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

Doug fell silent, sensing that asking any further questions would only provoke the other person. As the seconds ticked by, Doug grew increasingly uncomfortable, feeling unwell all over.

Whether it was due to radiation or simply psychological factors, Doug felt very uncomfortable.

“There are still three hours until sunset, I’ll go back to sleep for a while,” Raphael said.

"I can't sleep."

Doug hesitated for a moment, then inquired about the details of the ruins and the collapse techniques. He was eager to learn about something he rarely saw discussed on television news programs or online.

He displayed an unprecedented thirst for knowledge.

Raphael didn't refuse, offering his answers within his capabilities and available information. After all, he was the captain of the Hundred-Eyed Giants squad, while she only needed to issue orders to Doug, who would then relay and execute them.

This is somewhat like a combination of officers and non-commissioned officers standing between soldiers and officers; the former makes the decisions, and the latter is responsible for carrying them out.

To avoid similar trouble in the future, she intentionally kept her distance from everyone in the team except the captain, as getting too close would inevitably lead to conflict.

Cecilia woke up too and sat on the sofa opposite Doug. She could roughly imagine the content of the conversation from Doug's sigh and knew that the captain was angrier than usual.

"Is it related to Lieutenant Raphael?" she asked cautiously.

Doug silently shook his head and then nodded, turning to his side to try and fall asleep again. But this often happens when you're extremely tired: sleep simply won't come back.

He lay down for a few minutes, then stood up again, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and for the first time seriously looked around the room where he had been for so long.

The cloth spread on the table has two circles—one larger, obviously from the frying pan, and the other smaller, from the coffee pot.

The glass door of the cupboard was shattered, and everything inside had been taken by the woman of the house who had hidden it in the cellar. In the distance, on the writing desk, many traces of the family's life remained.

The fabric above had just been stitched, a bundle was neatly tied, several badly damaged volumes of anthologies, a few textbooks with clumsy doodles on them, a neat stack of new sixth-grade textbooks and matching workbooks... Later, Doug also saw a few children's English font workbooks.

He approached these textbooks and workbooks with the professional curiosity of someone who had once aspired to a career in education.

One of the books, which seemed to be for practicing handwriting, had the following written on it:

"The witch and the Munchkins were gone, leaving Dorothy alone, and she was hungry. She went to the cupboard, cut some bread, and spread cheese on it..."

One letter in the word "cheese" was crossed out, a new letter was added, then the changed letter was crossed out again and changed back.

She fed Toto a little something, then took a bucket from the shelf, went to the stream, and filled it with clear water. Toto ran to a tree and started barking incessantly at the birds up there…

Doug closed the calligraphy workbook; the article he used for his child's practice was Chapter 3 of "The Wizard of Oz," "Dorothy Rescues the Scarecrow," which reminded him of his childhood in rural Oregon.

Cecilia looked around, then sat down next to Doug, mimicking his posture. She reached for her exercise books and slowly flipped through them, suddenly beginning to talk about her own childhood.

Since they met, she and Doug had brought up this topic several times in their private conversations. At this moment, rather than Cecilia telling him about her own childhood, she was simply trying to coax Doug into talking about his past.

Doug Sutton was not the kind of person who was taciturn because of his melancholy nature or because of his principles; he simply spoke little, did more than he said, and let his actions speak louder than his words.

Firstly, because he was almost always busy with his job, and secondly, because he preferred to think alone when he was thinking.

Also, when he was with people, he always preferred to listen to them. Doug secretly felt that he had done little and accomplished almost nothing, so others were not particularly interested in his life experiences.

At this moment, he preferred to listen to Cecilia speak silently, sometimes pondering her words, sometimes focusing on his own thoughts, while calmly and carefully tidying up the things he had placed on the ground.

More than anything else, Doug wanted to know about Raphael's past. She was more like a ruthless computer or an online intelligent library than a person.

When discussing collapse technology and collapse radiation, Raphael was not only able to fully retell the contents of his paper, but also to find the supporting content for his theory based on the paper's citation list.

Therefore, besides believing that she was right, Doug also...

All that's left is curiosity about her as a person.

Hyperthymesia? Or some other very special way of remembering, and seemingly inexhaustible energy, that brought him an unprecedented and enormous impact.

Volume 1: The World Before the Great War: Chapter 68 This War of Mine

The woman's second child must be very young.

Several sheets of paper, torn from exercise books and decorated with cute little animals drawn with red and blue pencils, were scattered on the ground.

There were also drawings on the paper of crooked houses, burning buildings, and vehicles billowing black smoke, and on top of all this, a small figure drawn with a red pencil stood there shooting.

This is a common concept children have had about war—we are always shooting, while the enemy is always destroying.

However painful it was to recall past mistakes, Doug couldn't help but think that there were far too many people who held similar war-like ideas on the eve of chaos.

War... Recently, when he recalls his life, he can't help but categorize his entire life into one type. Afterwards, he analyzes his pre-war life and behavior, dividing it into bad and good. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Instead, we should consider whether it is suitable for war.

Should the city that never sleeps really be described as a "war"?

After much thought, Doug gave his answer: Yes, it had been drawn into war, into a war in which every stranded survivor was racking their brains and doing everything in their power to find a way to survive.

Now, as he fights, there are some habits and hobbies that hinder him, and others that help him.

The second type is more common, probably because people like him carefully studied the instructors' subconscious habits during training in the camp, understood and imitated them, and turned them into their own good habits.

After such arduous combat and life training filled with self-sacrifice and self-restraint, war, apart from the fixed possibility of death, cannot overwhelm him with its daily burdens.

Like many of his contemporaries who joined the SHD Homeland Strategy Bureau, Doug Sutton came from the best in his field. While his resume might not be perfect, he had at least visible achievements in his job—a man of great potential.

Like many others, he found the strength in life to reject repetitive, uncreative, and unexciting work and life.

Twenty-five years after the New York incident, he returned as usual to the training camp set up by the Strategic Services at Quantico, completed various competency assessments and a new round of combat training, only this time with the addition of many courses on the use and maintenance of equipment that were rarely offered before.

As Doug flipped through the child's exercise book, he recounted how he had come to New York.

He suddenly realized that the combat training course he had taken from April to August of last year had taught him how to survive in abandoned cities, such as how to collect the electronic components he needed from abandoned vehicles, find the parts he needed from shops filled with garbage, and find suitable gun parts from dilapidated warehouses...

All of this was done so that they could survive in some abandoned city.

As Doug pondered this, a bold idea formed in his mind: the politicians in power already knew the future of the City of Never Sleeps three months from now, and therefore had provided targeted training for the agents.

However, most of the agents who were among the first to enter, like him, suffered setbacks of varying degrees, ultimately ending up either dying in battle or betraying their masters.

So, he couldn't help but ask, were those months of targeted training really enough?

The answer is, it's not enough at all.

Not only was the training content and intensity insufficient, but they also concealed a lot of things, and their investment in New York was pitifully small.

If the resources and manpower allocated to the airdrop had been put into more practical work, places like Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx would have long since returned to order.

The result? A mess. Apart from the National Guard troops at those bridges and the Coast Guard floating on the Hudson River, there was almost no federal or state government presence.

How can this not be considered war? War has simply taken a different form, becoming a war for everyone.

The war began in December, though it wasn't as intense then as it is now. This war brought him, a finance professional who once aspired to a career in education, to the retro, wild land of the City That Never Sleeps.

Bringing him to this room, if it weren't for the stubborn gleam of the M4A1 automatic rifle hanging diagonally on the velvet sofa backrest adorned with family embroidery, this room might have reminded him of peace for a fleeting moment.

It was well past noon. Doug listened absentmindedly to Cecilia recount her life, while his mind wandered back to his own.

He slowly took out the cigarette case, and with a strong flick of his arm, the cigarette filter emerged precisely from the notch on one side of the case.

The cigarette was held in his mouth, the butt of which lit up with each breath, then went out.

Cecilia was silent for a moment, then sat motionless beside him. They sat there in silence for perhaps five minutes, perhaps ten.

Later, Cecilia started talking again, this time about her love life and marriage.

At first, she spoke with childlike seriousness about her infatuation with handsome boys at school, then moved on to ordinary relationships, and finally to a failed marriage. At the end, however, she suddenly asked Captain Doug Sutton:

"Hey, what about your love life?"

"What kind of love?"

"Love? Don't you have a love life yet?"

"Love? Romance?"

Doug took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pondered for a moment. He recalled two or three women who had flashed through his life, just as they had clearly flashed through theirs.

In this respect, they certainly owe each other nothing: he was not disappointed in anyone, nor did he wrong anyone.

Perhaps this is not good, who knows?

Perhaps the outcome of this matter—so easy and so short—was not because he didn't need love, but precisely because he needed it so much.

But the people Doug encountered and the outcome of this affair didn't seem like romance, not like what he had imagined; it was more like two people who needed each other.

She looked at Doug and simply said, "It's time. We'll leave in 30 minutes," before turning and leaving.

Doug glanced at Cecilia, quickly put on his tactical vest, checked the radio and headset, and finally picked up the M4A1 with a natural ease and put on the sling.

“There’s still time to rest a little longer,” he said to Cecilia as he adjusted the length of the sling.

After feeling the captain's words and actions, Cecilia felt a depressed, benign irony about everything she had just recalled with such urgency.

But in the face of that brief yet instantly filling phrase, "It's time, we'll be leaving in 30 minutes," everything they recalled became less important.

It was already evening when Doug and Cecilia took out the MICH2000 helmet, installed the metal bracket, and finally connected the PVS-15 binocular night vision goggles.

This model is already 25 years old, but there's nothing we can do about it; that's the kind of equipment that's provided in the airdrop crates.

However, despite being a 25-year-old outdated model, the instruction manual included with the device mentions that the night vision device has an anti-radiation coating, ensuring that the equipment can operate normally in a radiation environment.

Doug knew from the instructions that all the supplies were prepared for the lab rats who were trying to make a living in the Dark Zone.

Of course, they were also guinea pigs.

"Captain, how did you sleep?" Tony seemed to have recovered from his weakness, and he said with great enthusiasm, "It's finally about to start, I can't wait."

“Have you checked all your gear? Don’t make a fool of yourself by running out of batteries,” Doug said.

"I already removed the battery beforehand!"

Tony patted his chest; his red dot sight was practically on the verge of giving out. Rather than looking at that faint indicator, he might as well use the iron sights.

"what?"

He said with a mixture of helplessness and pride, "I'm just the unlucky guy holding the broken, collapsed liquid container!"

“What’s there to be proud of!” Cecilia lightly tapped Tony’s back with the butt of her gun, saying irritably, “That kind of thing…”

"Well, there have been changes, but I guess I've gotten used to it."

“Be careful next time,” Doug said in a kind yet admonishing tone.

He believes that someone who is responsible for the entire team always speaks in this tone when talking to everyone on the team:

"Don't touch things you don't understand, and if your teammates don't understand them either, then you should definitely not touch them."

Tony could only maintain a cheerful smile. How many next times does one have?

"Ah, I believe this is a lesson we will never forget."