Chapter 28: Zone 41 (1)

After they received the new mission, everything happened so fast.

One moment, Summer was standing in the training ground. The next, she was already sitting inside a private helicopter, something a lower-ranked person like her normally wouldn’t even be allowed to get close to.

"So you’re telling me this helicopter can turn invisible once it’s in the sky?" Summer asked.

Her eyes remained glued to the view outside the window. From this high up, she could clearly see the difference between the safe zone and the polluted zone.

The safe zone looked organized and alive, filled with buildings, roads, and lights. But the farther they flew, the more everything changed.

Buildings became fewer, roads disappeared, and the land below slowly turned into a ruined wasteland.

"Only military helicopters can do that," Ilya corrected her. "Commercial planes don’t need something this advanced. Tranquilizer guns are usually enough for them. Besides, the energy cells needed for this kind of camouflage are hard to make."

That sounded a little unfair, but then again, commercial planes always tried to follow the safest routes possible.

The military? They flew straight toward danger.

So yeah. Summer could understand why they needed something that could make an entire helicopter disappear from sight.

"Interesting."

Summer then turned her eyes toward Ilya, looking him up and down.

No, no, no. She wasn’t checking him out because she was a pervert!

There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for this!

After changing into his formal uniform, Ilya’s body was much easier to see compared to when he had been wearing his training clothes. And that was when Summer finally noticed something she hadn’t paid much attention to before.

His right arm and left leg were cybernetic prosthetics.

"What are you looking at?" Ilya suddenly asked. There was no anger in his voice. If anything, he sounded amused.

He lifted his mechanical arm slightly. "Do you find my robot arm fascinating?"

Summer was caught off guard the moment she heard that.

Fascinating? Not exactly.

Honestly, looking at it was starting to bring back memories she would rather keep buried.

"Kind of," Summer replied halfheartedly. Then, without thinking much about it, she asked, "Did the scientists cut off your arm and leg?"

The smile on Ilya’s face froze for a moment because clearly, that was not the question he had expected.

"The doctors were actually the ones who cut them off," Ilya finally answered.

Summer fell silent. Ah, so she was right.

Her mind immediately began filling in the blanks. Perhaps Ilya had experienced something similar, such as undergoing numerous horrible tests and painful procedures, or even having pieces cut away from him by scientists, all in the name of making him stronger.

"But not because they wanted to," Ilya continued. His expression softened as he looked at his mechanical arm.

"I got hurt by a giant scorpion. I hadn’t awakened yet back then, so the poison spread too quickly." He paused for a moment. "By the time they treated me, my arm and leg had already started to rot."

Oh. So he wasn’t like her.

Wait, why did she sound a little disappointed? Summer immediately felt terrible for even thinking that way. She should be happy for him.

After all, his prosthetics came from a real accident. No one had tied him down and cut pieces of his body away just to see if they could make him stronger.

Maybe... a small part of Summer simply wanted to meet someone who understood. Someone who knew what it felt like to have their body changed without ever asking for it.

That was probably why, deep down, she felt a little disappointed when she realized Ilya wasn’t like her.

But at the same time, a much bigger part of her was relieved because she didn’t want Ilya to have gone through what she had experienced in her old life, not even a little.

"I’m sorry about that," Summer expressed her sympathy. "It must have been such a horrible experience for you back then."

Ilya tilted his head to the side and somehow felt like Summer was saying that as if she also knew what it felt like.

"Yes, it was scary," Ilya admitted, then his expression softened again. "But Archer was there for me the whole time, so it wasn’t that bad."

Summer blinked at the mention of Archer again, but before she could say anything, the helicopter slowly began to descend toward Zone 41 Headquarters.

Ilya glanced out the window for a moment before turning back to her. "Thank you for saving Archer the other day," he said sincerely. "We owe you so much."

Summer replied, "I owe him too."

Not long after that, the helicopter finally landed on the rooftop of Zone 41 Headquarters. The zone wasn’t that big compared to Zone 0, but it was still considered one of the most valuable safe zones under the government’s control.

It was because the energy crystals produced in this zone had a very special function: communication.

Unlike normal energy crystals, which were mostly processed into Energy Cells to power weapons, vehicles, or buildings, the crystals found around Zone 41 could carry signals across extremely long distances.

More importantly, those signals could pass through areas with heavy pollution and that alone made the crystals almost impossible to replace.

"Captain Noctis! You’re here!" A soldier rushed toward them the moment Ilya and Summer stepped out of the helicopter.

Summer immediately pulled her rabbit ears down with both hands.

The helicopter blades were still spinning loudly behind her, and somewhere in the distance, explosions kept going off every few seconds.

The mix of roaring helicopter blades, shouting soldiers, and distant explosions was starting to make her head hurt.

Having rabbit ears was cute until the world decided to become ten times louder.

"I’m here to evaluate one of my trainees," Ilya explained calmly. He gestured toward Summer. "She’s a special case, so I need to evaluate her directly in the field."

The soldier glanced at Summer and his eyes immediately landed on her rabbit ears.

For some reason, she had a feeling he recognized her. Fortunately, the soldier seemed to realize this wasn’t the right time to ask for an autograph.

Ilya continued, "What’s the situation in the polluted zone?"