Chapter 99: Movie

Under the absolute weight of overwhelming power, the two Sentinels fell dead one after another, their spilling blood staining the pale sand beneath them crimson.

Having eliminated all three, the cloaked man began methodically looting their corpses for supplies.

Guns, anti-venom serum, water, rations, communicators, flares... and most precious of all, repair solution.

Just as he finished harvesting every usable resource and prepared to depart, a sharp, unannounced whistle echoed from behind him. "Your rank is impressively high."

The cloaked man’s expression shifted instantly. He spun around in a flash, locking his hand directly onto the newcomer’s throat.

Nyl stepped smoothly out of the shadows, making it clear he harbored no hostility—they were in the exact same line of work.

"We aren’t here to cut into your business. We’re here to talk shop."

With that, he casually tossed his firearm onto the ground.

"Talk shop?"

The cloaked man’s voice was raspy and rough, as though he hadn’t spoken a single word in ages.

Nyl blinked his icy blue eyes. "In twenty-four hours, a squad from the Sentinel Tower will be heading right through here to suppress an Aberration swarm sweeping in from the south. Rather than scraping by on crumbs like this, why not go for a massive score? How about a 40/60 split—forty for you, sixty for me?"

Hijacking an entire elite squad meant that all the high-grade resources inside the Sentinel Tower would be theirs for the taking.

How did he know? Because he had intercepted a classified signal broadcast directly from the Terra Military Command.

Nyl, after all, was a rogue who had defected straight out of District 616.

"Why should I trust you?"

Nyl adopted a completely nonchalant stance, shrugging his shoulders. "Take it or leave it, friend."

With that, he retrieved his weapon and turned to walk away. The cloaked man knew his own teammates were still back at camp waiting for life-saving aid—he didn’t just need a repair solution; he urgently needed Guide pheromone suppressants, as many as he could get his hands on.

He hesitated for a brief moment before calling out, "Fifty-fifty split."

Nyl halted his combat boots, turning around to flash him a deceptively charming smile. "Then you’d better call every last one of your guys over."

"Deal."

***

"Cyrus refuses to share his secret with me, and he even beat Xander and Liam so badly that they ended up in medical pods. He really is insufferable.

Today is our first official deployment for a suppression mission. I hope the squad completes the operation smoothly and everyone returns safely."

— Excerpt from "Bunny’s Journal"

The supersonic shuttle glided smoothly through the upper atmosphere. Red-gold sunlight scattered across the thin cloud layers, reflecting a dazzling ocean of clouds.

Bunny was currently traveling with eleven squad members from District 616, heading toward the exact coordinates of Corrosion Pass.

Corrosion Pass served as the starting point of the Great Wall, flanked by the Iron Mountains behind it and overlooking the Deadly Sea in front. Historically hailed as "the impregnable pass where a single soldier could hold off ten thousand," Bunny had always wanted to visit it in the past, though she had never gotten the chance.

Now that she was finally here, the world had changed beyond recognition.

The weathered remnants of the Great Wall’s battlements were eroded by sandstorms past all recognition, while the dried-up sea basin was buried beneath gravel and fractured ground, leaving only the towering mountain ridges standing tall.

Bunny closed the radar map on her tactical tablet, letting out a long sigh in her heart.

"Are you unhappy?"

Sitting to her right, Illai popped his oversized head over to stare at her, his nose almost brushing against hers.

These Sentinels truly seemed to have no concept of personal space.

Bunny shoved his dog-like head away. "Go cool off somewhere else."

Seeing that she was bored, Orion pulled up a holographic display to play a movie for her, considering the flight would take a long ten hours.

Naturally, Bunny thoughtfully avoided horror movies this time, casually selecting a feature film.

It told the story of an engineer.

The engineer was an orphan born in the slums, saved from starving to death by a junk-collecting uncle who took him in and named him Atli.

The uncle was no ordinary scavenger, but a former senior engineer laid off by a bionic corporation after offending his superior.

Raised by his foster father, Atli mastered bionics and virtual simulation technologies with incredible skill, demonstrating remarkable innate talent.

During an open recruitment interview hosted by Simons Bionics Corporation, Atli impressed top executives with sheer technical skill and was exceptionally hired as an intern engineer.

Atli was hardworking and dedicated, executing every command from his superiors without question. He developed numerous virtual electronic products that became immense hits among the citizens of Terra—especially electronic companions.

This accomplishment allowed his system security clearance within the corporation to skyrocket all the way from Grade F to Grade B.

Yet Atli occasionally ran into creative blocks. Virtual simulation engineering demanded an extraordinary amount of imagination; without sufficient creativity, one could never build a "product" capable of truly touching a customer’s heart.

He frequently visited the corporation’s chip storage center in person. Within these memory chips lay preserved pre-death recordings—often referred to as memories—of cryo-preserved individuals and clones.

Simons Corporation routinely recycled these products to extract their "memories" and store them as code templates.

One day, Atli discovered a dusty chip sitting in the repository, its serial designation faded and blurred. Driven by curiosity, he began to decode and play its contents.

To his pleasant surprise, this memory chip appeared to originate from a pre-Great Migration ancient human.

Through this person’s recollections, Atli caught glimpses of countless marvels he had never seen before—an experience that was nothing short of mind-blowing.

The chip’s owner seemed to have been a mercenary who spent years following a mercenary corps across battlefields in various countries, perpetually lonely and lost.

His dream was to retire and live in seclusion on the Italian island of Capri—a beautiful isle set in the middle of the sea.

His final assignment had been to escort a high-profile figure to a secure zone.

Yet the world was already collapsing into chaos.

Inside the evacuation helicopter, a little girl had wept continuously. The mercenary had grown up without a family, an American-born raised entirely by his grandmother.

Perhaps because the little girl shared his strange hair, bright eyes, and common heritage, a faint spark of compassion moved him to put down his weapon, pull a melted piece of chocolate from his pocket, and hand it to her.

He told her not to cry.

However, his special forces squad was wiped out entirely, and he perished in the prime of his life at just twenty-five years old.

Right up until his death, all he knew was that his mission remained unfinished.

Atli became deeply fascinated by the chip’s owner; preserved memories originating from before the Great Migration were exceptionally rare.

He worked painstakingly to reconstruct the memory chip’s encoding, making his way to the genetic storage vault where these products were manufactured. After overcoming numerous hurdles, he finally managed to meet a mid-level administrator.