Chapter 55 - Tree (9)
After Nadia and I entered the Processing Control Room, we immediately inspected the ceiling and walls. If there were no corpses, no ghouls in sight, and the door was still sealed, it was most likely that spot that had been breached.
And sure enough, just as we expected. A place we guessed to be a ventilation duct had been blown wide open. Judging by the long trail of blood, it was clear the ghouls had used it as a passage.
- Carry, block that spot for us.
【ദ്ദി(⩌ᴗ⩌ )】
Carry picked up a metal plate from the floor with its auxiliary arm. It pressed the plate firmly against the hole in the ceiling and began welding it with a laser. With a sizzling sound, sparks flew and the hole was blocked up.
Meanwhile, Nadia and I stood in front of the control room console. The floating holographic screen kept updating with the system log in real-time, continuously reporting the current status.
【13 system errors detected.】
【17 out of 72 installed laser emission devices damaged.】
【Antigravity device - currently operating normally.】
【Press frame damage rate: 24%.】
【Facility power supply – currently overheating. Temperature continuously rising.】
【Energy breaker – currently operating normally.】
【Line 1 – Normal.】
【Line 2 – Normal.】
【......】
【Line 8 – Emergency stop.】
At a glance, the place looked fine, so I thought there was nothing wrong. But more places were damaged than I expected. Well, it made sense. This area had already been seriously aged, and the other sections were badly destroyed—how could this area alone be untouched?
- So that's why the engine noise is so loud.
- Yeah. The cooling system can't keep up with the heat anymore.
- Heat shouldn't be building up that easily. Is the engine covered in junk or something?
The engine running the waste processing facility was installed outside. The external environment was so harsh, there hadn't been any prior heat-related problems. As far as I knew, anyway.
I turned to Licorice and asked her directly.
- Has anything like this happened before?
- Hold on. I'm checking the logs now. Hmm... Looks like there was a similar incident a year ago. Due to an internal employee's mistake, the output was forcibly increased and the engine overheated a bit. That's all.
- How did you solve it?
- They just reduced the output to green line. No further action was taken. And the current output is lower than it was in that record.
So it wasn't an output issue. Could the engine have simply reached the end of its lifespan in just a year? But that didn't make sense either, since the engine was still running fine at this very moment.
I briefly thought it might be due to the energy runaway in the nearby maintenance section, but Licorice's following words told me otherwise.
- There's nothing wrong with the engine itself. If there was, there'd be a log entry. Since the circuit breaker is working, it's not an energy runaway issue. Anyway, there are no connecting cables to that end. It seems like something's wrong with the surroundings. But you'll have to check directly to find out what.
- Alright.
I breathed out slowly. The engine's temperature was gradually rising. The noise was getting louder and louder, and it was obvious that if it overheated beyond a certain point, some parts would melt and disaster would follow.
At best, the engine would be destroyed; at worst, the facility would blow up in a chain reaction. Either way, it was not welcome news.
At that moment, Eric reached out via communication.
- If you tell me the location, I'll check it out.
- Huh? No, that's really not necessary.
I hurriedly tried to stop him. Even if this felt unsettling, we could just fix the shuttle quickly and withdraw before anything happened to the engine. It would be helpful to check, but it wasn't important enough to risk a life.
- I'm already moving through the outer sections, so I should know the engine's location. It's safer that way, too.
- Hmm...
- Besides, I already received its coordinates.
Apparently Celestia or Licorice had sent him the data, agreeing with Eric's suggestion. Knowing he wouldn't listen if I tried to stop him, I just sighed and told him to be careful. Eric wasn't the reckless type anyway.
- Hyun-woo, the town has a request. They need an industrial laser installer.
- I was going to look for one anyway. But can you actually handle the energy requirements?
For shaping materials needed for facility construction, nothing was as efficient as a laser. It cut through anything at high output. But it consumed a huge amount of energy to do so.
Without proper energy supply, a laser would be little more than a red pointer toy.
The waste processing section's engine wasn't as old as the solar furnace at Heaven's center, but at first, it couldn't supply the needed energy. That's why the facility had a separate engine.
- They'll manage. I was just about to say they're trying to assemble a small solar furnace. If you can find it, just bring it.
We agreed, then headed to the supply room. It was in the passageway leading to the maintenance section. I guessed it was originally designed as a space to don safety gear before entering the control room.
Even if SSTC was stingy about equipment replacement, that didn't mean they provided no equipment at all. Although I couldn't vouch for the quality.
And my guess was correct.
〈Waste Processing Section – Supply Room〉
【Staff must wear safety equipment before entering. SSTC is not responsible for accidents caused by failure to comply.】
Safety suits in yellow and orange hung on racks. Not much different from regular worker suits, except these could resist high-output industrial lasers once. Otherwise, they were inferior to worker suit mark 2.
Next to the racks were individual lockers and equipment storage compartments. Some glowed red, signaling full lockdown; some blue, freely accessible with privileges released; others stood open, their doors broken.
But it wasn't the work of ghouls. If they had forced the doors, the entire locker would've been shredded, not just the door.
- Can you lend me access?
- If you mean the storage, just cut it open with a cutter. They're designed so you have to open them directly; they're independent units. SSTC only bothers to overengineer this kind of thing.
- ... We really need to find an access bracelet soon.
I felt the urgent need for a bracelet registered to an senior-rank worker class or higher. Things like this could keep happening. I couldn't keep breaking in every time, especially since many lockers triggered alarms if tampered with.
With help from Licorice's support to keep the system from sounding the alert, I raised the plasma cutter's output and jabbed it at the lock mechanism.
With a loud crack! the high output energy instantly destroyed the internal lock. Setting the output to mining standards had been overkill, so I quickly lowered it so as not to damage any equipment inside.
Eventually, in the forced-open compartment, we found the laser installer we had been looking for.
- Found it!
Nadia, away from the noise in the supply room, lit up as she struggled to lift it. Actually, she gave up halfway. The tool was so heavy, it needed considerable strength to lift. Especially without any augmentation device.
While the laser installer was classified as heavy equipment, unlike the plasma cutter, it didn't directly emit a beam.
True to its name, it was used to install lasers. If the basic mining tool of a plasma cutter shaped rocks by gouging, this device, as long as you had plenty of disposable laser units, could subdivide cutting tasks solo—formidable indeed.
- Ugh, I can't lift this. But Hyun-woo, there aren't many laser units.
- Yeah. They must store them elsewhere, since they're consumables. Maybe not here.
There were only 12 laser units in the compartment. The device always needed at least a pair to work, set to face each other. If the angle wasn't right, energy output was limited. Licorice's response when I mentioned this was quick:
- That's because they hadn't restocked yet. Records show resupply was scheduled for two days ago, but, well, you know what happened.
- Nothing's going as planned.
While I was clicking my tongue in disappointment, Kyle contacted us in a much brighter voice.
- Repairs are going smoothly. The shuttle's power was drained, so I hooked up an emergency supply and booted it up; it's in better shape than I thought. Thanks to the auxiliary armor deploying properly, we just need to fix the thruster. The cable was oddly cut, but we can patch that up back in town, so it won't be a problem.
Good news, for a change. Kyle said with an emergency thruster fix, the shuttle could at least hover like a hovercraft. She also found the shuttle's internal log files and shared the data.
【Alert: Unverified file has been shared. Would you like to view it?】
Knowing what happened inside the shuttle would help clarify the situation. I immediately pressed yes, and a hologram spread out around us.
「-Playback Start-
The inside of a shaky shuttle. A man piloting, two others subduing a thrashing injured person. Their suits bore emblems from the medical section.
"Aaaagh!"
"Inject a sedative!"
"I have! I've given them above the maximum safe dose! Any more and they'll die! Plus, there's a strange metallic response—I don't know what happens if we tamper with it!"
"Are you just going to leave them like this?! Get whatever's left! We can't leave them like this!"
The man shouted at the patient, who was bleeding profusely. The bracelet on the patient's arm was water-blue: a manager class.
The Medivac was a paid service. If you paid, medical section's emergency shuttle responded and attempted rescue immediately.
"But...!"
"Catherine!"
The woman called Catherine bit her lip and grabbed all the sedatives from the compartment. While the man desperately restrained the writhing patient, Catherine quickly injected the sedative.
As the fluid entered, the patient gasped for breath and their body slackened. The restraint straps loosened.
Then the flatline—signaling the patient's death—rang out. The shuttle fell silent. But that was only the silence of people, not of machines.
The cockpit's emergency alert kept blaring.
"... They're dead. Told you. Another dose would kill them..."
"Damn it!"
"Jonathan, sorry to bring this up as soon as someone just died, but you have to decide. We're flooded with emergency calls. What are we supposed to do with only this shuttle?"
All the remaining shuttles had crashed, and reports came in that the residential area was burning. Catherine wept when she heard of the countless civilian casualties from the pureblood supremacist terror attack.
"... Maybe this is punishment. We took money for high-ups' clones instead of biocells—"
"Shut up, Catherine! Are you crazy? Even if we're alone, don't ever mention that!"
Jonathan, who had been yelling, stopped and stared at the dead patient. Catherine also looked terrified.
"Did...did it just move?"
"It really came back alive. ... How?"
【Ggggrrahh...】
The inspector, thought dead, twisted their body and let out a groan of pain. An occasional crunching came from inside, like something was happening deep within.
"No time to hesitate! Check vitals! We must save them! Or else we're... What the—"
"H-hardened blue crystals detected in the body! Suspected blue crystal... And, and...reacting to heat...?"
Just as Catherine murmured that, the shuttle's main power abruptly cut out. Backup power quickly kicked in, but that didn't last either.
A transformed being—no longer human—had plunged an arm made of dripping flesh into the shuttle, baring its teeth.
Catherine and Jonathan froze, stiff as corpses, as if facing a deadly predator. Only silent tears trickled down Catherine's face.
"Shit—! What the hell is going on!? The shuttle core's not responding! The controls are dead! Jonathan! Jonathan—!"
"Dear God, save us—"
― End of log-」
The final image was a torrent of blue light inside the shuttle, and then the surrounding hologram vanished with a pop. Several things stood out as suspicious.
But before I could mention them, Eric contacted us. Apparently he hadn't watched the file, being busy outside. The timing couldn't have been worse.
- ... Hyun-woo, I found the cause of the engine overheating. Some strange biological tissue is stuck to the engine, and it seems to be blocking the cooling.
Both Nadia and I immediately knew. It was the creature. The same being that caused the shuttle to crash had latched onto the facility's engine.
- Eric, listen carefully. Do not approach. We just watched a file, and if we're right, that thing is what caused the shuttle to go down. Stay safe and fall back—Kyle only needs to fix the thrusters to get the shuttle airborne again.
- It's far away, so it shouldn't know I'm here— Hold on, I think it's noticed me. How did it sense me from this distance...?
"...!"
Was it too late? I hadn't even relayed the warning about heat response when Eric's voice, tinged with dismay, came through. I clenched my teeth. The atmosphere around us had changed completely.
- Eric, no! Run!
Celestia's trembling voice shouted through the comms, and at the same time—
【KKYAAAAAAAH—!】
A shriek sharp enough to tear eardrums rang out.
-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=
Is it another mutant machine fusion?
【Σ(°ロ°)】