Syktyvkar City lay west of the Ural Mountains, beside the Chegda River. In its original history, it had not been an industrial city; being too close to the north, it was unsuited to industrial development. The outbreak of Honkai prompted Fire Moth to launch industrial and population relocation projects. As Fire Moth's sphere of influence contracted, industries scattered across the world gradually concentrated in Europe, and Syktyvkar City became one of the beneficiaries.
But the good times did not last. Although the people of Syktyvkar City hoped the industrial relocation would stop there, Fire Moth's territory continued to shrink, and Syktyvkar City drew ever closer to the front lines. It was no longer a destination for industry and population, but a place they fled from.
Kyshtym Town was the first victim. Its automobile factory was now nothing more than an empty shell. Industrial relocation had cost many residents their jobs, and unemployment coupled with persistently high prices intensified social tensions, leading to frequent violence. The unsolved serial murder case from a year ago became the last straw that broke Kyshtym Town. The town government announced its dissolution a month ago, and Kyshtym Town became a term of history.
Martha strolled through Kyshtym Town. Not a single vehicle could be seen on the empty streets; only a few bicycles stood along the roadside. A breeze swept scraps of paper and torn cloth from an overflowing green trash bin into a corner by the wall. This was a living, unruined ruin. The people who had lived here had already lost to nature, and before long, their creations would be left to nature's mercy as well, becoming a handful of dirt.
She stopped before a newsstand. Some newspapers still sat on the shelves beside it, buried beneath thick dust. Inside the stand were many fashion magazines that had been too worthless to take along. She picked up a newspaper and slapped it against the wall a few times. Dust drifted into her nose on the wind, irritating her.
Martha opened the newspaper. It was dated half a year ago, with a QR code printed in the lower-right corner. She scanned it with her phone. The website had not been updated in a long time, and many comments below complained about the poor quality of the Kyshtym Evening News app.
One comment read as follows.
Visitor157: "If I have to spend twenty minutes reading today's paper, I might as well spend five minutes buying one from a newsstand. I could even use it to swat cockroaches!" —4 months ago
"Four months ago? The population report showed that Kyshtym Town had already been an empty city six months ago."
Just as she was about to take a closer look at the newspaper's contents, the Herrscher's keen hearing detected someone not far behind her. The footsteps were light and irregular. Martha turned around and saw an old woman around sixty.
Martha greeted her. "Hello, ma'am."
"Hello," the old woman returned the greeting.
"You haven't left yet? How strange." Martha feigned surprise.
"Yes, I came back to take a look." The old woman sighed wistfully. "I can't bear to leave this place. I grew up here, and when you get old, you start getting sentimental."
The old woman sighed again, burdened by her thoughts, then asked Martha, "And you, young lady? What brings you to this dead little town?"
Martha had never said whether she was a resident here. The old woman had probably recognized that she was not from Kyshtym Town.
"To retrieve my father's marriage certificate."
"Oh... How strange."
"It's nothing." Martha smiled "shyly." "Whenever Father picked up the marriage certificate, he would always say the photo on it was ugly. But in truth, he smiled more happily than anyone. After we moved, he kept complaining to me that he had forgotten to bring certain things, but whenever I asked, he refused to tell me. He only muttered things like, 'The photo on it isn't pretty anyway, so it doesn't matter if I don't take it.' So I came back."
"How wonderful."
"When did you leave this place?"
"Forty-six days ago," the old woman answered naturally.
Martha said in surprise, "You actually remember so clearly!"
"When you're old, you like remembering these boring things." The old woman smiled too, and they chatted for a while longer.
"Goodbye, ma'am."
"Goodbye."
Martha was certain that the human she had spoken with was no wolf in sheep's clothing. Moreover, the things mentioned during their idle chat had given her plenty of information. The controller behind those robots was undoubtedly fabricating false documents, intending to deceive Fire Moth. That explained why Fire Moth's forces had not arrived after the fierce battle beneath 36 Oak Street. Those robots and Fire Moth were not on the same side at all.
Following the route of the map in her mind, the Herrscher hurried to the automobile factory. She easily opened the small blue door behind it. The interior was utterly empty. Beneath the white-painted concrete walls stood several unfinished sedans with their metal frames exposed, lined up neatly like discarded products that could not be taken during the evacuation.
Martha activated her x-ray vision. Only then did she discover, to her surprise, that a massive cavern lay beneath the automobile factory. She lay on the ground and used the movements of her fingers to feel out the structure below. A black-and-white panoramic image gradually took shape in her mind, stroke by stroke.
The corner of her mouth lifted slightly. This underground cavern was a real factory. Unlike the repair station that had resembled a handcraft workshop, Martha could at least sense some genuine automated equipment here. She shifted her body and carefully searched for the entrance, wriggling across the floor like a fat grub.
Following the buried wiring, Martha found an abandoned electrical switchbox. The densely packed wires inside resembled a tangled spiderweb, with no discernible pattern at all. She could sense that the circuits here were not powered, so Martha simply cut all the chaotic wires at once.
A strange electronic panel came into view. It was a password lock. What made it strange was that there were no buttons on its panel, only a narrow, smooth horizontal screen in the middle.
A voice sounded through the mental link between Herrschers. "Andre, come over here."
"Okay."
A few seconds later, Martha's voice came again. "Wait. Bring everyone on the team."
"Click." First the lower-right corner, then the upper-right corner—at last, Andre, the Hacker Herrscher, pried off the password lock's panel and exposed its internal structure.
"Where's your passcode?" Martha looked at Andre in confusion.
"This panel isn't activated. It needs to be activated before I can enter the passcode."
After tinkering for several minutes, Andre made the panel's smooth screen light up, projecting a red laser. He took T-800's head from his bag. A wire on top of its head was connected to a laptop. Andre hurriedly tapped a few keys, and T-800's electronic eyes slowly began to glow.
He aimed the head's eyes at the laser projected from the electronic panel, then tapped at the laptop again.
A few seconds later, Martha's group heard a door opening somewhere. But that was not all—the Herrschers' hearing also caught the sound of some mechanical device unfolding and extending.
Then came gunfire.
The Herrschers started running with all their strength. In a single bound, they burst through the hidden door, where machine-gun turrets were spitting streams of fire at their own servers and computers, golden shell casings scattering across the floor.
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