Silencing

Inside the infirmary of Shelter 404. Lying flat on the scanning bed, Luo Hua opened his eyes. The first thing that met his gaze was a silvery-white ceiling. He tried to sit up, only to find that the anesthetic had not yet worn off; his body refused to obey his commands. Except for his left hand— Staring at the bionic prosthesis before him, he could not help but swallow hard. Just then, an unfamiliar voice drifted over from the side. "Yo, awake already?" Luo Hua slowly tilted his neck to look at the unfamiliar man standing beside the scanning bed. He was about to ask where he was when he suddenly caught sight of several silver threads as fine as hair hovering from the man's forearm. He recognized that device. It was a "scalpel" used for minimally invasive microsurgery on neurons, typically found on massive medical equipment used for cybernetic prosthetic surgery. The only kind of people who would install something like that directly onto their own bionic prosthesis were the lunatics obsessed to the point of paranoia with Prosperity Era technology... His Adam's apple bobbed, and Luo Hua forced out a sentence. "Are you... from the Academy?" "Spot on. The Shelter 404 Branch, and I'm the dean here." Making a lighthearted joke using the empty promises Chu Guang had made him, Yin Fang retracted the hair-thin blades into the interface on the inside of his forearm. Looking at the man lying on the scanning bed, he offered a faint smile and continued. "Welcome to Shelter 404. Besides being the dean of the Academy branch, I'm also the leader of the scientific expedition here. By the way, the bionic organs on you are pretty interesting. I opened them up for a look earlier—you don't mind, do you?" Luo Hua replied helplessly, "...Would minding make any difference?" "None at all. It's already done," Yin Fang teased before adding, "My name is Yin Fang. If any of your components malfunction, you can come find me to fix them." "Luo Hua... employee of the Enterprise's Silverwing Group." Luo Hua looked around, his eyes filled with astonishment. "This place... is Shelter 404?" Yin Fang's eyebrow twitched slightly. "That's right. Haven't you been here before?" "I have, but..." He just had no memory of this room at all. Luo Hua stared blankly at the ceiling. Right then, he remembered something and immediately looked at Yin Fang beside the bed. "Where is your Administrator?" "Right outside the door. Want me to call him in?" Luo Hua nodded. Just as he was about to say "please," the infirmary door slid upward with a crisp hiss. A man and a woman stepped inside. The stunning beauty with long silver hair was another unfamiliar face, but the man standing beside her was someone he knew all too well. "Chu Guang..." Chu Guang smiled and nodded. "We meet again." Compared to when they first met a year ago, the young man lying in the bed looked far more mature, his face etched with weather-beaten weariness. If Yin Fang hadn't thoughtfully shaved his beard, his artistic demeanor would have been even more pronounced. A spark of excitement flared in Luo Hua's eyes. He struggled to sit up from the scanning bed, but Chu Guang raised a hand to stop him. "Don't strain yourself. You can talk just fine lying down. It wasn't easy waking you up; we don't want you passing out halfway through." Chu Guang smiled, then asked with concern, "How are you feeling? Any better?" "Much better..." Luo Hua swallowed, then blurted out, "We found it!" "Shelter 0?" Chu Guang asked thoughtfully. "Yes!" Luo Hua said excitedly. "In the Great Wasteland... we found the entrance!" "What does it look like?" "I don't know." "You don't know?" Chu Guang looked at him in surprise. "Didn't you go in?" A bitter expression crept onto Luo Hua's face. "To be precise, we were so close to going in..." Chu Guang pondered for a moment. "...Because of the Legion?" Luo Hua nodded heavily. "We successfully located the coordinates of Shelter 0, and we obtained the key to enter it from a pivotal figure... the very card you're holding in your hand." Chu Guang glanced at the silver card in his hand and fell into deep thought. Luo Hua paused on the scanning bed before continuing. "They were tougher to deal with than we anticipated... Although we had power armor, their combat strength wasn't weak at all. Moreover, the Falcon Kingdom at Oasis 2, the closest oasis to the Great Wasteland, is their vassal. "Faced with waves of soldiers surging in like a tide, we were forced to abandon the Pioneer land fortress. Part of our team took refuge in a temporary shelter facility near the base of the space elevator." Chu Guang was taken aback. "...Space elevator?!" "Yeah. Didn't you know?" Luo Hua gave Chu Guang an odd look. Seeing the latter slowly nod, he continued. "Near the equator in the central Great Wasteland lies the ruins of the People's Federation space elevator... That thing collapsed two hundred years ago. Its fragments are scattered all across the Great Wasteland, with the farthest piece crashing all the way down on the east coast. But none of that is the main point—the point is that Shelter 0 is right near it!" Taking a deep breath, he looked earnestly at Chu Guang. "Lu Yang... our captain ordered me to head east no matter what, and under no circumstances let the Legion get their hands on that card. "It's our final hope of ending all the suffering on this wasteland." Chu Guang pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, taking a moment to digest the massive wave of information. "I will do everything I can to help you. However, our current situation is that the Legion's airship is parked right under our noses. Unless we deal with it, our forces will have to make a massive detour south just to enter Luoxia Province... Do you have a way to contact the east coast?" Anxiety surfaced in Luo Hua's eyes. "We already reported the situation to the Enterprise. Haven't their reinforcements arrived?" Hearing this, Chu Guang's expression turned somewhat subtle. "Well, they arrived, but only a little over a hundred men... Are you sure that's enough?" Luo Hua visibly froze. "A hundred... How could there be only a hundred-odd people?!" Watching Luo Hua's eyes fill with mounting panic and disbelief, Chu Guang nodded grimly and continued. "That is the reality. The unit that came is the 26th Strike Team, barely numbering over a hundred, led by a captain named Yun Song. While they do have twenty suits of power armor, they are severely lacking in heavy weaponry... Honestly, that meager force looks barely viable to me." That was also one of the reasons he hadn't summoned those troops back to help fight the Heart of Iron. Those hundred-odd men would be utterly useless here; it was far better to have them assist in the west. What he needed was much heavier support. Whether it was weapons or technology, he would take as much as they could give. Luo Hua gritted his teeth and said, "A single strike team is nowhere near enough! Never mind the Legion's two ten-thousand-man legions deployed on the western edge of Luoxia Province; the Falcon Kingdom's standing army alone numbers around a hundred thousand! Even with twenty suits of power armor... there's no way they can face that many enemies." Chu Guang sighed. "I feel the same way." Especially after witnessing the destructive power of that 400mm main gun, he was all the more convinced. To tell the truth, he even suspected whether something had gone wrong on the east coast; otherwise, why would the reinforcements consist of so few men? However, now was clearly not the time to debate that. Pausing briefly, Chu Guang asked, "Don't you have large transport planes, airships, or anything similar?" A troubled expression appeared on Luo Hua's face. "We do, but this place alone is nearly three thousand kilometers away from the east coast... That distance far exceeds the maximum range of our Electric Rays." The Electric Ray was a twin-engine transport aircraft deployed by the Enterprise, capable of transitioning between fixed-wing and vertical takeoff and landing modes, but its maximum range was only five hundred kilometers. Otherwise, Yun Song and his men wouldn't have marched over by land. Historically, the Enterprise only possessed a single survivor settlement—Ideal City—and merely maintained trade relations with other settlements across Yunjian Province. With no need for ultra-long-range deployment or overseas military bases, they had never developed large-aircraft technology. It wasn't impossible to start developing them now; with their advanced power systems and energy-storage tech, designing a practical airframe wouldn't be difficult for them. Yet whether it could be completed in time to resolve the current crisis was another question entirely. Luo Hua fell into deep thought. After a long silence, he spoke up. "Regardless, we must find a way to contact the Enterprise first... I have to inform the higher-ups of the situation here!" Chu Guang asked, "Do you still have a Migratory Bird?" "That massive thing... how could I carry one on me?" Luo Hua coughed dryly, then continued, "However, aside from the Migratory Bird... there is actually one emergency method." Chu Guang immediately asked, "What method?" Yin Fang, who had remained silent at the side, suddenly chimed in. "An orbital satellite again?" A look of surprise crossed Luo Hua's face, and he nodded. "...How did you know?" A subtle expression appeared on Yin Fang's face, his tone tinged with a faint, imperceptible mockery. "It's not like this is your first time pulling that stunt." Chu Guang frowned slightly, not quite following along. "Orbital satellite? What do you mean? Isn't low Earth orbit filled with space junk—" "Precisely because outer orbit is swarming with space debris, you can always find one or two relics that still function, can't you?" Uncrossing his arms, Yin Fang continued in a teasing drawl. "All they do is upload data to an operational satellite, then use whatever residual propellant it has left to deorbit the thing near the east coast. Whoever finds the crashed satellite just grabs a crowbar or an axe, smashes that hunk of scrap metal open like a coconut shell, and reads whatever's stored inside... Only people like them would desecrate such refined treasures in such a crude, wasteful way." Chu Guang was stunned. *Holy shit?* *You can do that?!* Not only was Chu Guang taken aback, but even Heya standing beside him wore a dumbfounded look. Finally catching the mocking undertone, Luo Hua flushed. "It's not like we use them for regular phone calls! It's strictly an emergency measure for extreme situations." Chu Guang couldn't help asking, "Wait... why do you have to crash the satellite? Can't it just serve as a signal relay?" Yin Fang shook his head. "You're thinking too simply. First off, the satellites that can be utilized this way aren't low-orbit communications satellites; they are long-endurance, highly reliable scientific research satellites that we generally refer to as... T-series satellites. "These satellites are usually stationed in higher, roomier geostationary orbits. They remain relatively stationary relative to the ground and can only communicate with the research facilities directly beneath them... Furthermore, the communication method isn't radio, but tight-beam lasers with extremely narrow coverage." Chu Guang was startled. "Lasers?!" Yin Fang nodded and explained concisely. "Exactly. When information needs to be exchanged, the ground research facility shoots a beam of light upward, and the sky shoots a beam back down. You can roughly think of it as using a pistol to hit a coin-sized transmitter from thirty-six thousand kilometers away... The confidentiality of this communication method is extraordinarily high. Aside from the research facility tethered to the satellite, you can hardly contact it from anywhere else, let alone acquire its exact coordinates. "Generally speaking, if the ground communication station loses connection with the satellite, the satellite enters dormancy until awakened again. Therefore, in theory, these satellites usually have residual power remaining, and that remaining energy is at least sufficient for a single orbital transition." Chu Guang mused, "So all we need to do is find a ground station capable of linking with such a satellite, write the data into it, and then guide it to crash..." "Indeed. That's why I say they're burning harps for firewood. The way those people on the east coast exploit pre-war civilization relics is practically destructive; they have zero concept of sustainable use. Crashing a scientific satellite worth tens of millions just to send a hello... tsk, tsk..." Yin Fang clicked his tongue mockingly. Although the jab was directed at the Enterprise rather than Luo Hua himself, it still made the injured man flush bright red. "Aren't we discussing how to deal with the Legion right now? Do you have a better idea?" Yin Fang answered bluntly, "No. But do you even know where to find that kind of research facility?" "Of course! There's one in the south of River Valley Province; I remember the coordinates!" Luo Hua looked at Chu Guang and said sincerely, "It's a research institute about seventy kilometers from Qingquan City... You guys should find the data inside useful too. Could I trouble you to send someone there?" Chu Guang nodded. "No problem." That was easy enough for him. A distance of seventy kilometers took less than an hour for a Dragonfly transport plane; dropping a few parachutes would do the trick. As for crashing a satellite... It wasn't his satellite anyway. Securing the data inside the institute was reward enough. The top priority now was getting the Enterprise to deploy more reinforcements—and naturally, the more weapons they sent, the better. The airfield north of Dawn City was plenty spacious; it could accommodate transport planes of any size. Luo Hua's eyes brimmed with gratitude. "Thank you." Chu Guang smiled warmly. "Don't mention it. The Legion is our common enemy. "Just focus on recovering; leave the rest to us. Speaking of which, I've managed to get my hands on a few barrels of fine liquor. Once your injuries heal, we'll share a drink." Luo Hua chuckled weakly. "Haha... that will have to wait a while, then." His tense shoulders finally relaxed, and leaning back against the scanning bed, a look of profound relief washed over his face. Although his comrades far away in the Great Wasteland were still in peril, Chu Guang's wholehearted support gave him renewed hope. Standing by the door with arms crossed, Heya suddenly spoke up. "Now that the surgery is finished... can you arrange to transfer him elsewhere? This is no place for convalescence." Although this room was called an infirmary, she had long since turned it into her personal laboratory. The only scanning bed in the entire Alliance was an indispensable research tool for her. An embarrassed look appeared on Luo Hua's face. "Sorry for intruding." Chu Guang smiled. "Not at all. But this really isn't a place for recuperation. I'll arrange for someone to transfer you to a much better ward shortly." With that, he summoned the medical staff waiting outside and instructed them to transfer Luo Hua to the Alliance First Hospital on the surface. The wards there were spacious enough, and several wounded men left behind by the Enterprise's expedition team were already staying there. As for medical bills... Bringing that up would be far too distant. Yin Fang stood with his arms crossed, muttering under his breath even as the medics wheeled the patient out the door. "I knew it..." "Those bastards on the east coast definitely have a treasure map in their hands!" ... That evening. A transport plane took off from northern Dawn City, carrying twenty-five players from the Burning Corps toward the research facility seventy kilometers to the east. At the same time, in Ruigu City, one hundred and fifty kilometers west of Dawn City, the campaign by the White Bear Knights and Death Corps against Shelter 79 had reached its final stage. The main thoroughfare leading to the central research sector had been completely cleared. Although mutants and "savages" continued to pour out from other sectors, their assaults were noticeably weaker than during the first few days. Ultimately, the mutants active in this shelter were not fruiting bodies of mutated slime mold controlled by a hive mind. Their attacks on the players were motivated primarily by territorial defense and hunting instincts; there was no coordinated tactical cooperation between different species, let alone the formation of massive tides. If this had been downtown Qingquan City, a single gunshot would have drawn every mutant on the entire street swarming in; even twice their numbers wouldn't have held out... "Holy crap... that guy was freakishly strong!" Flicking the blood from his entrenching tool, Construction Site Youth and Brick clicked his tongue at the shambles in the room. He gripped the assault rifle slung across his chest and swapped out the magazine. Across the spacious hall lay forty or fifty corpses strewn haphazardly, alongside primitive weapons such as spears and bows, and a floor littered with smoldering brass shell casings. An encounter had just broken out here. The opponents were a band of savages who appeared to have been lying in ambush nearby, launching a sudden attack the moment the players entered the room. These people possessed sickly pale skin but surprisingly muscular limbs, with Strength attributes around 13 to 15—roughly equivalent to the first Awakening tier. Not only that, they were blindingly fast, astonishingly resilient, and moved their bodily muscles with the agility of wild beasts. Or to put it more accurately, they *were* beasts. Almost none of their internal organs matched those of normal humans; they merely happened to resemble people in appearance. Fortunately, these savages only knew how to use bows and spears. Otherwise, they would have been truly difficult to deal with. "Only the last 'checkpoint' remains before the research sector. Ahead looks like a Deathclaw's nest, and our ammunition is running low..." Carrying his rifle over his shoulder, Brother Edge stepped up to the White Bear Knights and continued. "I suggest we resume the raid tomorrow." "Tail agrees! Phew, I'm exhausted!" Slumped against the wall, Tail panted heavily and raised her arm to wipe her brow, only to smear blood all across her forehead instead of sweat. Sisi, equally out of breath, checked her remaining magazines and nodded. "Yeah... let's continue tomorrow." Shelter 79 had a simulated day-night cycle, and nightfall was only a short while away. Glancing around, she added, "There are quite a few rooms here. Since the mobs are cleared out, why don't we explore a bit before heading back?" This was the final building before the research sector, seemingly an administrative building or something similar. While searching other sectors earlier, she had discovered some intriguing clues. She intended to verify them before leaving. Hearing Sisi's proposal, Brother Edge readily agreed. "Sure, let's rendezvous in an hour." "OK." With an agreement reached, the players dispersed through the room to search. Tail, who had looked thoroughly exhausted just a second ago, sprang up with a bounce and scurried off with Rou Rou to parts unknown. Having already decided on her target, Sisi studied the floor directory before heading straight across the hall and up the stairs to the office floor above. Surprisingly, this floor was not occupied by mutants. The entire corridor was deathly quiet. What surprised Sisi even more was that, unlike the sectors they had traversed earlier, the office doors here were all wide open. "Oh, an unexpected discovery..." Picking the closest room, Sisi carefully confirmed it was secure before stepping inside with her rifle raised. It was a futuristic office. The furniture inside had sleek, distinctive designs. For a room nearly twenty square meters in size, it luxuriously held only two desks. Approaching the nearest desk, Sisi scanned the cluttered surface and casually pulled open the drawer on the right. Inside lay several personal items, including an ID badge and a thumb-sized storage drive. The connector on the drive matched the interface of her VM perfectly. "Is this... a flash drive?" A gleam of curiosity entered her eyes. Sisi turned it over in her hands for a moment, then plugged it into her VM. The indicator light blinked faintly, and a pale blue dialogue box soon materialized before her eyes, its contents automatically rendered into legible language by the VM's built-in translation protocol. [Shelter 79 Research Log] [Experiment Log: February 7, 2129] [Experiment Log: ...] The final log entry was dated July 8, 2178. Come to think of it... Wasn't the year 2129 the first year of the Wasteland Era? Lightly rubbing her chin with her forefinger, Sisi's intrigue deepened as she clicked on the very first log in the list. [February 7, 2129: The hibernation pods opened. What greeted our awakening was not our jubilant compatriots, but the shelter's automated sequence. It means we have ultimately succumbed to the worst-case scenario. The world outside is destroyed; this place is our final sanctuary... Damn it, it sounds like a nightmare, but the rubidium atomic clock never lies.] [I will remember this day of despair and hope. We shall fulfill the vow we made three years ago... Yet can such an outlandish dream truly be accomplished?] "...An outlandish dream?" Murmuring under her breath, she furrowed her brow. That Yong Shi fellow had mentioned that Shelter 79 was conducting research on "reverting mutated organisms back to their pre-mutation state." But had mutants already existed in the first year of the Wasteland Era? She vaguely recalled the official lore compendium stating that the widespread emergence of mutants occurred only after the half-century-long Little Ice Age. "Which means..." "Were they actually conducting an entirely different experiment here?" She was never one to blindly trust every word from an NPC; in fact, she had harbored suspicions about Yong Shi's true identity from the start. Since this was a fully realistic virtual-reality game, wasn't it entirely possible for an NPC to lie? Yet just as she was about to flip to the next entry, the alloy door behind her suddenly slammed shut, cutting off the only exit. Sisi's expression shifted slightly. She immediately dashed over and slammed her shoulder into the door, only to find it did not budge in the slightest. Without hesitation, she stepped back a few paces, raised the assault rifle slung over her chest, and pulled the trigger against the alloy door. *Bang! Bang!* Two deafening gunshots echoed like thunderclaps through the room. Sparks leaped toward the ceiling, yet not even a scratch was left on the door's surface. Taking a deep breath, she walked up to the door, felt around, and cupped her hands into a cone against the metal, shouting out. "Tail!" "Can you hear me?" No response. She pressed her ear against the surface, but not the faintest sound filtered through from outside. "Tsk... the soundproofing is absurd." Clicking her tongue, Sisi abandoned the futile effort and pulled her ear away from the door. Within a shelter, the Administrator's authority was absolute—at this moment, she finally understood what that lore entry meant. A product forged from the pinnacle of People's Federation technology was simply not something an archaic assault rifle could breach. Even using every grenade on her person would likely be useless. As long as the shelter's Administrator desired it... He could keep this door sealed until the next century. Just then, Sisi noticed that the ventilation duct overhead had fallen completely silent at some point, seemingly shut off. Realization dawning on her, she murmured in a low voice. "Planning to silence me, huh..." That guy had most likely intended to kill them from the start. Otherwise, he could have locked the door before she ever walked in. "A normal adult consumes about 0.75 kilograms of oxygen a day... A twenty-square-meter room with a three-meter ceiling holds roughly sixty cubic meters of air." When oxygen drops below ten percent, carbon dioxide poisoning sets in. "In other words... I have about five days to live." Taking into account an Awakened's elevated metabolic rate, two or three days was probably more realistic. Glancing at the research logs displayed on her VM screen, an almost imperceptible smile suddenly curled the corner of Sisi's lips. The time left to her was actually... Far too generous.