Fantasy Game: Infinite City

Chapter 523 The Polluted City (17)

The stairwell on the rooftop was not locked with any authority, so after shooting off the lock with a gun, it was easily opened.

Due to the unique characteristics of the town hospital's fifth floor, the stairwell leading to it was also sealed by a metal gate requiring a data card. However, it did lead directly to the fourth floor, but faint footsteps and conversations could still be heard in the stairwell. Therefore, the three of them did not leave the vicinity of the rooftop, but remained quietly there. Juan guarded the rooftop door behind him, while Adenauer mounted his gun on the railing, carefully monitoring the stairwell. If anyone entered the dangerous area, he would immediately shoot.

The seconds ticked by, and a tense atmosphere spread among the three men. Suddenly, footsteps in the stairwell became clearer, drawing ever closer. Adenauer gripped his gun tightly, his eyes sharp, his finger on the trigger, his breathing steady, ready to engage. He also used tactical hand signals to signal Juan to keep his eyes on the rooftop behind him. Juan nodded, his weapon warily tightened in his grasp, his gaze fixed on the rooftop door.

The footsteps stopped at the corner of the stairwell, followed by a low conversation, as if they were discussing something.

"despair."

Suddenly, the stairwell, which originally only smelled of air freshener and rain, was filled with the smell of cigarette smoke. Then the sound of footsteps in the stairwell began again, continuing to approach the rooftop. Soon, the heads of the two people came into Adenauer's shooting range. Adenauer steadied his breath, exerted a little force on his fingers, and prepared to pull the trigger.

"What are you two doing?!"

"You're so lazy, do you want to have one too?"

"Don't throw cigarette butts here. They don't want us to leave any evidence."

"We are not rookies carrying out a mission for the first time. We will not make such a low-level mistake."

"I advise you to return to the main group. A team on the third floor has been eliminated. It's not safe to stay out there alone."

"Are you sure it's not because they didn't get the serum beforehand that they killed each other? After all, we've seen this kind of rookie before when we were on missions elsewhere."

"That's impossible. The positions where all the people on the third floor died were roughly five or six meters apart. Furthermore, their locations were difficult to spot, most likely in the shadows of corridor corners or nearby rooms. It's likely someone was hiding behind them and killed them one by one."

"Special experimental variant?"

"Unexpectedly, the cause of death for all of them was a gunshot wound to the head, so the captain suspects that there may be other people hiding in this hospital, and it could be them."

"Those damn unlucky guys always cause us trouble!"

"We can't confirm if it's them yet, but even if it is, their number shouldn't be that large. We have a lot of people inside the hospital right now, and since we haven't found them yet, it means there are only one or two people at most."

"But I have to say, those guys did a really good job of intelligence work. They were actually able to find this town before we arrived."

"This also matches the captain's initial speculation. If that's the case, the first team to die on the third floor must have been their doing."

Just as Adenauer was about to pull the trigger, several other people came into range. He immediately lifted his finger from the trigger and gestured to Madison and Juan behind him to wait and not to fire. However, he kept his gun aimed at the people below.

Through their conversation, we can understand that the changes in the town are indeed related to them, and the other party also discovered that there are other people in the hospital. Although they did not confirm the identities of these people, they mentioned another organization. Although they did not mention the name, judging from their attitude, they should be hostile to them.

Adenauer reflected carefully on the scans of the first team that died on the third floor. While their equipment and helmets did bear numerous signs of battle, there weren't many gunshot wounds. Almost all of the wounds were from the front. The size of the wounds and the scattered bullets nearby confirmed that the bullets that hit them all came from their own guns. Therefore, the true cause of their deaths must have been different from what these heavily armed men had speculated. It must have been caused by something, leading to internal strife and internecine slaughter, rather than someone else's actions.

However, just as Adenauer was about to eavesdrop on the other party's conversation, the third person who had just talked to the two lazy guys subconsciously looked up and happened to see Adenauer. The two looked at each other, and the third person immediately wanted to raise the weapon in his hand. He opened his mouth, probably wanting to shout, but Adenauer's finger had already pulled the trigger, and a bullet accurately pierced his helmet and penetrated his brain.

"Tap tap tap!!"

“Swoosh~Swoosh~~”

After the first soldier was killed, the others reacted immediately, raising their weapons to look for the source of the attack, but Adenauer immediately moved quickly down the stairwell, firing continuously. The several people in the stairwell were killed by him before they could even find Adenauer's exact location. Apart from the sound of their bodies falling to the ground, no other sound was made.

Adenauer waved towards Juan and Madison, and immediately began to search for suitable weapons and ammunition from the corpses. However, these people were not like the team that was killed before, who had large-caliber weapons. Their guns were similar to those used by Adenauer and the other two, so Adenauer only took away some magazines.

"Falcon calling Spider, Falcon calling Spider, mission accomplished, prepare to evacuate, reply received."

At that moment, the communication device on one of the bodies suddenly rang. Someone was calling for help. Adenauer had already discovered the communication device through the contractor's equipment, but he had a reason not to destroy it beforehand. He needed to find a reasonable way to reach the fifth floor. After all, the mission to activate the backup generator was still unfinished. In this situation, if the message to this team went unanswered, another team would surely come up to investigate.

There is no place to hide on the rooftop. There are still many teams that have not evacuated on the fourth floor. Currently, only the fifth floor is empty. The team that came to the fifth floor before took away all the storage devices in the computer room and took away the half-body. After that, they left this floor and destroyed the private elevator. Now the only way to enter the fifth floor is through the metal gate in the stairwell that requires a data card.

Adenauer used the contractor's equipment to scan the metal gate and discovered that the data card required for this metal gate was different from the one required to access the private elevator. The only data card capable of opening this metal gate was the one Madison had found in the secret compartment on the fifth floor. Therefore, Madison was the only one currently capable of opening the metal gate using normal means. With pursuers in front and a blockade behind, Madison would undoubtedly be forced to open the door. After all, her previous behavior of opening the maintenance passage near the underground morgue suggested she didn't seem to have died there or been captured by those forces.

Only if Madison offered to use the data card would it not arouse suspicion, not only from Juan but also from the players watching the livestream. This was also the reason why Adenauer, knowing full well that Madison had the data card, hadn't directly taken it. After all, while he was fully aware that Madison was suspicious, the other players didn't. So, after returning from the fourth floor, when he "accidentally ran into" Madison acting suspiciously, he expressed his suspicions but didn't take any further action, instead continuing to observe. Given Adenauer's usual behavior, the other players would have considered this reasonable, as they would have understood he had some plans. However, if he had directly indicated that he knew Madison had something important, that would have been unreasonable.

Therefore, whether they wanted to go to the fifth floor to find the password for the backup generator, or to reasonably investigate Madison's identity and the information on the two data cards, they needed a reasonable way to let Madison actively expose the existence of the data cards. Based on the current situation, letting the pursuers discover their approximate location was the most appropriate option at the moment.

"Falcon calling Spider, reporting your current status, reply received."

"call out."

Hoping that the pursuers would notice anything unusual, Adenauer naturally destroyed the communication equipment with one shot. Soon, the other teams below also noticed something unusual. A large number of footsteps mixed with the humming of drones rang out inside the stairwell.

"There are a lot of people here, and our situation is very grim. Be prepared, we're probably going to have to fight our way out."

Adenauer positioned his gun on the railing, ready for a fight. Judging by the distance of the footsteps, he estimated that in a minute, the men below would rush up and discover the bodies. The tension instantly ignited. The approaching footsteps and the drone's humming became a death warrant, constantly stimulating Madison's brain.

Adenauer kept a close eye on Madison's movements. He had two options. If Madison refused to reveal the data card, a firefight with the soldiers below was inevitable. For Adenauer, eliminating them was a no-brainer. He estimated that, under reasonable circumstances, it would take an hour to completely wipe them out. He had already used the contractor's equipment to disable the vehicles parked outside the hospital's first floor, as well as their communications equipment. They couldn't escape, and they couldn't call for reinforcements. He could find an opportunity to deliberately kill Madison while he was killing them. Then, while cleaning up the battlefield, he could "accidentally" discover the two data cards on Madison's person. However, doing so would risk Juan dying in the firefight, a somewhat troublesome prospect, but not unacceptable.

It would be best if Madison couldn't bear the pressure and revealed the existence of the data card herself. If she took action immediately, then in the best case scenario, the three of them could still hide in the fifth floor in advance without being discovered.

"I have another way to avoid these people! Follow me!"

As expected, Madison's obsession with the data card didn't outweigh her desire to survive. She immediately revealed a way to evade the pursuers and immediately returned to the metal gate on the fifth floor. She pulled out the data card and opened the gate in just five seconds.

"How do you have the key to open this door?"

Of course, Madison's behavior immediately aroused Juan's suspicion. Adenauer didn't say anything, but the look he gave Madison made her shudder.

"Now is not the time to talk about this. Do you want to die?! Come in!"

After saying that, Madison entered the fifth floor first. Of course, her doubts were not as important as her desire to survive, so Juan immediately rushed into the fifth floor behind the metal gate. Adenauer also quickly retreated from his original defensive position to the gate. After entering the fifth floor, he quickly closed the metal gate. Less than a second after the gate was closed, the pursuers behind arrived at the location of the people killed by Adenauer and immediately began to search the nearby area.

"The door to the rooftop is open. He probably escaped from there."

"Go up and check. Notify the people in the first-floor convoy to see if they've spotted any hang gliders or wingsuits."

Using the contractor's equipment, Adenauer immediately understood the conversation between those people outside. It seemed that they had entered the fifth floor at just the right time, making them mistakenly believe that the person who killed their teammates had already escaped from the rooftop.

Perhaps the act of opening the metal gate just now was too abrupt and could not be concealed, so after entering the fifth floor, Madison gradually stopped disguising herself. She directly opened the monitoring terminal on the wall to the right of the metal gate and began to use it to observe the situation in the stairwell.