Volume 8: A Trip to the Sick Village Chapter 376: The Target of Public Criticism
"Share the last refreshed location of the tracker with me," Ivan shouted.
"I've sent it to you!"
"Let's go!" Ivan took a look at the coordinates displayed on the screen inside the helmet and ran in that direction first.
The trackers carried by Ke Lan and Asano Akira are small-sized sub-machines that are easy to hide. They do not send radio signals by themselves. They will only passively provide feedback when they receive special frequency band radio waves emitted by high-power mother machine, thereby informing the mother machine of the location of the sub-machine.
The working principle of this device is similar to that of the active sonar on a ship. The mother machine is the sound wave transmitting device on the ship, and the sub-machine is a "stone" with a very special shape and material, which enables the mother machine to identify it among a large amount of complicated and meaningless feedback information.
The main advantage of this thing is that it can ensure the concealment of the sub-machine to the greatest extent.
The signal of the mother-and-child tracker that Ke Lan and his team are equipped with is refreshed every sixty seconds. In the absence of interference, the effective tracking distance is over three thousand meters. If it is in an open area, it can even receive signals fed back from a sub-unit five thousand meters away.
But the mother machine carried by Layton last received feedback from the two people three hours ago.
Ivan and Layton are now 160 meters away from Ke Lan and Asano Akira. With the power and mobility of these two power armors, they only need one jet to cross the 160-meter distance in less than three seconds. But the problem is that within this 160-meter space, there are still a large number of capsule-type living cabins and simple scaffoldings... It's like a maze. Although they know that the exit of the maze is only separated from them by a wall, they still need to go around countless circles in the maze to reach that exit...
"No, we can't get through like this !" After turning two corners, Ivan also realized this problem - not only were they unable to get close to the coordinates, they were getting farther and farther away.
"Layton, is this thing anti-electric?"
"What did you say?" Leighton obviously didn't understand the purpose of Ivan's question.
"Let me ask you, are we afraid of electric shock with this suit of armor?"
"I don't know. This thing was not designed by me, and the young master of the Ye Group never mentioned this to me... But I think that for equipment of this level, a voltage of less than 10,000 volts should not have any effect on it... Wait, doctor, why are you asking this too? What are you going to do?" Leighton looked confused.
"There's no time to go around the maze, let's go from the top!" Ivan expressed his thoughts.
"Above ?" Layton raised his head subconsciously. "You mean, moving along the top wall of the space station?"
"Yes! Anyway, the gravity of this place can be ignored. If you walk from above, your vision and movement route will not be disturbed by these 'illegal buildings'! I'll jump up first, you follow closely, and be careful not to get entangled by the wires above your head!" After Ivan finished speaking, he squatted down, pushed his legs hard on the ground, and with the help of the accumulated strength, he jumped into the air with his armor.
Ivan brandished the standard combat dagger to cut the wires that blocked his jump path. The broken cables emitted blue and white electric sparks, crackling through the power armor and falling to the ground - the residents of this residential area had basically hidden away, and the only ones left were those who were tracking, monitoring, or even attacking them, so he didn't need to worry about accidental injuries.
But before Ivan could get over the scaffolding that was dozens of meters high, several figures swooped down from the top of the scaffolding, and crashed heavily into the power armor flying upwards - because of the fear of hitting the top wall of the space station, Ivan did not start the thrusters, and relied entirely on inertia to move. After being hit by the opponent, he was directly pressed down and fell heavily to the ground!
"Ivan!" Layton rushed over when he saw this, but just as he got close, he was suddenly hugged by several locals who rushed out from the corner - these people were all radiation mutants, with amazing strength. Among them was a guy with four arms, who sat on Layton's shoulders and dug hard at the instruments installed on the outside of his helmet.
"Damn it! Bastard! This surveillance camera is worth 160,000 credits!" Layton shook his body vigorously and opened the people who were holding his hands and feet. But the four-armed mutant in front of him used his legs to tightly wrap around his neck, and he couldn't get rid of it.
After discovering that his nails could hardly cause damage to the outer armor of the power armor, the mutant took out a sharp blade from behind him and poked it randomly at the seam between the helmet and the chest armor.
"Damn, this crazy guy who doesn't care about his life!" Leighton stretched out his hand, but could only grab two of the opponent's arms. The remaining two arms were still attacking him frantically. "Ivan? What should I do? Can I only fight back?"
"Just subdue the opponent...try not to kill anyone." Ivan replied. At this moment, he was already wrestling with several mutants. Ivan threw a strong man who was nearly two meters tall over his shoulder. The man happened to fall next to the pile of broken wires that touched the ground, and immediately let out a shrill scream.
"It's okay as long as you don't kill him, right?" Leighton glared fiercely at the mutant riding on him, and exerted force with his hands that were holding the other's arms at the same time. Under the huge shear force generated by the hydraulic device, only two crisp "clicks" were heard, and the two arms immediately drooped down, and a look of pain appeared on the mutant's face.
"You bunch of bastards, do you really think I don't dare to take action?" Layton growled, and broke the mutant's four arms in the same way, then grabbed his legs and pulled him off his body, swung him in a circle and slammed him to the ground.
“Bang—Crack!”
The first part of the mutant's body that touched the ground was his neck. With a crisp "crack" mixed in with the loud noise, the mutant's head tilted directly to one side, and the expression on his face was frozen in the previous moment.
"I'm sorry, I was too harsh." Seeing the other person dead, Layton felt a little relieved. "But you can't blame me. This is all your own fault."
"Didn't I tell you not to kill anyone?" Ivan said with some resentment in the team communication channel after noticing that Layton threw the four-armed radioactive mutant to death.
"In a fight like this, it's impossible to injure without killing anyone. Look at the guy you just threw out. Isn't he almost electrocuted to death?" Layton said. "Besides, do you think there's still a possibility for us to reconcile with this group of people? It's clear from their looks that they want to kill us. Whether we kill them or not, their attitude won't change."
"Well, if this can have a deterrent effect..." Ivan said, and he punched a mutant who was rushing towards him in the face, directly breaking one of his cheekbones and causing it to cave in. The eyeball that was affected even exploded, and a mixture of blood and saliva shot out more than ten meters away.
"That's right." Layton kicked a mutant away and said to Ivan, "When we first met, weren't you quite happy when you shot Jiang Lian? Why are you so fussy now?"
"I didn't hesitate at that time because I knew she was dead before I shot. I checked the body of the previous person. That kind of parasite will completely destroy the human brain..." Ivan said, "Besides, the situation back then was different from now. Under the glacier, our equipment was completely lost. A body parasitized by an unknown object posed a huge threat to us... and now, these people's attacks will not cause any substantial harm to us."
"Then think about it. If we weren't wearing this armor now, wouldn't we have been dismembered by these lunatics long ago?" Layton knocked down the last mutant who rushed out and retorted, "The reason why they can't hurt us is not because they don't want to kill us, but because they can't kill us."
Layton took a look at the mutants lying on the ground. There were sixteen people who rushed out to stop them. At least four of them were confirmed dead. The rest were either fainted or had broken limbs. They were lying on the ground groaning in pain.
"When I was in the army, a captain who led us on field missions said something to me." A mutant struggled to crawl towards Layton, but before its outstretched hand could reach Layton's calf, Layton raised his leg and kicked it in the forehead, bending its entire neck backwards.
The death toll from the conflict has risen by one.
"He said: 'Don't be kind to any creature that wants to kill you. It will kill you sooner or later.'" Layton continued, "This should be what the Chinese call 'woman's kindness'... Although I don't quite understand how this thing is related to the female gender, but you must have heard the story of the farmer and the snake, right?"
"The captain is right." Ivan nodded silently. "I just... treated a miner who had radiation sickness, but I was unable to cure him within the two-week detention permit period. In the end, he was sent here. I don't know if he is still alive now."
"I remember that your clinic charges a lot of money, right? Where do the miners get the money to pay for your treatment?" Leighton asked with some confusion.
"He didn't come to see me on his own. It was his girlfriend... The girl is very young and pretty. As for where her money comes from..." Ivan didn't continue talking. Instead, he opened the two compressed air valves on the power armor backpack and accelerated upwards again. "We should leave, otherwise we will be entangled by these people again."
The mutants that Ivan and Layton had just dealt with were probably all the extra personnel sent by the other side. As for the remaining people who were still monitoring them, they probably did not belong to the "combat unit" and did not jump out to stop them.
"To be honest, these mutants are actually quite strong." Layton muttered, "I estimate that they are at least at the level of level two or three biochemically modified humans. Can the conscience mutation caused by radiation alone really reach this level? And there are more than a dozen of them at once... Ivan, don't you think this is a bit strange?"
"It's really strange. The strength of a level 2 to 3 biochemically modified person is still within the normal range. The strange thing is the number. I have checked the information released by the research institute. This kind of benign mutation that can increase strength only occurs once in 20,000 cases. The residents in this space are at most 10,000 people. Even if we count those who died for various reasons after being sent here, this ratio is still too high."
"It's more than just a little higher." Layton couldn't help but speed up his speech. "It's impossible that there are only a dozen mutants in the entire 'Sick Village', right? These guys may just be the enemy's vanguard. If this point is taken into consideration, the mutation rate is simply ridiculously high - hey, do you think they have any means of stable mass production?"
“It’s hard to say.”
At this time, Ivan and Layton had already passed the highest point of the scaffolding. After locking the coordinates of the tracker, the two of them flew straight towards the residential area with the thrust generated by the compressed air jet.
This residential area is populated by the recent batches of sick miners who were sent to the space station. They have not yet "integrated" into the local population. In workplace terms, they are still in the observation period. Therefore, these people have not received any notice to evacuate.
Two avant-garde-shaped power armors landed abruptly on the aisle between the scaffolding, immediately attracting a lot of people's attention.
"These people all came here with us." The moment they landed, Layton had already used the monitor to scan the facial data of those who stuck their heads out. Some of the data happened to perfectly match the photos on the "cargo list" provided by the Mitsui Group.
"It seems that Ke Lan and the others were brought here." Ivan looked around vigilantly, "Did you find them?"
"Not yet... wait a minute, I found that the signal of the tracker carried by Asano Akira is less than 20 meters away." Layton said. Although there is interference, as long as the distance between the two is close enough, it will not be affected too much, just like the team communication channel used between Layton and Ivan.
"Only Asano Akira? What about Ke Lan?"
"...No, nothing was found. There is only the signal from Asano Akira here. Should we contact him?" Layton asked, "If they have other plans, would we be causing trouble for them?"
"... Never mind, let's meet up with Asano Akira first." Ivan hesitated for a moment, gritted his teeth and made a decision, "Then we'll go find Ke Lan... I really don't know what he was thinking, why would he choose to act alone?"
"It may not be his choice. Maybe he was forced?" Layton said as he floated towards the coordinates of Asano Akira's tracker.
However, when he floated to the bunk, he didn't see anyone. Under the tracker that was forged as a button was a thin piece of iron sheet with very small words engraved on it: "Ke Lan was taken away. It's beyond the agreed time. He didn't come back. I'm going to find him."
