The other volunteers leaned in, their eyes wide with nervous curiosity, wondering exactly what had the hardened Korn practically salivating. He was just frozen, staring down into the depths of the heavy tallic crate as if he had just found a holy relic. And as the others crowded around and peered over his broad shoulders, they finally saw it.
“Hey… wait a minute. Isn’t this one of the banned weapons of the old era?” one of the n whispered, his voice trembling as he looked at the thick, olive-drab tube resting in the molded foam.
“Yeah… my god. That’s an actual RPG,” another muttered, stepping back in disbelief.
Korn reached down with trembling hands and reverently picked the heavy launcher up. Beneath where the weapon had rested, he could see that there were three live, high-explosive grenade warheads left in the crate ready to use. These were strictly lethal military armants—devastating weapons of war that had been globally outlawed and confiscated during the passing of the Non-Lethal Weapons Act long ago.
“There’s a lot more where that ca from,” the masked ex-Altered Hunter said calmly. He pointed a gloved thumb behind him toward the dark recesses of the subway platform, where several other identical, dust-covered crates were stacked in the shadows.
The other volunteers didn't need to be told twice. They quickly moved past him, frantically popping the heavy tal latches open. Although the remaining crates didn't contain anti-tank weaponry like the RPG Korn had just unveiled, what they found inside was just as shocking. Resting in the packing grease were rows of sleek, heavy automatic assault rifles and countless magazines of live ammunition.
“How… how did you ever manage to get your hands on an arsenal like this?” Korn asked, feeling the cold, deadly weight of the RPG resting on his shoulder.
“Getting lethal weapons of the old era has actually been getting a lot easier on the black market lately, if you know which shadows to look in,” the ex-Altered Hunter explained, his voice muffled by his dark mask.
“Although the modern Anti-Altered equipnt you guys scavenged works decently well on standard Altereds by disrupting their energy, let's be entirely honest with ourselves. Against a horde of bloodthirsty, mutated monsters, there are still weapons of the old world that can simply do far more raw, physical damage.”
He walked over and picked up one of the assault rifles, checking the chamber with a practiced, fluid motion.
“So, my old network managed to get our hands on a heavy shipnt of them before the city completely fell. They were secretly stored in a hidden cache right here, just in case there was ever another catastrophic attack on humanity that the authorities couldn't handle.”
The Hunter looked around at the desperate, scarred faces of the volunteers. “They were placed deep in the maintenance shafts of this subway station, and that’s exactly why I originally ca down here to hide when the quarantine hit. If you're wondering why I’m only bringing this heavy firepower out to share now… it’s because I simply didn’t know how many of you were actually willing to stand up and fight against the Altered threat.”
He slamd a magazine into the rifle. “Even though I had all of these lethal weapons sitting in the dark, I’m only one person. It would be completely useless to wage a one-man war; I would just be overrun and the guns would be lost. But all of you standing here today have proven that you have real, unshakeable hatred for the Altereds now. You have the will to pull the trigger.”
The masked man handed the rifle to the nearest volunteer. “Which is exactly why I finally brought it out for all of you.”
The small group was absolutely ecstatic. Now that they had these legendary weapons securely in their hands, feeling the cold steel and slling the gun oil, they were vastly more confident than before.
Even those hardened few who had bravely agreed to fight beforehand had secretly viewed this scavenging run as a complete suicide mission. They had just hoped that with their tal pipes and stun batons, they could at least do a little bit of harm to the monsters that had butchered their families, and maybe, in doing so, they could save at least so civilian lives before they were inevitably torn apart.
But now, holding automatic weapons capable of tearing flesh and shattering bone from a distance, they felt like they might actually just have a fighting chance at surviving the night.
“Wait, does anyone here actually know how to use these old guns?” the young man with the glasses asked, nervously holding an assault rifle awkwardly by the barrel. “It’s been a really long ti since anyone in the public has legally fired one of these, right?”
“I’ve played so imrsive VR shooters,” another volunteer chid in, adjusting his grip on a rifle. “Just because the governnt banned them in real life didn’t an they banned the historical models in video gas. So, I have so basic idea of where the safety is and how to aim.”
As the group rallied together in the dimly lit terminal, a hasty, makeshift boot camp began. They were quickly shown how to properly hold, aim, and reload the weapons. So were naturally better at grasping the chanics than others, but the person who clearly had the most intimate, lethal knowledge of the firearms was the masked Altered Hunter.
When briefly asked about his terrifying proficiency with the banned weapons, he just smoothly lied and said that he had looked into old military training videos to study how to use them. The fluid, practiced way he cleared a jamd chamber suggested a much darker, bloodier history, but nobody was foolish enough to press the issue. They needed his expertise.
Now heavily ard and dangerous, the group had optimistically expected that maybe, seeing the real firepower, there would be a lot more terrified civilians hiding in the station who would suddenly be willing to join them on their journey to the surface. But it was anything but that. The sight of the lethal weapons only terrified the pacifist masses further, driving them deeper into the subway tunnels to hide.
So, swallowing their distaste at the cowardice of their fellow man, the fifteen heavily ard volunteers decided to finally move out and go ahead with their grand plan.
This wasn't a blind assault. The group had smartly learned a few critical things while hiding in the dark. They hadn’t just been cowering, and they hadn’t just vaguely planned to run up to the surface and randomly kill as many monsters as they could find.
Through their own makeshift, underground information network—using things like encrypted walkie-talkies, tapping into old landlines, and dropping handwritten notes in designated safe areas to pass intelligence to other surviving camps—nearly all of the human residents that were still alive knew exactly where the Glutton Werewolves had officially made their main base of operations.
Their target was the ruins of the old White Rose facility.
Decades ago, it was an impenetrable, high-tech fortress that had a massive, fortified wall surrounding its periter. However, the White Rose base was absolutely nothing like it was in its glorious past. The sprawling base had been utterly destroyed during the previous conflicts. To a lot of the oppressed people in the city, the facility was a dark, towering symbol of Altered supremacy and corporate greed.
The fact that the White Rose organization no longer existed was also a violent, political statent against the Altered existence as a whole. Because the White Rose had been left in a vulnerable ss after its downfall, it had naturally attracted a lot of disgruntled, heavily ard street gangs that would constantly co out and try to strip the place bare, eventually burning and destroying what was left of it themselves.
The thing was, there wasn’t much structure left to the whole sprawling lot. With a broken, apathetic local governnt failing to secure the zone, scavenging crews simply tore down the large structures for scrap tal. Only so broken, skeletal parts of the main buildings were still left standing, acting as hollow, abandoned warehouses amidst the rubble.
Because the city had never bothered to build anything new to replace the facility, the entire massive compound had simply beco a giant, decaying dump yard of jagged concrete, rusted steel, and dark, cavernous hiding spots. And this terrifying labyrinth of rubble was exactly what the horde of Glutton Werewolves was currently using as the central base for their apocalyptic operations.
Ard to the teeth, the small, desperate group began walking through the pitch-black, echoing subway tunnels that remained completely empty. They marched in grim silence. Soon, they would exit out of the closest surface-level station directly adjacent to the ruins and start their final, desperate attack.
“We won’t let these rabid monsters take over our city!” Korn growled, hefting the heavy RPG over his shoulder as he marched into the dark, his eyes burning with vengeance.
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