Chapter 247: News — “By the way, look into the Gilosha matter” |
Things went more smoothly than expected.
Orff, as always, was enthusiastic and reliable. After hearing Misha describe the difficulties the two of them were facing, he immediately agreed to help without hesitation.
Later, Everly sent his contact information to Old John, acting as the middleman to introduce the two sides.
She was completely broke now, so the payment after success would likely have to be covered by Old John as well.
After arranging the identification documents up to this point, Everly and Misha stopped following up in real time.
With Old John’s abilities combined with Orff’s hacking skills, breaking into a mere parking system would be easy. They would almost certainly be able to obtain what they needed sooner or later. The two of them only had a broken phone between them anyway, so there was no real need for them to be involved further.
Rather than worrying about whether their grandfather could succeed, it was better to think about where they would spend the night.
In a rural area, they might still be able to slip the front desk some cash and get by, but in the city, without proper identification, hotels would not accept Everly and Misha.
As for 24-hour shops, very few allowed customers to stay for long periods. Most only tolerated short stays after ordering something; if someone stayed too long, they would be driven out through methods like playing classical music or staff persuasion. If anyone was seen sleeping or lying down, they would be immediately asked to leave.
After so many days drifting at sea, the two of them were both physically and mentally exhausted and urgently needed somewhere to sleep. They did not want to be constantly monitored or chased away.
At a time like this, they still needed help from locals.
Misha used a second-hand phone to log into the local Sunette forum and, posing as someone who had suffered a “zero-yuan purchase” scam victim, posted asking for help. Not long after, she received advice from netizens.
Netizens told the two of them that near the Asian community in the city there was a bathhouse. For just 60USD you could rent a private room for the night. The rooms had showers and televisions, and both safety and privacy were well guaranteed.
What was even better was that at this place, as long as you could pay, no one cared about your identity.
After all, this bathhouse catered to customers from the nearby Asian community, where there were likely undocumented migrants among them. If the rules were too strict, it would affect business.
After receiving the reply, Everly and Misha did not immediately believe it. Instead, they carefully investigated the place through online searches, asking nearby residents, and doing on-site checks. Only after confirming that there was nothing wrong with it did they feel safe enough to stay there.
They ended up staying for a full three days.
On the night of the third day, masked “superman” Old John, with Orff’s assistance, successfully infiltrated the impound lot where the bus was being held. He picked the lock, climbed into the vehicle, and retrieved all of Everly and Misha’s personal belongings from inside the seat cushion next to the emergency exit, leaving without drawing anyone’s attention.
On the morning of the fourth day, Old John rented a car and drove north, arriving at the entrance of the bathhouse where Misha and Everly were staying by midday, reuniting with the two girls.
At this point, Everly and Misha finally escaped their awkward situation of having no identification documents.
As for school, Old John had already used black-market fake medical certificates to prepare deferred enrollment applications for Everly and Misha in advance.
So after the reunion, the three of them did not rush to the school day and night. Instead, they traveled by car at a relaxed pace, resting along the way.
During this period, news about the killing game and Gilosha occasionally reached them through the internet and media reports.
To start with the killing game: on the final day of the game, after the protagonist and others seized a helicopter and escaped the island, they had sent some survivors who did not wish to take revenge back to the mainland.
After these people returned, some chose to quietly hide back at home, while others—less cautious—went directly to the police and the media, attempting to publicly disclose their experiences.
However, whether they ran home in secret or actively reported it to the police and sought out the media, as soon as their whereabouts were exposed, they were all eliminated without exception by the game organization and corrupt police.
Originally, the game organization only needed to apply a few more tactics to suppress these deaths. But at that moment, the protagonist’s group launched an attack on the organization’s main base.
Everly searched terms like “private island,” “explosion,” and “attack,” and the results showed that on the sixth day after she and Misha escaped the island, a wealthy man’s private island in the Atlantic Ocean suffered an “unknown-origin terrorist attack.” It was likely the work of the protagonist’s group.
In that attack, the game organizers suffered heavy losses, and their control over public opinion dropped sharply. At some point, rumors about the “killing game” began circulating on social media.
At the same time, a wave of assassination attempts targeting powerful elites erupted. Every time someone died, people online would dig up and expose their crimes. No matter how charitable or refined they had appeared in public, they were all secretly involved in the “killing game”—as organizers, spectators, or investors.
Public anger toward the “killing game” surged to an unprecedented level. Every day, protests broke out in cities, with large numbers of citizens holding banners and signs, angrily demanding that the police do their duty and bring the criminals to justice.
In summary, the existence of the “killing game” had triggered massive public outrage. With the protagonist’s group and public opinion pressure leading the way, those involved in the game were now unlikely to focus their attention on Everly and Misha, two people who, on paper, had nothing to do with it.
Therefore, Everly and Misha no longer needed to worry about their identities being exposed.
However, there was something about this that confused Everly.
She remembered that in the movies she had seen in her previous life, the protagonist’s revenge journey was quite complicated.
In the early and middle stages, they were constantly suppressed by the game organization’s forces, and public opinion was firmly controlled by them as well.
Under the manipulation of interested parties, the media portrayed the protagonist and his group as bloodthirsty, cruel serial killers. The police even issued warrants for their arrest, forcing them to constantly stay hidden. Otherwise, if captured, they would mysteriously “die suddenly” on the way to prison.
However, in her current reality, the media narrative had taken a complete 180-degree turn. Both openly and subtly, they praised the protagonist and his group as “lonely heroes” and “bloodstained lone warriors.” While doing so, they also harshly vilified everyone they took revenge against.
As a result, the protagonist’s revenge path became extremely smooth, allowing them to kill far more enemies in far less time than in the original storyline.
Why was this happening…?
If it was due to the butterfly effect from her involvement, that didn’t quite make sense either. Everly had spent the whole time trying to escape and didn’t think she had done anything significant.
Hmm… she couldn’t figure it out.
But compared to the original story, this outcome was better, so she decided not to dwell on it.
Putting the “killing game” behind her for now, Everly also casually looked into the situation in Gilosha.
While she and Misha were kidnapped by the killing game and struggling to survive on the island, the situation in Gilosha had also gone through a series of twists and turns.
At first, just as Everly and Misha had seen on the bus, a large number of city residents suddenly mutated. Slime-like tentacles grew from their bodies, and they rushed en masse toward the port. Along the way, they would actively attack any unmutated ordinary people they encountered.
After that, due to being caught up in an attack, Everly and Misha were unable to follow the situation in real time.
By the time the two of them finally returned safely to land, online discussions about the Gilosha mutation incident had already been largely cleaned up, with only fragments of information still scattered across a few niche forums.
According to online rumors, the mutated people who had rushed to the port were targeting a ship that was about to dock. That vessel had just returned from a mission in a mysterious sea region. No one knew exactly what it had brought back, but it somehow attracted countless mutated individuals, who relentlessly traveled from far away toward the ship—even submerging into seawater without stopping.
Once the ship detected the approaching mutants, it immediately turned back and retreated. At the same time, there were eyewitness reports of a heavily armed helicopter appearing in the sky, flying in the same direction as the departing ship.
Some paranormal forums speculated that the helicopter had gone to rendezvous with the ship and retrieve a so-called “ruins statue” onboard.
After the helicopter left, it did not return the same way, so no one could confirm whether the speculation was true.
The only confirmed fact was that the mutation of Gilosha’s citizens was indeed connected to that ship.
As the ship moved farther away, the mutated individuals left on shore gradually returned to normal. Their extra tentacles retracted and reshaped into human limbs, and the madness in their eyes faded as their lost rationality returned.
These people were the fortunate ones.
Even after returning to normal, their hands were already stained with blood, the taste of human flesh still lingering in their throats, and they had to endure the rejection and fear of those around them. Still, they were considered lucky.
Because they had been far enough from the coast that, during their transformation, they never managed to jump into the sea like the mutated people at the docks.
Those who had followed the ship into the ocean were not so fortunate.
After the ship left, the bodily mutations of these individuals gradually disappeared, and they returned to human form. But this was not a good thing—because in losing their tentacles, they also lost their ability to move freely through the sea.
People who could swim were relatively fortunate. Even if they were far from shore, they could barely make it back by paddling.
Those who couldn’t swim were the unlucky ones. They screamed in panic, flailing wildly, but most of them couldn’t hold on for long before sinking like stones into the sea. Their bodies drifted aimlessly with the waves, slowly decomposing in places where no one would ever find them, becoming food for fish…
Although rescue teams were organized on shore immediately, the number of people who actually survived and made it back was still very small.
Most of them had already been permanently left behind in the sea long before rescue arrived.
……
As the situation gradually subsided, the government conducted a statistical report. Under the combined impact of the earlier infectious disease and the later mutation outbreak, the total number of deaths and missing persons in Gilosha City exceeded ten thousand.
Whether this figure had been concealed or understated was unknown to the public.
The only thing people knew was that Gilosha City had been severely weakened by the series of events. The once-prosperous port city was now in ruins and desolation. Ships no longer came and went through the harbor, many shops had closed down, and only funeral homes were thriving, with one funeral after another being held. Walking through the streets, one could see people dressed in black everywhere, their faces filled with grief…
With such a major incident, the authorities naturally had to offer an explanation.
However, many matters involving the mysterious side of things would only provoke unnecessary curiosity and panic if revealed to the public, bringing no benefit. Therefore, in response to the overwhelming doubts and demands from the outside world, the U.S. government’s official explanation was that the rampaging mutants were merely unfortunate people suffering from genetic mutations caused by radiation-induced skin disease.
This condition, they claimed, not only caused physical mutations but also affected the brain, making the infected bloodthirsty and aggressive toward others. As for why the mutants rushed toward the port, the official explanation was rather perfunctory: they claimed that due to the skin condition, the mutants felt extreme dryness in their bodies and needed to soak in seawater to relieve it…
That kind of explanation was the classic “whether you believe it or not, I believe it” type of official statement. The strange part was that, surprisingly, public opinion online was split evenly between believers and skeptics, which left Everly completely speechless.
And that was where the official explanation ended.
As for the cultists who had performed some kind of evil ritual at the port, Everly couldn’t find any information about them at all. Misha tried searching through group chats for videos from the day of the incident, only to discover that all related records had been deleted. Even the people who had posted those cultist videos had left the group and deleted their accounts, making it impossible to contact them.
Everly suspected this was most likely the work of the authorities.
Those cultists were probably suppressed by the government. Otherwise, with their ability to cause chaos, Gilosha would have been flattened by the summoned sea monster long ago, and there was no way things would have ended so quickly.
Sigh—at any rate, it was over now…
Once Gilosha recovered, Everly still intended to use it as a transit point for catching flights. If it ended up destroyed, that would be bad news for her.
……
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