In the dimly lit alloy gallery, a lopsided battle had just ended.
The smell of gun smoke filled the air. Spent shells and bullet holes were everywhere, while a dozen soldiers dressed in regular army uniforms lay flat on the ground. Most had passed out, but a few were still moaning in pain.
Hao Ren grabbed a soldier who looked like the captain. “Hey, can you hear me? Who are you?”
The soldier opened his eyes slightly. Seeing Hao Ren’s face, he suddenly recalled the supernatural scene a while ago and almost passed out again. Hao Ren grabbed him by the collar and shook him. “Don’t pass out yet! Answer my question first!”
“We are the 2nd Marine Division…,” the soldier said, trembling as if Hao Ren would suddenly turn into an alien creature and swallow him alive.
“Second Marine Division?” Hao Ren froze. He had never heard of this before. “What are you doing here?”
The soldier replied, “We… we were ordered to clean up the radical astronauts here…”
“Clean up the radical astronauts?” Hao Ren became even more confused. “Isn’t… isn’t this place the control center of the Nanomachine Swarms? It has been abandoned for more than sixty years. Wait a second, what is this place?”
The soldier looked at Hao Ren with a puzzled look. He thought he was looking at an out-of-mind Superman. He was cautious. “It is the launch site of Kodiak Mountains.”
At the launch site of the Kodiak Mountains.
Hao Ren knocked the soldier out and got to his feet, bewildered. He looked around at the changed, even mutated place.
He found a corner, hid in, and then began to check his mental state. He was sure he was not mad nor having an illusion. He was no doubt in the real world, but the real world had undergone tremendous changes.
“Looks like the world has changed,” the MDT said, looking at the surroundings through Hao Ren’s eyes. “Not only is the surrounding environment changing, but even times have changed. There should be no more space technology in this world; it ceased more than sixty years ago.”
Hao Ren remembered the disappearance of Ulyanov and the anomalies before that. “I’m afraid not only that… people should have been changing too. Ulyanov had a memory disorder before his death and vanished after death. These soldiers came out from nowhere, and the strange 2nd Marine Division. Oh, wait! Your body, MDT!”
A thought flashed across his mind. He immediately yanked out the MDT from the dimensional pocket; a blond girl fell out of the space crack in mid-air and landed buttock first on the ground. She glared at Hao Ren. “What the heck you think you’re doing? Don’t you know I still couldn’t balance myself?”
“Why are you still in this body?” Hao Ren looked at the blonde in front of her eyes, dumbfounded. “Didn’t the body disappear?”
The MDT was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“I suspect this world is resetting itself; people and things reemerge in new identities and positions.” Hao Ren stepped forward and pinched the blonde’s arms as if to check if there was any sign the body was disappearing. “Your body is acquired. By right, it should reset itself. But how come it didn’t?”
“It’s simple. Either you’ve got it wrong,” the MDT said, “Or my awesomeness has taken over the body completely so that it couldn’t be reset.”
Hao Ren sized up the blonde who was standing wobbly. “You still look like a twenty-year cerebral thrombosis patient yet you still have the nerve to say that you have complete control over this body?”
“Oh, then it must be that you’ve got it wrong.”
Hao Ren sighed. “Whatever. We must find Nolan. Or we talk with these fellows to figure out the situation.”
“Oh, then you should go in that direction,” the MDT said, pointing at the fork in the gallery. “I just heard some movement there.”
Hao Ren was honestly doubtful about the current navigation ability of the MDT. But since he did not know which direction to go, no harm to trust the MDT’s sixth sense. He turned to look at the MDT. “Can you walk?”
“Don’t worry, I can keep up,” the blonde patted her chest. “Of course, I still prefer to lie on your shoulder…”
Hao Ren strode away. “Follow me!”
He was more than willing to carry the girl on his back. Though the girl was only a piece of brick in real life, she was an eye candy nonetheless. But he also knew this was not the time; there could be enemies everywhere. Carrying the dead on his back would be a bad idea.
Though the MDT still appeared like suffering from sequelae of cerebral thrombosis, ‘she’ was no slowpoke. She could even catch up with him albeit clumsily.
As they were moving along the gallery, Hao Ren suddenly heard a loud footfall around the corner. He immediately motioned the MDT to hide in the shadow of a metal cabinet nearby while he cautiously leaned over to check out what it was.
A familiar figure appeared in front of him. The tall figure with a serious, big rectangular face with sharp features was none other than Carl, a mercenary of Greg Fox. But Hao Ren did not go up to him because he saw Carl was not in his usual black Gray Fox uniform but a desert camouflage special combat uniform.
He remembered that Carl was with Ulyanov, but Carl disappeared when Ulyanov died. Now Carl appeared again but in an entirely unfamiliar uniform. If he had guessed it right, Carl might have undergone some ‘changes.’
Hao Ren thought for a moment, raised his guard, and came out of the corner, greeting, “Hey, Carl.”
Carl was stunned. He immediately raised his rifle and pointed at Hao Ren with no hesitation at all. “Stop! Don’t move! Show me your hands and turn around. Who are you? Regular army or from the base?”
“I knew it,” Hao Ren muttered to himself and sighed, figuring it was impossible to get information from Carl now. But he took comfort in that this guy did not shoot at first sight. “Please calm down, I’m not your enemy. Let me ask you; are you Carl?”
Carl frowned and his facial expression changed momentarily but he quickly concealed it. “Shut up, raise your hand and turn around, or I’ll shoot!”
After a moment, as the MDT heard that everything was all right, it came out of the shadow and limped toward them. “Yeah, partner, you got it? Oh, friendly.”
“It’s Carl, but as I guessed, humans and the world have been reset. He couldn’t remember me,” Hao Ren looked at the tall guy who was already on the floor, unconscious. “This guy is a mule; he refused to cooperate. I have no choice but let him sleep for a while. One thing is certain is that his name is Carl, and he has taken an identity change. Looks like he is now the guard of this base.”
“So what’s next?” the MDT was a bit puzzled. She had learned nothing but the expression.
“Look for Nolan.”
“You think Nolan is the key?”
“There are too many questions about her—if not the key, at least the clue,” Hao Ren nodded. “Since the world is resetting … I think I’ve figured out what Nolan’s ability was all about,” he said.
Glancing down at Carl, he continued. “But before we leave, put this big guy in a safer place. After all, we were partners.”
Then he found a place that looked like a utility room nearby. He remembered the marines had searched the room once. So he threw Carl into it and covered him under a stack of waste paper cartons.
Hao Ren and the MDT continued to explore the building.
Since Carl was still here, he suspected that Nolan must also have ‘reset’ here. At least in the absence of more clues, keep looking was the only thing he could do.
The two of them kept searching in this unfamiliar facility. They had almost bumped into a score of soldiers or guards. An hour ago, this place was still the desolate Northern Ring Tower. But now it had become a little busy here, as it seemed at least three different forces were fighting in this area, including the regular soldiers and combatants from the base, and the unorganized militants wearing all kind of military outfits creating chaos in the lower floors of the building. There were gunshots and explosions from time to time that seemed to have been going on for some time. But only Hao Ren and the MDT knew that the entire episode had just begun tens of minutes ago.
Suddenly, the silhouette of a long gray hair flashed in front of his eyes.