Mystery of the Dead City

Syktyvkar City lay west of the Ural Mountains, along the banks of the Chegda River. Historically, it had never been an industrial city—its location was too far north to suit industrial development. When the Honkai erupted, Fire Moth launched industrial relocation and population migration projects. As Fire Moth's sphere of influence shrank, industries scattered across the world gradually concentrated in Europe, and Syktyvkar City became a beneficiary.

But the good times didn't last. Though the people of Syktyvkar City wished the industrial migration would stop there, Fire Moth's territory continued to contract. Syktyvkar City drew closer and closer to the front lines. It was no longer a destination for industry and people—it became a source of exodus instead.

Kyshtym Town was the first victim. Its automobile factory was now nothing but an empty shell. The industrial migration had cost many residents their jobs. Unemployment and soaring prices stoked conflict, leading to frequent outbreaks of violence. The final straw came a year ago: a string of unsolved murders that broke the town's back. The town government dissolved itself a month ago, and Kyshtym Town became a historical footnote.

Martha strolled through Kyshtym Town. The empty streets held no cars—just a few bicycles parked along the roadside. A light breeze swept scraps of paper and shreds of cloth from an overflowing green trash bin into the corner of a wall. This was a living, yet undestroyed ruin. The people who had lived here had already lost to nature, and soon their creations would be at nature's mercy too, turning back into soil.

She walked up to a newspaper kiosk. On a shelf beside it lay some newspapers, thick with dust. Inside the kiosk were fashion weeklies—worthless and impossible to take along. She picked up a paper, slapped it against the wall a few times, and dust blew into her nose on the wind, irritating her.

Martha opened the newspaper. The date was six months ago. A QR code sat in the bottom-right corner. She scanned it with her phone. The linked website hadn't been updated in a long time. In the comment section below, many users complained about the quality of the Kyshtym Evening News app.

One comment read:

[Guest 157: "If I have to spend 20 minutes reading today's paper on this app, I'd rather spend 5 minutes buying one from the kiosk. I could even use it to kill cockroaches!" — 4 months ago]

"Four months ago? The population report showed Kyshtym Town was already a ghost town six months ago."

She was about to read the paper more closely when her Herrscher-sharp hearing caught someone not far behind her—light footsteps, irregular. Martha turned around. It was an elderly woman, around sixty.

Martha greeted her: "Hello, ma'am."

"Hello," the old woman replied.

"You haven't left yet? How strange," Martha said, feigning surprise.

"Yes, I came back to take a look." The old woman sighed. "Ah, I can't bear to leave this place. I grew up here. When you get old, you get sentimental."

The old woman let out another heavy, preoccupied sigh, then asked Martha, "And you, young lady? What brings you to this dead little town?"

Martha had never said whether she was a local. The old woman must have recognized she wasn't from Kyshtym Town.

"To retrieve my father's marriage certificate."

"Oh... how peculiar."

"It's nothing." Martha gave a "shy" smile. "Every time my father picks up that certificate, he says the photo on it is ugly. But really, he smiles brighter than anyone when he looks at it. After we moved, he kept complaining he'd forgotten to bring some things. I asked him what, but he wouldn't tell me—just muttered things like 'The picture's ugly anyway, no big deal if I leave it.' So I came back."

"How lovely."

"When did you leave this place?"

"Forty-six days ago," the old woman answered naturally.

Martha looked surprised. "You remember that clearly!"

"When you're old, you remember all sorts of trivial things." The old woman chuckled. They chatted a while longer.

"Goodbye, ma'am."

"Goodbye."

Martha was certain the human she'd spoken with wasn't a wolf in sheep's clothing. The things she'd mentioned in their casual talk also gave Martha plenty of information. The controller of those robots was undoubtedly forging documents, aiming to deceive Fire Moth. That explained a few things—why, after their fierce battle underground at 36 Oak Street, Fire Moth's troops never showed up. Because those robots and Fire Moth were not on the same side at all.

Following the route in her mental map, the Herrscher quickly walked to the automobile factory. She easily opened the small blue door at the back. Inside was empty. Beneath white-painted concrete walls sat a few half-finished car frames with exposed metal structures, lined up neatly like abandoned products that couldn't be moved.

Martha activated her clairvoyance ability. That was when she realized, to her surprise, that beneath the automobile factory lay a massive hollow space. She lay flat on the ground, moving her fingers to sense the structure of the underground cavity. A black-and-white panoramic image gradually sketched itself, stroke by stroke, in her mind.

A faint smile tugged at her lips. This underground cavity was a real factory. Unlike the repair station that had felt like a handcraft workshop, Martha could at least sense some genuine automated equipment here. She shifted her body, carefully searching for the entrance, wriggling on the ground like a fat, fleshy caterpillar.

Following the buried cables, Martha found a discarded electrical panel. Inside, wires were packed as densely as a tangled spiderweb—impossible to make sense of. Using her ability, she could tell the circuits weren't live. So she simply cut through the chaotic mess of wires all at once.

A peculiar electronic panel came into view. It was a password lock. What made it strange was that there were no buttons on the panel—just a long, narrow smooth screen running horizontally across the middle.

A voice rang through the Herrscher mental link: "Andre, get over here."

"Got it."

A few seconds later, Martha's voice came again: "Wait—bring the whole squad."

Click. First the bottom-right corner, then the top-right. Herrscher of Hacking Andre pried the password lock's panel off, exposing its internal structure.

"Where's your access code?" Martha asked, looking at Andre with confusion.

"This panel wasn't activated. I need to power it up before I can enter the code."

After a few minutes of tinkering, the panel's smooth screen lit up, emitting a red laser. Andre pulled a T-800 head from his bag. A wire from its crown connected to his laptop. He tapped a few keys hastily, and the T-800's electronic eye slowly began to glow.

He aimed the head's eye at the laser beam from the panel, then tapped a few more keys on the laptop.

A few seconds later, Martha and her team heard a door open somewhere. But it didn't stop there—their Herrscher hearing also caught the sound of some mechanical device unfolding, extending.

Then came gunfire.

The Herrschers sprinted with all their strength, lunging through the hidden door in one swift motion. Turrets were spitting tongues of flame at their own servers and computers, scattering gleaming yellow shell casings all over the floor.