Chapter 476
After realizing what was happening on the screen, Jake wanted to immediately leave the secret level and return to the main cavern to challenge the Commander about what he had just learned. However, he forced himself to remain in place for a moment. He figured it would be a good idea to learn a bit more about the matter before returning to the leader of the Spartans and confronting him about it.
So, for the next several minutes, he kept clinging to the ceiling, staring at the events taking place on the monitor. However, he didn’t really learn any new useful details. Nothing he saw happening on the screen was extraordinary, just about what he would have expected.
Before leaving the room, he glanced at the human monitoring the feed. The man had the same half-bored expression as before. What had shocked Jake was clearly nothing new to him. He had known about it for a long time, long enough to grow used to it and stop expecting anything unusual.
It was safe to assume that not just the man on watch, but every single Spartan, was aware of what was in this small room. They probably rotated shifts to watch the feed around the clock. Sure enough, Silvia had to be in the loop too. There was no reason she wouldn’t know about it.
But that raised the real question: when she led her group to the location the Commander had sent her to half an hour earlier, had she known what was about to happen? Jake doubted it. She clearly had no idea what her team was about to run into.
Jake then also remembered what occurred within the first minutes of his return to Dead City from New Hope, when he had requested another electrolarynx from Catalina’s people. It didn’t take long for the pieces to fall into place. He stayed where he was for a moment, arranging the events in chronological order in his mind until the full picture became clear.
When it did, a fresh wave of anger surged through him. With the conclusion he had just drawn, it was time to face the leader of the Spartans and make him talk. Sure enough, even when Jake told him what he had learned and that he understood what the Commander had been trying to achieve half an hour ago, he would still undoubtedly try to deny everything.
Jake had no hard proof. What had happened might have looked like a coincidence, and the Commander would surely lean on that. But Jake was convinced it wasn’t a coincidence at all. The whole thing had to have been planned from the start, and he had a fairly good idea of what the Commander had been trying to achieve with his lies.
In a sense, it also aligned with what Mad Mick had told him about the Commander. The Commander cared about his people, yes, but he also believed the ends justified the means. And what had happened half an hour ago felt like solid evidence of exactly that.
So no, it couldn’t have been just a coincidence, and one way or another, Jake was determined to make the Commander admit his wrongdoing. And what happened after that… well, Jake hadn’t planned that far ahead. He would deal with it once the rabbit was out of the hat.
There was no reason to stay in the room any longer. So he took one last glance at the screen of the monitor to make sure nothing out of the ordinary was happening there and after that, left the room. He crawled along the ceiling of the corridor back to the freight elevator, then climbed up the elevator shaft. Within seconds, he reached the top level.
Sure enough, the two guards were still there, none the wiser about an intruder slipping in and out of the lower level. However, in his rush to get back to the Commander and confront him about his discovery and the conclusion he had drawn from it, he threw caution to the wind. He passed the two guards overhead, then detached from the ceiling, dropping to the floor a few yards ahead of them.
While his Cloak was still up, making him invisible, he was moving too fast, and therefore, the ability lagged behind, unable to keep up with his movements, causing visible distortions in the air. Sure enough, the two guards spotted them.
“What the hell?” the female one gasped. “Did you see that?”
“Yeah,” the male guard said, his voice just as stunned. “What the hell was that?”
Jake didn’t care if the Spartans learned about his cloaking ability. Even if humans knew about it, it wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Besides, he knew that D also had such an ability, and considering how much the Spartans knew about his counterpart, they likely already knew about this ability of theirs.
As if to confirm that thought, he heard the female guard say behind him, “I think someone just passed right by us. It looked a lot like D’s cloaking ability.”
The other guard sounded shocked. “You think it was D? Has he finally come after us?”
“No way. It has to be the other one, whatever his name is. Look, we fucked up. He obviously came from the tech lab. He saw what’s down there. We gotta warn the Commander.”
But Jake wanted to reach the Commander before the guards told him the news so he wouldn’t have time to prepare a defensive narrative. So he deactivated Cloak and rushed forward. He was already almost at the entrance to the main cavern, having left the two guards far behind. He could hear them talking because of his extremely keen sense of hearing.
A second later, he was moving across the cavern toward the makeshift briefing area where the Commander, Silvia, and Catalina were discussing something. Judging by the Commander’s face, the guards hadn’t contacted him yet. Good.
He was saying something to the two women, but then he noticed Jake approaching and stopped mid-sentence, a fake smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
“Jake, it’s good to see you,” he said in a tone that suggested the exact opposite. “You’re back sooner than I expected. Catalina said you’d return in a couple of hours, so I wasn’t expecting you this soon.”
Jake finally reached the briefing area and stopped in front of the three humans. Silvia stood to the right of the Commander, Catalina to his left. For a moment, Jake remained silent, eyeing the Commander. Then he glanced at Silvia.
She was loyal to her leader. It was written all over her face. Despite the fact that the Commander had given her a suicide order to attack D half an hour ago, she still stood by him. Jake couldn’t help wondering how she would react after he made the big reveal. If she remained loyal even after that, he would be genuinely surprised.
He then glanced at Catalina. She was staring at him far too intently, which wasn’t surprising at all. She knew where he had been and was clearly eager to learn what he had discovered.
As for him, he wondered if she would want to return to her base immediately after he told her what kind of man the Commander really was. Now that he had developed the Wyrmcaller and could merge with it for full control, taking her back to New Hope wouldn’t be a problem.
“I guess I should thank you for saving my people,” the Commander said, pulling Jake from his reverie. “Silvia told me you fought off D and…”
Before he could finish his sentence, Jake said, “Though I doubt that’s the outcome you were actually hoping for.”
The Commander frowned. “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not sure if I understand what you’re implying.”
He wanted to add something else, but his facial expression changed ever so subtly. Raising two fingers to his earpiece, he listened as someone spoke to him. It was clearly one of the guards, informing him that Jake had infiltrated the tech lab. The Commander’s eyes snapped toward Jake, then quickly darted away. He tried to maintain a poker face, but it was obvious he knew now.
So Jake said, “Yes, I found what you’re hiding one level below. Your big secret isn’t a secret anymore.”
“You… You were…” The Commander suddenly seemed unable to find the words. “How did you… Did you see the…”
“Yes,” Jake said. “I saw it all. Everything down there, including the room at the end of the corridor.”
With no point in keeping silent anymore, Catalina spoke up. “What are you talking about, Jake? What did you find?”
Jake looked at her. “There’s another level of the base below this cavern that the Spartans wanted to keep secret from you and me. Apparently, they call it the tech lab. It’s in ruins now. Looks like a battle happened there some time ago. There are broken machines everywhere. I have no idea what they were originally, but now they’re just heaps of crushed metal. One of them is in the process of being repaired, though I still don’t know its purpose. Hopefully, the Commander is about to tell us all about it. But the most interesting thing down there is a small room at the end of the level.”
“What’s in it?” Catalina asked, her eyes wide with anticipation.
“There’s a person watching a live feed,” Jake replied.
“A live feed?” Catalina echoed, confused. “Of what?”
“At first, I thought it was footage from a body cam, like the kind cops used to wear before the Collapse,” Jake said. “But I couldn’t figure out who was wearing it or why the Spartans were so interested in watching the feed.”
Jake paused as he shifted his gaze to the Commander. The leader of the Spartans silently watched him back with a tense expression on his face.
Jake looked back at Catalina as he continued speaking. “But I almost immediately realized the feed wasn’t coming from a body cam worn by a human at all. Instead, the Spartans apparently have some tech that allows them to see through D’s eyes.”