The little girl walked away from Lucas’s corpse.
She left the office and returned to the blood-splattered hallway.
After walking for a while, she stopped in front of one of the walls.
The little girl pressed her hand against the back of her neck and said to the empty wall,
“Come in.”
As if responding to a summons, the wall began to tremble violently.
The metal barrier twisted and deformed.
Eventually, a large hole large enough for several people to pass through appeared in the wall.
A bearded thug appeared at the other end of the opening.
“Mr. Donkey! You’re here!”
The little girl waved her arms happily.
The bearded man stared at her with a disgusted expression.
“Katie, why did it take so long?”
“Because there were many new friends! There were also many bad guys! Cleaning up was troublesome!”
The girl called Katie said with a grin.
“Old bastard… Why did I have to come play house with this brat…”
The bearded man muttered as he used his surprisingly thick arms to tear off a few dangling wall panels, making the hole even bigger.
Seeing this, Katie clapped her hands in satisfaction and shouted to the rear,
“Over here! Come this way!”
Upon hearing that, a head peeked around the corner.
Then another, and another, from children to the elderly, their numbers increasing.
“This is the exit! I’ll lead everyone to escape!”
Katie pointed at the large hole in the wall.
These words seemed to flip a switch.
People went from timidly stepping forward to scrambling to run in just a few seconds.
“Run! Hurry up and run! Before the bandits catch you!”
Katie sent off the escaping people with a sing-song tone.
The gray-haired figure was also swept along by the crowd and disappeared into the end of the tunnel.
Watching Katie dance happily, the bearded man scratched his head.
“What are you going to do next?”
This path connected to the sewage drain of Titan Company’s laboratory, all the way to the Lower City District.
He put these people in the Lower City District, then what?
“Huh? I haven’t thought about it yet!”
“You’re really crazy…”
The bearded man could only shake his head and sigh.
But that was none of his business.
Strictly speaking, the goal of this trip was just to destroy Titan Company’s laboratory.
The rest was just an “additional entertainment project” that Katie requested herself.
Since the old man had already agreed, he had nothing to say.
Katie, gradually calming down, looked at the dim tunnel.
The escaping figures were no longer visible.
“Planning everything out before acting, isn’t that too boring?”
However, she already had a suitable person in mind.
‘The Lower City District…’
Should she go and say hello to the person she met before?
Just thinking about it filled Katie’s heart with countless expectations.
Inside the dim sewer.
The girl called Number 12 was swept along by the crowd, running toward an even darker depth.
She had met strange people, but unlike the white-coated ones before, they didn’t stick needles in her or attach weird things to her.
Thinking about this, a sharp pain came from the back of her neck again.
Although she had said she wanted to play house, she still drove her here to be with these strangers.
She sniffled, then frowned at the strange smell in the sewer.
Come to think of it, where is this?
Where does this lead?
She knew nothing, understood nothing.
Number 12 just hugged the fairy tale book in her arms and ran forward with the panicked people, rushing into the unknown abyss.
Bres looked up at the TV that was turned on.
The TV was broadcasting breaking news about the Titan Company lockdown.
The spokesperson at the company’s main entrance was surrounded by countless microphones, looking flustered.
“The cause of this sudden lockdown has been determined. An intern accidentally triggered the alarm during an internal self-check. There has been no major safety incident.”
The spokesperson wiped the sweat from his face.
“Please do not panic, and do not spread rumors. Thank you for your cooperation!”
After saying that, the spokesperson turned and walked into the company without looking back.
The guards stepped forward to block the reporters’ way.
“…”
He looked solemnly at the message that popped up on the terminal in his hand.
The entire screen was taken over by a huge red interface, with a big exclamation mark in the background.
“Unrestricted Bounty.”
This could be said to be the highest commission level in Nightless City, surpassing the intermediary’s area of responsibility and function, issued to all elite mercenaries.
Normally, he would probably be happy to be able to carry out a top-level commission, since it meant he had entered the ranks of the elite and was one step closer to his goal.
But he had no interest in feeling joy right now, and that was due to the content of the commission.
Subject Retrieval
“Bring a total of forty-four subjects back to Titan Headquarters, alive or dead. Unauthorized dissection or research is prohibited.”
The commission was just a single sentence.
The attachment was a list detailing the subjects’ appearances, behavioral habits, and other characteristics.
The reward for completing the mission?
He didn’t need to see it to know how outrageous it was.
Bres looked up at the ceiling and stared blankly for a while.
There were two reasons for his concern.
First:
Catching victims for these companies always felt a bit uncomfortable.
Doing this kind of thing too much made him feel like he was becoming one of them.
But—
He had already come this far.
He could already see the threshold in the distance.
To grasp the truth from back then, he absolutely could not let go now.
‘Saying I want to retreat now, isn’t that just ridiculous?’
Besides, if he didn’t do it, someone else would.
How could a few dozen people fight against an entire “Company”?
Soon, Bres had mentally prepared himself.
Now came the second trouble:
Should he call Qiao Anni?
From what he knew of her, she would probably find this job “unethical.”
It was possible she would resist or directly refuse.
But he definitely needed her help.
Over the past few months, she had proven herself to be an indispensable part of the mission.
“Brooding over this on my own is useless…”
He decided to contact her first, discuss it with her, and then make a decision.
If she really didn’t want to, he wouldn’t force it.
With that in mind, Bres took out his terminal again and planned to call Qiao Anni, who was wandering outside.
Beep—
Beep—
No one answered.
“What’s going on?”
“What’s going on?”
Qiao Anni, on the street, looked at the image in her prosthetic eye.
In the upper right corner, there was a big “X” mark.
“A virus?”
She tapped the back of her neck, but the built-in terminal remained unresponsive.
“This is troublesome…”
The functions like communication and search were completely unusable.
Could it be a virus?
She should have known better than to click on those strange websites…
“I should go see Miss Evelyn…”
Yeah, put the bill on Bres’s tab.
“Huh?”
Just about to head to the clinic, Qiao Anni stopped again.
Because she seemed to have spotted an urgent situation that couldn’t be ignored.