"No,
if it were Old Suzuki, he wouldn't have made it this obvious."
After listening to their conversation, the short-haired woman used a dagger to pry open the black substance lodged in the track seams. Viscous fluid stretched into spiderweb-like strands from the blade's tip.
"The Black Tide has seeped into the physical layer. Those missing train cars may have..."
"...already been dragged into a deeper Contaminated Zone."
Su Wen pointed toward the distance he was staring at through his own eyes. "So we only have two choices now.
Either wait here for rescue that may never come in a few hours, or follow these Black Tide traces down and take a look."
Hearing that, the man with the Mechanical Eye suddenly laughed. He pulled open his tactical vest, revealing an old bullet hole in his chest. "I should've died in a Syrian sandstorm ten years ago.
Blanks, you're not scared now, are you?"
He did not turn back to look again.
He simply grabbed the emergency lamp from the wall and walked deeper into the tunnel, its beam carving a path of light across the damp brick walls.
"Keep up!"
The short-haired woman cursed as she checked the Armor-Piercing Rounds in her magazine.
"If the association finds out we acted on our own..."
"At least,
we have a 'guide,' don't we?"
But as he heard them say that, Su Wen had already seen a deeper image of the Subway Station through his dark blue Appraisal Vision.
Something was moving there.
It was not human.
Meanwhile,
within the Tokyo Metropolitan Spirit Disaster Countermeasures Bureau, the Space Stability Index monitoring department had already entered Level One Alert.
But even though everyone was fully prepared, they all understood perfectly well:
The war had already begun.
In an instant, at the exact