Chapter 603.1: The Old Settlement

Because the Mutant Human’s frontline collapsed, Escaping Mole’s convoy reached the rendezvous point faster than expected.

They paused at a crossroads. Two more Chimeras rolled up from a nearby street, one after the other.

A player popped out of a turret and shouted at Escaping Mole, “This is Chimera-2! We ran into a retreating Mutant Human unit and got held up a bit.”

The one behind had to be Chimera-4.

Escaping Mole nodded and yelled back. “Step on it, don’t keep our allies waiting!”

Then he rapped the turret and told the driver inside, “Move out.”

Engines roared to life.

Chimera-1 pulled forward, leading the other two into the bomb-blasted district.

They were now inside the communication system jammed zone. Even at close range, their channels were thick with static.

So far, the Burning Corps hadn’t managed to knock out the jammers. Whatever they ran into, it definitely wasn’t a small problem.

Distant explosions and gunfire rumbled through the fog. Escaping Mole frowned from his turret hatch.

Visibility was abysmal.

“Eye Owe Money! Time to work!”

“Okay!”

Players from the Death Corps jumped off the armored vehicle.

Players in the other two Chimeras did the same, except for the human radios left on them. Armored infantry in exoskeleton suits spread out, weapons ready as they covered the vehicles.

Leading the way, Eye Owe Money’s gaze swept the street until it caught on an abandoned truck.

Its boxy frame and urban camouflage showed it had belonged to the Federation’s army.

However, the emblem painted on the door wasn’t theirs. Rather, it belonged to Singularity City.

Before that, it might even have borne the Post-War Reconstruction Committee’s emblem.

Anyway, none of it mattered.

Artifacts like those littered the streets, their owners long irrelevant.

Behind the truck was a sandbag checkpoint. Beyond it, buildings seemed ordinary at first glance, but on closer look, something was off.

What should’ve been office towers had metal scaffolds out the windows, with tattered clothes hanging everywhere.

Trash lay scattered, coal half-burned in paint buckets, and storefronts still bore slogans of another age.

“The cold winter will pass.”

“The world belongs to us.”

“No war, only peace.”

“Don’t rely on the Committee, rely on ourselves.”

Eye Owe Money muttered, searching corners carefully.

“It feels like people lived here... There used to be a lot of them.”

From the hatch, Escaping Mole replied casually, “No doubt. This is Singularity City.”

Death Corps players looked at each other in shock. “Singularity City? Here?”

“I thought that was called the Old Settlement!”

Escaping Mole chuckled, eager to show off his trivia.

“No, the Old Settlement was wartime housing during the Three Year War. That’s where the Mutant Humans live now.”

“They have wide open space, subway and garages that doubled as nuclear shelters. It’s cramped, filthy, and has bad air... but this city was never nuked. Locals survived the first years, then moved back up and rebuilt, right here where we stand.”

Without a Hive in the area, Singularity City never built giant walls like Boulder Town. Survivors fortified tall buildings, threw up sandbags and wire to split safe and unsafe zones.

Until the 50th year of the Wasteland Era, Mutant Humans weren’t the biggest threat. Cold, famine, disease, and marauders were.

Not everyone worshiped order. Some thrived on chaos.

Once humans regressed to animal instincts, anything became possible. Many wastelanders were born into it. They were beasts in human skin.

The bullet holes in sandbags were old.

It came from battles a long time ago.

They crossed the checkpoint and found graffiti on a collapsed iron wall, blurred by rust.

Everyone froze.

Construction Boy craned his neck and asked, “What’s it say?”

Eye Owe Money brushed grime off, picking out a few words. “‘Lies... betrayal... monsters...’ That’s all I can read. Anyone better at the Federation language?”

Escaping Mole snorted. “Don’t need to. Think how Singularity City fell.”

Construction Boy frowned. “Meaning?”

“‘Monsters’, Mutant Humans. ‘Lies’ and ‘betrayal’. Those describe the people and the city government. Remember the intel Ample Time dug up in Hope Town? Mutant Humans originally couldn’t reproduce.”

Eye Owe Money and another player blinked blankly.

Seeing they had forgotten, Escaping Mole continued, “Long ago, Mutant Humans fleeing from the East Coast were sterile. Singularity City sheltered them and supported their research. Some residents even volunteered to mutate to gain stronger bodies, solidarity with the scientists, or just to spit on the Post-War Reconstruction Committee.”

“Eventually, Mutant Humans gained both citizenship and fertility. The lore book skips details, but since their offspring are always Mutant Humans and their bodies stronger... guess what happened?”

Construction Boy gulped once. “What?”

“More Mutant Humans would clearly appear. Power would shift to them. Humans became the minority. Maybe officials promised Mutant Humans were harmless, or that violence could be restrained by civilization. But Mutant Humans were single-gender and needed humans to reproduce. Meanwhile, human numbers dwindled.”

Construction Boy scratched his head. “Why not make female Mutant Humans, let them breed themselves?”

“Because Mutant Humans were neutered to stop unfinished DNA from spreading. Giving them dicks was already a compromise. Designing females too? It defeats the point completely. And really, their tastes came from humans, they used to be humans.”

“Besides, the authorities probably never meant to create a separate race. They wanted dependent vassals, immune to radiation, gathering trash from the wasteland without gear. However, they lost control.”

𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

“Mutant Humans still needed humans. But just as humans need livestock for protein, that doesn’t make us vassals to chickens. Once balance tipped, roles flipped. Mutant Humans enslaved humans like cattle.”

Escaping Mole eyed the graffiti on the wall.

“They were harmless at first. They slowly bared their fangs later, and finally jaws that devoured everything in their way. They are just like plague and Na Fruit.”

Eye Owe Money sighed, stepping back. “Law of nature...”

Some truths never change.

Though the game was lighthearted, the buried lore was heavy.

The whole city was a tombstone. Graffiti was its epitaph.

When exactly Singularity City died, none could say. Few survivors of that era still lived, most old popsicles were older still.

Escaping Mole figured humanity hadn’t gone extinct then. They resisted the spread of Mutant Humans.

They lost.

The survivors were enslaved or exiled to places like Pinecone Ranch and Hope Town.

In time, Mutant Humans abandoned human-built housing as it didn’t suit their bodies. They moved back underground, to the Old Settlement near the Champion Biopharmaceutical Research Institute.

Subways, garages, Shelters. They provided warmth, cover, and protection from snipers.

Later, Mutant Humans fully adapted to wasteland life and founded their own civilization.

That was the origin of the Qi Tribe.

Likely once called the Singularity Tribe, they eventually shortened the name.

To Escaping Mole, Boulder Town’s fall was tragic ambition, but Singularity City was something harder to speak of.

Its people had braced for the worst, never abandoning their ideals, only to realize their destination was never the one they sought.

The squad pressed on and the fog thickened.

Green-gray mist reeked of rot.

It was the stench of corpses.

That was no normal fog. It contained spores from buried Na Fruit.

Clearly, danger lay ahead.

As everyone flicked off safeties, their eyes scanned every shadow. Instead of lurking, the threat stood bold in the open.

Three hulking mounds of greenish flesh blocked the highway.

Eye Owe Money spotted them first, yelling back, “Mutant Humans! Prepare for battle!”

The monsters growled and charged.