Chapter 440

Chapter 440

Nothing happened. To his surprise,

Mind Reader

failed to open Silvia’s memories. It’d never happened before. For a moment, Jake simply stared at the human. He already knew something was wrong, but it had nothing to do with the ability itself. After all, it had never malfunctioned, always allowing him to explore a human being’s mind on the first attempt.

A second later, after he recovered from the initial surprise, he tried again, even though he was certain that if it didn’t work the first time, it wouldn’t work on any subsequent attempts. As expected, nothing happened. Jake was astounded.

He noticed Silvia watching him closely, lips moving, but he wasn’t paying attention to her words. He made another attempt to use

Mind Reader

on her, then another, and another. It was futile. The ability just wouldn’t activate. What was the reason for that, he didn’t know.

He glanced at one of the humans behind Silvia and attempted to use the ability on them, only to achieve the same result. One by one, he tried to view the memories of each human, but each time,

Mind Reader

failed to activate.

Something was preventing him from accessing their memories. Each of them was at least a hundred levels above him, which wasn’t surprising considering they had been awakened from stasis earlier than the people of New Hope. Perhaps the huge difference in their levels was the reason. Or maybe each of them had some kind of perk protecting them against mind-reading abilities.

Whatever the reason, Jake didn’t like it one bit. Peering into human memories had been second nature to him. And now, stripped of that ability, he felt powerless. It irritated him. Angered even. He hated that he couldn’t look into Silvia’s memories to see whether she was lying or not.

There were other, more primitive, old-fashioned methods of making her talk, but Jake chose to resist those darker impulses. For now.

He realized Silvia was now talking to Catalina. Clearly, seeing that he had stopped responding to her, she had turned her attention to his companion. He heard her say, “So it was a massive creature that took down the helicopter you were flying in, huh? Then why did you have the nerve to accuse us of destroying your chopper?”

Catalina faltered, clearly unsure of what to say. Which was understandable. After all, it was Jake who had made that accusation against Silvia, not her.

“Because whoever, or whatever, took down the helicopter Catalina’s people were in wasn’t the same creature that took us out,” Jake said.

Silvia’s gaze snapped back to him.

“So you’re with us again, huh?” she teased, a mocking smile curling her lips.

“I never left.”

“Is zoning out like this something you do often?”

Jake wasn’t in the mood to tolerate her taunts. He stepped toward her, and Silvia instinctively stepped back, a shadow of fear briefly passing over her features.

“Those attackers looked far more like ordinary humans, which led Catalina’s people to believe they really were human,” he explained, fixing a sharp glare on the woman. “If they’d resembled the mutant who attacked us, don’t you think her people would’ve mentioned it? But they didn’t. They told her it was humans who shot down their chopper. So, either those attackers were mutants looking very similar to humans or they truly were human, hence my earlier question.”

Silvia stared at him in silence for a moment, then said, “Well, I don’t know what you want to hear from me. I already told you we had no reason to shoot down any helicopters.”

“What about those mutants fused with weapons?” Jake asked. “Where did they come from?”

“I have no idea.”

“They don’t look like the regular ravagespawn,” Jake continued. “They’re more like cyber-monsters. So what do you know about them?”

“Nothing,” Silvia replied, shrugging her shoulders. Again, she seemed to be trying too hard to appear casual.

“You’ve been trapped in this city for… how long? A few months? And you still haven’t learned anything about those cyber-monsters?”

“All this time, we’ve simply been focused on staying alive,” she shot back. “We didn’t exactly have the luxury of investigating the Ravage Contamination.”

Jake glared at her silently. Unable to use

Mind Reader

on her, he wasn’t sure if she was lying or telling the truth.

“Besides,” she continued, “before the Ravage began to infest our city, it’d progressed to Stage 2, during which various monsters similar to the ones you described began to materialize. Some of those monsters were called armored brawlers, creatures with armor plating fused to their bodies and massive spiked maces in place of their hands. This might explain where those cyber-monsters came from.”

Jake knew she wasn’t lying about that part. After all, New Hope had already gone through the same transformation, spawning similar kinds of monsters. It seemed that every city in this world went through the same process, regardless of when it was awakened from stasis. Stage 1 introduced the weaker mutants, Stage 2 unleashed more formidable threats like armored brawlers, and Stage 3 marked the emergence of the Ravage Contamination.

Yet Jake wasn’t sure whether the Ravage Contamination marked the start of Stage 3 or occurred during the latter part of Stage 2. One thing was clear: he’d never faced anything like the creature that had brought down the helicopter he and Catalina had flown in. Or perhaps they were simply meant to appear later?

“We’ve never actually encountered any of those cyber-monsters you talk about,” someone from the group behind Silvia suddenly said.

Silvia turned on the person with a fierce glare, instantly making the speaker wish they’d stayed quiet.

“How is that possible?” Jake asked. “If those weapon-wielding mutants are among the creatures that appeared after your city transformed into Stage 2, why haven’t you encountered them?”

“We have no idea, alright?” Silvia snapped, her voice laced with irritation. She cast another warning glance at her people, ensuring none of them dared to interrupt and jeopardize the story she was trying to maintain. “Come to think of it, every time you saw those cyber-monsters, they were up on rooftops, right?”

Jake nodded without saying anything.

“Have you ever encountered them on the ground during your time in this city?”

Jake silently shook his head.

“That must be it,” Silvia said, her eyes sparkling. “Apparently, those creatures stick to the rooftops for some reason. But we never tried to go up there, as doing so would be suicide. The ground is dangerous enough without adding the risk of climbing to the rooftops. Maybe that’s why we’ve never encountered those cyber-monsters.”

The humans behind her nodded, exchanging content smiles, as if proud to have such a clever leader. Her quick, plausible explanation seemed convincing enough, and they were certain Jake would have no choice but to accept it.

Yet he couldn’t understand why those cyber-monsters confined themselves to the rooftops of Ravage-contaminated buildings. He also reasoned that if the ravagers permitted them to scale the structures they controlled, then perhaps the two species regarded each other as allies. Or, at the very least, not as enemies. Jake couldn’t help but wonder why this was the case.

Anyway, the group of humans before him clearly knew more than they were willing to reveal about this matter. However, Jake decided to let it go. At least for now.

For a moment, nobody said a word. Then Silvia drew a deep breath, relief softening her expression. She was convinced Jake had accepted her story.

“Alright,” she said with a small smile. “Glad we’ve finally settled that.”

Jake stayed quiet, and she took it as a cue to continue.

“Let me properly introduce us, as I don’t think I’ve done so yet,” she said. “My name is Silvia, and we like to call ourselves the Spartans. I lead this small unit, but our organization is somewhat larger. The actual leader of the entire force is a person whom we call the Commander. Now, let me get in touch with him so I can tell him about you before I take you to the heart of our base.”