Cyberpunk: 2075.

Chapter 851, Section 61: Not So Unlucky
As the collapse occurred, smoke and dust billowed like a thick fog, almost completely obscuring the view.

Carl reacted instantly to the collapse, rolling sideways under a relatively stable metal frame structure. Huge blocks of concrete crashed down where he had just been standing, creating a deafening roar.

For several minutes, or perhaps longer, Carl remained motionless, simply listening. Apart from the steady beating of his own heart and the occasional soft clatter of falling gravel, there was no other sound. The communicator was filled with deathly static; Jack and Oliver's signals had completely disappeared.

As the last sound of falling rocks gradually subsided, leaving only the sound of scattered debris, Karl slowly stood up from behind his bunker.

He slowly moved his limbs to confirm that there were no serious injuries.

He was physically normal, except that his left shoulder joint was slightly dislocated from the impact. He expressionlessly raised his hand and pushed it back into place with a soft 'click'.

The scene before us has completely changed.

He was in a section of corridor that was almost completely buried. The once spacious passageway was now filled with twisted metal beams and huge concrete blocks, leaving only the small triangular area where he was hiding to survive by sheer luck.

Above his head, a huge precast slab was slanted down, with the other end deeply embedded in the opposite wall, forming a temporary support, but also making the space extremely oppressive, with a height that only allowed him to stand bent over.

The air was thick with a pungent odor: the dryness of concrete powder, the ozone burnt smell of broken cables, the sweetness of leaking coolant, and a faint, unique bio-technological disinfectant scent, mixed with the synthetic bloody smell emanating from the crushed bodies of the velociraptors, creating an indescribable, almost savory, pre-decaying aroma.

The light had almost completely disappeared, with only his night vision goggles providing a pale green view. In this monotonous green, the thermal imaging mode captured some remaining temperature differences—a section of jaggedly broken cable in the distance was still emitting faint heat, and further away, there was a cold, deep blue representing heavy concrete.

"Jack, Oliver?"

Carl tried to contact his companions via communications, but all he got was static, just like the previous deathly silence.

It seems the communications are being disrupted; perhaps something collapsed.
However, Carl felt that given Oliver and Jack's abilities, nothing would happen to them.

The temporary information gap is within expectations.

After confirming that he was safe, Karl began to carefully examine the collapsed and isolated space. In his eerie green vision, every detail was magnified. He moved carefully, avoiding touching the unstable pile of rubble.

After moving slowly through the rubble for nearly two minutes, carefully moving until he was covered in dust, Karl smelled a peculiar scent.

That was a scent he was very familiar with, the scent of blood.

Carl spent a few more seconds approaching the spot where he sensed the blood. It was a room that had collapsed but still retained some space. He crouched down and ran his fingers across a thin layer of dust on the ground, revealing large patches of dried, blackened, splattered filth underneath.

It's human blood, a lot of blood. Judging from the splatter pattern, someone was violently attacked here, and may even have been torn apart.

These torn marks do not appear to have been caused by the experimental subject.

Karl moved his hand across the bloodstain, making a rough comparison, and then a weapon that could have caused such a bloodstain appeared in his mind.

Armor-piercing projectile.

His gaze then fell on the nearby wall, where the night vision goggles clearly captured a series of bullet holes—not the caliber and dispersion pattern commonly seen in street weapons, these bullet holes were deeper, with distinctive burn and carbonization marks on the edges.

Carl took out his neurotoxin knife, but instead of activating the neurotoxin, he carefully used its sharpness to pry a deformed bullet fragment from one of the bullet holes. Carl carried two knives, but considering the importance of one of them, he had to make do with the neurotoxin knife for this task.

After examining the deformed warhead closely in his hand, Karl discovered that the warhead was made of a peculiar material, not an ordinary lead or steel core. Under night vision, it appeared as a matte dark gray with fine spiral patterns on the surface, and even had tiny remnants of propulsion structures at the tail.

“High-speed armor-piercing rounds, but not the military kind,” Karl muttered to himself, taking out a small pouch he always carried with him that contained disposable gloves and putting the bullets inside.

This type of ammunition is specifically designed to penetrate heavy armor and bulletproof vests, and is extremely expensive, making it difficult for ordinary gangs or mercenaries to obtain.

He continued his search and found a body almost buried under rubble behind another twisted metal plate. The body was dressed in a biotech internal security uniform, but the equipment was clearly much more sophisticated than standard—clearly an elite security personnel.

Carl dragged the body out a little. There were two bullet holes in the chest, with very small entrances, but a hole the size of a bowl had been blown open in the back. This cavity effect was a typical feature of that special bullet. But strangely, there were no signs of struggle around the body, nor any weapons that belonged to him.

“The weapon was accurately finished off and then recovered,” Karl mused. “That’s the style of a professional team.”

But it's strange.

Given the situation of this attack team, carrying extra weapons would obviously slow down their operation. They are not mercenaries who need to scavenge for guns and bullets on the street to sell for money. A team that can use such special bullets should obviously prioritize the mission.

If we think about it that way, then their reason for taking the weapons shouldn't be that they coveted these elite security weapons, but rather that they had some other reason.

such as
That weapon would expose them.

暴露
Security teams like these primarily use smart weapons. Once a smart weapon is compromised, the attached hand implant not only causes the weapon to lose its locking function but could also become a new entry point, directly threatening the user.

So, did this team take such action because they had a professional hacker in their team who had infiltrated the system, and they deliberately took all the weapons away to avoid leaving any trace?
After all, if it is simply destroyed on the spot, there may still be some recoverable data fragments left behind, so such a cautious approach is reasonable.

In other words, if you can find a weapon that might not have been taken away in time, can you at least trace some clues?
Just as Carl was thinking this, he heard a strange noise.

The noise caused the area around Karl to tremble, a sensation Karl was very familiar with.

Before the second collapse, there seemed to be similar tremors, and now, the tremors are almost here.

Carl suddenly remembered the divination that Misty had given him a few days ago.

Avoid: enclosed spaces

He looked around at the space.

An enclosed space.
No, there are still quite a few places to get out of this place.

So it seems that things weren't so bad after all.

(End of this chapter)