Suddenly, the noise outside the room grew loud.
It seemed a fierce battle was inevitable.
“Stick to the plan?”
“Let’s do it.”
The second step of the plan was for Bres to protect the victims inside the room, while Qiao Anni headed to the operating room to find survivors and clean out as many Hyena Gang members as possible to buy time until the Banyan Life Support Group arrived.
“What about me?”
“You stay here with me.”
Bres pushed the Observation Robot back into his jacket pocket.
Qiao Anni nodded, turned, and dashed out of the room.
“Is she really okay on her own?”
Farry asked worriedly.
“Don’t underestimate her just because of her looks,”
Bres said as he piled discarded construction material and iron cages in front of the door to block it.
“Everyone who made that mistake paid for it dearly.”
He aimed at the Hyenas appearing at the end of the corridor and pulled the trigger.
“Where’s the intruder?”
Bang!
“Behind you… Ah!”
Bang!
Qiao Anni wove through the maze of floors at a speed far beyond normal humans, picking off the isolated Hyenas.
Her bullets always struck from behind or from their blind spots, a single shot enough to incapacitate them.
‘Not many bullets left…’
It was indeed a mistake.
She hadn’t expected to end up tangled with so many enemies.
She should have asked Bres for more ammunition, Qiao Anni thought.
“Gather up! That one’s only picking off stragglers.
Close ranks and cover each other’s blind spots!”
“Tch.”
They caught on fast.
Qiao Anni grabbed an iron bucket beside her and hurled it toward the other end of the corridor.
The bucket slammed into the wall with a loud crash.
“Over there! Search! Move in slowly!”
The main force was drawn away.
‘Two magazines left…’
Qiao Anni recalled the route she had learned through Farry’s robot and dashed toward the operating room.
Soon, the makeshift operating room, with its medical curtains, came into view.
Qiao Anni pulled the curtain aside with a whoosh, and a thick stench of blood hit her.
“Those bastards…”
Before Qiao Anni lay several operating tables—likely discarded hospital equipment.
On them were multiple bodies that had been cut open, with various “parts” missing.
Under the sterile lights, the scene was especially gruesome.
Qiao Anni steadied herself and began searching for survivors in the operating room.
Soon, she found one.
The homeless man she had seen being dragged away earlier was lying still on a table in the corner, his chest rising and falling weakly.
A syringe lay by his feet.
‘He’s already been anesthetized…’
It seemed that the commotion she had caused had spared him from being sliced open.
Qiao Anni grabbed the restraints binding him and tore them apart like sheets of paper.
Then she bent down and hoisted the unconscious man onto her shoulder.
‘I’ll just slip back quietly and meet up with Mr. Bres…’
Qiao Anni turned her head and locked eyes with several glowing red electronic eyes.
The Hyenas had circled back without her noticing.
This was bad.
“Someone poaching? No… you’re that little chick?”
The leader let out a strange laugh.
An old acquaintance?
“Who are you?”
Qiao Anni hid the unconscious homeless man behind an operating table.
She had no memory of the person in front of her.
“You’re still alive?”
The leader’s face twisted with rage.
“Perfect. I’ll avenge my big brother and my men with my own hands!”
In an instant, memories flooded back to Qiao Anni.
The figure approaching her with a syringe re-emerged in her mind, and she broke out in goosebumps.
“You? The one who ran away back then?”
The leader of the Hyenas looked nothing like that person…
They seemed like different species now.
Back then, he was a head shorter, his face wasn’t so pitted like a honeycomb, and his arms weren’t as bulky…
The leader raised his arm.
His wrist opened and flipped, revealing a cannon barrel.
Boom!
“Whoa!”
Qiao Anni sidestepped just in time.
A wave of hot air grazed her cheek.
She turned to look at the wall behind her.
A massive hole gaped in it.
“I spent my life savings on this powerful cyberbody just for revenge,”
the leader roared.
“I didn’t expect you to deliver yourself to me!”
“I don’t care about your brotherhood.”
Qiao Anni now understood why he looked so bulky.
This must be the “large-caliber weapon” Bres had mentioned.
It might sound like bragging, but ordinary small-caliber bullets did negligible damage to Qiao Anni’s cyberbody and reinforced areas like her head—they’d at most scratch her synthetic skin.
But this caliber was a different story.
Qiao Anni glanced at the deep, wide crater behind her.
If she got hit by these rounds a few more times, half her head would be blown off.
“I’m not done yet!”
The leader screamed, raising both arms and firing wildly into the room.
The underlings beside him also raised their guns and sprayed bullets inside.
Qiao Anni quickly ducked behind what seemed like the sturdiest operating table, deliberately keeping her distance from the unconscious man—being near him in this situation would only increase the risk of him getting caught in the crossfire.
The cannon fire shattered the instruments in the room, knocked over containers, and pulverized the bodies on the tables.
The entire operating room turned into a hellish scene.
Soon, the gunfire stopped.
“Huff, huff. How about that? Get out here and die!”
The leader was breathing heavily, clearly “amped up”—not just from Qiao Anni’s provocation, but probably also from various drugs working inside him.
No one answered in the wrecked operating room.
Only sporadic gunfire from somewhere in the distance could be heard.
Suddenly, a single shot shattered the last lit sterile lamp.
The room plunged into darkness.
“Turn on a flashlight! Or find something that lights up—”
Before he could finish, one Hyena’s head exploded.
In the darkness, a pair of crimson eyes flickered, tracing an irregular path.
Qiao Anni’s cybernetic eyes allowed her to see normally in the pitch black.
The Hyena Gang members began firing wildly into the room, but they were met only by merciless bullets.
As the Hyenas fell one by one with screams, soon only the leader remained.
Clatter — the sound of a magazine hitting the floor.
The leader’s eyes darted.
He let out a roar, raised both arms to shield his front, and charged into the operating room.
Under his massive body’s impact, every obstacle snapped and shattered.
“This lunatic?!”
Qiao Anni quickly dodged away from the path of his charge, then swapped in a new magazine.
But when she raised her gun to aim at where the leader should be, her expression froze.
“What’s wrong? Go ahead, shoot.”
The first thing to appear from that spot was not the leader.
A “Hehe” of laughter came from behind the still-unconscious man.
The leader was using the man as a human shield to protect his vital points, with a hand cannon pressed against the man’s head.
“Drop your weapon, or I’ll blow his head off.”
“You keep saying you want revenge, but in the end, you resort to this kind of trick?”
Qiao Anni shifted slowly, step by step, and the leader turned to match her movement.
“Say whatever you want. If you’ve got the guts, shoot.”
“Do you really think I wouldn’t?”
Qiao Anni feigned calm, continuing the standoff.
‘Damn it. No opening at all.’