Chapter 113

The street was initially quiet. No one spoke, not even breathed. Only the wind blew through the gray mist, splattering onto the leaves, causing the trees to shake heavily in silence.

After a momentary stillness, people began to step back, one step after another, in horror and disbelief, crushing the freshly fallen dead leaves beneath their feet, shattering them into pieces.

The crowd centered around Ains slowly retreated. She stood in the middle of the crossroads, her fingertips curled up, her eyes nearly bloodshot, her lips bitten pale without a trace of color, as if she was about to cry, yet not a single tear fell from her face.

People on the screens began to open their mouths wide and speak, glaring angrily, their faces flushed red, chattering nonstop. Others, as if receiving some signal, moved even farther away from her. Some tried to rush forward but were held back by those beside them. They cursed at something, while she, amid the clamor of fear and anger, slowly raised her hand.

In her trembling palm, she clutched that mask.

Ains was a very cute yet stubborn girl. She held her hand up just like that, as if taking an oath.

A long time passed—one minute, perhaps two minutes, or maybe a century.

A recon drone flew over her head, heading farther away.

No red light descended. No death arrived. None of the imagined horrors happened, and the fear on the street turned into dead silence.

Her lips moved slightly. Through the screen, Horne understood what she was saying—

‘I did it.’

She had done it. She had single-handedly rationalized the recon drone’s central AI, exploiting a code vulnerability from when Dol Company first developed the intelligent AI, altering the recon drones’ recognition program for masks so that even after people removed them, the drones would still identify them as normal.

She had accomplished what her father could not.

The recon drone flew steadily past, leaving the street district, but another one soon streaked over. The scene on the street reappeared on another monitor screen.

A hunched old man with a full head of white hair spoke to Ains. A middle-aged man beside him joined the conversation and argued with the old man, pointing at Ains and roaring ferociously, even trying to make a move, but the old man held him back.

The recon drone flew higher and higher. More and more people appeared in the frame. Only then did Horne see that at this moment, a huge crowd had gathered in the street district. People in the back argued, some shoved a couple of times, afraid to get too close to her and trying to retreat. Those on the outermost edges wanted to know what was happening and pressed inward.

Immediately after, the old man at the front did the same thing as Ains—he removed his mask.

“Boom—” A terrifying thunderclap made almost everyone tremble in fright, stirring up their fear with the massive sound. The middle-aged man beside him suddenly shouted like a madman. The crowd scattered rapidly. Their terrified expressions and wide-open mouths were clearly visible even from the distant monitors, along with screams and chaos.

Another thunderclap rolled closer from the horizon, heading straight toward the skies above Loch City.

The old man’s hand trembled as he looked up at the sky. Above were the already split clouds, and closer was the recon drone flying in midair. His gaze clashed with the recon drone flying by at that moment.

Through the monitor, Horne met his gaze steadily.

The old man stared at the recon drone for a long time. Horne read a few words from his trembling lip movements: “It really didn’t attack me.”

Horne knew Ains had never liked masks. She believed most people would accept her. She had grown up in Thunder Pavilion, where masks weren’t needed anyway. Many people naturally removed their masks upon returning there. Since the people above were all humans, surely many disliked the existence of masks. She was understandable. The things had bound humanity for too long; they just feared death.

But Horne hadn’t expected Ains to prove herself in this way.

Horne supported himself with one hand on the monitoring console while staring intently at the scene unfolding on the screen. Suppressing his voice, he urgently asked the person beside him, “Where is this street?”

She shouldn’t have done this. What controlled the recon drones were xenomorph particles—living matter, not code she could rewrite. Tricking the recon drones’ visual systems so that people in Thunder Pavilion could see what the drones saw was like borrowing their eyes; the other side might not even know someone was using their own eyes to view the same scene. But preventing the recon drones from firing—one after another—over time would certainly be discovered. Achieving a world where everyone removed their masks wasn’t something that could be solved just by the drones not killing.

Nor could it be solved in this manner.

The technician saw the scene on the monitor and paused before saying, “Central Avenue No. 2, third intersection, about 2 kilometers from the Red Light District.”

Horne turned and left immediately.

“Colonel! It’s going to rain—take an umbrella!”

“No need!”

This rain had been brewing for over ten days.

No one knew how it all started. Ains was still immersed in the conflicting tension and relief.

The old man beside her let out a long sigh, expelling the vicissitudes of years from his throat. “Not wearing a mask is something from my childhood. I’ve waited my whole life for the day I could take it off.”

The middle-aged man roared beside him, “Why do something like this? Who cares about that?”

The recon drone flew over their heads with no reaction. Ains’s fear slowly receded, turning into tears welling up in her eyes.

She had never liked masks. When she put on this skin, she was a idle little thief, an inexperienced girl—though that identity was one she had asked Hels for. In reality, she could do more, but time passed too quickly, there were too many people around, and sometimes she even forgot if she truly still had the ability, the leeway, to reclaim the recon drone central AI.

The wild wind pelted her face, thunder exploded in midair. Even if terrifying, it was a long-lost sense of reality.

This tearful elation lasted about ten minutes when a sharp alarm blared suddenly from overhead.

“Beep—”

The piercing alarm instantly swept over the crossroads. No one knew who shouted, “The recon drone is going to kill!!”

Accompanying the shout was a flash of lightning that illuminated everything, turning everyone’s faces ghastly white. A few seconds later, thunder exploded right by their ears, almost touching every person on the street.

The crowd instantly descended into chaos. Fear arrived as they screamed and fled outward madly. Ains froze stiff, only daring to swivel her eyes toward the recon drone emitting the alarm. She immediately realized that drone wasn’t attacking her; it was just sounding the alarm.

“It didn’t—” Ains anxiously shouted, but shrill screams drowned her out.

“Plop.”

Ains froze for a moment and looked up.

“Plop.”

She reflexively closed her eyes, her whole body shuddering as she wiped her eyelids again.

Water.

It was raining.

The rain was black in midair but turned transparent upon hitting the ground.

One scream followed another. No one noticed the recon drone doing nothing but blaring its alarm. People shoved backward, all terrified of dying to the drone’s stray fire. In the pushing and chaotic crowd, someone fell, then another. They fled like mad.

“Don’t push! The recon drone isn’t attacking!” Ains reacted and shouted frantically. She was at a loss, unsure why this was happening. No one heard her.

“Plop.” The raindrops came one by one, from sparse singles to continuous sheets, growing larger and denser.

The old man was shoved down. His hunched form prevented him from crying out loudly. The middle-aged man was squeezed to the other side of the crowd and could only roar, “Get out of the way!” He wanted to help the old man but couldn’t move an inch, letting the crowd carry him outward.

More people surged like tidal waves amid this sudden black rain.

Gale winds swept in, plunging the city into darkness, lit only by occasional lightning flashes amid the screams, thunder, and trembling ground slick with water and people.

A hysterical roar came from afar: “She did it on purpose! She wants to kill us!” Someone trying to approach Ains reached for her. She screamed and dodged backward.

Her gear bag was gone. In the chaos and black-veiled vision, she couldn’t see where it was. Her face was full of water, hair plastered to her cheeks, twisting into strands. Her sweater was soaked through in minutes, hanging heavily on her.

Someone noticed something wrong with the rain and shouted, “Look! The rain is black!”

After his shout came even more frenzied flight.

Ains wandered like a headless fly at the storm’s center, scared to the point of nearly crying.

At that moment, a strong hand suddenly grabbed her arm, yanking her harshly from the out-of-control chaos. She stumbled forward off-balance but was immediately pulled into a protective embrace.

“Follow me!” Horne shouted.

The crowd was too chaotic, the rain too heavy, visibility dropping in an instant. Horne led Ains bit by bit, struggling outward. Just as they reached the edge, a recon drone streaking from the horizon blared its deafening siren again, blending indistinguishably with the thunder.

Horne glanced up slightly, his pupils contracting sharply.

The recon drone had opened its mouth, light gathering inside.

That was the precursor to attack!

Rationalization control had failed. Lasers surged fiercely. In that instant, Horne dragged Ains out of the crowd, but it was too late. The recon drone targeted those without masks.

The moment they burst out, the laser poured from midair, red light sweeping the path Ains had taken.

The laser sliced like a blade, tearing the road apart. Screams erupted, blood sprayed, immediately pressed into the ground by bullet-like rain.

“Aaahhhhh!” Miserable shrieks.

“Boom!”

An explosion followed the sweep.

“Get out of here!!” someone roared hoarsely.

Horne pressed Ains down, enfolding her completely in his arms. The moment he crouched, the explosion hurled surrounding people into the air. Some were flung high before crashing down, along with mangled limbs from the laser sweep, falling amid the black downpour.

An arm rolled right before her eyes. Ains screamed on the spot.

“Where’s your mask?” Horne scrambled up and asked anxiously.

Ains’s face was ashen. She backed up several steps, her empty hand curling and trembling as she pointed behind her.

Behind was a blazing inferno from the laser beam, hellish and unquenchable even by the downpour. The ignition point was the frantically running people, fire burning on them, screaming as one fire person after another burst from the crowd, trailing choking smoke.

The muddy, wet earth smell mixed with nauseating charred flesh—like burnt hide—splattered blood-charcoal, and the thick, greasy smoke of ignited fat, all blending in the heavy, damp air.

Horne nearly vomited.

Immediately, the recon drone locked onto Ains and attacked again.

“Run!” Horne grabbed Ains and bolted.

Hurricane winds whipped past their ears, rain pummeling their skin painfully. Buildings flashed by rapidly. The recon drone’s wings cleaved the air, red light hot on their heels.

The recon drone ignored any innocents nearby; it only focused fire on the target’s path. They had to get to an empty area!

A series of explosions boomed behind them in succession, road debris splashing up densely, leaving no time to breathe.

In the mad dash, several red beams predicted ahead, piercing straight through Ains’s chest. She grunted dully, blood spurting from the wounds. She staggered, then crashed down hard, kneeling in a muddy puddle.