Distress

In the main camp of the underground river cave, the air was as thick as congealed blood. The beams of emergency lights cast distorted shadows on the damp rock walls, as if foreshadowing misfortune. Elaine sat before a flickering terminal, the screen's dim light illuminating her bloodless face.

More than three hours had passed since Keegan's signal disappeared, and every second of silence felt like a dull knife cutting into her heart. She forced herself to focus on the fragmented data stream, tracing the last clues of the Makarov network, but reports of regional unrest and suspicious weapons movements now seemed so distant and vague. Fear, like cold vines, coiled around her heart, tightening and tightening.

"We can't just sit here and wait!" Hesh's low growl broke the silence, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white.

Ghost's figure was like a frozen statue, the skull mask turned towards him, and his voice came through the mask, cold as iron, suppressing all agitation: "Impulsiveness is what Kruger wants most. He is now a mad dog that has been provoked, waiting for us to scatter and tear him apart one by one."

“But Keegan…” Elaine’s voice trembled uncontrollably. She took a deep breath, forcing back a sob, her nails digging deep into her palms, using the pain to gain a sliver of calm. “We have a lead. His signal disappeared at the entrance to the underground river. The underground river system isn’t without clues. Give me a map of the area, hydrological data, geological reports—all the data you can find! I can try to model it and extrapolate the areas he might have been swept away to!” Her proposal flashed like lightning in the darkness.

Ghost silently scrutinized her for a moment, his eyes, sharp as an eagle's, peering through his mask. Finally, he nodded heavily: "Whatever you need, cooperate fully. Konig, assist her in accessing the highest-level database. Hesh, check the equipment and prepare for maneuver."

Elaine immediately rushed to the control panel, her hands moving like blurs across the keyboard. She suppressed all personal emotions, transforming her anxiety and fear into cold computing power. Geological maps, satellite topographic scans, historical hydrological records, even fragments of exploration reports from decades ago… massive amounts of data flowed, intersected, and compared before her eyes.

Based on the coordinates of the underground river's entrance, its flow velocity, the known distribution of underground caves, and the elevation difference, combined with Keegan's physical abilities and the limits of underwater survival, she constructed a complex fluid dynamics model. Sweat soaked her bangs, and her gaze was frighteningly focused, like that of the most precise instrument.

“Here,” she finally pointed to the edge of a vast underground water system marked “Satir Abyss” on the map, her voice hoarse with exhaustion but filled with undeniable certainty, “according to the model, there are three high-probability outlets or large gas wells. This makes it more than 65 percent likely that he was swept into this area. But the area is still very large, and the entrance must be extremely well hidden.” Her analysis was like a glimmer of light, piercing through the fog of despair.

Ghost immediately issued orders, speaking as fast as a bullet: "Team A Rescue: Konig, you lead the team, Hesh provide cover. The two of you carry diving gear, a medical kit, and a high-intensity signal repeater, and secretly search along the path Elaine calculated. Remember, absolute silence. Your primary task is to find Keegan, not to fight."

"Group B decoy: I will carry out the operation myself. Move to a fan-shaped area to the northwest to create a false signal, expose our tracks, and attract Kruger's attention."

“Doctor,” he turned to her, his gaze grave, “you will remain at backup safe point number two—'Shadow Rift.' That’s our last resort, and very few people know its location. Your task is to maintain encrypted shortwave contact with Groups A and B, monitor for any possible Keegan signals, and maintain minimal communication with 'Stone House.' You are the eyes and ears of all of us. Understand?”

"Understood!" Elaine nodded emphatically, feeling the heavy responsibility on her shoulders.

Meanwhile, deep within the frigid, pitch-black underground river, Keegan was battling death. The raging current carried him against jagged rock walls, each impact bringing excruciating pain. With astonishing willpower and a well-trained physique, he desperately protected his head, struggling to maintain his direction in the whirlpool.

After an unknown amount of time, the current finally slowed, carrying him into a relatively calm underground lake. "Cough...cough cough..." He struggled to the surface, his lungs burning with pain, greedily inhaling the thin, damp air. All around was absolute darkness, broken only by the dripping of water echoing in the empty cave. A bone-chilling cold quickly devoured his body heat.

He forced himself to calm down and quickly checked the situation: his main weapon and most of his equipment were missing. Fortunately, his personal dagger and spare Pistol were still in their holsters, and the emergency beacon launcher indicator light, which was standard equipment for the squad and strapped to his tactical vest, was still stubbornly flashing a faint green light—indicating that the equipment was intact, but under the shield of this thick layer of rock, it was almost impossible for the signal to get through.

He had to find a way out quickly, or a weak point through which a signal could penetrate, or hypothermia would soon claim his life. He groped his way in the darkness, found a rocky platform protruding from the water, and struggled to climb up, curling up to minimize heat loss. His only hope lay in the silent beacon on his belt and his companions in the distance.

The main camp began an orderly evacuation. Konig and Hesh were the first to infiltrate the rainforest and head downstream towards the underground river. Ghost led Team B in the opposite direction to create a disturbance. Under Konig's escort, Elaine quietly moved to the more secluded "Shadow Rift"—a narrow rock crevice whose entrance was completely covered by vines and could only accommodate a few people inside.

Just as Ghost deliberately left traces of his retreat in an attempt to lure Kruger, several kilometers away, Kruger, crouching high in a branch, calmly observed everything through his high-powered sniper scope with his green eyes. He saw the footprints Ghost had "hastily" left behind, the broken branches, and even a piece of cloth snagged on the thorny vines.

A cold, cruel smile curled at the corner of his lips. "A diversionary tactic?... You underestimate me, Ghost," he muttered to himself, his voice laced with sarcasm. He saw through the trick instantly. His target had never been Ghost, nor those samples.

Keegan's escape humiliated him like never before, and he wanted revenge, to make that "coward" pay the heaviest price. The best way to do that was to capture the key figure who Keegan clearly cared about, the one who had even risked everything to distract him—the "brain" of the team, the woman named Elaine.

“Once we find her, Keegan will naturally appear like a shark that has smelled blood.” His green eyes gleamed with hunting excitement and vicious pleasure. Like a apex predator, he abandoned tracking Team B and began to use his astonishing insight into the traces to analyze the Ghost Squad's operational patterns and the distribution of possible backup strongholds, his target being—the information core who must be in a relatively isolated state at this moment.

Inside the “Shadow Rift,” Elaine established a makeshift communications station. She successfully established intermittent encrypted shortwave contact with Group A (Konig/Hesh) and Group B (Ghost). Group A reported that they had infiltrated the underground river network and were searching as planned; Group B reported that they had successfully created chaos but had not found any trace of Kruger’s trail.

Everything seemed to be going according to plan, but Elaine's unease grew stronger. It was going too smoothly, abnormally smoothly. She stared intently at the screen monitoring the Keegan beacon; the red area representing the lost signal felt like a red-hot iron, searing her heart.

As night fell completely, the clamor of the rainforest turned eerie. The rustling of the wind through the vines outside the rock crevices and the howls of unknown wild beasts in the distance sent chills down her spine.

Suddenly, a very subtle, yet unnaturally occurring, alarm device she had set up fifteen meters outside the crevice in the rock emitted a faint click from a conspicuous spot! Someone had triggered the alarm! Not an animal! It was a cautious and professional movement!

Elaine's heart stopped instantly! It wasn't Keegan, it wasn't her teammates... the only possibility... Fear washed over her like ice water, but she didn't scream, she didn't panic. Her basic training and strong survival instincts made her act instantly.

She typed rapidly on the keyboard, sending a high-priority encrypted distress pulse signal to Group B, indicating "your location exposed, extremely dangerous." Then, she abruptly cut off the terminal's power, hid the small encrypted radio deep in a rock crevice, gripped the pistol Ghost had given her for self-defense, turned off her headlamp, curled up at the bottom of the darkest, narrowest crevice, and held her breath.

In the darkness, her senses were amplified to the extreme. She could hear her own heart pounding like a drum, and the faint yet deadly rhythm of footsteps approaching from outside the crevice. The footsteps stopped at the entrance to the crevice.

A deathly silence lasted for a few seconds, then a deliberately lowered male voice, tinged with mockery, cruelty, and a hint of cat-and-mouse pleasure, pierced her eardrums like a viper's tongue: "Little mouse... I know you're in there. The game is over."

Time seemed to stand still. The air was thick and suffocating, with only the dripping of groundwater deep in the rock crevices like the ticking of a death knell. Kruger's towering figure blocked the only exit, almost swallowing up all the faint light, except for his pair of eerie green eyes, which gleamed in the dim light with the cold, excited light of a predator locking onto its prey.

Elaine huddled deep within the crevice, her back pressed against the rough, damp rock, the icy touch seeping into her bones through her thin combat suit. She gripped the pistol Ghost had given her for self-defense, its muzzle aimed at the blurry, dangerous figure at the cave entrance, but the uncontrollable trembling of her fingertips betrayed her near-limitless fear.

Kruger didn't pounce immediately. Like a apex predator enjoying its hunt, he strolled in slowly, his heavy military boots making a sickeningly subtle sound as they pounded the gravel. His sharp eyes swept over the makeshift hideout, finally settling on Elaine's pale, terrified face.

"You're all alone now? You poor thing." His voice, thick with a chilling mockery, echoed in the cramped space. "Where's your all-powerful knight? Hmm? Just dumped you here like a piece of unwanted luggage to die? Looks like... he doesn't care about you that much after all."

Elaine bit her lower lip, almost tasting the blood. She didn't answer, but gripped the gun tighter, her knuckles turning white.

Kruger chuckled softly, a dry, malicious laugh. Suddenly, he moved! So fast that he left only a blurry black shadow! Before Elaine could even see him clearly, a piercing pain shot through her wrist, as if it had been clamped by iron clamps! She groaned, and the pistol flew from her hand, landing with a thud on a rock a few steps away.

Immediately afterward, a large, cold, rough hand followed her like a shadow, suddenly grabbing her throat. The immense force lifted her off the ground, slamming her heavily against the rock wall behind her! A feeling of suffocation instantly overwhelmed her, stars flashed before her eyes, and her lungs burned with a burning thirst for air.

Elaine's feet left the ground as she kicked in vain, desperately trying to pry open the iron-like hand.

“Tsk, how boring.” Kruger leaned closer, his cold gaze sweeping across her face, contorted in pain from lack of oxygen, like a scalpel, with a cruel curiosity as he examined a dying creature. “But it doesn’t matter… as long as I pluck this delicate flower of yours, make it into a beautiful specimen, and give it to him…” His voice was low, a devilish whisper, “I believe that even if he crawls out of hell, he’ll crawl back to settle the score with me. I’m really looking forward to that moment.”