I Have Returned, but I Cannot Lay down My Gun

Chapter 674

"...Is this person not coming in again today?"

A day passed, then two, and by the time three days had gone by, it had been almost a week since I arrived at Central Park.

The Alpha-class mutants' accommodations, which had been hastily built, almost looking like rags or scraps in the beginning, were now relatively more organized as time went by. Of course, asking for anything more was pure luxury.

Still, compared to just a short while ago, it felt like a miracle. Especially with the little bit of electricity that had been turned on recently. It only lasted for a couple of hours during certain times of the day, but still, it was something.

But after staying in Central Park for about five days, I realized that this place was a complete mess, and I knew better than to complain about it.

The reality of it had hit me long ago.

"Although they say I’m a top-priority personnel, all I’ve been doing is manual labor…"

But it couldn’t be helped.

Leaving aside the matter of inspection cooperation, there was enough justification for why we had to do these things.

If you exclude the restricted areas and the health center within Central Park, this place couldn’t easily access resources like electricity or water from nearby buildings. Not that there was none at all.

The reason I said it wasn’t completely absent was simple. You could see it from the fountains or streetlights scattered throughout Central Park. But drawing water and electricity from those places was another issue altogether.

The wires supplying electricity to things like the streetlights were nowhere near enough to handle the enormous amount of power needed for the HQ. Even if they tried to implement it, the excess power supply would have caused the wires to blow.

So, the necessary task was simple.

"...Digging the ground and laying down new power lines and water supply lines."

Even with heavy machinery, this would take quite a while, but it had to be done by hand.

The refugees held shovels and pickaxes to receive enough food for a day. All the men and women, except the very old or very young, were digging the land of Central Park. The trees had long been extinct.

I heard that the construction in Central Park started just under three weeks ago. So, it was understandable that it had turned into this massive mess.

Shifting the burden onto civilians… well, that couldn’t be helped.

Moreover, it was the best way to calculate my data, so it was necessary for me to cooperate with the inspections. Though I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it.

Anyway, it was hard to say I had any special skills, but my job there was simple. With a pickaxe, I smashed the frozen ground at a pace no one else could match, and with a shovel, I moved the dirt.

Occasionally, I would lift and place down the huge and heavy pipes… I began to wonder if the reason I had ended up here was to do this kind of labor.

At first, I thought I might end up being used for some kind of biological experiment, but now, there were days when I would rather be called in by the medical team than be stuck working like this.

"Ugh..."

My body was sore.

The only relief was that I had been able to shower occasionally. The method was simple. A few of the nearby high-rise buildings had started to normalize their facilities, and we could use their shower rooms.

Of course, not everyone could use them. Only senior officials who worked here could use them once every two to three days.

There was no longer enough water for even basic hygiene, let alone two showers a day. It was winter, and many pipes had burst because of the cold… it's a wonder they hadn’t completely broken down yet.

Perhaps something worse would happen soon, but... what I was more curious about right now was something else.

"...Aren’t any other Alpha-class mutants supposed to come?"

The two-story building, which could house a few dozen people, had rooms that were about half the size of a training camp room on both the first and second floors. I was on the second floor.

The person I was referring to was using the first floor. Since the U.S. is sensitive about privacy, I hadn’t gone inside to check, but I could make out a few things from the outside.

The room was dark, so I could barely see anything. But I could make out a few military-style digital-patterned bags and various clothes, an oversized empty cabinet, and a book I didn’t recognize.

I wanted to talk to them, but the soldier—who I guessed was a soldier—seemed to be on a separate schedule in a completely different location. If I met them, they might turn out to be quite intimidating.

I just hoped they weren’t a scary person.

"...I tried staying up to meet them, but how can they expect me to hold out without sleep, making me do all this work..."

Well, whatever. Even if they looked scary, they might be nice.

At least the soldiers I had met so far had all been good people, and now that I thought about it, I could meet members of the 107th Military Police Company much sooner than expected. I had thought I would be isolated from them for a while, but that hadn’t been the case.

I guess, in a situation of extreme manpower shortage, they couldn’t keep those elite soldiers locked away for too long. I ended up meeting the team members who had been in charge of the construction site just a few days ago.

One of them handed me a sweet cola they must have gotten from somewhere. It made me think that having good relationships with people was important.

Anyway...

"...Looks like I’m going to sleep without any progress today."

Agent Regent, who had promised to find out where Jenna was, was still silent, and I hadn’t been able to meet the person on the first floor.

At least I still had the energy to study English, so that was something to be thankful for.

Learning a foreign language to survive felt quite strange. Only a few weeks ago, I couldn’t understand anything, but now, I could start to understand a little.

And naturally, I figured out the first thing I needed to focus on—vocabulary. If I didn’t know the words, I couldn’t express what I wanted to say.

I should avoid studying until I fell asleep with my face buried in the book like last time. Back then, the pages got soaked with saliva.

One hour, two hours, and then three hours.

By then, my brain stopped taking in anything, my eyes started to blur, and I kept yawning. It was about time to sleep. Luckily, I had closed the book and placed it under my pillow to raise it up a little.

The fatigue of the day hit me. Maybe tomorrow, I would finally meet someone I hadn’t seen yet. If I did, I wasn’t sure what I would say first. As someone whose MBTI starts with 'I', that thought terrified me.

But that thought gradually faded, and I slowly drifted into sleep, holding on to a small hope that I might dream of Korea and my parents.

And then—

"Eh, oh, um..."

"...I was wondering if there was some gloomy friend, but there’s actually a cuter kid than I expected. Nice to meet you."

A few hours later, after a sudden stomachache woke me up, I rushed to the bathroom and was greeted by someone who looked like a princess who had just been released from some northern European castle.

The fact that she was much taller than me was a little sad.

It was the moment I got a new older sister who might be scary.

...

The situation wasn’t great, at all.

War.

Not a 'battle' or 'skirmish'—but a 'war'... whether big or small, war was like a huge abyss that swallowed resources and costs, spiraling down endlessly.

It wasn’t just war between countries. It was the war on crime, the war on terrorism, the war on drugs… The word 'war' had many prefixes, and it wandered through society as a catchphrase.

And none of those wars, however big or small, drained national resources to a frightening degree.

Then, how much resources, budgets, and lives did the 'war against the virus' consume?

...

The answer was something even Lauren C. Brenner, the team leader of DEVGRU's Gold Squadron Alpha Team, could not know.

But after coming to Central Park HQ, she felt like she was getting closer to that answer—but approaching the truth didn’t necessarily guarantee a clear solution or a bright future.

It felt more like being sucked into a whirlwind, a feeling of devastation.

...

Right now, there were no external attacks. But what about in the future?

One of the few people who could access the world's secrets, Lauren knew that the president, entangled in terrorism, couldn’t reach Cheyenne Mountain's bunker and was stuck at Central Park.

Ideally, she should have been aboard one of the transport planes arriving and leaving the base dozens of times by now. But due to various interests and risks, things couldn’t proceed so easily.

The biggest reason was that the president had become directly involved in the terror attack. Even Air Force One had been infiltrated. That meant security had been completely breached.

So, the problem was...

...The identity of those who had contact with hostile countries or terrorists was still unknown. And if they tried to evacuate the president to the bunker?

There were several possibilities, but one certainty was that the transport plane carrying the president could be intercepted by a missile before even reaching half of Colorado.

And whether this was fortunate or unfortunate, the president had come to realize this and was now working diligently in the makeshift bunker being built in Central Park. That fact had not leaked anywhere.

But the problem was... that even if the president was hidden here in Central Park, this place might still become a target for potential terrorists or hostile forces.

That’s why, as soon as she arrived at HQ, Lauren assessed Manhattan’s risks and was asked to focus on training forces capable of responding to any unrest, but...

'At most, it will last 1 to 2 months. After that, something will definitely happen.'

It was an exceptionally harsh winter, but it would soon be February.

The weather would gradually warm, and once the cold no longer hindered people’s actions, the struggle for survival would fully emerge.

Gang members released from Riker's Island, forces armed with advanced weapons, civilians turned into mobs to survive...

A cold wave and power outage that might only happen once in a century had killed off most of the infected hosts, and the Omega virus had all but collapsed, but the future was the real problem.

That’s why, after hurriedly setting up accommodations for the Alpha-class mutants, Lauren spent over 16 hours a day fulfilling her tasks. That was why she had never once met Eugene since the building had been constructed.

Just five seconds ago, that had been the case.

"…"

"Eh, um, hi... I’m Eugene, I live on the second floor... Nice to meet you."

"...Lauren. Just call me that."

Lauren still wasn’t used to her new name.

She swallowed the last words, looking down at the kid in front of her. She had to look down automatically because of her 188cm height. What stood out were not the usual murky eyes but sapphire-like eyes.

Her black hair reached down to her waist, and she had a gentle-looking face. Her features were delicate, and her small head was about the size of a man’s fist. Her body and hips had proportions that looked more mature, and there was a snake tail poking out of her backside.

...Come to think of it, I think I heard something about another Alpha-class mutant arriving around the same time. Back then, I didn’t think much of it, but...

"...I didn’t expect you to look so harmless."

"Ah, sorry-"

"...Are you really sure you’re based on an anaconda?"

Aside from her snake tail, she looked harmless enough to be... like a little Japanese mochi figurine.

She briefly touched Eugene’s face with both hands and then gently withdrew her fingers.

Memories that had been half-forgotten started coming back.

"...I’m not sure I could talk about Icarus right now with this kid..."

Especially when it came to the Icarus Gear.

Right now, first-entry units were struggling to eliminate gang members around Manhattan, but strictly speaking, these soldiers were fighting with equipment that should only be available to special forces, engaging in life-threatening combat.

And the department under the Department of Homeland Security, Icarus ICARUS, which was receiving full support to solve the current crisis... was secretly looking for personnel to use the Icarus Gear.

It was a cutting-edge technology that guaranteed combat abilities far beyond what normal operators could achieve, but it also carried the danger of potentially killing someone using it because no one knew if the human body could withstand it.

So, they requested that Alpha-class mutants, who had surpassed the limits of human physical capabilities, test the gear, collect data, and adjust the settings so that even regular operators could use it.

You could call them test subjects, but on the other hand, they were also experimental candidates.

"...I don’t think she’s going to die during the experiment, but..."

If I considered this innocent child as the preparation to throw into the battlefield, it was understandable why I would hesitate.

But on the other hand... honestly, Central Park and the surrounding area were going to become a battlefield soon enough. The flames of war had just started to kindle, and once they ignited, they would burn for years without stopping.

Leaving this kid without any preparation in the middle of that warzone was just as absurd. It wasn’t wrong to make sure she had the chance to survive by preparing her to fight for her life.

Accepting the truth was always hard.

She thought that.

Ah, but of course...

"Would you like a chocolate bar? I haven’t opened the packaging yet."

"I’d love one!"

Cute things are still cute.

Lauren’s face finally broke into a smile, something she hadn’t shown in a long time.