Eh? You want to try the humanoid girl's iron fist too?

No matter which option you choose, there is only one outcome: no way out.

Of course, New York is not a small town. No matter how many times it has been raided by thugs, there are always supplies hidden in places that people don't notice. Survival is definitely not a problem, but he has to think about the other team members.

Raphael had previously made it very clear that following her into the Dark Zone would carry an extremely high risk of death.

high.

Doug turned around with difficulty, cursing the bureaucrats and politicians who had brought the city to its current state.

“Alright, let’s have a briefing now.” Raphael said loudly from downstairs, “This concerns your lives and mine, so I hope everyone will take it seriously.”

Two hours after the briefing, dawn was approaching.

The roar of turboprop jet engines drifted over the city. Raphael stood on the rooftop, gazing at the large transport planes flying low overhead. Suddenly, a dark spot appeared in the middle of the heat decoy flares.

The items have arrived.

The Hundred-Eyed Giants squad then transitioned from rest to combat readiness, following closely behind Raphael toward the nearest airdrop landing site.

The noise also activated the deadly city, bringing to life the heavily infected ELIDs awakened by the sound, the black market merchants who remained in the Dark Zone using anti-collapse radiation pills, as well as the survivor army, the Lex Gang, and the Dark Zone garrison of the Purifiers.

The battle began when the noise of the planes disappeared, and Doug Sutton had already suffered his fourth cut during this fight for supplies.

Everyone has gone mad.

The battle for supplies was fierce and brutal.

The radio was filled with noise, but Raphael could vaguely discern the situation of the survivor army. They had surrounded four drop zones in the north, and nearly half of the supplies had fallen into their hands today, leaving only a small portion for the others.

To Raphael's surprise, Tony Gagia, who had been so active before, now cowered, leaning against the cover as if he had been killed, without even raising his head.

"Hey, Tony!" Raphael called out as he crouched low as he approached him. "Tony, Tony Gagia!"

Tony looked up anxiously, saw Raphael, and unexpectedly jumped up, grabbed her shoulders, and pulled her down to the ground beside him.

"Lie down!" His voice changed when he shouted.

Raphael took his hand and sat down next to her.

How do I 'lie down'?

“Lie down, it’s dangerous here…” Tony repeated, as he tried to grab Raphael and push her to the ground.

Raphael understood; the guy seemed to be reacting to the collapse radiation. The complex and intense battle, combined with the stimulation of the collapse radiation on the human body, had caused him to hallucinate.

"What, is it scary?" Raphael asked calmly and knowingly, and Tony responded just as simply and kindly to this gentle tone:

"Oh, how terrible! This is bad... they're coming."

"So you're just going to lie there like that?"

"Comrade Captain, at your command!"

"What? What did I order?..."

Raphael was a little confused. What had this guy just seen? The USSR had been resurrected on the spot, had it? But she turned around and said:

"Lie down, be patient, and get used to it and wake up as soon as possible! Your friends are waiting for you."

She decided to stabilize Tony's situation first. Regardless of what Tony saw in his hallucinations, her priority was to support him. She would address Tony's heightened sensitivity to the radiation from the collapse later, once the fighting subsided.

The buzzing sound from the Geiger counter annoyed Raphael even more.

Book 1: The World Before the Great War: Chapter 57 Valuable Assets

Around noon, Cecilia contacted us. She said, "The Alpha team has arrived at the designated location, the park management office, and it has been cleared."

"This is Raphael. I'm going to another place. Bravo-1 is taking care of Bravo-2 and cannot proceed for the time being. Be careful of your surroundings. Over."

Raphael hung up the radio.

After spending the last two days together, Cecilia understood Raphael's meaning: "be careful" actually meant that she should maintain her composure and calmness, and not take excessive risks for petty gains.

"Alpha-1 received, over."

"Doug, what do you think?" After receiving a definite answer, Raphael turned to Doug and asked, "There's only one ARA-11029 left. Should we use it now?"

“Are these the initial symptoms of ELID?” Doug observed Tony intently. “Hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, and minor skin lesions.”

"Yes. He is more sensitive to the radiation from the collapse."

Raphael knelt down beside Tony Gagia, rolled up his sleeve, and said, "You see... the skin damage has already appeared."

"If you don't complete the recovery of supplies, or if there are no anti-radiation drugs in the airdrop, death is only a matter of time."

Yes, that's reality.

“Then we’ve been really screwed over by DARPA.” Doug’s voice trembled as he spoke. “They haven’t provided any information about the Dark Zone other than the airdrop schedule and drop locations.”

"That's just how they are. If you're going to serve them, you have to get used to it and find the only way to survive in a mission where you're guaranteed to die."

Raphael had a very deep understanding of those bastards at DARPA.

All the tasks assigned to her a year ago were designed to push her physical limits, and when they designed the tasks, they didn't care at all whether her companions could keep up.

Most of the time, falling behind means certain death; there are no other options.

Initially, the mental model (personality) was still in its infancy and no one was aware of this problem. Although the task completion rate remained around 80%, the casualty rate was as high as 95%, highlighting a situation where there was no return.

If she hadn't intentionally controlled it later, the death rate would have risen even further.

The greater the gap between the mission mortality rate and the mission completion rate, the more excited the researchers at DARPA, who are responsible for reverse engineering of relic technology, artificial intelligence, and bodily research, become. This means that they may have created mechanical products that can replace soldiers in large numbers.

Artificial intelligence learns at a speed many times faster than that of a normal person, and given a suitable body, it can be transformed into a "super soldier".

They were incredibly excited. Then, in September 2023, the fiscal year 24 budget bill was passed, providing unprecedented budgetary support for artificial intelligence and autonomous mechanical equipment.

Multiple test data have demonstrated that the "Rafael NGSW" exhibits far greater reliability and endurance in combat than human soldiers with the same training and experience.

Even though their research has made no new progress to date, Raphael's existence has pointed them in a direction for advancing military technology. Perhaps when this technology is completed, "autonomous bionic robots" can be applied to the civilian market.

The prospects are incredibly bright, and they are just around the corner in the near future.

What currently stands in their way is merely the interpretation and reproduction of relic technology, and the limitations on "strong artificial intelligence." Clearly, the current level of understanding and application of relic technology is still largely dependent on luck, and the core of reverse engineering remains undeciphered.

The difficulty in interpretation means that the understanding of the original artifacts excavated from the site is only superficial, and that we do not know how they might function.

Raphael recalled that before she left for New York, DARPA's research on unearthed cores was stuck at the level of how to start them up, while the cores that were reverse-engineered could be started and operated in a way that they could understand.

Unfortunately, those copied cores all had flaws, often crashing and freezing mid-run. By the time the core restarted, all the AI ​​training data stored within it was lost.

This is

It seems that random access memory (RAM) is completely lost when the power is turned off.

Raphael remembered that the most frequent topics of conversation among the researchers were hair care and hair transplantation, and quite a few ruthless individuals even shaved their heads, determined to give up any thought of having hair.

Those failed reverse engineering attempts are excellent prototype cores in her eyes. As long as the prototype can be connected to her mental network, it can be used as a puppet.

Perhaps after things are over in New York, when she returns to DARPA, she should think of something.

Raphael interrupted the thought process of the puppet core and the original body, and handed the syringe filled with ARA-11029(A) solution to Doug. "What do you decide to do?"

"Given our severe shortage of manpower and the urgent situation, I believe Tony is an indispensable and valuable fighting force for us."

After saying that, Doug grabbed the syringe and, following the brief instructions on the transparent tube, plunged it deep into Tony's groin. The clear, pale blue liquid flowed into Tony's body with the pressure applied by his thumb.

Sure enough, the effects of this thing were very obvious. Raphael quietly recorded Tony Gagia's physiological manifestations and external reactions.

He quickly calmed down from the chaos caused by the radiation from the collapse, his eyes closed and his brows furrowed, as if he were having a nightmare.

A short while later, Tony slowly opened his eyes and looked blankly at Raphael and Doug who were taking care of him.

"What... what's wrong with me?"

Raphael glanced at Doug and asked as usual, "Alright, answer yes or no. Are you at the Quantico training base?"

Tony shook his head, panting heavily.

Are you in Somalia?

He continued to shake his head in denial.

Are you in New York?

Tony closed his eyes, exhaled through his nostrils, and nodded.

"Is your captain, Doug Sutton, a lovely girl?"

"Super cute!" Tony Gargia instantly straightened his back and shouted, "Doug Sutton is absolutely adorable! Hahahaha..."

"OK, he's fine."

Raphael helped Tony up and said to Doug, "Your blondie's back now. But you guys might have been exposed to radiation in the White Zone. Is there anything we should be concerned about?"

Doug crouched down, stared at the drop zone a few hundred yards away for a long time, and replied with certainty, "No, our main area of ​​operation is in the city near the Williamsburg Bridge..."

“No, before that,” Tony said, flexing his hands, “we went to investigate the cheap apartments in the Torrington area on your orders, and I remember getting a clear glass that emitted a pale green glow there.”

"A double-walled, transparent glass cup, and the light-emitting part is a small glass tube in the inner layer, right?"

"How did you know, Lieutenant?" Tony

Raphael couldn't help but put his hand to his forehead. How could Gordon Amherst have come into contact with that kind of thing?

I don't understand at all. Dr. Gordon is a biologist, and he is very likely the releaser and researcher of the smallpox virus in the green bill, but how could he be related to the collapse fluid?

"That's a special storage container for collapse fluid. Forty years ago, it was the raw material for weapons that turned Vietnam into a no-man's land. How dare you touch that kind of thing with your bare hands!"

Having said that, Raphael grabbed Tony's left hand and abruptly rolled up her sleeve. Immediately, Doug and Tony heard her expressive admiration:

“Son of B***h, this is truly—astonishing.”

Volume 1: The World Before the Great War: Chapter 58 Indication (Please vote!)

"What's wrong?" Doug asked, relieved but puzzled, seeing no signs of corrosion on Tony's body. "Isn't that a good thing?"

"It looks good for now, but it might get worse."

Raphael himself wasn't entirely sure, but as someone who had come into close contact with the storage device of the collapsed radioactive solution—according to Tony Gagia's own description, he had even seen a pale green light—he was definitely doomed.

Tony Gagia himself was sitting right in front of them, and he didn't look like an ELID infected person at all, but rather a living, breathing human being.

The anticipated large-scale skin damage did not occur. After roughly feeling around with his hands, Raphael confirmed that no silicon-based metal lumps had grown on Tony's body, which meant that the actual effect of the collapse radiation dose was not good.

In other words, Tony Gagia, who is now sitting on the ground leaning against the wall, now has a 50% chance of being a "natural exemptee," possessing a recognition factor for ELID mutant cells, which allows his immune system to accurately identify mutant cells and thus solve the problem of radiation damage.

That's not all. His bone composition should be different, making him stronger than an average person.