Mutants - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Taciturn One

The Gobi was a land of yellow earth, uneven and rugged. A modified S501 Desert Crawler crushed the sharp gravel on the ground with its massive, 220cm-diameter tires. The ground itself, scorching hot, radiated a shimmering heat, making the air appear distorted whether viewed from near or far.

High in the sky, the scorching sun was full, so full it felt as if it were overflowing. The temperature was unbearably high, and the sunlight itself was tinged with red.

Seven ferocious vehicles, front and back, sped onward, kicking up a rolling cloud of dust.

Inside the vehicle, the temperature was tolerable. The partition in the middle of the back seat was lowered, revealing three screens displaying the outside temperature and climate data, a GPS map, and a biological thermal sensor screen.

A cute girl who looked about fifteen, her hair in a ponytail, was checking these three data panels. She wore a pair of large, bug-eyed, hypersensitive goggles that covered half her head. While manipulating a complex remote control, she chewed on a lollipop, the candy pushing out her cheek in a round bulge. She muttered, "Alliance standard temperature 48°. Map coordinates normal. Direction normal. No dangerous creatures approaching. Provisional comprehensive assessment: safe. Based on current speed and no-danger status prediction, in 25 minutes, we will arrive at Deep Red Sector B05 Ruins Zone."

"Information notice sent. Awaiting feedback from the Group Development Department's station in the ruins zone and for them to dispatch personnel for pickup."

The S501 Desert Crawler was a seven-seater.

The rearmost seat was separate, occupied by a sniper of a tall human variant, standing at two-point-three meters. In dangerous situations, he needed to quickly use the seat for support to aim and fire from the roof hatch while the vehicle was moving.

As the one with the most powerful thermal weaponry, his status was naturally the highest, but he had the best relationship with the girl who wasn't even one-point-six meters tall.

Jenny, nicknamed Rabbit.

At this moment, she was being teased by the sniper, Knox.

"Oh, Rabbit, if I were you, I wouldn't waste energy sending a signal to a bunch of dead people. Isn't the reason our group sent us because they lost contact with B05, and the eight search parties they sent before all turned up nothing? With the Red Sun Tide about to arrive, the group didn't want to waste energy dispatching a flight crew, so they sent our little recon team instead. And you're still sending messages over there? What a waste of a signal source."

Before Rabbit could speak, Zhang He, who was cleaning a Falcon-1045 three-port assault rifle, laughed. "You big block of wood, you just don't get it. It's their business if they don't respond. But as the communications officer, if Rabbit doesn't follow procedure, and someone with an agenda reports it, you know what the group's Strategic Operations Department's punishments are like."

At the thought of those regulations and penalties, Knox's massive body shuddered, but he grumbled, "We're all our own people here. Who would report it?"

"Who knows," Zhang He's laugh was a bit shrill. The bald man next to him, Chucks, discreetly glanced at the seat behind the front passenger seat.

"Speaking of which, our team's personnel and equipment aren't much better than the previous eight recon teams. What was the group thinking? Sending us here to die?"

Zhang He said, "We do have one advantage. Didn't we get an extra history consultant?"

Chucks, with a deliberately stern face, corrected Zhang He, "Wrong. It's a history plus environmental studies consultant. By the way, Consultant, do you know what the environment outside is like right now? Are there any dangers in this desert?"

After he said this, the others cackled.

Only Jenny frowned and told them to shut up, while cautiously looking at the woman with black, shoulder-length hair.

Her hair was very black, smooth and lustrous. Her skin was pale, with an unhealthy pallor, unlike these frontline combat personnel. One look and you could tell she was a civilian employee—slender and delicate, of average height, and clearly someone who hadn't seen much sun and had been well-nourished with nutrient packs or food to have such healthy hair.

However, she had been leaning against the window for the entire four hours of the ground journey since they disembarked from the transport. She hadn't said a single word. Only the recording and positioning device on the ring of her combat suit's right arm flashed red periodically, indicating it was functioning normally.

She was still alive.

Her slender arms were clutching a shiny, black-and-red protective helmet—a sign of insecurity.

In the front passenger seat, the team leader, Ye Chen, frowned. He slapped the short sword he was polishing onto the vehicle's metal partition with a clatter.

The people in the back quieted down, but not out of fear. They just looked at the woman with increasing dissatisfaction.

An outsider forced upon them, a soft, useless person, wasting both energy and food…

Her resource allocation was higher than all of theirs, even higher than Team Leader Ye Chen's.

On what grounds!

Ye Chen turned around. His one-point-nine-meter frame gave him a heroic and imposing aura, and his features were handsome. He was reasonably polite as he looked at the woman in the back seat and said, "Consultant Sui, given the dangerous nature of this mission, the fact that you were sent to lead us is a sign of trust. Do you have any thoughts on our current situation?"

"I've reviewed a lot of data, but I can't determine why the previous recon teams and the station personnel, with over a thousand armed guards, ran into trouble and lost contact."

"Satellite reconnaissance is also unable to determine the situation due to the complex atmospheric layers and strong thermal interference here."

"You're an environmental scientist. Have you noticed anything?"

Sui Xin withdrew her gaze and looked at Ye Chen. Her slender, pale fingers rubbed the slightly oversized sleeve of her combat suit. The fabric was waterproof, oil-proof, and even heat-resistant, but it was a bit coarse, and the friction on her delicate fingers was noticeable.

"Because the previous eight teams all chose different routes from their predecessors to avoid encountering the same dangers, the route we've chosen this time is also new, not within the group's usual transport-regulated paths. According to the geology here, the gravel originates from mirrorstone. This is a specialized material for the third straight-pipe section of deep-sea mining drills. Its hardness reaches the Alliance's HB standard, comparable to diamond. However, due to the long-term exposure to high temperatures of 52-62 degrees and the furnace-like baking effect here, according to the properties of mirrorstone—which is pressure-resistant, waterproof, and corrosion-resistant, but not heat-resistant—they should have rapidly melted and denatured due to the high temperatures after this area was exposed as land during the Deep Sea Subsidence Day in 2480, twenty years ago. At least, twenty years should have been enough for them to deform. They haven't."

Due to the drastic global changes over the past hundred years, education levels had polarized. It was the same in this vehicle. These frontline combat personnel were neither good at nor patient with long-winded explanations. Zhang He impatiently interrupted Sui Xin, "So? What are you trying to say? We just want the answer."

Ye Chen glanced at Zhang He, who could only suppress his temper and say no more. Sui Xin seemed very mild-tempered and didn't get angry. She just paused for a moment after being interrupted, like a quiet gourd, and then continued speaking.

"My point is, this is a seabed subsidence zone. The deep-sea mining drills exploded due to a drastic change in the sea, destroying this area with the force of a small-scale atomic fusion, forming a desert. Mirrorstone would normally melt in such high temperatures within ten years. The fact that they have suddenly regained their sharp edges can only mean that there has been a recent occurrence of extreme low temperatures, causing their metal ions to move again and reform their edges under the effects of alternating heat and cold and the climate cycle."

"Therefore, we cannot spend the night here. We must reach the station before seven in the evening, no matter what. Because the vehicle's systems and our combat suits are designed to protect against high temperatures, not extreme low temperatures. If we don't make it to the station, we will die here."

Before Ye Chen could say anything, Zhang He was speechless. Looking at the terrifying, heat-distorted air outside, he couldn't imagine how cold it could get at night. Even if it did get cold… Lin Dan laughed. "Our great consultant is so impressive. But it seems kind of pointless, doesn't it? After all, it's only four in the afternoon. We'll definitely reach the station."

Sui Xin's lips moved. She wanted to say something but hesitated. Ye Chen noticed. "Do you have other thoughts?"

"I was thinking about the adjacent geological layer I just saw. This area should have been fir-rock back then, a large expanse of petrified fir-rock that formed a geological layer during the crustal period, later covered by the rising sea… and then exposed again by the sea's subsidence. According to historical geographical records, the Deep Red Sector incident site was originally in the region of 20° to 46° North latitude and 122° to 154° East longitude. At our current speed, if we are in the fir-rock zone now, it means we should be in a former volcanic eruption zone. From here, it would take at least three hours to reach the B05 ruins."

"But, the GPS positioning on the screen shows we're almost at B05. I'm a bit confused."

She was like a rigid, top-student examinee who had memorized a bunch of facts, only to suddenly find that the question and the answer didn't fit together, that it was different from what she had rote-learned. She couldn't quite wrap her head around it.

But as she said this, Ye Chen, a battle-hardened veteran, stared intently at the screen and immediately became alert, his voice suddenly rising.

"Something's wrong!"

At this moment, Jenny also realized it. She quickly used her game-controller-like device to rapidly probe the GPS data stream and suddenly discovered…

"It's being interfered with! Its sensor angle data has been overwritten by someone else's positioning data! They've created an information bubble to trick us."

The network in the ruins zone was very weak. Establishing and maintaining a connection required specialized equipment. Normal communications couldn't guarantee a stable signal here without it, let alone establishing a local firewall. And when an external network without a firewall entered a network area built by the locals, the probability of being hacked was not low—but their understanding of the attackers in the ruins zone was that they were savage and uncivilized, with low technological levels and large numbers. They had never heard of them having the ability to launch a network attack.

Unless they had acquired relevant talent. But people like that could easily find a job at a big corporation. Why would they be here?

"We've been tricked!"

As Jenny said this, she was about to exit the fake information bubble. Sui Xin glanced at her, her expression hard to read. Her lips moved slightly, but she ultimately said nothing, because Ye Chen had already shouted.

"Don't!"

Too late. Jenny had already exited the information bubble.

Ye Chen's expression changed. He immediately roared, "Grab your weapons! Prepare for battle!"

"Ah! My fault, ahhh!" Jenny instantly understood—the enemy had been trying to overwrite their equipment with false GPS data and lead them to a location of their choosing. They were most likely monitoring them. The moment she rashly exited, the other side would immediately realize they had discovered the truth.

In that case, the people hiding in the shadows would definitely launch an armed attack!

The best method would have been to pretend they were still being controlled, then quietly alter their trajectory and head for the correct route to the station, to get away from the enemy's control.

But now that was impossible.

Ye Chen decisively sounded the alarm for battle, but just then… Jenny, who had switched to the weapons sensor system, saw a red light appear on the black-and-blue energy sensor screen.

She immediately marked the direction and broadcast the projection to the guidance screen next to the driver's seat.

"Incoming long-range artillery! Watch the screen!"

The driver, Xiao Dao, saw it. His strong, powerful arms yanked the steering wheel…

Modern vehicles, especially specialized armored ones, had many components added to the steering wheel. And to prevent the enemy from sniping the steering wheel and disabling the entire vehicle, the material used was often very heavy, weighing a full twenty-five kilograms. Drivers were always very strong individuals.

Xiao Dao was experienced. The four giant wheels gripped the ground and turned sharply. The S501 turned nimbly, and the vehicles behind also received the warning and quickly scattered…

But in an instant, the long-range shell, which had traveled over two thousand meters, whizzed into the attack range of the seven crawlers.

Boom!

The S501 dodged it. The shell slammed into the gravel ground more than three meters from where its rear had just been, blasting a fiery crater three meters in diameter and half a meter deep. The shockwave caused a crawler behind it to sway violently. The tires withstood the heatwave from the blast, but the driver's side window was directly facing the shockwave.

Bang!

It shattered. The driver's head exploded in a spray of blood, killing him instantly, and the fiery blast surged into the vehicle…

The team leader in the passenger seat decisively kicked his former teammate out of the vehicle, letting him be consumed by the flames as he screamed. He then took the driver's seat himself, braving the heatwave to quickly control the vehicle.

But the second shell was already on its way.

Boom!

A small, egg-sized projectile was fired from high up, intercepting the shell mid-range.

The trajectories aligned. A hit. An explosion.

A rolling heatwave erupted in mid-air, not harming the crawlers below. The one who fired this interceptor round was Knox. His thick waist was buckled into the back seat, his head and upper body out of the roof hatch. Wearing glasses with a system split-screen display, he aimed at the enemy's position and the trajectory of the weapon's heat source, following Jenny's instructions…

It was an ambush, so the first wave was naturally successful. But this recon team was, after all, dispatched by a major consortium. Their personnel's abilities and equipment were up to par. After recovering from the initial shock, they quickly entered counter-attack mode.

They returned fire with their own long-range artillery.

Sui Xin was a non-combatant. She just had to make sure she didn't hold them back or require them to waste effort saving her. Right now, she gripped her seatbelt tightly, her face turning even paler, as if shocked by the sudden turn of events.

She didn't even have the instinct to grab a gun to protect herself. But her gaze occasionally swept over the monitor at the top of the vehicle, and her fingers were secretly, repeatedly rubbing something.

"Don't get bogged down in a fight! Just intercept their artillery from high up and pull away. We can get out of this!"

Ye Chen knew very well that although they came from a major consortium and had a strong backing, the ruins development zone had always been one of the most chaotic and dangerous places in the world. Vast resources meant infinite wealth, and countless desperados made their living here.

Forget hunting recon teams like them; even if a high-level executive team from the consortium came here, there would be no shortage of deranged organizations trying to hunt them down.

Whether they succeeded was one thing, but if they did, they could not only blackmail the consortium, but the energy and equipment the team carried would be enough to make them rich.

To put it bluntly, their armored vehicle alone was worth one hundred thousand Alliance Credits, and a single Alliance Credit could cover the cost of a full day's worth of satiety-type nutrient packs for an adult.

So even if it was just one gang attacking them now, if the commotion got too big and attracted the attention of other organizations in this Deep Red Sector, they would be in great danger.

Ye Chen's plan was to avoid a direct confrontation and prioritize the mission.

The others were also experienced. After receiving the captain's order, they didn't linger to fight, attempting to pull away with all their might…

But!

The enemy had other ideas.

"What's that sound?"

"Not good!"

Jenny was the communications officer. She suddenly saw five red dots appear on the screen right at their vehicle's position. And according to the thermal analysis, these were life-form readings, not heat signatures from weapons.

So?

Before Jenny could see anything out the window, Sui Xin had already tilted her head to look down, and through the window, she saw the gravel and soil on the ground they were speeding past momentarily squirm and bulge.

What is that?

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