WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 206: Survivors (9)

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On the nine-ball table, the CIA agents showed off impressive skill. Even Gyeoul, with his exceptional senses, could only just hold his own against them. Joanna stared in disbelief.

"Did you people spend every meal break playing pool?"

At first, she showed her usual stubborn streak, but the gap in skill was simply too wide. In the end, she gave up and watched from the side. Just watching was entertaining enough.

The gentle mood in the room was at least half deliberate. Kowalski seemed to know this gathering was for her sake. Though she hesitated now and then, she made an effort to enjoy the game. Whenever her eyes met someone else's, she gave a timid smile. It was hard to remember the confident woman she had been at first.

It had only been a few days, yet fear and loneliness could weaken a person so much.

For that very reason, they could also become a chance for someone to change. If she cooperated sincerely, she might end up serving as a spy inside the Intelligence Agency's private faction.

The evidence Joanna had secured was limited to material related to human experimentation. It could deal a blow, but rooting out every last member of the 「True Patriots」 would be difficult. They, too, were likely veterans of the intelligence world. There was no way they had not prepared for the worst.

So if they had an inside collaborator, it would be better to delay making the case public and conduct a secret investigation. This was about tearing one unstable factor in the world setting out by the roots.

To do that, it was best to win Kowalski over while there was still a chance.

A vibration broke into his thoughts.

Clink, clink. The glass on the table trembled. The lights swayed faintly, and the balls rolled out of position. As a ball no one had struck began to drift slowly, Tucker raised both hands.

"Well. An earthquake when we were almost done..."

Being close to a metropolitan area, this place had frequent tremors. People often failed to notice them, but there were also plenty of times, like now, when they could be felt clearly. Joanna cleared the table.

"Let's stop here for today. There are people waiting too."

There was an order for using the rec room. There was only one green table.

The objective was the objective, and a game was a game. The agents who had been enjoying themselves looked disappointed. Their stay here would end tomorrow. The long journey to Yuba City would be days without much in the way of entertainment.

As the agents dispersed, Kowalski spotted Gyeoul's gesture and faltered. Talbot and Joanna noticed, but pretended not to and moved away.

Gyeoul went outside first. Since they had been careful not to let any light leak out, the darkness outside the building was clear with starlight. He could see a shadow pacing on top of the watchtower.

Creak. A door opened behind him. After the light spilling through the gap disappeared, quiet footsteps approached beside the railing. The wind blowing between them was like an invisible curtain.

After waiting long enough, Gyeoul asked,

"Is it hard?"

"..."

Kowalski burst into tears. She tried hard to hold them back, but it did not work. Watery loneliness fell drop by drop. Each tear looked hot and heavy.

It felt like looking at a prisoner who had been locked in solitary for a few days. Her guilt was the iron bars.

Of course, she probably still had some justification and self-rationalization left even now. People with no other way to affirm themselves had trouble accepting in their hearts that they were wrong, even if they knew it in their heads.

Pushing her would not change anything. Unless he meant to kill her.

So Gyeoul tried to affirm her, even if only a little.

"Agent Kowalski. You helped with something truly terrible."

Kowalski, choked up, barely managed to nod.

"You may not have been directly involved in the human experimentation, but even if you were only a liaison, you bear a heavy responsibility."

"Yes..."

"I think that is a wrong that cannot be forgiven, no matter what you do or what excuse you make."

"..."

Still, there was room for consideration. When she did not know how far the organization had spread, becoming a whistleblower would not have been an easy choice either. In the worst case, she would have been eliminated.

That was the conclusion Joanna had reached after interviews that bordered on interrogation.

In a secretive intelligence agency, a certain degree of arbitrary action and corruption was common. Joanna had said Kowalski seemed to have accepted it mechanically for that reason. Why else would the FBI send supervisors to the CIA? The CIA had tortured American citizens on American soil before. Systematically, too.

In other words, she was a passive accomplice.

Joanna had mocked herself, saying she did not know whether this was pity or witness protection, but if she truly thought Kowalski was rotten to the core, she would not have arranged a gathering like today's.

Where did the truth end? Gyeoul decided to trust the supervisor's judgment.

"What I mean is, this is not a problem that ends just because you are punished."

He took a breath, then continued.

"Suppose I tore Agent Kowalski apart as painfully as possible. What comfort would that bring the victims? They are already dead..."

Revenge was for the living. No matter how much people claimed it was for the dead, in the end, it was the grief and anger of the living. Legal punishment was the same.

"Make sure the same thing never happens again. What you can do to make that happen, and what the real best option is, you probably know better than I do. If this case is properly exposed, it will greatly help improve the treatment of refugees. That is the only reason I am keeping you alive. Carry that guilt until the day you die."

"...Lieutenant. Do you despise me?"

After quietly staring at her for a while, Gyeoul said,

"Finish crying. I will stay beside you."

The guards patrolling the fence hesitated at a distance. They seemed to be wondering what was going on. Gyeoul brought a finger to his lips. After hesitating, they went back the way they had come. It was a small base anyway, so even going around the other way would not take long. With Gyeoul here, there was no need to inspect this area separately.

Midnight drew closer as the forest strained against the wind.

After calming Kowalski and sending her inside, Gyeoul went to bed as well. It was not sleep in the true sense. It was only to maintain his condition within the world setting.

The flow of time in 「Days after Apocalypse」 could be made to match the physical world perfectly, but that was impossible when the viewers from another world had to be considered. Once they returned to their painful yet unavoidable daily lives, the boy would finally be given a long rest too.

Still, being able to rest even briefly was not bad...

Unfortunately, not tonight.

Clang clang clang- clang clang- clang clang clang- clang clang-

The Charge of Quarters personnel made a loud metallic racket. It was the combat readiness signal used in place of a siren.

There was a pattern here too. If a mutant had infiltrated the interior, they had agreed to strike without stopping. That was not the case now. A threat had been spotted outside. Whatever had happened, the fact that they were waking all forces meant this was no ordinary situation.

Gyeoul had lain down without taking off his combat uniform in the first place. The moment he opened his eyes, he armed himself and ran outside.

"Xcel!"

The sensitive animal had already woken from the indoor commotion. After Gyeoul had fully tamed him with 「Riding」, he was not even tied up, so he came running as soon as his master called. Gyeoul climbed onto the black steed. He pulled out the iron bar tucked into the saddle and waited, scanning every direction.

The mobile unit appeared next. Mobile unit was the temporary name for the soldiers most skilled at riding. They hurriedly mounted their horses and gathered around Gyeoul.

"Have you received any situation report?"

At Gyeoul's question, the soldiers looked at one another, then shook their heads. Sergeant Morales answered.

"Not yet. It seems you do not know either, Lieutenant."

Their curiosity did not last long. In the situation room, Captain Langford personally took the radio.

[Baker Actual transmitting the situation. Local time 0148, five gunshots were heard north of State Route 1. Multiple guards reported it, so the information is reliable. Distance unknown. There may be friendly survivors. Break.]

Baker was the company's temporary call sign. Since they were survivors from Fort Baker, it was intuitive.

North of State Route 1, three kilometers away, there was a small city, or perhaps a large village. Point Reyes Station. It would take more than forty minutes on foot, but on horseback they could reach it quickly. When they had gone on outer patrol, they had found no real threats there. Only traces remained of mutants that had moved east in groups.

After a brief pause, the transmission continued.

[War Horse will advance along the state route. Until support arrives, prioritize safety and search, but if necessary, you may enter the urban area at Baker 1 Actual's discretion. Do you copy?]

Even though he had been indoors, and asleep at that, Gyeoul had not heard the gunshots. The place where it happened had to be at least twenty to thirty minutes away on foot.

War Horse naturally referred to the mobile unit. Gyeoul pressed the transmit button on the radio.

"This is Baker 1 Actual. I copy. War Horse is moving now."

The horses, roused from sleep, were irritable. It was fortunate enough that they did not simply lie back down.

The mobile unit left through the gate the guards opened. Until a few days ago, many trees had blocked visibility, but thanks to the soldiers' hard work creating a barren zone, it was now open on every side.

The night had no clouds and no fog. The soldiers wore night vision devices, but Gyeoul could see far even with his naked eyes. He wondered if he would gain 「Environmental Adaptation」 soon. His visibility during day and night would become almost the same.

The post office, the church, and the carpentry shop swept past, and the village ended. A hundred meters to the northeast, an artificial light glittered. It had been deliberately installed by connecting wires stripped from telephone poles. Since every other direction had been blocked off, light leaked only at a narrow angle toward the base. If mutants approached the base, they would see the light and change direction. The same trap existed south of the village.

A map and directions showing the location of Company Headquarters had been hung where the light spread, so humans would not be fooled.

As expected, no mutants had been lured by the trap.

Gyeoul led the mobile unit up toward the ridge on the right side of the road. The goal was to secure a wider field of vision. Of course, their silhouettes on the skyline would also be highly visible to mutants. But they only had to outrun them. He was confident they could spot them first and avoid them. Unless it was a ghoul, ordinary mutants had worse night vision than humans. There was nothing to be done about sound, though.

Far away in the direction where the moon rose, he could see the ruins of a ranch separated from the village. Under the starlight near the horizon, there was another ranch. That was the entrance to the residential area.

‘Could they really be U.S. military survivors?’

The direction they had appeared from was a little strange for that. In the San Francisco metropolitan area, the U.S. military bridgeheads were concentrated around Golden Gate and Angel Island. Even if survivors escaped, they were more likely to appear from the south or east of the base. Though there was also a chance they had wandered through the mountains while being chased and ended up on a strange route.

The mobile unit reached the edge of the village in five minutes.

A stream flowing toward the nearby marshland formed the city's southern boundary. Morales listened carefully.

"Lieutenant. Can you hear that?"

Gyeoul nodded. Even with the creek filling the area with the sound of running water, several noises were coming from the urban area. The clearest was the mutants' shrieks. Aside from that, there was the dissonant noise of them crashing into things or breaking them here and there.

"Whatever it is, that means they still have a reason to go wild."

"What should we do? At this hour, entering with just the five of us is risky. But if they are survivors, we may lose the chance to save them while we wait for reinforcements."

At those words, Gyeoul looked back at the mobile unit. The soldiers could not hide their concern. It would have been different if they had enough ammunition. But each person barely had two full magazines.

A residential area was an environment that required caution even in daylight. There was a reason they had been ordered to prioritize safety. There were far too many obstacles. They had permission to enter at Gyeoul's discretion, but Langford had still urged maximum caution.

"Increase the radio output and follow me."

The soldiers followed Gyeoul's decision with hardened expressions.

============================ Author's Note ============================

#Q&A

Q. PigDada: @I read this on Joara and wanted to own it too, so I even bought the ebook. This is the first time in my life I bought a genre novel I had already read because I wanted to own it, lol. It felt too good to read alone, so I had my husband install the app and download the ebook too. My husband had never read a genre novel before, whether martial arts or fantasy or anything else. He did not say anything for a while, so I did not know if he had read it or not, but yesterday he said, "It was well written." Then today... "When is volume 6 coming out?" I felt happy and found it funny, so I laughed for a while, then proudly said, in a just-trust-older sister kind of way, "I will ask for you"... lol; So I have a question for the author. When is volume 6 coming out on Ridibooks???? Thank you so much for the great work.

A. Thank you for enjoying it.

Volume 6... I am not sure. I need to ask too. Even though I am the author, I only have ebook volume 1, so I do not even know how far volume 5 covers... haha.

I will go check in a just-trust-the-author kind of way. I will answer again next time.

Q. Nimiireon: @This is the kind of novel that makes me realize the author's rich background knowledge makes the story realistic and immersive. I enlist the day after tomorrow, and this is the book I want to read in the army. If I desert, it is the author's fault.

A. You must be in the barracks by now. I hope you stay healthy until discharge. Health really is the most important thing in the army.

One of my peers tore the cartilage in his knee. He was not someone I liked, but seeing him like that made me feel sorry for him.

Footnotes:

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