Chapter 422
Chapter 422
She led him into the security control room located on the second floor. One wall was lined with a bank of monitors, each screen displaying various data. One monitor showed a zoomed-out section of the Scarlands, with two small pulsing dots positioned far from each other.
There was no legend on the map to indicate what those dots represented. However, Jake already knew that Catalina had been dispatching helicopters somewhere over the past several days, and based on what she had just told him, he suspected one dot marked the city they were in, while the other marked the city Los Demonios had come from.
He turned his gaze back to her.
“So, what’s this about?” Jake asked, his voice coming through the device with a mechanical, emotionless tone. “Why were you searching for Los Demonios’ original city?”
“I wasn’t exactly searching for it,” Catalina replied. “I just happened to find it.”
She paused. Jake didn’t mind the silence, patiently waiting for her to continue. It seemed she was sorting through her thoughts. Her gaze drifted from him to the glowing bank of monitors at her side. She studied something on the screens for a brief moment before turning her attention back to him.
“I have someone on my team whose Intelligence attribute is extremely high and whose Hacking skill is through the roof. Over the past several days, I had her working on something important,” Catalina said, leaning in slightly as if sharing a secret. “Her task was to hack into the database located in Los Demonios’ main base. It wasn’t easy, as their digital defenses were powerful. It took her a little while, but eventually, she tore through their firewalls and unlocked full access to every shred of their entire data archive.”
“What have you been looking for?” Jake asked.
“Nothing specific, really,” she replied with a casual shrug. “Just curious what I might dig up if I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong, y’know? At that time, I wasn’t just a trusted member of the organization, I was running one of the secondary bases. Skullface genuinely believed I was loyal. But no matter how much he trusted me, he never granted me access to the main base’s archives.”
Jake’s gaze stayed fixed on her, silent and unyielding.
“Maybe he didn’t trust any of the secondary leaders with that kind of information,” she went on. “Or maybe it was just me. Either way, those locked files were like a wall I kept running into. And walls… Well, they make you wonder what’s behind them. That’s when I set my hacker on the task of breaching the main database. When she finally succeeded, I lost myself in it for hours, combing through every detail, and Skullface was none the wiser.”
Catalina fell silent once more, her gaze momentarily distant. Seizing the pause, Jake stated, “So that’s how you found the gang’s original city.”
His tone was sure, leaving no room for doubt. She gave a small nod, though she offered no further words. Jake leaned forward slightly and prompted, “And did that lead to anything valuable?”
Catalina shook her head faintly. “Not really… not right away, at least.”
Jake figured Los Demonios’ original city was the location she had been sending helicopters to. But what she had been hoping to find there wasn’t clear yet. Maybe there was no defined objective at all, just a restless curiosity about what secrets another city might hold. After all, nobody from this city, not even him, had set foot in any other city in this new world yet.
“Did you find anything else of interest while digging through the gang’s main data archives?” he asked.
“Not really. I didn’t have much time to do a thorough search, as my hacker managed to get access to the database when you were already busy tearing apart the secondary bases. When you called me on your way to the main base, I realized that once it was gone, I would lose access forever, so I started downloading as much data as possible. In retrospect, I should’ve asked you to grab their hard drives before reducing the entire place to dust. But what’s done is done. But I did manage to download some of the data from the main database and have been studying it for the past several days.”
Jake listened without offering any input. When Catalina fell silent, he simply waited, recognizing that she was gathering her thoughts before continuing.
“So, I didn’t find much while I still had access to the main database, and so far, nothing useful in the files I managed to download. However, I did discover the location of the city Skullface came from.”
She looked at the screen displaying a section of the Scarlands and pointed to the dot situated in the top-right corner. “This is us: New Hope.” Her finger trailed diagonally across the screen to the other dot, which was near the bottom-left. “And this is Dead City.”
Shifting her gaze to Jake, she added, “In the files from the main database, the city Skullface and Kato came from was referred to as Dead City. So, that’s what I call it too.”
“What about New Hope?” Jake asked.
“Right… I’m guessing you didn’t know this, but not too long ago, the people around here decided our city needed a name. It happened after you took down Skullface and his main base, helping Samantha and her people return to the city. After Los Demonios was gone, people were happy, y’know. While the city has always been dangerous, it was our city. Then those bandits arrived and started acting like everything belonged to them, like they owned us all. And after they were gone, people began to believe in a better tomorrow again. That’s when somebody suggested we might as well give a name to this city, our city. New Hope seemed like a fitting choice, all things considered. Since the city had no name to begin with, the name New Hope stuck.”
Jake instantly grasped the meaning behind Catalina’s words. The city they were in wasn’t like any other city he had known as a human before the Collapse. Even though more and more of his human past was slipping away, certain memories were etched deeply into his mind, and this was one of them. He knew that after the System absorbed Earth, it had merged it with a much larger world, drastically altering it in the process by removing old elements and adding countless new ones. Their city was something entirely new. After learning what modern human cities looked like, the System appeared to have erected new ones based on that concept. New Hope bore no traces of any pre-Collapse landmarks. Instead, it was a generic mishmash of features common to modern cities: skyscrapers, districts, and so on. It was entirely new, and it had no name until now.
Catalina’s voice cut through his wandering thoughts.
“Dead City was completely swallowed by the Ravage Contamination,” she said. “Skullface and Kato were the only members of the original Los Demonios who managed to escape. The rest of the organization, as well as any other survivors who lived in that city, were gone. That’s why Skullface named it Dead City after escaping.”
Catalina stepped closer, her eyes intense as they locked onto his.
“What is happening in New Hope has already happened in Dead City,” she said gravely. “So unless we find a way to stop the Ravage Contamination from spreading, our city will be lost too. It would be a bitter tragedy, especially now, after we’ve finally won our freedom from Los Demonios.”
She fell silent for a moment, her gaze distant, as though steadying herself for the next words.
“Some time ago, I dispatched a team to fly to Dead City,” she continued. “None of them have returned.”
Since Dead City was completely infested by the Ravage Contamination, to Jake, it made perfect sense that Catalina’s people had never returned. The infestation there had started much earlier than in New Hope, giving the ravagespawn ample time to grow into an unstoppable tide of numbers and strength.
“What were you hoping to find there, though?” he asked. After all, Dead City was already lost, and whoever had lived there before had clearly failed to find a way to defeat the Ravage Contamination. If anyone there had discovered a solution, it would have been preserved in Los Demonios’ main database, the same archives Catalina had been examining. And by now, she would have found it.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, her voice tinged with weariness. “Something. Anything, I suppose. By then, I was out of ideas and clinging to whatever hope I could find. I was grasping at anything. But almost as soon as my team flew into Dead City, I lost contact with them. Not long after, I sent a second helicopter in with a rescue team.”
“But it never returned either?” Jake asked.
Catalina’s expression darkened. “No. It didn’t. But this time… after my second team entered Dead City, someone reached out to them.”
“What?” Jake said, surprised. “Who?”
“A man’s voice,” she said. “He never gave a name.”
“So someone’s been alive in Dead City this whole time? I’m guessing they were asking for help, to be rescued?”
“Not exactly. Oddly enough, the man didn’t sound afraid, nor did he ask for help. According to my people, he spoke in cryptic riddles. He said he knew who they were, what they sought, and that he possessed valuable information for them and gave them a location in the city where they could find him if they were interested. When they pushed for details, he refused, insisting he would only explain face-to-face before abruptly ending the call. The location he provided lay in the far southwestern corner of the city, practically on the opposite side from their position. They would’ve had to fly across the entire city to get there.”
“But they never got there?”
“No. I lost contact with them shortly after they reported their exchange with the stranger.”
“Dead City must be teeming with all kinds of dangerous mutants,” Jake concluded.
Catalina nodded. “Yes, Dead City is certainly a dangerous place. But I know one thing for certain: it wasn’t mutants that brought down the helicopter.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was just in contact with my team when the attack began,” Catalina said, her tone heavy. “They reported seeing some people on the roof as they flew past.” She locked eyes with him, her expression dark. “The helicopter was shot down with some kind of energy weapon.”