Chapter 617 Bonds
Tao Haohao climbed onto the roof of the vehicle, shouldered his grenade launcher, and opened fire on the horde of monsters.
He emptied the drum magazine, and as he reloaded, he roared amidst the deafening noise, "Damn it! Which team of bastards did this?! Didn't we agree to try not to completely wipe out the contaminated area?!"
Tao Haohao thought it was done by combat teams from other bases.
The riots triggered by the collapse of the contaminated area have caused monsters to gather there, blocking their way back.
As the contaminated area collapsed, the concentration of pollution in the vicinity increased, and the sentries in the team felt uncomfortable, but thought it was a normal phenomenon.
Song Liang was the first to notice something was wrong. "Something's not right! There are no registered teams near number 299, and we haven't seen any reinforcements either."
Duan Xi climbed onto the roof of the car to support Tao Haohao. Upon hearing this, he turned his head and looked down, saying, "Then what happened? It couldn't have been the contaminated area that collapsed on its own, could it?"
Wang Jiayu rolled her eyes at him, annoyed. "How could a contaminated area collapse on its own?!"
Wow, they really do.
The communicator received the message shortly afterward.
[To all units engaged in field operations: Multiple contaminated areas have experienced unexplained structural collapses, resulting in a large-scale and abnormal leak of dark matter. Contamination concentrations are rising rapidly, and the spread pattern is unknown.]
[The "Return to Home" emergency plan is now activated.]
[All sentries, immediately terminate your current mission! Return to the nearest base at all costs and speed. Any necessary force may be used to breach any obstacles.]
[Repeated: Evacuate immediately at all costs.]
Because the nearby signal became intermittent and delayed, the time it took for people to receive the message varied.
Song Liang simply read the message aloud.
The once noisy rooftop fell silent instantly, with only the monster's incessant howls and the sizzling of overheating weapons remaining.
Tao Haohao slowly lowered the arm carrying the grenade launcher, Duan Xi's scope deviated from the target, and Wang Jiayu's finger on the trigger stiffened slightly.
The group exchanged glances, and in each other's eyes they saw an unprecedented sense of dread.
The contaminated area... really collapsed on its own?
The monster was about to reach him, and Tao Haohao had to snap out of his daze and continue firing. He even wondered if he had misheard.
"All? Including the troops stationed at the outer outposts and the launch site?"
"Of course it includes."
Song Liang turned on his computer, wanting to check the specific data, but the signal was not good, and he couldn't log in to the system.
He said from the driver's seat, "The information says there's an abnormal leak of dark matter... The research institute previously deduced that when the dark matter rises to a certain level, darkness is very likely to return. We must get back to the base as soon as possible."
The message sent by the command center.
They had no idea how many contaminated areas had collapsed or to what extent the pollution concentration had risen.
The thought that darkness might return made everyone's hearts leap into their throats.
Wang Jiayu realized, "What about the captain and Sister Yun Zhao? They're still in the contaminated area and can't receive any messages."
Duan Xi kept firing at the monster, and said anxiously, "The contaminated area couldn't have collapsed for no reason. Maybe the captain and the others have discovered something. Let's go back and check it out."
They were all born at the end of the Dark Ages and have vague memories of that period.
But the sacrificed elders, the unseen blue sky, and the perpetual fear and oppression in the darkness are like fears etched into one's very bones.
The convoy of twenty transport vehicles behind them also received the message from the command center and hurriedly honked their horns to remind others.
The sentry, who was standing on the roof of the vehicle killing monsters, shouted, "Old Song! Forget about these monsters, let's try to break through!"
There are tens of thousands of monsters in a contaminated area; if they stay here, they won't be able to leave.
Upon hearing this, Song Liang put down his computer and started the car.
"Breaking through is too much of a waste of time, everyone back off! Let's take another route and shake off these guys first!"
Upon hearing this, the transport trucks behind quickly turned around, killing the approaching mutants while increasing their speed.
The armored vehicles instantly became the rearguard.
Wang Jiayu opened the passenger window, set up his sniper rifle, and began targeting the high-speed, high-level mutants.
She sensed something was amiss, and after thinking for a while, she realized someone hadn't spoken, so she asked, "Where's Qi Lingren?"
On the roof of the car.
Qi Ling huddled behind his robot, looking down at the dark substance on his body, which was writhing and expanding uncontrollably.
A thick, dark substance, as thick as tar, seeped from the pores of his skin, dripping onto the car roof with a faint hissing sound as it corroded the metal.
All the dark matter is overflowing uncontrollably...
When Qi Ling heard Wang Jiayu call him, he didn't hide his situation and murmured, "I think... I'm about to lose control."
It is no longer the slow, barely suppressed erosion of the past.
This time, it was a riot.
He could feel the dark power within him frantically responding to the collapsing contaminated area outside, as if it had heard some irresistible rallying cry.
Every drop of flowing dark matter screams and boils.
They wanted to break free from his control and return to that spreading, shared chaos.
Upon hearing this, the faces of the Zero Team members changed drastically.
Tao Haohao and Duan Xi, who were on the roof of the car, quickly came over to check on him.
"Don't come any closer."
Qi Ling's hood covered his entire face. He shrank back, clutching the wide hem of his clothes, trying to cover the rapidly gushing sticky fluid beneath him.
Tao Haohao and Duan Xi stopped abruptly, their outstretched hands frozen in mid-air, standing there somewhat at a loss.
Qi Ling slowly raised his head. The tense faces of his companions gradually distorted in his eyes into "food" radiating alluring energy (life force).
"Hao Hao, if I lose control, you must not hold back."
Qi Ling's voice was very soft, "I still owe the captain a lot of points, my robot isn't fully modified yet, and there's Qi Shiqi, he said he's bringing his younger family members over for Chinese New Year this year, and he wants me to meet them all..."
Qi Ling initially didn't quite understand the meaning of her existence.
He once felt like a ghost stuck in a time gap, completely out of place in this hopeless new world.
He came from a brightly colored, peaceful era that others had only seen in surviving archival footage.
He remembered the sky as a clear blue, the air as free of decay, and the city as ablaze with lights and bustling with activity at night, unlike now, where only howling winds and the howls of monsters filled the air.
After leaving the contaminated area, the world did not give him a new life, but rather another form of prison.
Living is merely a habit, or even a punishment.
Until he joined Team Zero, he had his own home and friends.
The captain may have a cold attitude, but he would quietly do a lot for him and supervise his training.
His teammates treated him like a normal person, joking and playing around with him, cooking meat for him, and teaching him how to use various devices of this era.
These insignificant, fragmented connections, like fine threads, finally stitched him together, albeit reluctantly, yet undeniably, with this cruel and unfamiliar era.
He seems to have finally found a sense of reality in being alive again.
So when that moment actually arrived, he found it even more unbearable.
I can't accept that I might eventually become a monster, and I can't accept that I might hurt the people I've finally managed to build a connection with.
Unable to accept that the little bit of "meaning" they had just grasped was about to be completely taken away.
Qi Ling looked at them, and in the human's eyes was a pure, almost pleading, resolute determination, "Don't let me... destroy all of this, and don't let me... become a real monster."
Please.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
