"Move it, everyone! Seal off this block!" Rachel shouted as a group of Planetary Defense Force soldiers in Bulletproof Vests set up barricades and heavy weapons at the street entrance.
After receiving Chen Xi's orders, Rachel dared not delay. She immediately sought out General Gregory of the Planetary Defense Force and had him mobilize the Planetary Defense Force to seal off Area A7-012.
She personally led a squad of elites into Area A7-012, intending to search its interior for the xenos Chen Xi had mentioned.
Though she held the lofty position of Chancellor, Rachel had retained the habits she had developed as an Imperial Guard Commissar. Whenever a mission required combat, she always took the lead.
For this, she had put on the greatcoat and Flak Armor from her days as a Commissar, and taken up her Laspistol and Chainsword.
These two pieces of equipment were Rachel's family heirlooms, once used by her father when he served as an Astra Militarum Commissar.
When that Astra Militarum force had collectively retired on this planet, Rachel's father had remained behind as the regiment's Commissar. He later became the first Commissar of the Planetary Defense Force.
Not only that, he had trained his daughter into a qualified Commissar as well, and passed his position and weapons on to her.
To Rachel, these two pieces of equipment were not merely an inheritance, but symbols of honor and responsibility.
That was precisely why equipping them meant she was staking her own honor and her family's honor on this operation. Failure was not an option.
"Lady Rachel, the six nearby blocks have been sealed off! Please give us our next orders!" A second lieutenant of the Imperial Guard ran up to Rachel and reported on the current situation.
"Conduct a carpet search of every block! Everyone must operate in squads! Your objective is to locate the xenos! Kill on sight any target that is not human!" Rachel issued the ruthless order.
To a Commissar of the Imperium of Man, enemies came in only two kinds: dead, and not yet dead.
Now that the enemy had been identified, there was naturally no reason to show restraint.
Moreover, the brutal murder cases in this area had cast an extremely negative shadow over the district since the previous governor's tenure.
Rachel had once been ordered by that governor to purge the area, but her target at the time had been Cultists. She had failed to notice that the incidents had actually been the work of xenos.
As a result, that operation had achieved little. While she had indeed cleared out the Cultists in the area and uprooted a small gang engaged in heretical activities, using the blood of some to bring temporary peace to the district,
it could hardly be called a success. To put it bluntly, she had merely used that small gang as a scapegoat to bury the matter.
Rachel had originally believed it to be an unsolved case with no answer. Such things damaged one's honor, but they were also difficult to avoid.
After all, although Rostov II was merely an ordinary Imperial colony world, its two cities housed more than a billion people. If Cultists truly wished to hide themselves, they would be difficult to find.
Perhaps professional Inquisitors could uncover them through various other means, but an "ordinary person" like Rachel lacked that talent.
Yet now, she had learned that all of it had been her misjudgment. The murders had been committed by xenos. It was an immense humiliation, because not only had she failed to capture the true culprit and solve the problem, she had even identified the wrong murderer.
Rachel felt that her family's glory had been tarnished.
That was why, upon receiving Chen Xi's order, she had personally led her men here, desperate to wipe away this disgrace.
Following Rachel's orders, the Planetary Defense Force began searching the streets of Area A7-012. Though it was unlikely they would catch the xenos out in the open, the soldiers still meticulously searched every place where xenos might be hiding.
Rachel herself led a squad of elite guardsmen into the city's sewers.
In a sense, this was practically routine, but the sewers of a city capable of housing hundreds of millions truly were an ideal place for filth and evil to fester.
After all, to meet the needs of hundreds of millions of residents, the sewer system had to be built vast enough, and that undoubtedly provided fertile ground for certain activities that could not bear the light of day.
Besides those reasons, Rachel had another important reason for focusing on this place: according to the reports she had received earlier, nearly all the discovered bodies had appeared in the sewers or near sewer entrances.
That was why Rachel had mistaken the culprit for Cultists last time.
Cultists and sewers—those two were practically inseparable.
As she entered the sewers through an open maintenance passage, the stench that hit her nearly forced Rachel to take a step back. Fortunately, she promptly took out a respirator and put it over her face.
"Everyone, put on respirators and operate in squads! No one is to go off alone! Every squad must maintain strict communications, and check them every fifteen minutes! Open your eyes and search carefully! We must find the xenos!" Rachel's voice was muffled by the respirator, but her orders still reached the soldiers she had brought with her clearly.
After putting on their respirators, the soldiers began moving out, while Rachel led a squad of elite guardsmen deeper into the sewers to search.
Such a large-scale operation carried the air of striking the mountain to frighten the tiger, and it naturally alerted certain presences lurking deep within the sewers.
Pairs of scarlet eyes opened. Scimitar-like claws flexed. Torn human skin draped over metal bodies, while rotten fat and dried blood stuck those ragged scraps of flesh to the metallic surface, creating a sight both cruel and bloody.
These were the Flayed Ones, soulless machines afflicted by a curse.
Their flesh and souls had once been devoured by the C'tan, and the shadows left behind had become mechanical undead.
Now, warped and mutated by the C'tan's curse, forever unable to suppress their hunger and thirst, they had long since lost even the last remnants of themselves.
"Lando... Gore..." the Flayed Ones murmured a name, and their insatiable hunger for flesh drove them into motion.
They moved in groups of two or three, slipping through the sewer shadows with eerie speed.
Within these sewers, already a place where filth and corruption gathered, the Flayed Ones and the Imperial Guard began hunting one another like hunters and prey.
As for who was the hunter and who was the prey, only when one side fell would the answer truly become clear.
Before you continue