After confirming that this abandoned town held no more valuable intelligence, and encrypting and transmitting back to the forward base the observation reports on those zombies that emitted tragic howls, their biological signal characteristics, and the surrounding threat-distribution map, Leon sent an additional supplemental request through his dedicated communication link:
"Calling base, this is Kennedy Squad.
New, high-priority biological specimens discovered in the target area: a type of 'zombie' and a 'cranial parasite.'
Requesting that the Bio Division dispatch an elite technical retrieval team equipped with standard biological containment gear to covertly infiltrate this area, attempt to capture all zombies and their parasites alive, and collect environmental biological tissue samples.
Note: Targets may retain residual consciousness, and there is extensive activity from unknown alien organisms in the vicinity. Recommend a highly covert operation.
Over."
After sending the request, the three did not remain in place waiting for a reply.
They continued along the route plotted by their invisible holo-glasses, heading deeper into the town toward the direction of the city's underground sewer system.
They moved quickly between collapsing houses and rubble-choked alleys, their optical camouflage cloaks blending them almost completely into the ruined surroundings.
However, just as they passed a half-collapsed residence, something suddenly went wrong.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Several parasitic alien creatures—shaped like ticks enlarged dozens of times, dark red all over, with smooth "skin," or carapaces—suddenly lunged out like lightning from a hole in the roof and from the shadows at the corners of the walls.
Their target was clear: the seemingly empty "air"—which was exactly where Leon's team was.
These "alien ticks" had no obvious visual organs, yet they seemed to possess some kind of detection ability beyond normal senses, able to pinpoint Leon and the others even while they were under optical camouflage.
"Left side."
Leon barked, reacting with astonishing speed.
He twisted his body aside, narrowly avoiding a tick that was diving straight for his face. At almost the same moment, his right hand drew a customized pistol from the thigh holster, fitted with a high-efficiency suppressor and firing subsonic rounds.
With two extremely faint puffs, like air being vented—
Pff! Pff-splat!
Sticky fluid burst from the shells of two ticks, their bodies convulsing as they fell into the dust.
On the other side, faced with another tick leaping at him through the air, Mike chose not to fire. Instead, he snapped out a precise side kick, booting it away like an annoying rock. The creature slammed into a distant brick wall with a dull thud and stopped moving.
Maggie was even more direct. As two ticks attacked from opposite directions, her hands flashed out like lightning, intercepting their lunging paths and then smashing the two ugly parasites together.
With a crisp crack, both ticks went limp and dropped.
"These things... don't rely on eyes."
Mike shook off a bit of slime that had splashed onto his boot and frowned.
"Yeah. Some kind of bio-sensing ability. Optical camouflage has limited effect on them." After confirming there were no more threats around, Leon holstered his pistol. "Move out. Stay sharp."
Although this little episode ended without incident, it once again confirmed the bizarre nature of these biological threats.
After threading their way through the perilous abandoned town, the three finally reached their destination—
A large sewer outfall at the edge of the dry seabed, partially blocked by a rusted iron grating.
The grating had long since been violently broken, leaving an opening large enough for a person to pass through. Inside was pitch black, reeking of damp, mold, and an indescribable stench of rot.
"Heh, a standard 'welcome tunnel.'"
Mike looked at the dark entrance and, out of habit, cracked a joke in an attempt to dispel some of the heavy mood.
Without much hesitation, Leon made a hand signal, and the three of them bent down one after another and slipped into the entrance of the city's underground network.
Inside, it was completely dark. Only the faint moonlight filtering in from the entrance barely sketched the outline of the massive circular tunnel.
The air was thick and foul, their boots squelching in slick mud and standing water.
Fortunately, the insect-drones were scouting ahead.
The pulses emitted by those micro-drones mapped the tunnel's structure, junctions, and possible obstacles in real time on their holo-glasses, effectively preventing them from walking into dead ends or triggering unknown traps.
After traveling for some time through the labyrinthine, maze-like sewer network, they came to a relatively open area.
It appeared to be a large circular reservoir.
The water in the basin was inky black and stank, its surface littered with unidentifiable clumps and trash.
A rusted metal walkway spanned the reservoir overhead, leading to the opposite side.
They stepped gingerly onto the walkway, the metal mesh under their feet creaking softly.
Just then, walking in front, Leon suddenly raised his hand, signaling a halt.
He pointed at the darkness above the walkway.
Using night-vision and enhancement modes on their holo-glasses, they saw several enormous, slightly pulsing, tumor-like masses of living tissue hanging upside down from the domed ceiling over the reservoir.
The masses were an unhealthy red, their surfaces knotted with bulging veins.
From each of them dangled long, vine-like tendrils that swayed silently in the air, almost reaching the height of the walkway.
"A new biological form."
Maggie stated calmly as she began scanning and recording.
"They don't look like anything intelligent," Mike observed the slowly swaying tendrils. "More like a pre-set trap."
To verify their behavior and provide intel for any Bio Division team that might follow, Leon quickly gave instructions:
"Maggie and I will cover the area. Mike, test its reaction."
"Got it."
Mike picked up a small discarded metal bucket half-buried in the mud nearby, weighed it in his hand, then took aim at the tendril closest to him, one that was "swaying in the breeze," and hurled the bucket hard.
The moment the metal bucket touched the tendril—
Whoosh—!
The tendril snapped taut like a sprung bear trap, coiling tightly around the bucket.
Then it retracted upward at speed, pulling its "prey" back toward the largest of the tumors.
Sensing the arrival of "prey," the mass above suddenly split open at the bottom into a maw-like orifice lined with fine, needle-like teeth, ready to swallow the bucket whole.
However, just as the bucket was shoved toward the orifice, the tumor seemed to realize something was off.
This was not living flesh.
A second later, it flung the bucket away in apparent disgust, letting it slip from its tendril.
With a clang, the metal bucket dropped into the reservoir below, splashing up a fan of black water.
"Record: Target organism, provisional designation 'Hanging Predator'." While watching, Mike gave a low-voiced report:
"Response mechanism: Tendrils are sensitive to physical contact. Once triggered, they rapidly snare and reel in the target.
Suspected to use the maw for digestion or absorption.
Preliminary assessment: Very low intelligence. Unable to distinguish between living and non-living matter. Relies on static tactile triggers for predation.
Potential threat: Lethal to any creature that carelessly brushes against its tendrils, including unintelligent animals or unwary humans."
Maggie added, "Lacks visual or advanced sensory systems. Predation efficiency depends on environmental camouflage and prey negligence."
"Exactly," Leon concluded. "Looks like the ecosystem of Earth-21 has been completely scrambled by these alien intruders.
Alright, we've got our data. Let's move on. Once we clear this area, we should be close to the city's residential zone."
They ignored the slowly writhing "Hanging Predators" on the ceiling and, keeping their guard up, continued along the rusty walkway, slipping deeper into the sewer network and closer to that alien megastructure.
In the dark, damp sewer maze, thick with the stench of decay, the three continued to move in stealth along corroded pipes and slick walkways.
On their holo-glasses, the real-time map generated by the insect-drones kept expanding, marking out safe paths and potential threat nodes.
Suddenly, on the miniature radar display at the edge of their view, a signal from a forward insect-drone flared into a glaring red and began to blink rapidly, issuing a silent warning.
?!
They halted immediately, bodies pressing instinctively against the cold, damp tunnel wall, breaths slowing.
Leon gestured for absolute silence and then crept toward the location indicated by the warning: a T-shaped junction ahead.
They hid in the shadows at the corner and carefully eased their line of sight forward.
Up ahead, in a section of relatively wide main drainage, a strange-looking small drone was hovering on patrol at low altitude.
Roughly the size of a basketball to a soccer ball, its body was a dark gray that blended with the sewer environment.
Most striking of all, it had no conventional rotors. Instead, four razor-edged metal wings spun at high speed around it, their edges glinting coldly as they emitted a faint, tooth-grinding whine.
Its "head" seemed to be outfitted with multispectral sensors, scanning the surroundings like compound eyes. It was clearly a patrol drone under alien control.
"Enemy recon unit."
Mike passed the information along through the bone-conduction earpiece.
Leon quickly assessed the situation.
Disabling or interfering with this drone would not be difficult for them, but there was no way to know whether it was live-linked to some central monitoring network.
If it suddenly went dark, the aliens—or human traitors—controlling this place might immediately become suspicious, tightening security or launching a search, which would introduce unpredictable risks to their infiltration mission.
"Avoid it," Leon ordered decisively. "Find an alternate route."
Using the real-time map fed by the insect-drones, they soon located a parallel but much narrower maintenance tunnel and slipped into it, skirting the patrol zone of the spinning-blade drone.
However, as they drew closer to the city center, the enemy patrol drones they encountered within the sewer network grew ever more numerous.
Some were the same spinning-blade model. Others were smaller, scuttling along the tunnel walls like metal spiders.
Together, they formed a crisscrossing patrol and surveillance web.
Each time they ran into one, Leon's team had to choose more circuitous routes, sometimes even climbing or wading through water to avoid detection.
It wasn't that they lacked the ability to quietly neutralize these drones; rather, the principle of "not alerting the enemy" overrode everything.
They could not afford to gamble that the enemy would ignore a suddenly disabled drone.
During one such detour, another insect-drone assigned to flank reconnaissance reported a new discovery.
It had detected stable heat signatures and signs of life in a nearby abandoned warehouse, a former underground air raid shelter from the old era.
The three of them approached a ventilation opening in silence. Through the live video feed from the insect-drone, they saw what lay inside the warehouse.
A group of roughly a dozen humanoid creatures huddled there.
Their bodies were hunched as they warmed themselves around a feeble fire fueled by scrap wood and trash.
Their skin was rough and gray-brown. Judged by human standards of beauty, they were undeniably ugly, with flat, distorted features.
Most peculiar of all, each had short, auxiliary limb-like structures growing from its chest, which they occasionally flexed or waved.
Their dwellings were makeshift shelters patched together from rags and sheets of metal, overall giving off an impression of destitution and desperate survival.
"A new alien species..." Maggie logged the observed traits.
"Judging by their situation—hiding out in a place like this and relying on the most primitive fire for warmth..." Mike analyzed, "they don't really look like members of the alien faction ruling this area. More like they're... on the run? Or being oppressed?"
Leon agreed with that assessment. "Mark this location. These creatures may not belong to the same camp as the primary invading aliens, and could even be hostile to them. They might have valuable intelligence."
He quickly "packaged" the warehouse coordinates along with the creatures' appearance and behavioral patterns and transmitted them via encrypted link back to the forward base.
"Recommendation: If an operational window opens later, a Bio Division or specialized contact team should be assigned to 'approach' and 'question' this target.
Preliminary assessment indicates low threat level. If they display a cooperative attitude, recommend non-hostile engagement for communication and information extraction."
Leon added further notes to the report.
Imperial policy was not to indiscriminately exterminate all non-human intelligences. For potentially communicable, or even oppressed, species, a cautious-contact strategy was standard procedure.
After flagging this unexpected discovery, the squad returned to their primary task: infiltrating the city's core.
Following a long and winding underground journey and dodging countless patrol drones and lurking monstrosities, they finally saw a different kind of light ahead.
Climbing up a vertical maintenance shaft, they pushed aside a heavy, partially rusted grate and returned to the surface.
Compared to the sewers, the "fresh" sea breeze that hit them felt almost pleasant, though it still carried traces of smoke and rot.
They were at the edge of an abandoned harbor, surrounded by toppled cranes, the hulks of stranded, ruined cargo ships, and hills of broken shipping containers.
From here, they had a relatively concealed yet wide-open vantage point.
Looking up, they could clearly see the heavily fortified defensive nodes built on the outskirts of the metropolis—
Towering metal walls, automated turrets flashing red lights, and "soldiers" in full-body armor patrolling back and forth.
Whether those "soldiers" were aliens, traitors, or humans under mind control—
What enraged them even more was the sight of lines of ragged, gaunt human survivors being herded like livestock under the whips and shouts of the soldiers, forced into some kind of hard labor or driven toward an unknown destination.
This scene laid bare the brutality of the city's rulers and the miserable fate of the humans living there.
Leon and the others quickly picked the best observation point and began carefully recording the layout of the defenses, troop deployments, patrol patterns, and areas of human activity, streaming this critical intelligence continuously back to the forward base.
______
(≧◡≦) ♡ Support me and read 20 chapters ahead – patreon.com/Mutter
Every 100 Power Stones = 1 extra chapter on Saturday.
Every 5 reviews = 1 extra chapter on Saturday.