Inside the pitch-black Warehouse No. 7.
Calista walked at the front, with Carver and Mike covering both flanks, while Bossie and Turner brought up the rear.
The inside of the warehouse was very orderly.
The shelves were neatly arranged, and most of the boxes were still intact, stacked where they had originally been placed. Only the few rows of shelves near the entrance had been rummaged through.
The boxes had been pried open. Foam padding was scattered all over the floor, and the insides were completely empty.
Mike snorted and nudged one of the empty boxes on the floor with the muzzle of his gun. "No idea what was inside, but it must've been worth grabbing and running with, even after the virus outbreak."
Cole swallowed and pointed deeper into the warehouse. "The really valuable stuff is farther in. And… the underground vault."
The headlamp beam stretched forward in the direction he indicated.
At the very back of the warehouse, a concrete ramp leading downward came into view. At the end of the ramp stood a heavy gray blast-proof door, with a faint red standby light glowing on the electronic lock panel beside it.
"That's it," Cole said quietly. "But the last time I came here was before the outbreak. Someone called me over to pick up scrap. Now I'm not sure what's inside…"
"Lead the way," Calista cut him off.
The group walked up to the blast-proof door.
Cole took out the magnetic card again and inserted it into the slot.
After a brief reading sound, a green light came on, and the door slid inward.
Behind it was a flight of stairs leading down. At the bottom, a steady white light could be seen faintly.
"Bossie, Turner, stay here and keep communications open." Calista looked at Carver and Mike. "We're going down."
Cole braced himself and followed.
The stairs were not long, only about twenty steps, but with every step down, his heart sank a little further.
Only when he stepped off the final stair did the space before him suddenly open up.
It was an underground chamber of roughly two hundred square meters.
The walls and ceiling were covered with professional soundproofing and temperature-control materials.
LED light strips were embedded along the edges of the ceiling, giving off a steady, soft, cool-white glow.
On the left was a full row of transparent dust-proof display cabinets. Inside, various precision mechanical components were neatly arranged: composite wing structural parts, precision gyroscopes mounted on specialized brackets, and optical sensors.
On the right was a semi-open work area: three large CNC machine tools, a laser cutter, and a complete set of measuring and testing instruments, including a coordinate measuring machine, a spectrometer, and a high-speed camera.
The instruments had clean, polished surfaces, clearly well maintained.
And on the dedicated stands in the center sat three streamlined gray-black airframes.
"Night Hawk Tactical Reconnaissance UAV, Prototype III. Bossie's gonna love this!" Carver whistled and quickly walked up to the nearest one, carefully checking the nameplate.
"Northrop Grumman, DARPA joint project, sealed away in 2010. Electric propulsion, modular payload, high-speed data link… God, this thing is still top-tier even now!"
Mike was already checking the supporting equipment nearby. "Spare battery packs, chargers, ground control station, encrypted data terminal… the full set's here.
Look at the battery status indicator. There's actually still some charge left. If the batteries haven't completely sulfated, we might really be able to get these things flying!"
Calista's face stayed expressionless, but inside, she was already thrilled.
Heh, heh, heh. They were all hers now.
Her gaze swept over the entire space before settling on a small half-open door at the very back.
A faint light leaked through the crack.
"What's in there?"
Cole narrowed his eyes. "Should be an equipment maintenance room or a duty room. But that door shouldn't be open…"
Carver and Mike instantly shifted into combat mode, their muzzles trained on the crack in the door.
Calista raised her M4 and slowly moved closer.
An extremely faint humming came from inside, like the fan of an old server still running.
She carefully pushed the door open with the muzzle of her rifle.
The room was small, only a dozen or so square meters.
In the center stood a server rack. Several pieces of equipment still had indicator lights on, though the screens were dark.
There were three walkers in the corner.
They wore faded work uniforms. Their bodies were badly decomposed and dehydrated, their skin clinging tightly to their bones, dark brown in color.
But they were not wandering around aimlessly like ordinary walkers. Instead… they had kept the postures they had in life.
One sat in a swivel chair in front of the control console, head lowered, both hands still resting on the keyboard.
Another was curled up in the corner, clutching a shattered tablet to its chest.
The third lay in front of a row of open equipment cabinets, surrounded by scattered tools and dismantled equipment parts.
The strangest part was that when the headlamp beam shone into the room, all three walkers reacted at the same time.
The walker in the swivel chair slowly raised its head. On its rotting face, its hollow eye sockets "looked" toward the doorway.
A low, rasping "huh, huh" came from its throat as its hands left the keyboard and it staggered to its feet.
The walker in the corner also let go of the tablet it had been holding and tried to push itself up with its withered fingers.
The walker lying in front of the equipment cabinet even reached out toward a wrench beside it.
"They still retain work memories?!" Carver said in disbelief.
"Don't let them near the equipment!" Calista had no intention of letting these walkers destroy what was about to be hers.
Before she finished speaking, three extremely soft pops sounded.
The bullets punched neat holes into the center of the three walkers' foreheads.
Their movements froze, then they collapsed limply to the floor and stopped moving for good.
Cole watched the scene, his legs so weak he could barely stand.
He had seen countless walkers, but ones that had been trapped in a sealed environment for more than half a year and still retained some kind of "professional habit"… that was fucking creepy.
Calista walked into the room, carefully avoiding the walkers on the floor and the scattered tools.
She first checked the server rack. The indicator lights showed the equipment was in low-power standby mode, and the hard drives were still running.
Then she walked over to the shattered tablet.
The screen was already cracked, but when she pressed the power button, it actually lit up for a moment, showing the last interface left open: an encrypted log file.
Calista unplugged the data cable, turned her head toward Carver, and lifted her chin at him.
Carver quickly pulled a tactical tablet from his backpack, connected it to the broken tablet, and began copying the data.
"These researchers were trying to repair or modify something before they died," Mike said, crouching down to inspect the area. "Look at these solder joints and wiring…
They were trying to connect the UAV's high-sensitivity camera and signal receiver to this old server. Why?"
"Maybe they were trying to set up remote monitoring," Carver guessed. "In the early days of the outbreak, communications went down and they were trapped here. They might've wanted to use the UAV to see what was happening outside, or send a distress signal."
As he spoke, the data finished copying.
"Whatever the reason, it's ours now."
Calista looked at Carver and Mike. "Strip out all the core equipment. The UAVs, the control station, the server hard drives, and these unassembled sensor modules. Take as much as you can, but make sure the UAVs remain intact first."
Then she looked at Cole. "Go upstairs and help Bossie and Turner. Mark the electronic components and specialty materials on the shelves that we can use, so we can organize people to move them later."
Cole looked as if he had been granted a pardon. He quickly nodded, turned, and ran up the stairs.
For the next half hour, the underground space was filled only with the sounds of equipment being dismantled and packed.
Carver and Mike moved skillfully, quickly packing the three UAV bodies, control modules, and supporting equipment into specialized shock-resistant cases.
Calista carefully searched the server cabinets and collected every storage device and paper technical manual she could find.
By the time they carried the heavy equipment cases out of the underground space, Bossie and Turner had already followed Cole's guidance and marked dozens of high-value targets in the shelving area.
These included precision bearings, specialty alloy plates, military-grade integrated circuits, and even several unopened boxes of high-energy-density batteries.
"Calista, it'll take at least three trucks to haul everything on these shelves," Bossie reported.
"And judging from the labels, there's also a temperature-controlled storage room specifically for optical lenses and laser components. We haven't checked it yet."
"Mark the location. We'll deal with it later." Calista checked the time. "For now, we pull out. Carver, tell Rickson to send a transport team, fully armed. This warehouse is worth… far more than expected."
The group carried the equipment cases out of the warehouse. Cole looked back at the slowly closing roll-up door, and the weight in his chest finally settled.
He had handed over his pledge of loyalty, and Rock Fortress… really did have both the appetite and the ability to swallow this generous gift.
"Let's go!" Calista patted him on the shoulder. "Your people can move into the temporary settlement this afternoon. In a few days, we'll take you back to the base for a look. As for you…"
She glanced at him. "The base needs someone familiar with the local situation and the distribution of supplies. Interested?"
Cole froze for a few seconds, then nodded hard.
He knew that from this moment on, he was no longer Cole the scavenger.
He was Cole of Rock Fortress.
...
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