Beware of the church, basement level.
Having arrived in an unfamiliar environment, Ge Miao woke up from a restless sleep.
"What's wrong?" her sister, Ge Lin, mumbled beside her.
Ge Miao thought for a moment and said:
"Go, go to the restroom."
She originally wanted to use the word "pee," but considering that Deacon Locke had said that once inside the Ark, one should speak and act politely, otherwise it would offend Mr. DiMarco, she forcibly changed her wording.
For a wanderer from a small settlement in the wasteland, this was a very awkward thing.
However, the three meals a day, the safe and stable environment, the warm and soft bed, and the future of not being separated from her sister were urging her to change.
Even learning the Red River language, such a headache-inducing task, Ge Miao didn't find so unbearable.
It even made her happy, as if every word carried a little hope, which, when accumulated enough, could be redeemed.
"I'll go too," Ge Lin said, thinking that her sister was only fifteen years old. Although she had become much more mature due to the destruction of their settlement and the loss of their parents, she was still a little worried.
The sisters, guided by the light of the street lamps seeping through the crack in the door, groped their way out of the room and towards the restroom they remembered.
On the way, they encountered guards patrolling the "Underground Ark," but after explaining their purpose, they were not harassed.
Amidst the flushing sound, Ge Miao looked at the flushing toilet with a dazed expression.
"Sister, this thing is so convenient," she couldn't help but exclaim once again.
She remembered that even the most powerful elder in their enclosure didn't have such an item.
Ge Lin "hmm"ed, and a smile unconsciously spread across her face:
"Good days are really coming."
For the first time, she had such a longing for the future.
She remembered Deacon Locke saying that Mr. DiMarco not only didn't forbid the servants from pairing up, but also encouraged everyone to marry and have children.
The two sisters reluctantly washed their hands and walked out of the restroom, retracing their steps.
When they were only a few steps away from the six-person room they were staying in, two "Underground Ark" guards passed by on patrol.
One of them, a Greysoil man with black hair and brown eyes, nodded kindly to them.
Ge Lin's heart fluttered, and she shyly smiled:
"Good evening."
"Don't wander around," the Greysoil guard reminded them.
"Yes, sir," Ge Lin said with a flattering smile, "You've worked hard."
Although the two sisters weren't particularly beautiful, they were considered decent-looking among this batch of slaves. The two "Underground Ark" guards didn't reject them, but instead smiled:
"No need to be like that. Once you enter the Ark, everyone will be colleagues."
Ge Lin seized this opportunity and earnestly asked:
"Officers, I heard Deacon Locke say that if you can pass the training, you can choose the job you want, is that true?"
"Yes, but you can only choose within a limited range, and you can't exceed the maximum number of people..." the Greysoil guard explained simply.
Ge Lin held her sister's hand and looked at the two men expectantly:
"What's better to choose then?"
The Greysoil guard was silent for a moment, glanced at his Red River companion, and looked at the surveillance camera belonging to the Beware of the church rather than the "Underground Ark" above his head, considering his words before saying:
"Try not to go near Mr. DiMarco. He, he doesn't have a good temper and gets angry easily, and when he gets angry..."
He didn't make his words too clear. A certain fear, like a boulder, weighed heavily on his heart.
The other Red River guard, seeing this, also reminded Ge Lin and Ge Miao:
"We often supplement servants like you, and the 'Ark' is only so big..."
They didn't say much more, and strode off, continuing their patrol duties.
Ge Miao listened in a daze, not understanding what they were talking about at all. Ge Lin's expression changed several times, and she could roughly understand the hidden meaning:
All the previous servants were driven away because of Mr. DiMarco's bad temper?
No, Deacon Locke mentioned that once inside the Ark, no one could leave unless they were sent out to work. They were Ark people in life and Ark ghosts in death...
Could it be that all the previous servants are, are dead?
Ge Lin thought of the pitying eyes and solemn expressions of the two guards just now, and increasingly felt that her guess was correct.
They're all dead, they're all dead...
Ge Lin's steps became unsteady, and she felt a sense of despair, as if she had just jumped out of a fire pit and fallen into the jaws of a tiger.
Although she also knew that wasteland wanderers like herself and her sister could die at any time due to various accidents, and that if they couldn't enter the Ark this time, they might be sold to some place and become prostitutes, suffering torture and death, no one didn't want to live, to live well.
Back in the room, she tiptoed onto the bed. Ge Lin looked at her sister, who had fallen asleep again, and grief arose uncontrollably.
She buried her face in the quilt, her body trembling slightly.
In the corridor outside, the two Ark guards who had been patrolling looked at each other and sighed softly:
"Alas..."
…………
"Alas..."
On the second basement level, near a vent, Yu Tian let out a silent sigh.
After he and Bode returned to the Ark, although they were excited and eager to mobilize everyone they knew to cooperate with the Beware of the church and overthrow DiMarco's tyrannical rule, they ultimately didn't take action.
This was because they didn't have much confidence yet, and recently hadn't suffered any pressure from DiMarco, lacking the fuse to ignite the powder keg.
Thinking that the other party said that they only needed to do very little and didn't need to take any risks, Yu Tian and Bode decided to cooperate to a limited extent and observe the progress.
If everything went smoothly, they would join without reservation.
Yu Tian sighed because he didn't know if this matter would succeed, and he and a maid had caught each other's eye, and were in the midst of a passionate romance.
His father, a veteran guard, firmly opposed this matter, because the maid also had direct relatives who were also working as servants.
Within the "Underground Ark," the guards' status was relatively special. They were rarely killed by DiMarco's tyranny, and the same was true for their families.
This made them the first target for servants to choose a spouse, hoping to obtain a get-out-of-jail-free card.
The guards, however, weren't too willing.
Because after a certain servant and a certain guard got married, although they would indeed receive a certain amount of tolerance from DiMarco, they still had direct relatives, and if their direct relatives made a mistake or offended DiMarco and were tragically killed, according to DiMarco's habit, it was likely to involve the corresponding guard's family to eliminate hidden dangers.
Therefore, intermarriage within the guard community was a better choice.
This also gave many guards a sense of superiority.
But love is unreasonable.
Yu Tian was troubled by this matter, and the Beware of the church's actions gave him hope.
Amidst a flash of thoughts, he turned his head, holding a submachine gun, and glanced at his companion Bode, and found that he was also a little tense and uneasy.
Yu Tian shook his head almost imperceptibly, signaling Bode not to panic.
Maybe the Beware of the church had already abandoned their original plan?
As his gaze shifted, he scanned the vent behind the metal bars as usual, the three surveillance cameras arranged in this area without leaving any blind spots, and the other guards guarding below the other two cameras.
There were four of them in total, divided into two groups, three Red River people and one Greysoil man, all wearing olive green uniforms and holding the latest model of submachine guns.
From Yu Tian and Bode's point of view, such a defense wasn't impregnable, but there was definitely nothing that could be exploited. Invaders could only fight head-on, facing waves of reinforcements transferred from the monitoring room.
Just then, a silver-white electric light and the sparks it generated suddenly lit up before their eyes.
A circuit malfunction?
This was the first thought that flashed through Yu Tian and Bode's minds.
At the same time, in the monitoring room on the sixth basement level, the two guards on rotation also saw the image displayed on one screen spark, then lose its image and turn black.
"B3 area guards, check if camera B12 has malfunctioned," one of the men in charge of monitoring immediately instructed using an electronic product purchased from "Mechanical Paradise."
His voice then echoed in the ears of Yu Tian and the others through the loudspeaker in the corresponding area.
Yu Tian raised his head and looked at camera B12, and found scorched marks at its interface.
Suddenly, he saw a hand waving at him from outside the metal bars of the vent.
Yu Tian's pupils suddenly dilated.
Following his instinct, he slowly retracted his gaze.
The next second, arcs of electricity and sparks flashed again, twice in a row.
In the monitoring room, the man who had spoken through the loudspeaker earlier saw that the images corresponding to cameras B10 and B11 had also disappeared.
Before he could give further instructions, Yu Tian came back to his senses and said through the electronic product clipped to his collar:
"Yes, all three cameras here have malfunctioned. It should be a problem with the circuit."
At this moment, he found himself unprecedentedly calm.
After all, he didn't need to do anything dangerous, just report the most likely situation.
"Check again, I'll send someone over to repair it immediately," the man in the monitoring room processed it according to the procedure.
Yu Tian, Bode, and the other two groups of guards obediently reconfirmed separately.
During this process, Yu Tian and Bode deliberately took the area below the vent, leaving the others to face away from here.
The metal bars of the vent were silently removed.
Shang Jianyao, wearing a monkey mask with a hairy face and pointed mouth, and Jiang Baimian, wearing a delicate monk mask, jumped down in succession.
They couldn't completely eliminate the sound of landing, but they had inside support to create various normal sounds in time to cover up the corresponding movements.
Without hesitation, Shang Jianyao pounced on the two guards who were checking the camera with their backs to this side like a tiger descending the mountain.
Bang! Bang!
He used both hands, hitting the targets under the ear separately.
The two guards fainted without even a groan.
Shang Jianyao slid his hands down and caught their bodies, slowly laying them on the ground.
On the other side, Jiang Baimian also easily knocked out the last two guards, letting them "lean" against the wall, without making a thudding sound.
After doing all this, Jiang Baimian made a gesture towards the vent.
The silver-black robot Genaeva, wearing a shirt and with blue light in his eyes, jumped down, making very little noise upon landing.
He climbed up and directly pried open a metal finger, inserting it into the interface corresponding to camera B12.
Behind him, Long Yuehong and Bai Chen, wearing military exoskeletons, also entered the "Underground Ark" one after another.
Yu Tian and Bode were both nervous and relieved.