't help.

"Well. Business here is done. Time to get out."

Fsssh!

Out on the heliport — a terrace-like platform jutting wide from the exterior of the lighthouse — I twisted the cap off the signal flare and yanked the cord. The fuse inside burned down in a furious rush, and a red flare punched into the empty air. The crimson star climbed and painted the pitch-black sky so bright it drowned the moonlight. And of course, something that bright pulled an enormous amount of aggro.

The prisoners still tearing into each other, unable to let go of their greed. The things that had crawled out of the sea to feed on those prisoners. Even the 'Ship' docked at the harbor to receive new 'Hope.' It was no exaggeration to say every gaze in the Dark Zone had just locked onto the lighthouse.

That was how long we had until the helicopter punched through that black sky, picked us up, and pulled us out of the Dark Zone.

"And more than enough time to deal with a bastard like you."

Shraaaack!

Instead of an answer, a steel lash tore the air at sonic speed and went for my head. I'd already ducked, so my skull didn't burst, but my opponent clicked his tongue from the darkness, sounding genuinely disappointed.

"You could've gone for my back while my partner was busy fighting downstairs. Didn't think you'd climb all the way up here after me alone. Guess you're the type that holds a grudge."

"My partner will handle yours. And me? I still get the shakes in my hands and feet every time I think about that night. Nnnnngh! Oh, I do, I really do!"

Trembling all over like a man in the middle of a seizure, he slowly stepped into view — the pervert I'd run into once before, in the prison in the middle of the night. The one who'd bragged, like it was something to be proud of, about hunting the prison's weakest for fun: the ones whose Time-Limited Human Rights had already been erased.

Not a single normal one among them, I swear.

A man nuzzling a hybrid whip of metal, leather, and fiber — iron cores studded through it here and there — against his own cheek like a beloved pet was never going to be right in the head. Still, if he was willing to ignore a warning I'd given him to his face, telling him to run if we ever met in a Dark Zone, that meant he was that confident in his own skill. I couldn't afford to take him lightly.

No. The fact that he took my warning as mockery instead of a warning makes him even more dangerous.

Types like him had to see it through to the end, no matter what, once they'd fixed on a target. When they were the hunter, they drove their prey into a corner and took the throat. Even when they were the prey, they would still try to tear out the hunter's. He really did deserve that Orange jumpsuit.

Shraaaack!

With no warning at all, the whip came again. This time it bent in midair like a snake and switched targets from my head to my chest. I was wearing body armor, but if that stupidly powerful lash caught me wrong, a cracked rib or two wouldn't be the end of it.

So what was the play?

Close the distance.

Against a whip user, falling back on instinct and retreating, or sidestepping, was the worst option. Once a whip was extended, its power concentrated at the tip of its reach — inside that reach, you could barely expect any force at all. Closing in was the surest way to beat it.

"Yes, yes, that's the way. You think so too, don't you?"

The only problem was that the lunatic in front of me clearly understood his own weapon's weakness just as well as I did. As expected, the moment I lunged inside the whip's arc, he didn't waste strength hauling it back by brute force. He spun his whole body like a rhythmic gymnast and recovered the lash on centrifugal force. I'd thought he was unusually slender for a man. He'd reshaped his entire build from the start just to use it that way.

Shraaaaaack!

The whip, snapped back in a blur of centrifugal force, became a close-range strike as the Orange grabbed it mid-length and slashed, cutting the reach down hard. I threw myself into a sideways roll and barely slipped the steel lash that came in like it meant to split my skull. The mini sonic boom when that iron cracked the air was enough to put goosebumps down my whole body just from the sound.

But I'd watched him swing it three times now. I had the pattern.

"Struggle all you want! And scream with every last ounce of breath you've got! Dance and sing for us!"

"Drop the cheap artist act. There's no aesthetics in murder."

"No, no. What I want to hear isn't criticism dressed up as a review. Just follow the script you've been given!"

Crack! Crack! Shraaaack!

Attacks powerful enough to split the concrete underfoot came at me in a relentless chain, like a snake that refused to miss.

"Sorry. I've never had much talent for the arts."

Not every Korean is a born singer and dancer. A real Korean has a different specialty.

"Taking down the ones who get drunk on how special they think they are."

The steel lash came for my head again. This time I pretended to dodge, then stuck my arm out and took it. A whip that had been aiming for a skull and found an arm instead did the obvious thing — it wrapped.

Crrk!

"You idiot!"

"Yeah? You sure about that?"

I asked it back as I detached the Modular Exo-Suit protecting my wrist. Then I yanked Pretty free and brought the claw hammer down on the exo-suit and the steel lash tangled around it, both at once.

KRA-KOOM!

The compact battery pack built into the Modular Exo-Suit detonated under the surge of current and impact. The thick, stubborn iron was wound so tight around it that almost none of the shrapnel kicked back at me. The whip, though, was thoroughly shredded.

I gave Pretty — who'd pulled her weight yet again today — a flashy little twirl. The pervert's whip wasn't a whip anymore. A whip that couldn't concentrate its force at the tip was, for all practical purposes, a floppy length of rope.

"Ah… ahhhhh?"

"Aw. Look at that. Your lover couldn't take what I had to offer and broke."

There's an old saying for this, isn't there.

The smallest peppers pack the most heat.

"Looks like you'll need to buy yourself a new one."

If you survive this, that is.