Twenty kilometers away.
City center of Yelcha.
Pei Ran retraced her path back to the glass skybridge. The swarm of human-drone hybrids was gone now—after failing to break through the door, they had wasted no further effort and returned to their formation, continuing their aerial performance.
She quietly unlocked the reinforced door and peeked outside.
The drones were busy assembling themselves into the shape of a dolphin, gracefully leaping above an invisible ocean.
Timing it just right, Pei Ran darted out.
Her sudden movement drew the attention of the swarm. The dolphin's tail stopped mid-performance as the formation turned sharply, surging toward the bridge.
But instead of heading straight across, Pei Ran veered toward the scattered dots of green light glimmering across the skybridge.
Every little bit counts, she thought. Even scraps were better than nothing. She leapt and dashed across the walkway, grabbing every glowing speck she could reach.
With enough energy now stored, W silently swiveled and began firing. One by one, the lead drones were taken down.
Pei Ran remained focused, clearing the field before bolting through the door on the far side.
Tiny particles of green light entered her body, wriggling uncomfortably inside her. She summoned them with her mind, gathering them together to feed them to Greenlight-1.
Greenlight-1, already wide awake at the sound of its mental "can opening," came bouncing over and began gobbling them up like sunflower seeds.
Retracing her route was easy—hopping over the outer wall, crawling through the dog tunnel, Pei Ran returned to the ground floor lobby of the twin towers.
The people guarding the door saw her return. Though none could speak, the expressions on their faces were identical—hopeful, questioning.
Pei Ran gave them a thumbs-up.
A collective breath of relief swept the room.
She directed them to shift the service desk just enough to open a narrow gap in the door. The drones were now positioned perfectly in the sky—there was no need to carry the metal sphere outside. Pei Ran simply placed it on top of the service desk.
Everyone watched in astonishment as the battered sphere moved on its own.
A pair of mechanical limbs unfolded like crab legs, lifting the device. It took two short steps to the doorway, adjusted its aim, and rotated to face the sky. The black lens at its center locked onto the space between the buildings.
Moments later, W opened fire.
Silenced rounds thudded softly in rapid succession: thmp, thmp, thmp.
The explosions outside, however, were anything but quiet—blasts echoed violently through the city. Debris rained from above, twisted shards of drones fluttering down like confetti. The streets were quickly blanketed in strange, fragmented parts.
The brightest among them were the green lights—tiny glimmers, like fireflies hovering in the air.
Under attack, the swarm launched an all-out charge.
Flat, expressionless faces surged toward the door, relentless and fearless, throwing themselves at W's line of fire.
He kept firing until they were nearly at the door. Then, just in time, he stopped and retreated. Pei Ran barked the command to push the desk forward and seal the gap.
The hybrids slammed furiously against the door—but after a few seconds, realizing it was futile, they returned to the sky, resuming their performance like goldfish with seven-second memories.
The dolphin this time was missing its tail—and a good chunk of its belly.
As soon as they withdrew, Pei Ran ordered the door opened again.
W launched a second round of attacks.
They repeated this process, over and over. W swapped energy cores twice. One wave after another, the number of drones dwindled. The dolphin lost its shape, and eventually only a few human-drone hybrids remained, still performing diligently, leaping in and out of their invisible ocean.
At last, with the final door opening, W fired a concentrated burst, taking out the last approaching drone.
He turned to Pei Ran. "Including the ones you blew up earlier, that's 3,028 confirmed kills—at least from what we could see."
This thing was incredibly useful.
Tang Dao slapped the table. "So we can leave now?"
Pei Ran nodded.
The longer they stayed, the worse it could get. They needed to leave the city while they still had the chance.
Everyone helped move the service desk. The door opened. They stepped out into the ravaged street.
Aisha pointed north, asking silently, That way?
Pei Ran nodded. No one wanted to risk staying behind. The whole group began jogging down the road.
Pei Ran lagged behind slightly, running silently through the street, sweeping up every last grain of green light.
There were so many that the light clustered densely inside her body, wriggling around in her gut. The discomfort returned—but Greenlight-1 was ravenous, still chewing away. Even Greenlight-2 and Yulianka's Greenlight-3 managed to sneak a few bites when it wasn't looking.
The sky above the city remained quiet. No new drones had emerged—yet.
Yelcha wasn't a large city, and they were close to the northern outskirts. The urban sprawl quickly gave way to barren red terrain.
The landscape was strange here, carved by countless deep fissures as if the earth had split open and clumsily stitched itself back together. The result was a series of undulating ravines.
Just like in Night Sea, there were no proper roads in this age of hovercraft. They had to find their own way through the ridges.
Once they left the city, the group relaxed slightly. Their pace slowed. There were still hours of walking ahead—running the whole way was impossible.
Greenlight-1 wasn't asleep. Still munching.
Pei Ran took advantage of the break, mentally summoning it.
It drifted reluctantly into her inner field of view, sulking like a kid interrupted mid-snack: What now?
Pei Ran directed it to write.
J. T. N. 3.
Four letters down—it stopped.
Even after absorbing so much light, it still hadn't written the fifth letter. Apparently, the further along it got, the more green light was needed for each new step.
Earlier, it had managed to generate partial words like "medicine" and "drug," producing fragmented pieces of medication packaging. Now, after so much time and progress, maybe it was finally worth trying "anti-rejection meds"—if they were lucky, the generated fragments might be larger.
But it wasn't the time yet. The road ahead was still uncertain. Best to save the greenlight for emergencies.
She let Greenlight-1 return to its snacks.
The twenty-kilometer journey might not seem long, but the terrain was brutal.
Cold winds swept across the wilderness, kicking up clouds of red dust and howling between the ravines.
Crossing the ravines meant constant climbing, as if they were trekking through mountains. It was grueling for everyone, especially the elderly and the children. Progress was slow. They had to stop often to rest and regroup.
W said quietly to Pei Ran, "Put me down. I'll walk."
"You're light," she replied. "I'll carry you."
The metal sphere was made of some unknown material—surprisingly light. Probably no heavier than a can of food in her backpack.
They trudged forward, climbing, slipping, pressing on.
Time passed. The dull orange sun reached its zenith, then began to sink again. They had covered about half the distance.
When they stopped again, W spoke near her ear: "Up ahead is the southern entrance to Blackwell Base. You'll know it when you see it—it's inside a massive gorge. You won't miss it."
"The entrance is hidden," he added. "There's a large white rock nearby. It stands out."
Pei Ran said, "We should show everyone, just in case someone gets separated."
But explaining that much was difficult.
With Aisha and Tang Dao, at least communication was possible—slow, but doable. With the rest, it was nearly impossible.
"I'll draw it," W offered.
This time, he didn't bother with art. He just produced a photo—an overhead view of the gorge, with a red marker highlighting the entrance.
The second image was a close-up of the area. In the red earth, a massive white stone lay half-buried, unmistakable.
"You said art serves expression," W noted. "A photo works best here."
He was right. Pei Ran immediately showed the "photos" to the others.
After a brief rest, the group pressed on—until they came across a cluster of half-ruined buildings between the ravines, resembling a factory.
"The mining district," W said.
"Blackwell was originally a massive underground mine," he explained. "The military later took it over and converted the entire zone into an underground city."
They had been marching for hours. Everyone was exhausted. Pei Ran raised her hand and pointed ahead, signaling a rest.
Then W said sharply, "I hear something. Aircraft."
He turned, aiming at the rear sky, ready to shoot.
Pei Ran heard it too—the familiar drone, like a swarm of wasps.
A moment later, a massive swarm of human-drone hybrids rose from behind a crimson ridge.
Countless white, expressionless faces filled the sky, their wings spreading wide to blot out the light.
In the open wilderness, the group was painfully exposed.
The drones had spotted them.
This swarm was even larger than the one they'd faced in Yelcha. W's remaining firepower wasn't enough.
"I'll suppress them," he said quickly. "There's a metal tunnel up ahead. We can take shelter."
He spun, opened fire at the sky.
No one waited for orders. The second they saw the swarm, everyone had already taken off running.
Just a few hundred meters ahead stood the tunnel—a stretch of metal structure leading into the hills. The front of the group reached it first and grabbed the door, rattling it wildly.
Locked.
They had to get there—fast.
Pei Ran sprinted full speed.
The metal sphere bounced and swung on her back, but W's aim never wavered.
Explosions ripped through the air as he took out drone after drone.
He prioritized the closest ones, buying them time.
But the swarm was fast—too fast. People began ditching their backpacks, sprinting with everything they had.
Pei Ran reached the tunnel door and began pounding it with her mechanical arm.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
At last—click—the door opened.
She and several others rushed inside.
Tang Dao's group arrived, dragging the blinded Jin Hejun. Middle-aged men, gasping for breath, followed.
Everyone was spent, bent double, but alive.
Not all had made it.
Some were still behind—families carrying children, an old couple leaning on each other, doing their best but falling behind.
Aisha and her grandmother were still in the rear.
Aisha was holding tightly onto Jiang's arm, the two of them stumbling forward together.
The vanguard of the human-drone hybrids closed in on the rear of the group, spreading their flattened bodies and limbs as they dove down, ready to deliver a death embrace.
Only a short distance remained.
W was firing madly, but it was clear he couldn't hold them back anymore.
One of the hybrids targeted Jiang and Aisha, but W managed to shoot it down—only for several more to immediately dive in after it.
Aisha whipped around and raised her head to the sky, quickly forming a seal with her hands.
The human-drone hybrids almost upon them suddenly spun off midair, as if kicked by some invisible force.
But a fresh wave came hurtling down from the sky like a dark swarm.
Greenlight One had been snacking all the way and was already full, yet it couldn't bear to waste the leftover sunflower seeds. It was still lazily cracking them, when Pei Ran yanked it into her neural visual feed.
Pei Ran locked onto the descending formation of human-drone hybrids and scribbled quickly:
[R9 explode]
She didn't punctuate the sentence. A sudden realization struck her.
The flying units embedded in the hybrids' bellies looked different from the R9s—smaller, sleeker, with smoother edges.
She quickly asked W, "These aren't R9s?"
W was still busy, but his voice remained calm and precise: "No. They're the new generation—R11. Released by the company earlier this year."
Pei Ran had one thought: Thank goodness Greenlight had been upgraded and could now handle four-character commands.
She wiped out the previous text and hastily scrawled:
[R11 blow]
A string of explosions went off in the sky. A huge cluster of human-drone hybrids detonated all at once.
Shrapnel and scorched remains rained down as the last of the runners pressed forward through the grisly downpour of human skin and machine parts.
The explosions gave the group a temporary breather. With W's suppressive fire continuing, Pei Ran calculated they might actually make it. She braced herself against the door, waiting.
But the elderly couple at the very end of the line suddenly stumbled. They pitched forward and fell hard onto the red earth.
They had been holding hands the entire time. No one could tell who tripped first, or who brought the other down.
They struggled to sit up, helping each other, trying to stand.
Come on… you can still make it. Pei Ran willed them from the doorway. Hurry.
She glanced up at the hybrid swarm overhead.
There was no time to run out and help them now. Doing so would mean death—for everyone. They had to rely on themselves.
Maybe it was the long journey, or the sprint, or simply old age and fragile bones—but whatever the reason, they couldn't rise.
They sat still. And then they stopped moving.
The old woman tilted her head to the sky.
Above them, countless hybrid figures flew. Every one of them was a warped imitation of a human, flattened like they'd been run over, wings stretched wide, eyes rolling wildly as they dove in to transform others into the same grotesque, inhuman form.
Like hell they would.
She looked at her husband.
They locked eyes. Decades of shared understanding passed between them in a glance.
They had come so far. Run so hard. Sitting here was just fine. There was no need to go further.
She raised her hand, peeled away the tape over her mouth, and took a breath.
"Let's go," she said, her voice raspy—she hadn't spoken in days.
Her husband watched her, then removed his own tape.
Their hands never let go.
"Alright," he said.
Just like forty years ago, when he came to pick her up from work, and she walked out, took his hand, and said, "Let's go."
Just like now, every evening after dinner, when she'd put on her shoes, turn back and ask, "Shall we go?"
And every time, he would answer: "Alright."
The human-drone hybrids dove down, limbs spread wide.
But there was no one left.
Only two dark blood-colored blossoms marked the red soil.
The family of three made it through.
So did Aisha and Jiang.
Pei Ran gave one last glance to the two flowers on the ground—then closed the door.
There were thirty-three people left in the group.