Keep Quiet in the Dark Zone
I'd sprinted my guts out through the dark, and there they were — the Suicide Squad I'd been hoping to find, locked in a head-on brawl with Machine Spirits possessing Slaughter Robots.
They should have either run for it or crushed those Machine Spirits with overwhelming skill or numbers. Watching these half-assed idiots flail against a handful of them was so pathetic I couldn't help myself. I stole the last hits.
And of course, I didn't forget to announce the Dark Zone's catchphrase.
"......"
They fixed me with suspicious stares for a moment, but I didn't care. I calmly looked over the members of this clueless, mannerless Suicide Squad.
Three hulking bruisers who looked like they'd gotten basic strength-enhancement and metabolic-boost auxiliary implants, plus one slender man who clearly didn't belong with the rest. It was a party composition you almost never saw anymore, now that Dark Zone expeditions had gotten serious.
Prisoners had finally figured out they were betting their lives, so they recruited party members based on cost-effectiveness and efficiency. Just look at what happened when I — the Super Rookie — posted a party recruitment on PrisonNet. The flood of applicants was insane. Everyone wanted to team up with someone at least close to their own level, or better yet, ride the coattails of someone far greater.
"Unusual combo. Looking at you three, you don't seem all that bright. Is that skinny guy the brains of this party?"
"That's a hell of a thing to say to someone you just met! I appreciate the help, but if you're looking for a fight, we're happy to oblige!"
"I just said keep quiet in the Dark Zone, you fucking idiot. Raise your voice one more time and I'll rip out your implants and sell them to Ted Chan, so shut the hell up. Especially you with the shotgun — think carefully before you pull that trigger. What do you think you're going to do with that piece-of-shit homemade shotgun?"
Buckshot? Against a classic Native Species made of flesh and blood, it was a decent enough weapon. Even by my standards, a shotgun using buckshot ranked around B-tier. But buckshot was for stopping and suppressing, not reliably killing — especially not against the Slaughter Robot wreckage scattered around here, or a heavily armed prisoner like me. And this wasn't even a proven commercial product. It was a homemade shotgun slapped together from a sawed-off pipe. I wasn't idle enough to play house with these guys in the middle of a Dark Zone.
"So? What's your answer?"
"...I do serve as this party's advisor, yes."
"Advisor for a party this small? Please. You're just the guy who explains the gimmicks and phenomena these meatheads can't understand. And you appraise which items will sell for more, right? Am I wrong?"
"That's also correct."
"Then there's nothing more to discuss. You've got two options."
I drew my shotgun and pistol, one in each hand, and trained them on the group. Thanks to the Modular Exo-Suit and the strength amplification, holding a heavy shotgun one-handed wasn't particularly difficult.
"Option one: you each get a brief moment to deliver your last words, then we all go missing together in the Dark Zone. Nice and friendly."
"You son of a—!"
"Option two: you bet on a slim chance of survival and come with me on a thrilling Dark Zone adventure, in pursuit of glorious fame and a fat backpack."
The hammer-wielding bruiser who was clearly the party leader snarled, but the skinny guy I was watching didn't show any emotion. He just thought it over. Honestly, I didn't think this was something that required deliberation. Then again, maybe he was simply curious which option offered better odds of survival — taking me down, or joining me.
"Even soccer gets shit on if extra time goes past ten minutes, and you guys have already burned three. That's enough time to cook a cup of instant ramen. Why don't you just ask for a coffee-and-cigarette break while you're at it?"
"You're in a position of advantage, and yet you're offering us a chance to join you. Doesn't that mean you need our strength right now?"
"Bluntly? Yeah. But it's not like I couldn't do this alone without you. It's just a matter of slightly more annoying versus slightly less annoying."
"Then we'll join you."
"Hey!"
"Smart choice. I'd rather have guys who are a little dumb but strong than a bunch of incompetent meatheads who won't listen."
The skinny guy accepted the second offer without further hesitation, which only made the bruiser next to him more furious. But what was he going to do about it? I was holding guns, not a knife. What could they do when I was pointing firearms at them?
Fortunately, the skinny guy quickly calmed the bruisers down.
"This is the only way we're getting out of here alive. Before this man showed up, we were hanging by a thread and you know it."
"I'm not denying that, but what the hell are we supposed to trust this guy on?"
"Reputation."
The skinny guy dropped that single, solid word, and even the team leader was left speechless, just rolling his eyes. Sensing that a bit more explanation was needed, he recited the prisoner number hidden beneath my body armor.
"We're from a different cell block, so we've never seen him in person, but I know who this man is. Prisoner number 77777. A new death-row inmate who's been making a name for himself in Cell Block H-050. The celebrity who shattered every Dark Zone record in the shortest time on record. He's the Super Rookie."
"Ah! That, that, that... son of a bitch?"
"That's also correct."
The hell it is.
Whatever else I might have done, I hadn't lived badly enough to get called a son of a bitch by guys who'd committed actual crimes and landed in prison. Well, I'd set that minor grievance aside for now.
"It's settled. You're coming with me on a fun, exciting Dark Zone adventure. Before we go, three rules. First: keep your mouths as quiet as possible until we escape the Dark Zone. Silence is a virtue in here. Second: if I tell you something, you believe it — even if I say you can make soybean paste out of red beans."
"What's the third?"
"I just thought of a third. Don't talk back."
"......"
"What are you standing around for? Move."
Having delivered the rules, I started herding the guys who were still standing there like idiots. You never linger at a combat site. We needed to move, fast. And with the temperature dropping in real time, we needed to keep our bodies moving even if it meant burning extra energy.
"Since the one guy who looks like he has a working brain is barely dragging your average IQ into triple digits, I'll give you a free tip. These Slaughter Robots look expensive, but they're all flash and no substance, so don't go out of your way to hunt them. If you insist on farming... just pull the AI chips and the compact power-source parts, like this. Those are the only pieces that actually fetch a decent price outside."
"How do you know that?"
"Experience."
I split open the skull plating of a Slaughter Robot with a snapped neck and deftly extracted the AI chip. They started clumsily copying me. Everything they'd been stuffing into their backpacks was junk — easy-to-farm scraps that were nothing more than environmental texture from this Dark Zone. I could understand why they'd get greedy.
The skinny guy sidled up beside me, watching my work closely, and suddenly introduced himself.
"My name is Ahn Moon-ho. I ended up in this prison due to... circumstances. I was fortunate enough to catch our leader's eye, so I've been working with them."
Somehow that name sounded like the kind of guy who'd skim a manual, hop in a giant robot, and hard-carry a space war.
"Guys with 'circumstances' are always missing the two most important things in society. Money and connections. Looking at you, I'd say you've got neither."
People with money had connections, and people with connections had money. Living without just one of the two was actually the harder path in this world.
"You've got it exactly right. I had a certain social standing, but it was barely enough to keep food on the table. I even had some authority in my field of expertise, but I never formed any deep personal connections."
I wasn't some politically correct, human-rights-obsessed hypocrite who felt sympathy for prisoners. But ending up in a place like this because you had no money and no connections? That, I could relate to. Because ninety-nine percent of the guys around me were exactly that type. Even a bloodless, tearless extreme-T personality would be overflowing with empathy after a single week in here.
But what mattered right now wasn't the emotional stuff. It was the practical, realistic part. Namely, the Dark Zone wrecker hustle of picking up the money scattered right in front of us.
"But why are you only taking the AI chips and power sources? This armor plating, for instance — if we brought it outside, it would help with new-materials research, so it should sell for a decent price. And this circuit board..."
"Tough, cheap, proven combat-robot armor is easy to manufacture on the outside. You run into those Cans every single day in the prison that's locking us up. That didn't tell you anything?"
"In other words, only things with 'research value' sell for real money."
"Exactly. Why do people research lab-grown meat and alternative sweeteners on the outside? Because raw material production is getting harder, or because more people want substitutes for health reasons. Dark Zone loot works the same way. You extract the core value according to supply and demand. If you go around gobbling up everything like a neighborhood stray, you'll get sick."
Part of me wanted to dump all the junk out of their backpacks, but I didn't owe them that much. I stopped at giving advice.
Once we'd roughly finished farming, we bolted before other Slaughter Robots could visit this horrific crime scene. They say criminals always return to the scene of the crime. We had no intention of ever coming back.
"So what's your reason for teaming up with us?"
The hammer bruiser, who belatedly introduced himself as Lee Duho, asked in a suddenly gruff tone.
"The thrill of a party-play adventure."
"Bullshit. If you're the famous Super Rookie, hanging around with guys like us is a net loss, isn't it? Using us as bait would make a lot more sense."
"Like I said, whether I go with you or not is just a difference in how annoying things get. And I hate being annoyed. Also, don't overvalue yourselves. Bait only works properly when it doesn't know it's being used. If I wanted to use you as bait, would I be walking around with you like this? I'd be tailing you in secret, waiting for my opening."
"That's—!"
The hammer bruiser hadn't gotten a Smart Link implant, so his brain apparently couldn't handle the overload. He started to speak and then just stammered. Sharp conversations usually ended the moment one side ran out of words or one side threw a punch. Ours fizzled out just as blandly.
The truth was, if I moved alone and in secret like he'd said, I could probably achieve my goal somehow. But the results would fall infinitely short of my standards. And if I tried to do everything myself from start to finish, the risk was too high and I didn't have the manpower. Above all, as I'd already said — it was annoying. That was why I'd formed a temporary alliance with these guys, who at best would normally serve as bait.
"Seems like I didn't explain enough, so let me add something. I intend to deal with the machine... Native Species currently occupying this facility, and normalize the Dark Zone."
"Normalize?"
"You heard that weird broadcast a few hours ago, right? That's a gimmick phenomenon created by the Native Species occupying this facility after they infiltrated the machines and systems. Eliminate the source, and this Dark Zone goes back to the comfortable environment we had when we first dropped in."
A Dark Zone so warm it was almost stuffy, with no real threats besides the Slaughter Robots. An amusement park, basically. Most prisoners couldn't deal with a gimmick that spanned the entire Dark Zone, so they farmed a bit and bailed in a hurry. I wanted to suck every last drop of sweetness out of this place.
"In short, this isn't a Dark Zone where you farm a little, dodge the creeping lethal cold and the Slaughter Robot pursuit, and then escape. The whole point is to punch through the cold and the killer robots from the start, eliminate the source of the gimmick, and extract maximum profit. Fail at that, and you won't take anything out of this Dark Zone — and you won't get out alive, either."
How much would you even get for a backpack stuffed with miscellaneous junk? Honestly, a hundred per person would be a miracle. Fifty would be pushing it. By current cost-of-living standards, even a cyberpunk scrap-collecting grandpa would be so horrified he'd fire up his self-driving handcart and start working the Dark Zone even harder. I couldn't accept that kind of result either.
"...Honestly, you're probably the only one who'd even think that way. Most people would figure they can't even dodge the Slaughter Robots, let alone solve this phenomenon."
"That's why I didn't kill you."
"......"
No need to kill a bunch of sled dogs that actually listen, right? Setting everything else aside, I had to see this Dark Zone expedition through to the end.
Anyway, I took point with Lee Duho down a corridor lined with yellow labels, checking a few key facilities along the way. Most of the electronically sealed doors were locked tight from the power being out, but we could bypass those by slipping through ventilation shafts or smashing through the thin walls between rooms. The security facilities that looked like they held classified data, though, were protected by bulletproof glass and thick walls. Those we skipped — no point wasting time.
And the deeper we went, the darker it got, and the more Machine Spirits were hunting us. We couldn't just focus on exploration and farming. I'd been staying reasonably alert, knowing that any Machine Spirits tracking our position and movements would definitely try something.
The moment we crossed into a new sector, a thick fire door slammed down behind us, sealing our retreat.
I unceremoniously removed the suppressor from my shotgun. A precaution to keep it from melting during sustained fire. Silence was a virtue in the Dark Zone — but a forced Wave was a different story.
Lee Duho's group at least understood what a Wave meant. Faces tight with tension, they gripped their weapons and scanned the surroundings.
Then came the sound of small animal-like things skittering through the ceiling vents, and the pipes inside the walls burst with a bang, spraying ice crystals everywhere. And from the darkness far ahead, an ominous mechanical clanking echoed without pause.
The kind of E-tier bullshit situation everyone ran into at least once in a Dark Zone. This time I wasn't alone. As long as my temporary party members didn't tap out, we should get through it as smoothly as usual.
Alright. Time for the usual WWE hour.