Sitting on the hospital bed, I waited, bored, smoking as I watched the storm raging outside. I had to admit, this base had been built on excellent foundations. There wasn't even a speck of standing water on the roads. It was clear that an expert had advised them when they built it. Otherwise, a downpour like this would have flooded the base in just a few days.
The base had been built on a flat area among the mountains. I wasn't sure if they'd originally leveled a peak here, but the ground was much higher than in the surrounding areas. On top of that, there were plenty of drains in the streets, so the water flowed through them and out of the base.
"Whoosh!"
I opened the window, and the sound of the torrential rain poured into the room. I looked around, then gazed into the distance. A faint wall surrounded the area, and most of the houses were two stories tall. The vast majority were wooden buildings; only a few were those temporary blue-and-white houses, along with a dozen or so scattered concrete buildings.
I supposed most of the concrete had been used to pave the roads, right?
That made sense. In an environment like this, using resources according to the local conditions was essential.
And Juanjuan had done a very good job of that.
As I watched the storm outside, a faint glint suddenly flashed from a house in the distance. I couldn't help but freeze, then instinctively looked toward it.
The curtain in the window of a wooden house had shifted.
For an instant, I thought I'd seen a flash of... reflected light from a pair of binoculars inside that house.
I looked at the room, then silently surveyed the surroundings again, pretending I hadn't noticed. Every