Huang Jinghe frowned. "Where are the stink bugs? Why aren't they here?"
"There should be some," someone said. "Sister Ling froze a whole layer of them in the last cabin."
"Maybe this place is a copy," another guessed. "It copied what was over there, but there were never stink bugs here to begin with. So none crawl out now."
It sounded plausible. But if the spot ahead was only a copy, did that mean the box beneath the cabin—and the map and chip inside—were copies too?
Faces turned grim, but hands didn't stop. They kept clearing rubble until a familiar red glimmer pulsed up from the earth.
Lan Jin took out the IC card again and opened the box. After one look at the map inside, everyone let out a breath. "Good. The two maps aren't the same. If they were identical, I'd really think we were stuck in a looping maze."
"Yeah. I was worried it would match. Then we'd still be trapped. Good thing it doesn't." Otherwise, who knew how many desperate tricks they would need to break the circle.
They handed the paper map to Captain Zhang to lead the way. The chip, like before, went to Lan Jin for safekeeping.
With the chip stored, they moved on.
…
They pushed forward. After blasting two more cabins, they had collected four chips and four maps, and everyone was spent.
The three ordinary members from the professors' team could barely lift their legs.
Seeing they truly could not keep moving, Captain Zhang said, "Rest where you are."
They needed rest, and they needed food. Thirst had been so fierce that they had already thrown caution to the wind and taken off the insulated suits to drink, virus or no virus. Eating was another matter.
No one in the team was a cook, and no one carried cookware.
Luckily, each person had standard compressed biscuits. At least they would not starve.
Still, something felt off. Lan Jin asked, "Have you noticed that after we ran into the cabins, we never saw another mutant creature besides the first wave of stink bugs? And for all the ground we covered, we never ran into a single teammate who was taken away. Isn't that strange?"
The forest was vast. But not so vast that they would never even glimpse a silhouette.
Everyone had the same doubt. Captain Zhang stayed calm. "Forests like this are always odd. Anywhere you find one. And I don't know this place well. The H City forest isn't like this at all. Back at the H City base, I led you four through it. We circled the whole perimeter to blow it up, and we never saw cabins like these. The mutants weren't this extreme either. The Base Chief was gone, and I was acting lead, but I am not the Base Chief. My clearance is limited. I truly don't know everything."
So don't ask him. He really didn't know.
Captain Zhang sighed. "Believe it or not, there is a lot I am kept in the dark about. Maybe I know a little more than you do, but only within what everyone with my clearance can access."
No one spoke. Lan Jin said, "I was not accusing you. Put yourself in my shoes from before. My suspicion was normal. Besides, this mission is a joint operation. Even if we trained together for two months and went through a lot on the way, we still have not truly lived and died together. Who can say they trust the other side completely? For now, finish the mission and stay alive. Leave each other the last bit of trust."
Then Lan Jin added, "Captain Zhang, you said the base has not run anything this dangerous for a long time and probably will not again. Even if it does, we would not be forced into it, right?"
Captain Zhang faltered, then explained, "It was not supposed to be forced. For you four, it was half forced at most. I am not lying. You just happened to get caught up in it. As for future missions, I cannot promise anything. If you live in a base, you fight to protect others, and at least to protect yourself. And we don't even know if our base will still be there when we get back."
So don't think about anything else. Finish the job first.
Lan Jin nodded. "We don't even know what we are going back to."
Maybe because Lan Jin looked too calm, Captain Zhang could not help asking, "Grandma Ling and Qiao Qiao are still at the base. You are not anxious?"
Lan Jin shot him a look. "Too late to panic. It has been a long time already."
Captain Zhang didn't point out what he knew. Back when the ship was still moving, Captain Zhang had already received word that Grandma Ling and Qiao Qiao were not at the base.
…
Once they had rested enough, they gathered and studied the maps.
With the first three maps, the next destination had been easy to find. With the fourth map, the next point refused to show up, and they had already been circling this area for a long time.
Captain Zhang said, "Maybe there are only four maps. Maybe this is the destination."
"Then where is the item?" Lao Gao asked honestly. "If we reached the destination, the mission's core should be here. Where is the thing we need to take back?"
"We have searched the area. There is nothing," Shen Zhiyan joked. "They don't want us to carry back mutant plants, do they?"
Captain Zhang said, "It is not impossible. But I doubt it. If they wanted plants, we could have collected them at the H City base. The plants there look the same as here."
H City's plants would have been easier to grab. Some would even walk down the mountain on their own. And there were far fewer mutant creatures.
Just then, Huang Jinghe seemed to notice something on the maps. Huang Jinghe held each one up to the light, then stacked all four together and raised them against the glare.
Huang Jinghe's eyes lit up. "Hold on. Put them together like this and it looks like a new map. Look. The lines link up, like a continuous guide pointing the way for us."