When he infiltrated Base Miller, as it was called back then, Jake had help from a guy nad Johnny, who assisted him in escaping the base undetected. Without Johnny’s help, Jake would have had no chance of getting out unnoticed.
Before he left, Johnny told him about his girlfriend, Samantha, and asked for Jake’s help in rescuing her from the Los Demonios main base, where she had been sent as punishnt for sabotaging various machines at Base Miller.
Both Jake and Johnny were nearly certain that it was too late to save Samantha and that she was likely dead or worse by that point. Still, Johnny held onto a flicker of hope that she might still be alive, even though he knew the chances were slim to none.
And then Johnny sacrificed himself to keep Jake’s infiltration of Base Miller a secret. Jake always rembered the promise he made to Johnny. While he intended to honor it, he didn’t truly believe he would find Samantha alive when he infiltrated the main base.
But now he realized he couldn’t have been more wrong.
Not only had Samantha managed to survive long enough for him to find her, but she had also escaped from Los Demonios, set up a hideout deep underground, and even ford a resistance group that successfully launched ambushes against their forr captors in the mines.
Jake had just used Mind Reader on the woman, so he knew she was the sa Samantha Johnny had told him about, instead of being soone with the sa na. He wasn’t sure whether he should tell her about Johnny, though.
Being the bearer of bad news didn’t bother him, as, unlike humans, he rarely experienced any feelings or emotions. However, he worried about how the news of her boyfriend’s death might affect her.
Would her spirits drop? Would she still maintain her fighting spirit? What if she beca reckless in the upcoming fight, showing no regard for her own life?
If she got killed in battle, it would an he failed to fulfill the promise he made to Johnny. In the end, though, he concluded that she had a right to know what had happened to her boyfriend.
“I have so bad news for you,” he said.
“What news?” she asked, clearly surprised.
“About Johnny.”
Samantha instantly tensed, while Marcel, who stood nearby and heard Jake’s words, looked puzzled. He glanced at Samantha in confusion and asked, “Who’s Johnny?”
Apparently, the leader of the resistance fighters had never ntioned her boyfriend to them. Ignoring Marcel’s question, she stepped closer to Jake, looking him intently in the eye.
“You... you know Johnny?” she asked hesitantly, already predicting she wasn’t going to like what Jake had to tell her.
“Yeah, I knew him.”
Samantha closed her eyes for a mont. After steeling herself, she opened them and asked, “So what happened? Did sothing… happen to him? Is he—”
Her question trailed off.
“Yes,” Jake replied. His chanical voice, coming from the device, sounded cold and indifferent, which was sothing he hadn’t minded before, but now it made him uncomfortable. “Johnny is dead.”
Samantha took a deep breath and turned her gaze away from Jake, but not before he caught a glimpse of glistening tears welling in the corners of her eyes. After a mont, still avoiding his gaze, she asked, “How did it happen?”
Jake gave her a brief rundown of how he t Johnny and the circumstances of his death. He also shared how Johnny had asked him to find Samantha and help her escape from the main base.
After he finished talking, he waited for her reaction, but she didn’t reply right away. For a few seconds, she stayed silent, her gaze cast downward.
Marcel stepped closer to her and placed his big palm on her shoulder.
“Are you alright, Sam?” he asked in a surprisingly gentle voice. Jake found it odd coming from such a large and intimidating-looking guy, especially considering how aggressively he had behaved toward him earlier.
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Samantha nodded slightly but remained silent for a few more seconds.
Looking a bit out of place, Marcel didn’t know what else to say, so he simply took a step back to give Samantha the space she needed to deal with her grief.
When she finally looked up at Jake again, her eyes were dry, and they carried a steel-hard expression.
“You ntioned you destroyed all the secondary bases, yes?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“Including Base Miller, I assu.”
Jake nodded.
“But what about Miller himself?” she pressed. “Did you kill him, too?”
There was a hopeful edge to her voice, though Jake wasn’t sure whether she hoped he had killed the bandit leader or if she wanted him to have escaped so she could track him down and kill him herself.
“I killed him,” Jake answered, rembering how Miller, clad in a ch suit, had been with his n waiting for him at the entrance to the dungeon, having set up an ambush to attack him as soon as he left.
A look of disappointnt flashed across Samantha’s face.
“Good,” she said after a pause. “Though I can’t help but wish I could’ve killed the bastard myself. He was one ruthless son of a bitch.”
“They all are,” Marcel said, spitting on the ground either to express his disdain for Los Demonios or because simply ntioning the bandit organization left a foul taste in his mouth. “They all deserve to die. Horribly.”
Samantha was silent for a second, then she asked, her voice laced with hope, “Did you make it quick? Or did he suffer before death? At least a little bit?”
Jake recalled how he killed Miller and told her the truth, “He died in just a few seconds.”
Samantha’s face took on a disappointed expression. However, Jake then added, “But while those few seconds passed quickly for , the way Miller was dying, those monts must have felt like an eternity for him. He died a very painful death.”
A small smile appeared on Samantha’s lips. “Good. That bastard deserved a painful death. Not just for Johnny but for all the evil deeds he’d committed.”
Jake decided to clarify sothing. “I said I destroyed all the secondary bases, including the one Miller had been in charge of, but that’s not entirely accurate.”
Samantha tilted her head slightly to the side.
“What do you an?” she asked.
“I left two bases standing, including Miller’s,” he explained. “So Base Miller is now called Base Catalina.”
Looks of confusion crossed Samantha’s and Marcel’s faces.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why would you do that? And who is Catalina?”
Jake said, “Catalina is one of you. Her teammates were all killed by Los Demonios, but she fought so valiantly against the bandits that Skullface wanted to enlist her in his ranks. Naturally, she refused his offer to join, so she was captured and held captive at Miller’s base.
There, she made friends with so other captured survivors. Then one day, her best friend, with whom she had planned to rebel against Los Demonios one day, was tortured to death right in front of her.
After that, she was told that while she’d been at the base, she’d constantly been watched, and now all the people she’d befriended were going to be brutally killed just like the previous one unless she joined the organization. So she had no choice but to comply.”
“Geez,” Marcel said, spitting to the ground once again. “Those fucking assholes.”
Jake continued, “However, while she beca a mber of Los Demonios, she bided her ti, patiently waiting for the right mont to rebel. She gradually rose in the ranks, and eventually, around the ti I killed Miller, she was promoted to the leader of the base he’d once been in charge of. I learned all of this when I ca to destroy her base.
So her base has beco a safe haven for ordinary survivors who have never been part of Los Demonios. There’s also another base I didn’t destroy. Its leader was Ryder, but now a friend of Samantha, lissa, is in charge of it.
After I help you break out of this place, you are welco to stay at either Catalina’s or lissa’s base. Both are essentially fortresses, and you’d want to spend your nights there instead of hiding in random places around the city, as you did before.
The city has undergone an upgrade, and all the mutants are now much more powerful and constantly roaming the streets looking for humans, which they hadn’t done before the upgrade. So simply holding up in a random spot is no longer safe. Staying at those fortresses is your best chance to avoid being attacked at night by mutants.”
All the resistance fighters ford a semicircle around Jake, listening with eager attention.
None of them was aware of the changes that had taken place in the city during their absence, so they listened with great interest. So of them looked at him with sparkling eyes, the re thought of finally escaping the underground tunnels and returning to the city filling them with excitent.
After Jake finished speaking, a silence enveloped the group as they processed the information he had just shared.
Nearly a full minute passed before Samantha broke the silence and asked, “So what’s your plan of attack, Jake?”
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