Chapter 20: Hidden Danger
Black Mountain, West Sector 3, the top floor of a twenty-story skyscraper.
A man with a cold, stern face, dressed in a solemn black trench coat, stood by the window, gazing down at the countless lights flickering across Black Mountain. His hair was dyed in bold streaks of red and green, both colors carefully highlighted.
Between the man’s emerald-ringed fingers, a thick black cigar was clamped. Smoke curled lazily around him.
In this era, cigars were the height of luxury. Aside from the few that had survived since before the Cataclysm, only armed merchant caravans ever brought in black cigars. These were a specialty of Hava Refuge City—one single stick cost as much as a bottle of Level 2 purified water.
Two burly men with matching red-and-green hair shoved the door open, dragging in a man whose right leg had been shattered. They flung him to the floor.
“Boss, we’ve got Philip. How do you want to handle him? Toss him off the roof?” one of the underlings asked.
“Tossing him would make a hell of a mess to clean up. Just bury him,” the man replied, taking a deep drag on his cigar without even turning his head.
After days of brutal internal bloodshed, the new leader of Black Mountain’s largest gang—the Demon Gang—had finally risen: Simpson Browne. He was a cunning and vicious mutant, one of the rare Tier 4 Vanguards.
“Yes, boss.” The underling obeyed, seizing Philip by his broken leg and hauling him toward the door. Philip bared his teeth in agony, hands scrabbling uselessly across the floor.
“Wait! Simpson, I know who killed the last boss!” Philip suddenly screamed.
“Oh?” Simpson turned around, eyes narrowing to slits. “Who?”
“Give me a chair. Let me sit while I talk,” Philip gasped, still sprawled on the floor with his broken leg clutched in the underling’s grip.
He sucked in a sharp breath, eyes burning with pure hatred. “If I could be as low and dirty as you, the one lying on the ground right now would be you!”
Simpson didn’t bat an eye. He waved a hand, signaling the underling to fetch a chair and dump Philip onto it.
Philip slumped into the seat with his eyes closed, sweat pouring down his forehead as if the pain from his shattered leg was unbearable. “I know you have to avenge the last boss to keep everyone in line. At the very least, you need to figure out how he really died.”
Simpson took another slow drag on his cigar and spoke calmly. “Make your last words short and sweet. Get to the point. That’s exactly why you lost—you could never focus. It’s not that you weren’t willing to play dirty like me. You’re just too damn stupid to pull it off.”
“Heh.” Philip let out a cold laugh. “I’ve got the clue right here, in the inside pocket of my jacket. Come get it yourself. The boss died like a dog. No matter who takes over, I hope someone makes things right for him.”
He weakly waved his hands. The back of his left hand had a clean bullet hole still leaking blood, and three fingers on his right hand were snapped. He was showing that he couldn’t unzip the jacket himself.
Simpson stepped closer and reached for the zipper—then suddenly pulled his hand back and nodded at a nearby underling. “You do it.”
The underling nodded, stepped forward, and yanked the zipper down in one smooth motion.
With a crisp metallic rasp, Philip’s leather jacket fell open, revealing a tight stab-proof vest underneath—and a thick bundle of blue high-explosive strapped around his waist.
Philip tilted his head back to look Simpson dead in the eyes. He grinned wide, then used the two remaining fingers on his right hand to press the detonator switch taped to his chest.
BOOM!
The violent explosion erupted right at Philip’s waist, but his smile slowly faded away. The high-explosive charge strapped to him—powerful enough to bring down an entire floor—had detonated perfectly. Yet the blast… stopped in place.
It was like a blazing flower caught mid-bloom, its petals halted before they could fully unfurl. The searing flames and terrifying shockwave hung motionless around Philip’s waist and body, not spreading even an inch.
In truth, the blast had already torn Philip in half. He was still conscious, staring up at Simpson with eyes full of disbelief. “You… you can actually do this…”
Simpson looked down at the man with the suspended explosion blooming at his waist, cigar smoke blowing straight into Philip’s face. He sneered. “The difference between a Tier 4 Vanguard and a Tier 3 Vanguard isn’t just one level.”
With that, he clenched his hand. The suspended explosion compressed under his grip, forcibly contained around Philip. The trapped blast kept burning inside its cage until Philip’s body was shredded to pieces, collapsing into a pile of ashes on the floor.
“Clean it up,” Simpson ordered.
A moment later, a fat middle-aged man walked in. It was West Sector 7 Commander Terry Jenkins.
“Old pal, I knew it had to be you who’d end up as the new boss,” Terry said with a wide, beaming grin.
“Mr. Jenkins, it’s pretty late. What brings you here?” Simpson asked, frowning.
“Your previous leader, the respected Mr. Wilson, died in a nuclear explosion of unknown cause. I’m truly sorry to hear it. Luckily, I happen to have a few clues right here.”
“You got any more clues?”
Terry tossed out a dented brass bullet. The faceted stone embedded in the tip sparkled under the light. “This is one of those Relic Marrow Bullets your last boss used, right? Not the kind of pricey ammo just anyone can afford.”
Simpson caught the bullet, weighed it in his palm, and studied it. His eyes narrowed sharply. “Where’d you get this?”
“Some kid from out of town picked it up. Of course, he says he just found it. Who knows what really went down?” Terry shrugged.
Simpson clenched the bullet tight in his fist. “You want us to take care of the kid for you, huh? What’s his strength? Is he a mutant? What’s his special ability? Which Refuge City did he crawl out of?”
“Ha, you nailed it. After all, I’m the Sector Commander—I’ve gotta show the City Lord some respect and can’t just go around killing people. But the info I’m giving you is solid. That outsider’s name is Finn. Probably a Tier 3 Vanguard. No known background. His special ability creates shields that stop bullets cold. Nothing can pierce him from head to toe—real pain in the ass to deal with.”
Simpson let out a cold laugh. “Who wouldn’t give the City Lord some respect? Tier 3 Vanguard, huh? I’ll send a few guys to pry his mouth open, squeeze out whatever he knows, and then put him down.”
The previous leader, Wilson, might not have had any special abilities, but every member of the gang respected him. If Simpson could uncover the real cause of his death and avenge him, it would definitely put the fear into anyone with disloyal ideas.
Terry puffed out his slightly bulging beer belly and said, “Then I’ll leave it to you. Oh, one more thing—all the Sector Commanders just held a security meeting. Looks like they’re planning something big against you guys. Watch your backs. That’s all I can tell you. The new Operations Commander has some kind of see-through ability that’s a real nuisance. She’s one troublesome bitch.”
“So, shall we team up again and take her out?” Simpson asked, raising an eyebrow slightly.
“Sure thing. We’ll get in touch when the time comes,” Terry replied, turning and walking out of the room.
……
Back at the Jackson house, Finn and Jimmy were still enjoying their dinner. Gotta admit, the lady of the house was a damn good cook. Cockroaches, mutant bison, swamp crabs… all those weird wasteland ingredients somehow turned into delicious meals under her hands.
Suddenly, the incandescent lights snapped off, plunging the whole room into darkness.
“Power outage again?”
“Ow! Dad, your fork just stabbed my hand!” little Beverly Jackson screamed.
“I wasn’t even holding a fork.”
“Wasn’t it that relay you fixed last time that broke?” the hostess asked, her tone sharp.
“No way, I’m damn good at what I do. It’s gotta be a city-wide blackout. Go check if the neighbors’ lights are out too?”
The man of the house walked to the window and peered outside. “The whole block is dark. Everything out there is pitch black.”
“Black Mountain’s nuclear battery is almost dead. We’re running out of power,” the hostess sighed as she lit an animal-fat lamp. Her movements were quick and practiced, like blackouts were just another everyday thing.
Jimmy set down his fork and asked, “Does this Refuge City run on nuclear power?”
“Yeah, it’s powered by a pre-Cataclysm nuclear fission battery, but the fuel’s nearly used up,” the hostess said worriedly. “What are we going to do? If we can’t find a new power source, soon nobody will have electricity.”